The town is in a ferment like a disturbed ant hill. Voices are raised loudly in altercation. The Duma has been dismissed. Our only hope was in the Duma. How bold the citizens of Petrograd have become all at once! They shout things out in the streets they would have been afraid to speak of in a whisper in the privacy of their own bedrooms but a short time ago! Trouble is feared. With the murmur of discontented voices in my ears, I think, “It’s all very fine, my brave fellows. … But what has it to do with me?”
From sheer lack of something else to do, I went to the Taurida Palace. It looked just the same as on any ordinary day. A small crowd of us stood watching the members coming out. There seemed nothing unusual about them too; they were men like other men, only a little grave and satisfied, perhaps, that it had fallen to their lot to participate in such a great historic event. To be dismissed in the hour when “the country was in danger”! They came out with dignity, and sat stiff and upright in their carriages, looking grave, with the air of a specialist who had just finished a patient. When I smiled and happened to pass some jocular remark, a young man near me said something about the black hundreds. I resolve to get away before I was mobbed, and really, what business had I there at all? I went to the Ochta Bridge afterwards and expended six kopeks to go down the Neva on a steamer as far as the Vasily Island.
The water has a strange attraction for me. I was very soothed to sit on the fore part of the ship, with the wind and spray beating against my face. It gave a pleasantness to my hopelessness and despair.