“But, supposing they don’t dissolve you?” I asked. I don’t know what his answer was, because this conversation took place in the lobby of the Duma, and the spokesman, who was a Cossack member (not a man with a shock of hair and golden sequins or silver braid on his coat, but a pale, thin, short man, with large bright eyes and no collar), had such a fiery and emphatic delivery that a large crowd collected round us, and one of the crowd entered with him into a heated argument, of which I heard fragments. “We have done nothing,” he said. “We have been here a month and talked.” “What else could we do?” said his interlocutor; “the Government take no notice of us.” “We ought to declare ourselves a Constituent Assembly. The people of St. Petersburg are like ducks who have been fired at. They are afraid of the sight of blood. But the Government needn’t think they have got the best of us, not those silly little gramophones (this to his interlocutor) who repeat what the Cadets say, but us, the representatives of the people; we shall have a nice surprise for them. We have got terrible means at our disposal without even appealing to the people. That’s the worst of us Russians: we know how to talk, how to write; they translate our books into foreign languages; but we don’t know how to act. I mean the educated Russians, the Cadets; but we are going to show that we do know how to act. Every day for the last month I have acted in a certain direction.” The rest of the philippic was lost to me. One of the arguers, who had just joined the Cadet Party, and being a young official was frightfully proud of the fact, seemed somewhat mortified at being called a “little gramophone.” The temper of the Duma, although its outward behaviour is decorous, seems to be rising in temperature. The majority is in favour of moderation, and at present the majority is powerful. The Government has been treating the Duma like a spoilt child which needs humouring. CHAPTER XXI THE BEGINNING OF DISORDER ST. PETERSBURG, _June 16th_.