Meanwhile everybody knew what was coming, and people began to get very nervous. The most ordinary thing was enough to start a panic. At the sound of machine-guns practising I have seen a crowd gather and then, taken by a sudden impulse, run like a flock of sheep, they knew not where. During these long months all classes of society displayed a feverish gaiety. Never were the streets so full, the theatres and cinematographs so crowded, or the shops so busy. Money seemed to have no value except to purchase one more pleasure, before the time when there would be no pleasures at all. I shall not easily forget the evening when there came a lying telegram that Venice had fallen. The people in the streets acclaimed the news with shouts of wild laughter, and they could not have been merrier if their own army had taken Berlin. It was not so much want of sympathy for Italy, as extreme nervousness finding some excuse for expression. The sword of Damocles hung above our heads, and nobody knew when or upon whom it would fall. Ordinary good-byes in those days had something of the solemnity of an eternal farewell. The afternoon before the fighting began, I had been giving a lesson in the town and was taking leave of the family. They asked the usual question, “When will you come again?” A silence fell upon us. Who knew if we should ever meet again? The storm broke at last. The Bolsheviks occupied the chief Government institutions and issued an ultimatum to the Younkers and Cossacks to deliver up their arms. As this was equivalent to saying, “Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed,” the invitation was refused and the fighting began. On one side were a thousand Younkers and Cossacks armed with rifles and machine-guns; on the other, twenty thousand Bolshevik soldiers and Red Guards, supported by four batteries of Field Artillery, some heavy howitzers, and a number of siege guns. Between these unequal forces the battle raged for ten days. The Younkers had possession of a few brick and stone buildings near the river Angara. The Cossacks were in their wooden barracks, and they afterwards took a children’s hospital commanding their position. The Bolsheviks were everywhere else. The Younkers showed great bravery in attack. At the third attempt they stormed the bridge over the Angara and blew it up, thus preventing reinforcements from reaching the Bolsheviks by this route. They also took the White House, the largest and strongest building in Irkutsk. Here they captured some of the leading members of the Soviet, whom, however, they treated with perfect courtesy. The cowardice of the Bolshevik soldiers was appalling. At the White House some ran and hid themselves in cellars and some in the lofts, while others reported themselves sick. It was a building which ten men could have held against a thousand, and which need never have been taken at all. The Younkers asked one lot of prisoners why they were fighting so badly.