“Delay is fatal,” he replied quietly; “this is the beginning of the end. Sophia has let loose the fiends, and who will chain them up again? Zénaïde Feodorovna is in danger from them also; therefore farewell, M. de Brousson, and may your patron saint befriend you.” We were standing in the lane, and he pressed my hand; his face was sad, it may have been with a prescience of impending fate. His warning had taken effect, however, and my thoughts were all for Zénaïde’s safety; and so I parted from him and hurried on with the reluctant dwarf, who saw that his chances of evading me grew momentarily less. Once I looked back and saw the Jew disappearing into the low door of a pine hovel at the end of the lane,--one of those huts occupied by peasants, and built in two days, at the cost of a few rubles, and at that time scattered through Moscow, beside the palaces of the nobles, in every quarter of the town. After this, I turned my face steadily towards the river and hurried on, guided by Homyak, who seemed to grow more resigned to the inevitable as he realized my relentless determination. I had selected a way that I knew was not likely to be crossed by the rioters, and our progress was uninterrupted. This part of the city seemed quiet enough as yet, undisturbed as it was by the tumult stirring in the quarters of the Streltsi. Yet there was a portentous aspect even about these silent houses; occasionally a face would appear at a window, to be withdrawn as quickly at our approach, and once or twice I heard the heavy bolts drawn across a door as our footsteps sounded in the silent street. There was terror here, concealed in these quiet corners; the specter of some danger already lurked in these lonely alleys. The gray of dawn had passed into the broad daylight, but there were no signs of the busy life of a city waking up; it seemed as if the active element must have been drawn off to another quarter, and there was only desolation here. How still it was! We were in the Biélui-gorod now, walking in the direction of the Smolensk Gate, and suddenly we were startled by a strange sound, the galloping hoofs of a horse and a man’s hoarse voice shouting something, the same words repeated again and again. I stopped involuntarily to listen, and in a moment he crossed the end of the street, riding recklessly, and swinging his long arms over his head. It was one of the Streltsi, and his uniform was splashed with mud and his long hair was flying. He saw us but did not pause, only calling out his constant cry:-- “The Naryshkins have murdered the Czarevitch Ivan! To arms! To the Kremlin and punish the traitors! Rescue the czar!”