We made our way through a procession of sentries into the Palace, up the broad staircases, across a wide lobby, and into a huge ball-room. Great circles of light were reflected on the polished floor from the mammoth candelabra hung on the frescoed ceiling somewhere up near the sky. There were guards and more guards, stairs and more stairs, until at last a sailor politely forced us into a box overlooking the Assembly. The auditorium was a great square room surrounded by balconies and roofed with glass. The seats were arranged like a fan in widening circles. They were cushioned with red leather, and strips of red carpet ran like ribs toward the tribunal, where slender bay trees stretched their green arms against the white columns. Here red-leather-cushioned couches marked the places where the many mighty men of Russaia’s past had sat. Here, in due time, came the People’s Commissaries. Trotzky was away at Brest-Litovsk. Kolontai, Commissary of Public Welfare, was the first to take her place. She came in with a large brief-case under her arm, and paused for a moment to search the crowd for comrade faces. Krylenko, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was just behind her, hurrying in with that quick, nervous stride so familiar to all of us who frequented the corridors at Smolney. Krylenko was always going somewhere in a great rush, and we never saw much of him except a grotesque and fleeting picture of his long, narrow back, and the little short legs that carried it. Lunarcharsky, the Commissary of Education, came next. Volodarsky--whom one Russian called “The little bell that always echoes Trotzky”--and half a dozen lesser lights slipped quietly into their seats. Last of all came Lenin, his merry brown eyes bright and his face serene. The hours went on. We punctuated them with many glasses of tea. Nothing happened. Three o’clock came. I wandered out on the balcony, and looked down upon the ball-room, where men and women paced back and forth across the inlaid floor. They seemed like pygmy people beside the massive columns. The bigness of the North and the splendor of departed ages was in that room. The largeness of a great materialistic dream was there, and the work of countless little men tossed into the building at the command of a single woman. The little men and the big woman had long since crumbled to dust. To-day other little men--the inheritors of the builders, the masons and carpenters, peasants and factory workers--were here. They were the one tremendous fact of the moment.