On my way back I walked through the Dvortsovy Square. Four armored cars were drawn up under the shadow of the mighty granite shaft in front of the Winter Palace, their guns pointing significantly at the palace windows. Flaming red flags were freshly painted on their gray sides, and on one in large letters was the word “Proletariat.” A crowd of perhaps twenty mechanics and chauffeurs tinkered with guns and engines, making ready for instant action. Occasionally a man looked up from the nut he was tightening to offer some comment on the situation. The whereabouts of Kerensky was the chief topic of the moment. “He is not there now,” said one of them, pointing with his wrench in the direction of the palace. “He ran away to Finland in the night.” “He is not in Finland,” said another scornfully. “He went away to get troops. He is coming back to fight us.” “They say he escaped to the front disguised as a Red Cross nurse,” said a third, with a sneer that produced a loud burst of laughter from his companions. Inside the palace, seated around the mahogany table in the great council chamber, where the Tsar of all the Russias had spoken commands that made an empire tremble, fifteen members of the Provisional Government grimly waited. In the hall outside the door ten military school cadets kept watch. These, the women’s regiment, and a company of cadets encamped on the lower floor, were all that stood between them and the rising army of the workers. To them the whereabouts of Kerensky was no secret. He had gone in search of loyal troops who would rise to the protection of the Provisional Government, and upon his success or failure they must stand or fall. It was noon when I returned to St. Isaac’s Square. The Marinsky Palace, where the Council of the Republic was meeting,--once the home of the Council of the Empire, mouth-piece of absolutism in old Russia,--was surrounded by sailors, soldiers, and Red Guardsmen. The palace guards offered no resistance when a crowd of sailors demanded admission. They swarmed through the entrances, and appeared simultaneously in various parts of the hall. A sailor, a tam-o’-shanter on the back of his head and long ribbon streamers flying out behind, stepped up to President Avksentieff. “Stop talking. Go home,” he said. “There is no Council of the Republic!” Avksentieff and his followers demurred for a moment; then, looking around the room at the men in blue, they adjourned, and filed into the square. The Council of the Republic, hope of Tseretelli, Cheidze, and those other moderate Socialists who were trying so desperately to stave off the final break, was at an end. The more radical Socialist members went to Smolney Institute, where the delegates from all parts of Russia were flocking to the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.