Before I had time to acquiesce or protest, I found a lean hand grasping mine in a strong, characteristic handshake. We stood there for a few moments, talking of inconsequential things, but all of us charged with the tensity of the hour. There was keen intelligence here, nerve, a certain uncompromising streak of iron, a sense of power; yet I little suspected I was talking to the man whose name within a few brief weeks would be a familiar word on every tongue--the most-talked-of human being in an age of spectacular figures. At twenty minutes to eleven our conversation was abruptly cut short by the appearance of Dan, who opened the meeting. It was Dan’s swan-song. Only a few weeks before, in this gathering, his voice would have been law; but with the swing of the workers to the left his power was gone. The mass had broken with its leaders, and every comment from the crowd indicated more definitely the irrevocability of that break. Dan announced that he would not make a speech, declaring that the hour in which his comrades were being shelled in the Winter Palace, and self-sacrificingly sticking to their posts, was not the hour for oratory. He said that five hundred and thirteen delegates had been seated, and the new presidium of twenty-five members would contain fourteen Bolsheviki. The spokesmen of the various parties then announced the names of their representatives. Leaders of the social patriotic groups, of the Mensheviki, and Socialist Revolutionists refused to take their place in the presidium, and the Menshevik Internationalists declared they would delay joining the presidium until certain questions were settled. The Bolsheviki, with Nicolai Lenin and Zenovieff at their head, climbed to the platform. A great cheer went up from the Bolshevik supporters. Lenin and Zenovieff, who had been in hiding since the July riots, had that day come out of their holes to take a historic part in this new Revolution. When the ovation had died down, Dan briefly stated the object of the meeting before relinquishing his place to Trotzky. “The business of the Convention,” said he, “divides itself into three heads: a governmental crisis, the question of war and peace, and the Constituent Assembly.” “Take up the question of peace first,” shouted a soldier in the crowd. It was all that was needed to set the indignation of the Mensheviki flaming. “Tavarischi, forty minutes have passed since we announced that our comrades were being shelled in the Winter Palace, and the cruiser _Aurora_ is still firing. We demand that this bloodshed be stopped immediately.” “A committee has already been sent out,” some one else declared. Martoff, perhaps the ablest of the Menshevik Internationalists, took the platform, and in a voice ringing with indignation demanded immediate settlement of the governmental crisis.