Dully unprotesting, the public received the news of the dissolution of the Duma and the arrest of the deputies. The majority of Russians did not want disunion, did not want the overthrow of vested rights. Each wanted some specialty of his own. Yet here was the resultant of each constituency’s crystallized desires. The people had accepted the leadership of those who had held out great hopes, impotently. The Government had crushed the men whose power meant social and economic, as well as administrative, revolution. In the blow it had perforce shattered the dreams as well. [Illustration: THE TVERSKAIA GATE LOUBIANSKAIA PLACE STREET SCENES IN MOSCOW] Humiliated by the contemptuous condemnation of their chosen representatives, bitterly disillusioned, the people at large stolidly acquiesced in the extinction. The voting for the second Duma, which followed some months later, was almost perfunctory. Those who had chronically wished to agitate, and those put forward by the Administration in an effort to pack the membership, composed the bulk of the deputies. Moderates, hopeful of progress with order, stayed at home, disgusted with both sides. The result was a second violent, wrangling Duma, offending like the first, and in its turn ignominiously snuffed out. The year 1907 saw universal disappointment, cynicism, and skepticism. In the literature, the lassitude of the nation was shown, and morbid despair reflected the thwarted hopes, the agonies, the confusion of the people. The bitterness in the _Lazarus_ of Andreyev, the decadence in the _Sanin_ of Artzybashev, mirrored the people’s mood, and the shadow of a dark destiny brooded over all. To fill the cup, the reaction, coldly triumphant, was able to bring the members of the first national parliament before the bar for high treason in signing the Viborg Manifesto. In the stifling Hall of Justice in St. Petersburg, like a resurrection of the first Duma, sat the hundred and sixty-nine signers, grouped as of old by party affiliations. Each man was called upon to justify his actions. Many had signed the Viborg document in the belief that the people would rise in bloody rebellion, and they issued what was, to their fevered view, advice of moderation. One deputy after another stood erect to answer for his deeds. If the men had been carried from liberty into license, at least they had been fired by intense belief in themselves and in their mission. Impressive were the solemn declarations of those who expected nothing less than long imprisonment for speaking out, now, a defiance to the ruling power. It was currently rumored that should the former President of the Duma, Dolgoroukov, justify his action, his penalty was to be three years’ imprisonment; the others would serve one; while liberty was reported to be the bribe for any who would confess a fault. Yet almost to a man these old deputies rose to declare that they still stood by all that they had done.