Maklakov, reserved and serious, seemed better and purer to Yevsey than any person he had met up to that time. He always wanted to ask him about something, and tell him about himself--such an attractive and engaging face did this young spy have. Once Yevsey actually put a question to him: "Timofey Vesilyevich, how much do the revolutionists receive a month?" A light shadow passed over Maklakov's bright eyes. "You are talking nonsense," he answered, not in a loud voice, but angrily. The days passed quickly, in a constant stir, one just like the other. At times Yevsey felt they would file on in the same way far into the future--vari-colored, boisterous, filled with the talks now become familiar to him and with the running about to which he had already grown accustomed. This thought enfolded his heart in cold tedium, his body in enfeebling languor. Everything within and without became empty. Klimkov seemed to be sliding down into a bottomless pit. CHAPTER XVI In the middle of the winter everything suddenly trembled and shook. People anxiously opened their eyes, gesticulated, disputed furiously, and swore. As though severely wounded and blinded by a blow, they all stampeded to one place. It began in this way. One evening on reaching the Department of Safety to hand in a hurried report of his investigations, Klimkov found something unusual and incomprehensible in the place. The officials, agents, and clerks appeared to have put on new faces. All seemed strangely unlike themselves. They wore an air of astonishment and rejoicing. They spoke now in very low tones and mysteriously, now aloud and angrily. There was a senseless running from room to room, a listening to one another's words, a suspicious screwing-up of anxious eyes, a shaking of heads and sighing, a sudden cessation of talk, and an equally sudden burst of disputing. A whirlwind of fear and perplexity swept the room in broad circles. Playing with the people's impotence it drove them about like dust, first blowing them into a pile, then scattering them on all sides. Klimkov stationed in a corner looked with vacant eyes upon this state of consternation, and listened to the conversation with strained attention. He saw Melnikov with his powerful neck bent and his head stuck forward place his hairy hands on different persons' shoulders and demand in his low hollow voice: "Why did the people do it?" "What of it? The people must live. Hundreds were killed, eh? Wounded!" shouted Solovyov. From somewhere came the repulsive voice of Sasha, cutting the ear. "The priest ought to have been caught. That before everything else. The idiots!" Krasavin walked about with his hands folded behind his back, biting his lips and rolling his eyes in every direction. Quiet Viekov took up his stand beside Yevsey, and picked at the buttons of his vest. "So this is the point we've reached," he said. "My God! Bloodshed! What do you think, eh?"