CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE RIOT.
The next morning the Police Master, "in order to avoid bloodshed,"issued a proclamation forbidding Jews to leave their houses. The orderwas copied from one that had been issued in other riot-ridden townswhere, as the Miroslav Police Master knew but too well, it meant thatthe Jews were prevented from uniting for their self-defence and forcedto await the arrival of the mob, each family in its own isolatedlodgings. At the same time every soldier of the Jewish faith was calledback to barracks, none of their number being included in the patrol,"for fear of embittering the Christian population."
A peculiar air hung about the city, an air at once of festive idlenessand suppressed bustle. It looked as it might on the eve of some greatfair. Gentile workmen, staying away from their shops, were parading thestreets, many of them shouldering axes, sledge-hammers, bores,chisels--their tools of useful toil to be turned to weapons ofdemolition and pillage; peasants from neighbouring villages werearriving with sacks, pails, tubs, spades, axes, pitchforks, theirwaggons otherwise empty and ready to be laden with booty. Among thepeople in the streets were gangs of trained rioters, come from townswhere their work was at an end. The Jews were in their hiding placeswhere they had passed the night. Pavel went about alone, avoidingcompany, asking himself questions to which his mind had no answer. Hewas filled with the excitement of a sportsman a few minutes before thebeginning of a great race; with mental chaos and anxiety.
At one corner of Cucumber Market a group of peasants took off theircoarse straw hats and bowed to two policemen.
"We are only ignorant peasants," they said. "Will your High Noblenesstell us when his Excellency the Police Master will give the order tostart in?"
"There won't be any order to start in," answered one of the policemen."Move along, move along."
The large market place became white with country people. They weregetting restive. Their sacks and tubs were hungry for the goods of"Christ-killers." Four years ago many of these very people, dressed likesoldiers, had been driven to the Balkans by a force known to them as theCzar, to fire at Turks without having the least idea what sort ofcreatures those people called Turks were or what they had done to befired at. Now they had come here, in obedience to the same force, to roband do violence to Jews. Among the out-of-town looters were two trampswho had it whispered about that they were two well-known generals indisguise, personal emissaries of the Emperor sent to direct the attackupon the Jews. These two were soon put in gaol, but that which theypersonified, the idea that the anti-Jewish riots met with the Czar'sapproval, was left at large. It seized upon soldier and civilian alike.People who usually kept at a timid distance from everything in the shapeof a uniform, were now bandying jests with army lieutenants and policecaptains. The question this morning was not whether one wore the Czar'suniform or citizen's clothes, but whether one was a Jew or not. Anunusual feeling of kinship linked them all together, and the source ofthat feeling was the consciousness that they were not Jews.
It was about nine o'clock when a large seedy-looking man with a bloated,sodden face, stepped out of a vast crowd on Cucumber Market, and walkedjauntily up to a deserted fruit stand. Snatching a handful of hickorynuts, he flung it high in the air, then thrust his two index fingersinto his mouth and blew a loud piercing blast, puffing himself upviolently as he did so. The sound was echoed by similar sounds in manyparts of the crowded market place.
"Hee-ee-eeee!" came from a thousand frantic throats.
A long stick was raised with a battered hat for a flag, a hundred humanswarms rushed in all directions, rending the air with their yells, andpandemonium was loose.
There was a scramble for hardware shops, vodka shops and places whereJewish women were said to be secreted. Another few minutes and thestreets were streaming with spirits. The air was filled with the odourof alcohol, with the din of broken glass, with the clatter of feet, withthe impact of battering rams against doors; and coming through thisgeneral clang, thud and crash of destruction, were smothered groans ofagony, shrieks of horror and despair, the terror-stricken cry ofchildren, the jeers of triumph and lust. Here a row of shops, theirdoors burst in, was sending forth a shower of sugar, kerosene, flour,spices, coats, bonnets, wigs, dry goods, crockery, cutlery, toys; therea bevy of men were tearing up the street, piling up the cobble-stoneswhich others were hurling at shop windows. Some men and women werecarrying away bucketsful of vodka. Others were bending over casks,scooping out the liquid with their caps, hands or even boots; otherswere greedily crouching before barrels, their mouths to the bungholes.Here and there a man leaning over a broken cask was guzzling at itscontents in a torpor of drunkenness. One rioter, holding a sealed bottlein his hand and too impatient to look for a corkscrew, smashed its neckagainst the sidewalk, while another man, by his side, broke two similarbottles against each other, and then cursed the Jews as he licked winemixed with his own blood off his fingers. Nearby a woman carrying a shoefull of vodka toward a four-year-old boy who was seated on a pile oflogs, yelled frantically:
"Here, my darling! Taste it, precious one, so that when you grow up youmay say you remember the day when the ill-gotten wealth of Jews wassmashed by people of the True Faith."
Women and children were serving vodka to the soldiers in cans, teapots,saucers, ladles, paper boxes.
Orlovsky mounted a cask and began to shout, wildly:
"Don't drink too much, boys! Don't befog your minds! For this is a greathistorical moment! Only why attack Jews alone? Behold, the Czar is atthe head of all the blood-suckers in the land!"
Scarcely anybody listened to him. The crowd was too deeply absorbed inits orgy. His voice was drowned by a thousand other sounds; his flashingeyes and his air-pounding fists were part of a nightmare of brutalisedfaces, attitudes of greed, gesticulations of primitive humanity runamuck. Presently, however, a group of belated rowdies came along insearch of drink. They stopped in front of Orlovsky, eyeing the caskunder his feet hopefully, the appearance of the bung showing that itscontents were still intact.
"Who are you, anyhow?" one of them said to the speaker. "It must be theJews who sent you here to talk like that to good Christian people."
"It isn't true. You're mistaken, old boy," Orlovsky answered hoarselyand breathing hard, but with a kindly, familiar smile on his flushed,perspiring face. "I am one of the best friends you and all the peopleever had, I mean the good of all of you fellows. What's the useattacking Jews only, I say. We had better turn upon the authorities, theflunkeys of the Czar----"
"Do you hear what he says?" one of his listeners said, in perplexity,nudging the fellow by his side.
"He wants to get us in trouble, the sly fox that he is," somebodyremarked.
"Sure, he does. And it was by the Jews he was hired to come here. I knowwhat I am talking about," growled the man who had spoken first. "Downwith him, boys!"
"Down with him!" the others echoed, thirstily.
Orlovsky was pulled off and the group of belated rioters, re-enforced bysome others, rushed at the cask savagely.
Pavel was in another section of the same street. An old little Jewesswhom he saw run out of a gate struck him as the most pathetic figure hehad seen that day. Her fright gave her pinched little face somethinglike a pout, an air of childlike resentment, as it were. A Gentile boysnatched off her wig and held it up, jeering to some bystanders,whereupon she covered her gray head with her bony hands, her faithforbidding her to expose her hair, and ran on with the same childlikepout. A sob of pity caught Pavel in the throat. He was about to offer totake her to a place of safety, when an elderly rowdy, apparentlyprovoked by her outlandish anxiety about her bare hair, struck her avicious blow on the head, accompanying it with profanity.
"Cur!" Pavel shrieked, springing up to him and landing a smart whack inhis face.
The rioter looked round with surprise, muttered something and joined thelooters.
"Come with me, don't be afraid of the scoundrels," Pavel said, takingher by the hand. His heart was melting with pity
for all the Jews atthis moment. He felt a rush of yearning tenderness for Clara, and hewished she could see him taking care of this woman of her race.
When he saw two marauders hand out gold and silver watches--the spoilsof a raid--to the patrol, his blood was up again.
"Is that what you are here for, thieves, vermin that you are?" heshouted.
"Who is that fellow? Run him in!" somebody said.
He fought desperately, cursing the authorities and calling to the mob toturn upon the soldiers, but he was overpowered and carried away halfdead. When his identity was discovered at Police Headquarters, it causeda panic among the officials of the place. He was reverently placed in acarriage and taken to the Palace.
The Defence Guard gave the rioters fight in two places, and a desperateencounter it was, but it was not to last long. Troops fell upon them,beat them with the butts of their rifles and hurled execrations at themfor violating the police ordinance. Every Jew who was armed and everyJew who looked educated, Elkin among them, was arrested. The others weredriven indoors. Vladimir was brought to police headquarters unconscious,with blood gushing from his head.
When the first stack of bedding was pitched out on the sidewalk atNicholas Street, from a residence over a tobacco shop, a man with wateryeyes and a beautiful Great-Russian beard, one of the leaders, selecteda big, plump, tempting feather-bed, and opened his pocket-knife withdignified deliberation. A crowd of about one thousand stood about inbreathless silence, as though attending a religious ceremony of greatsolemnity. In order to prolong the spell, the man with the golden beardplayed with the feather-bed awhile, kneading, patting, punching it,brandishing his knife over it, like a barbaric high priest performingsome mystic rite over a captive about to be sacrificed. Then, graspingit with sudden ferocity, his teeth a-glitter amid his enormous whiskers,his watery eyes flashing murder, he cut a quick, long gash, rent thepillow-case apart and hurled its snow-white entrails to the breeze.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" the mob yelled savagely, as the breeze seized the downand flung it in a thousand directions. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
The other feather-beds and pillows were ripped up, disemboweled andemptied by some of the other rioters. The summer-baked street seemed tobe in the grasp of a snow-storm.
It is one of the characteristics of the housewife of the Ghetto that shewill put up with a poor meal rather than with an uncomfortable bed. Thedestruction of pillows and featherbeds is therefore the most typicalscene of anti-Semitic riots in Russia. An Anglo-Saxon crowd viewing aprize-fight is not thrilled more deeply at sight of "first-blood" thanwere the rioters of Miroslav at sight of the first cloud of Jewish down.Now the outbreak was in full swing. Some of the men came out infashionable clothes, their pockets bulging with plunder. The same workof devastation and pillage was going on in many places at once. Aboutten thousand raiders, most of them covered with down, were skirmishingabout in groups of fifty to one hundred, preceded by one or two leadersand accompanied, in some cases, with a band of toy-drums and whistles.They went from street to street reconnoitering for houses or shops thathad not yet been visited. Now it looked like a real anti-Jewish riot.Hurrah! Hurrah!
After the pillows came the furniture and other household goods, everybit of it either shivered to flinders or carried off. While some werebusy smashing things or throwing them out of the windows, others werestripping off their own clothes and arraying themselves in the bestcoats, trousers, dresses, bonnets, the raided houses contained. A frowzydrunken scrub-woman emerged in a gorgeous ball dress, a costly fur capon her head, with two gold watches dangling from her neck. One of thesegangs was led by a man who wore a woman's jacket of brown plush and ahigh hat. Another leader was decked out in a fashionable summer suit anda new straw hat, but his feet were bare and encrusted with dirt. A thirdgang was preceded by a flag consisting of the torn skirt of an outragedJewish woman, the flag-bearer celebrating the exploit as he marchedalong.
Following the looters were dense crowds of spectators, many of them welldressed and with the stamp of education and refinement on their faces.These included some well known families, members of the aristocracy, whowatched the scenes of the day from their fashionable equipages.Officials, merchants, people of the middle class were out in their bestclothes. Miroslav made a great gala day of it. The aristocracy was in acomplacent, race-track mood. Occupants of carriages were exchanginggreetings and pleasantries. Cavaliers were interpreting to their ladiesthe bedlam of sound, odour and colour. The appearance of a drunken jadein a ball dress, strutting with her arms akimbo, in besotted imitationof a lady, brought forth bursts of facetious applause. The well-dressedspectators tried to steer clear of down and feathers, but that wasalmost impossible. Many streets were so thickly covered with it that itdeadened the sound of traffic. But then to catch some of the Jewish downon one's dress or bonnet or coat was part of the carnival. Where thestreet was strewn with jewelry, silverware or knicknacks, costlycarpets, fabrics, many a noblewoman scanned the ground with the haze oftemptation in her eye. "Isn't that cameo perfectly lovely!" And in many,many instances the cameo, or the silver tray, or the piece of tapestryfound its way into the lady's carriage. This was during the early stageof the riot. Later on, when all restraint had been cast off, phaetonswith crests on their sides were filled with plunder. The lame princesstook home one carriage-load and hurried back for more. At every turn onesaw a cavalier offering his lady some piece of finery as he might a roseor a carnation, and in most cases it was accepted, on the cogent groundthat if left on the pavement it would be destroyed. On the other handmany of the rioters themselves disdained to appropriate anything thatwas not theirs. Very often when a Jew offered his assailants all themoney he had about him as a ransom the paper money was torn to piecesand silver or coppers was flung out into the street, whereupon the crowdoutside would fall over each other in a wild scramble for shreds of thepaper or the metal. In one place a man offered the mob all he had in theworld as a ransom for his daughter's honour, but his money wasdestroyed, his daughter assaulted and he himself mortally wounded. Whena peasant woman was seen carrying an armful of linen and ribbons out ofa small shop, she was stopped by one of the rioters.
"Drop that, you old hag," he shouted. "We are no robbers, are we?" Headded a torrent of unprintable Russian and kicked the woman into a swampof syrup, whisky and flour. A short distance from this spot otherpeasant women were stuffing their sacks lustily, whereupon some of thempreferred loud linen to black silk and cheap spoons to silver ones. Inseveral places large sums of money were plundered. As the bank and checksystem was (and still is) in its very infancy in Miroslav, this meant inmost cases that people of means were literally reduced to beggary. Onefamily was saved from personal violence as well as from the loss of itsfortune by an iron safe which the looters spent the whole day in vainlytrying to open. But then, while they were at work on the safe, themother of the family went insane with fright.
Marching side by side with the leaders of the various bands were thecompetitors of Jewish tradesmen or mechanics who acted as guides, eachpointing out the stores or workshops of his rivals. Thus Rasgadayeff,after instructing his wife and servants to see to it that no harm wasdone to his tenants, the Vigdoroffs, had gone to the scene of theoutbreak, where he directed a crowd of rowdies to the store of his mostformidable business opponent. The place was raided. A wealth of costlyfurs was cut to pieces and flung into the street, where cans of keroseneand pails of tar were emptied over the pile, while more than half asmuch again was carried off intact.
"Boys, no stealing," Rasgadayeff said, in a drunken gibberish, when itwas too late. All he could save from the marauders for the slashers wasa sable muff over which two women rioters were fighting desperately.
In the meantime Rasgadayeff's tenants and the people who sought shelterin their house,--the family of Clara's sister and the two or threestrangers--had had a narrow escape from coming face to face with aninfuriated band of hoodlums. Their presence had been indicated by aGentile woman across the street. Mme. Rasgadayeff had tearfully
beggedthe rioters to desist and after some parleying it had been agreed thatthe Vigdoroffs and their guests should be allowed to escape to theirlandlord's apartments before the mob invaded their rooms. From an atticwindow commanding the street Vladimir's parents then saw their householdeffects and their celebrated library--the accumulations of thirtyyears--flung out on the pavement where it was hacked, torn, slashed,trampled upon, flooded with water, mixed with a stream of preserves,brine, kerosene, vinegar, until the contents of eight rooms and cellar,all that for the past thirty years had been their home, were turned intotwo mounds of pulp. The Vigdoroffs watched it all with a peculiar senseof remoteness, with a sort of lethargic indifference. When old Vigdoroffsaw the rioters struggling with the locked drawer of his desk, heremarked to his wife:
"Idiots! Why don't they knock out the bottom?" When one of the mob hurthis fingers trying to rend an old parchment-bound folio, he emitted amock sigh, quoting the Yiddish proverb: "Too much hurry brings nothingbut evil." Only when Clara's little niece began to shake and cry in aparoxysm of childish anguish, upon seeing her doll in the hands of alittle girl from across the street, did the whole family burst intotears.
"I'm going to kill them. Let them kill me!" the old man said, leaping tohis feet. But his wife and daughters hung to him, and held him back.
Later on, when the rioters had gone, the family returned to their nest.The eight rooms were absolutely empty, as though their occupants hadmoved out.
Gradually the various bands of rioters got into the swing of their workand did it with the system and method of an established trade. First thepavement was torn up, the cobblestones being piled up and then crashedinto the windows; the padlocks were then knocked off by means ofcrowbars, hammers or axes and the doors battered down or broken in. Nextthe contents of pillows were cast to the wind, after which, the streethaving thus received its baptism of Jewish down, the real business ofthe rioters was begun by the wreckers and the looters. If the shopraided was a clothier's and the freebooters had not yet prinkedthemselves they would do so to begin with, some of them returning to thestreets in two pairs of trousers, two coats and even two hats. After ahouse or a shop had been gutted and its contents wrecked or plundered itwould be left to children who would then proceed to play riot on itsruins. Here and there a committee followed in the wake of some band,ascertaining whether some Jewish dwelling or shop had not been passedover, or whether a roll of woollen or a piece of furniture had not beenleft undestroyed. Not a chair, not a pound of candles was allowed toremain unshattered. Kerosene was poured over sugar, honey was mixed withvarnish, ink or milk. It was hard, slow work, this slashing and rending,smashing and grinding. Some raiders toiled over a single article tillthey panted for breath. A common sight was a man or a woman tearing at apiece of stuff with broken finger-nails and bleeding fingers,accompanying their efforts with volleys of profanity at the expense ofthe Jews whose wares seemed as hard to destroy as their owners. In oneplace the mob was blaspheming demoniacally because a heap of groundpepper from a wrecked grocery store had thrown them into a convulsion ofsneezing.
* * * * *
The most hideous delirium of brutality was visited upon Paradise,--uponthat district of narrow streets and lanes in the vicinity of CucumberMarket which was the seat of the hardest toil and the blackest need, thehome of the poorest mechanics, labourers and tradesmen. As thoughenraged by the dearth of things worth destroying, the rioters in thissection took it out of the Jews in the most bestial forms of cruelty andfiendishness their besotted minds could invent. The debris here was madeup of the cheapest articles of furniture and mechanics' tools. It washere that several Jewish women were dragged out into the street andvictimised, while drunken women and children aided their husbands andfathers in their crimes. One woman was caught running through a gale offeathers and down, her child clasped in her arms. Another woman waschuckling aloud in a fit of insanity, as she passed through the districtin a cab, when she was pulled off the vehicle. A good-looking girl triedto elude the rioters by disguising herself as a man, but she wasrecognised and the only thing that saved her was a savage fight amongher assailants. A middle-aged woman came out of a house with shrieks ofhorror, imploring an intoxicated army officer to go to the rescue of herdaughter. The officer followed her indoors, but instead of rescuing theyounger woman the only thing that saved her own honour was his drunkencondition. One woman who broke away from two invaders and was about tojump out of her window, was driven back at the point of the bayonet byone of the soldiers in front of the house.
"We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get out," he explained toher, good-naturedly.
"Take pity, oh, do take pity," she was pleading, when her voice waschoked off by somebody within.
Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in many cases beingdesecrated in the most revolting manner; while the Scrolls of the Lawwere everywhere cut to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats anddogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from the Old Synagogueat the hands of a ruffian who had once heard it said that that was theway Titus, the Roman emperor, desecrated the Temple upon takingJerusalem. Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt torescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the streets, theirprecious and rather heavy burden hugged to their hearts. The mob gavechase.
"'Hear, O Israel!'" one of the two men shrieked, "'God is God. God isone.'"
But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful distancefrom every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise its powers on therioters. The two men were overtaken and beaten black and blue and thescrolls were cut to pieces.
A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding place, begged themob to spare his violin which he said was older than he; whereupon theinstrument was shattered against the old man's head. On another streetin the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was made to playwhile his tormentors danced, and when they had finished he had to breakthe violin with his own hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalidsto be ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring shop aconsumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was found with a bottle ofmilk in his trembling hands, his only food until his children shouldfind it safe to crawl back to the house.
"You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby Christ-killer!" yelled arioter as he knocked the bottle out of the tailor's hand and hit hishead with a flat-iron.
Little Market in front of Boyko's Court, the home of Clara's father andmother, glistened with puddles of vodka, in which cats and dogs,overcome by the alcoholic evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now andthen a drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles, dip up ahandful of the muddy stuff with his hands and gulp it thirstily, with aninebriate smile of apology to the bystanders. The corner of a lanenearby was piled with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds. Ahorse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of yolks andegg-shells. When the goose market next door to Boyko's Court was raidedsome of the fowls were stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot,while others were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundredgeese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating liquid,fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters formed a cordon preventingthem from waddling out and then fell to stabbing them with knives andpitchforks, till every pool of vodka was red.
"Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!" they snarled.
Not very far off, hard by a wall, a Jewish woman was giving birth to achild. Presently a Gentile woman with a basket half filled with loottook pity on the child and took it home, giving the policeman heraddress, while the mother was left bleeding to death.
It was also in this district of toil and squalor where the mostdesperate fighting was done by the Jews. One lane was held by five ofthem against a mob of fifty for more than half an hour until the fivemen were lugged off to jail, and then the remaining inhabitants of thelane became the victims of the most atrocious vengeance in the historyof the day. A mother defended a garret again
st a crowd of rioters bybrandishing a heavy crowbar in front of them. The maddened Gentiles thenscaled the wall and charged the roof with axes and sledge-hammers. Partof the roof gave way. The woman continued to swing the crowbar until shefell in a swoon.
* * * * *
The houses of the richest Jews were closely guarded by the soldiery and,barring one exception, rioters were kept at a safe distance from them.Even the house of Ginsburg, the most repugnant usurer in town, was takencare of. Some army officers, indeed, directed various bands of roughs tothe place on the chance of having their promissory notes destroyed, butthe roughs failed to get near it. There was an instinct in officialcircles that the wrecking of wealthy Jewish homes was apt to develop inthe masses a taste for playing havoc with "seats of the mighty." Forafter all a man like Ginsburg and a titled plunderer of peasant landsare not without their bonds of affinity. The great point was that indealing with Jewish magnates Popular Fury was liable to confuse the Jewwith the magnate, the question of race with the question of class.
As to the Gentile magnates their attitude toward the rioters was onewhich seemed to say: "You fellows and we are brothers, are we not?" Andtheir mansions were safe. Members of the gentry openly joined therioters, some out of sheer hatred of the race, others for the sport ofthe thing, still others honestly succumbing to the contagion ofbeastliness. In the horrid saturnalia of pillage, destruction and rapinemany a peaceful citizen was drawn into the vortex. A man stands lookingon curiously, perhaps even with some horror, and gradually he becomesrestless as do the legs of a dancer when the floor creaks under a medleyof sliding feet. But then there was a large number of Gentiles who actedlike human beings. Among these were members of the priesthood, althoughthere were holy "little fathers" who pointed out the houses of theirJewish neighbours to the mob.
* * * * *
The best friend of the Jews during that day of horrors was Vodka. Thesons of Israel were made a safety valve of by the government and Vodkarendered a similar service to the sons of Israel. It saved scores oflives and the honour of scores of women. Hundreds of the fiercestrioters were so many tottering wrecks before the atrocities were threehours old, while by sundown the number of dead and wounded looters wasas large as the number of murdered and maimed Jews. Two men were founddrowned in casks of spirits into which they had apparently let theirheads sink in a daze of intoxication. A handsome young rioter in acrimson blouse staggered over the balustrade of a balcony, hugging aJewish vase, and was killed on the spot. One man was killed in astruggle over a Jewish woman and several others had simply drunkthemselves to death, while a countless number were bruised and disabledin the general melee, falling, fighting, injuring themselves with theirown weapons of destruction.
Toward evening some of the streets had the appearance of a battlefieldafter action. Hundreds of men and women, swollen, bleeding, werewallowing in the gutters, in puddles, on the sidewalks, between piles ofdebris, in a revolting stupor of inebriety. Some of them slept severalhours in this condition and then struggled to their feet to resumedrinking. The trained rioters had thoughtfully seen to it that somecasks of vodka, as also some accordions, should be reserved for theclosing scenes of the bacchanalia.
The moon came out. Her soft mysterious light streamed through the ruggedholes of shattered unlit windows; over muddy pavements carpeted withsilks, velvets, satins; over rows and rows of debris-mounds on streetssnowed under with down; over peasants driving home with waggons ladenwith plunder; over the ghastly figures of sprawling drunkards and thebeautiful uniforms of patrolling hussars. Silence had settled over mostof the streets. For blocks and blocks, east and west, north and south,there was not an unbroken window pane to be seen, not a light to glitterin the distance. The Jewish district, the liveliest district in town,had been turned into a "city of death." In other places one often saw asingle illuminated house on a whole street of darkness and ruin. Theilluminated house was invariably the abode of Christians. Officers onhorseback were moving about musingly, the hoofs of their horses silencedby thick layers of down. Most streets were impassable for the debris.Here and there the jaded sounds of revelry were heard, but there weresome peasants who had come out of the day's rioting in full control oftheir voices.
Seated on empty boxes and barrels, their fingers gripping newaccordions, their eyes raised to the moon, a company of rioters onLittle Market were playing and singing a melancholy, doleful tune. TheJews were in their hiding places.
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