Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/142

130, had assembled in the theatre to give expression to their joy over the Tsar's manifesto, granting the modern constitution. While the townspeople in the theatre were listening to speeches on the importance of this epoch-making political act, a procession, composed of labourers of the lowest type, of stevedores from the docks along the Tom, of ex-prisoners and even of the inmates of the town prison, who had been specially released for this day, was formed and was marching through the streets. Among this crowd of wild, drunken and demoralized men moved agents of the political police, fanning their hatred and urging them on to acts of vengeance against the intelligentsia. A picture of the Tsar and some ecclesiastical banners were borne at the head of the procession. When this mob, armed with cudgels, knives and blackjacks, drew up before the house of Bishop Makari, the "holy old man" appeared on the balcony and blessed the procession, making a strong appeal to their patriotism, which was the paraphrase for the fight for unrestrained power of the Tsar.

With this blessing of the man of the Church upon them, the mob marched straight to the theatre and fell to massacring the intelligentsia gathered there. The few who succeeded in escaping into the street were caught and despatched by cudgels or bullets or by being thrown into the river for the sport of the crowd. The ghastly total of those who perished on this day was twelve hundred souls, among whom was a distinguished Polish engineer, Klionowski, who at the time held the post of assistant to the Director-General of the Siberian Railway.

I had personally known Bishop Makari. A small, thin old man, with an ascetic face recalling the Byzantine pictures of the saints, he was, however, the son of a Siberian peasant, possessed of a small stock of learning and wholly