"Plehve is a lucky dog," continued my friend. "The outbreak of the war has forced the entire Russian opposition camp into an armistice. It would be considered unpatriotic to create internal difficulties for the government, that needs all its power for an external conflict. It is at least intended to see whether there would be any new provocations on Plehve's part before further steps are taken in the organization of the opposition. At any other time an occasion like Mikhailovski's funeral would lead to great demonstrations and collisions with the Cossacks. Now it will only amount to expressions of devotion; and it is quite probable also that the police will avoid a collision. Hence, you may take part without danger in a demonstration by intellectual St. Petersburg, where, at any other time, you would be exposed at least to a few blows of the knout or a temporary arrest at the police station."
"Why do you speak of the knout and the Cossacks?" I asked. "Are not the police sufficient to maintain order?"
"They are not sufficient in mass-demonstrations, especially where these are participated in by the student body. Formerly use was made of the "dvorniks" (janitors) and butchers' clerks to bring the students to reason. But that is no longer practicable. The "dvorniks" and butchers' clerks have hesitated of late to come out against the students. They have discovered that these persons really take their lives in their hands for the people's sake, and, therefore, are no longer willing to do the jailer's work. And so the Cossacks must hold forth; and they know no pity."
We therefore agreed to meet in front of the deceased publicist's house. Such a Russian funeral is a full day's work. It begins early in the forenoon, and it is dark when you return home. In front of Mikhailovski's house I saw Korolenko--a still robust man, with very curly gray hair and beard--and almost all the master-minds of the intellectual life of St. Petersburg. Even the recently retired minister, Sänger, showed himself. Many a man was named to me with great reverence. The foreign public knows not one of them, and so I may forego the repetition of their names. It should be mentioned here, however, that in Russia a distinguished man tries to show his distinction by his dress and appearance, as far as possible. Here an original way of dressing the hair is one of the marks of distinction, and so one sees many striking heads. There is no getting along without some posing. I noticed, too, that scarcely one of the forty or fifty men I had become acquainted with was absent from the funeral. Now, these forty or fifty persons belong to most widely different social and political groups, so that the radical publicist could not have possibly had the same significance for each of them. But every one was present and was noticed. In fact, every new appearance was noted by the crowd. Most of them knew one another. The loose but yet effective organization of opposition in Russia had never been so clear to me as now. The unwritten public opinion, I had frequently noted, orders every intellectual to take part in this mute demonstration against the régime; and this dictation is more readily submitted to than the legitimate one. I do not believe our newspapers in the West could even approximately replace this intimate contact established day by day among these thousands in a manner mysterious to me. It is as if St. Petersburg were fermented by some medium in which every impulse is propagated with furious speed. And people have an incredible amount of time for politics in St. Petersburg. People in Russia have in general more time than we hurrying Westerners can conceive.