“Lads！” he said, with a metallic ring in his voice, “this man, Vereshtchagin, is the wretch by whose doing Moscow is lost.”
The young man in the fox-lined coat stood in a resigned pose, clasping his hands together in front of his body, and bending a little forward. His wasted young face, with its look of hopelessness and the hideous disfigurement of the half-shaven head, was turned downwards. At the count’s first words he slowly lifted his head and looked up from below at the count, as though he wanted to say something to him, or at least to catch his eye. But Rastoptchin did not look at him. The blue vein behind the young man’s ear stood out like a cord on his long, thin neck, and all at once his face flushed crimson.
All eyes were fixed upon him. He gazed at the crowd, and, as though made hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled a timid, mournful smile, and dropping his head again, shifted his feet on the step.
“He is a traitor to his Tsar and his country; he deserted to Bonaparte; he alone of all the Russians has disgraced the name of Russia, and through him Moscow is lost,” said Rastoptchin in a harsh, monotonous voice; but all at once he glanced down rapidly at Vereshtchagin, who still stood in the same submissive attitude. As though that glance had driven him to frenzy, flinging up his arms, he almost yelled to the crowd：
“You shall deal with him as you think fit！ I hand him over to you！”
The people were silent, and only pressed closer and closer on one another. To bear each other’s weight, to breathe in that tainted foulness, to be unable to stir, and to be expecting something vague, uncomprehended and awful, was becoming unbearable. The men in the front of the crowd, who saw and heard all that was passing before them, all stood with wide-open, horror-struck eyes and gaping mouths, straining all their strength to support the pressure from behind on their backs.
“Beat him！ … Let the traitor perish and not shame the name of Russia！” screamed Rastoptchin. “Cut him down！ I give the command！” Hearing not the words, but only the wrathful tones of Rastoptchin’s voice, the mob moaned and heaved forward, but stopped again.
“Count！” … the timid and yet theatrical voice of Vereshtchagin broke in upon the momentary stillness that followed. “Count, one God is above us …” said Vereshtchagin, lifting his head, and again the thick vein swelled on his thin neck and the colour swiftly came and faded again from his face. He did not finish what he was trying to say.
“Cut him down！ I command it！ …” cried Rastoptchin, suddenly turning as white as Vereshtchagin himself.
“Draw sabres！” shouted the officer to the dragoons, himself drawing his sabre.
Another still more violent wave passed over the crowd, and reaching the front rows, pushed them forward, and threw them staggering right up to the steps. The tall young man, with a stony expression of face and his lifted arm rigid in the air, stood close beside Vereshtchagin. “Strike at him！” the officer said almost in a whisper to the dragoons; and one of the soldiers, his face suddenly convulsed by fury, struck Vereshtchagin on the head with the flat of his sword.
Vereshtchagin uttered a brief “Ah！” of surprise, looking about him in alarm, as though he did not know what this was done to him for. A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd.
“O Lord！” some one was heard to utter mournfully. After the exclamation of surprise that broke from Vereshtchagin he uttered a piteous cry of pain, and that cry was his undoing. The barrier of human feeling that still held the mob back was strained to the utmost limit, and it snapped instantaneously. The crime had been begun, its completion was inevitable. The piteous moan of reproach was drowned in the angry and menacing roar of the mob. Like the great seventh wave that shatters a ship, that last, irresistible wave surged up at the back of the crowd, passed on to the foremost ranks, carried them off their feet and engulfed all together. The dragoon who had struck the victim would have repeated his blow. Vereshtchagin, with a scream of terror, putting his hands up before him, dashed into the crowd. The tall young man, against whom he stumbled, gripped Vereshtchagin’s slender neck in his hands, and with a savage shriek fell with him under the feet of the trampling, roaring mob. Some beat and tore at Vereshtchagin, others at the tall young man. And the screams of persons crushed in the crowd and of those who tried to rescue the tall young man only increased the frenzy of the mob. For a long while the dragoons were unable to get the bleeding, half-murdered factory workman away. And in spite of all the feverish haste with which the mob strove to make an end of what had once been begun, the men who beat and strangled Vereshtchagin and tore him to pieces could not kill him. The crowd pressed on them on all sides, heaved from side to side like one man with them in the middle, and would not let them kill him outright or let him go.
“Hit him with an axe, eh？ … they have crushed him … Traitor, he sold Christ！ … living … alive … serve the thief right. With a bar！ … Is he alive？ …”
Only when the victim ceased to struggle, and his shrieks had passed into a long-drawn, rhythmic death-rattle, the mob began hurriedly to change places about the bleeding corpse on the ground. Every one went up to it, gazed at what had been done, and pressed back horror-stricken, surprised, and reproachful.
“O Lord, the people’s like a wild beast; how could he be alive！” was heard in the crowd. “And a young fellow too … must have been a merchant’s son, to be sure, the people … they do say it’s not the right man … not the right man！ … O Lord！ … They have nearly murdered another man; they say he’s almost dead … Ah, the people … who wouldn’t be afraid of sin …” were saying now the same people, looking with rueful pity at the dead body, with the blue face fouled with dust and blood, and the long, slender, broken neck.