The vodka and a good three-course dinner (Plotki for fish, Lockschen for soup, and Zrazy for joint) brought David new courage, and again he sallied out to recruit.

This time he sought the market-place—a badly-paved square, bordered with small houses and congested with stalls and a grey, kaftaned crowd, amid which gleamed the blue blouses of the ungodly younger generation. He had hitherto addressed himself to the classes—he would hear the voice of the people.

[407]On every side the voice babbled of the Duma—babbled happily, as though the word was a new religious charm or a witch's incantation. Crude political conversations broke out amid all the business of the mart. He had only to listen to know how he would be answered:

A blacksmith buying a new hammer stayed to argue with the vendor.

'We must put our trust in the Constitutional Democrats.'

'And why in the Cadets? Give me the Democrats.'

'Nay, we must put our trust only in the Czar.' (This came from the Rabbi's wife, who was cheapening fish at the next stall.)

'For shame, Rebbitzin! Put not your trust in Princes.'

The bystanders hushed down the text-quoter—a fuzzy-headed butcher-boy.

'Miserable Monarchists!' he sneered. 'We Jews will have no peace till the Republicans——'

'A Republic without Socialism!' interrupted a girl with a laundry basket. 'What good's that? Wait till the N.S.'s——'

'The D.R.'s are the only——' interrupted a phylactery-pedlar.

'And who but the Labour group promises equal rights to all nationalities?' interrupted a girl in spectacles. 'Trust the Trudowaja——'

'To the devil with the Labour Parties!' said an old-clo' man. 'Look how the Bundists have betrayed us. First they were bone of our bone; now it is they who by their recklessness provoke the pogroms.'

The blacksmith brought his hammer down upon the stall. 'There is only one party to trust, and that's the C.D.'s,' he repeated.

[408]'Bourgeois!' simultaneously hissed the Republican youth and the Socialist lass.

'My children!' It was the bland voice of Moses the Shamash (beadle). 'Violence leads to naught. Even the Viborg Manifesto was a mistake. As a member of the Party of Peaceful Regeneration——'

'Peaceful Regeneration?' shouted the blacksmith. 'A Jew ally himself with the Reactionary Right, with the——!'

A Cossack galloped recklessly among the serried stalls. The Jews scattered before him like dogs. The member of the P.P.R. crawled under a barrow. Even the blacksmith froze up. David drew the moral when the Cossack had disappeared.

'Peaceful Regeneration!' he cried. 'There will be no Re............