A jaunty, lively march tune, and death at the end of it,
and in a sense at the beginning of it too. At times even now I can
conjure up a vision of the broad, sombre Petrograd streets, with
the dull cotton-wool sky pressing down almost on to the house-
tops; the vast silent crowds thronging the thoroughfares, and the
tumbrils rolling slowly forward through the crowded streets to the
place of execution, accompanied by the gay strains of the march
from Fatinitza. The hideous incongruity between the tune and the
occasion made one positively shudder.
There is in the Russian temperament a peculiar unbalanced
hysterical element. This, joined to a distinct bent towards the
mystic, and to a large amount of credulity, has made Russia for
two hundred years the happy hunting-ground of charlatans and
impostors of various sorts claiming supernatural powers:
clairvoyants, mediums, yogis, and all the rest of the tribe who
batten on human weaknesses, and the perpetual desire to tear away
the veil from the Unseen. It so happened that my chief at Lisbon
had in his youth dabbled in the Black Art.
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