She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was
occupied by--the heirs.
They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their
lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had
stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive
fury of the masses burst forth--and the remnants of the Rastorov
family gathered in their old nest--to be hidden from the Revolution
and famine.
Snow-storms--galloping snowy chargers--howled over the Steppe, the
Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of
Stenka Razin--thundered the Revolution.
The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old
cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the
Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its
steamers moored to their wharves.
The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was
nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room,
with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant,
worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived
utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow
of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their
thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.
General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock.
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