"What's the trouble?" asked the police commissioner, stopping in front of Rybin and measuring him with his eyes. "Why are his hands not bound? Officers, why? Bind them!" His voice was high and resonant, but colorless.
"They were tied, but the people unbound them," answered one of the policemen.
"The people! What people?" The police commissioner looked at the crowd standing in a half-circle before him. In the same monotonous, blank voice, neither elevating nor lowering it, he continued: "Who are the people?"
With a back stroke he thrust the handle of his saber against the breast of the blue-eyed peasant.
"Are you the people, Chumakov? Well, who else? You, Mishin?" and he pulled somebody's beard with his right hand.
"Disperse, you curs!"
Neither his voice nor face displayed the least a
