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Oh, that day, that dreadful day, When the end of the world will come. The judgment day . . .

The terrible heart-rending sounds floated up from the crunching, frosty ground, wrenched whining from these yellow-toothed old instruments with their palsied, crooked limbs.

'Oh my brethren, oh my sisters, have mercy on my poverty, for the love of Christ, and give alms.'

'Run on to the square and keep a place, Fedosei Petrovich, or we'll be late.'

'There's going to be an open-air service.'

'Procession . . .'

'They're going to pray for victory for the revolutionary people's army of the Ukraine.'

'What victory? They've already won.'

'And they'll win again!'

'There's going to be a campaign.'

'Where to?'

'To Moscow.'

'Which Moscow?'

'The usual.'

'They'll never make it.'

'What did you say? Say that again! Hey, lads, listen to what this Russian's saying!'

'I didn't say anything!'

'Arrest him! Stop, thief!'

'Run through that gateway, Marusya, otherwise we'll never get through this crowd. They say Petlyura's in the square. Let's go and see him.'

'You fool, Petlyura's in the cathedral.'

'Fool yourself. They say he's riding on a white horse.'

'Hurrah for Petlyura! Hurrah for the Ukrainian People's Republic!'

Bong . . . bong . . . bong . . . tinkle - clang-clang . . . Bong-clang-bong . . . raged the bells.

'Have pity on an orphan, Christian people, good people ... A blind man ... A poor man . . .'

Dressed in black, his hindquarters encased in leather like a broken beetle, a legless man wriggled between the legs of the crowd, clutching at the trampled snow with his sleeves to pull himself along. Crippled beggars displayed the sores on their bruised shins, shook their heads as though from tic douloureux or paralysis, rolled the whites of their eyes pretending to be blind. Tearing at the heart-strings of the crowd, reminding them of poverty, deceit, despair, hopelessness and sheer animal misery, creaking and groaning, they howled the refrain of the damned.

Shivering dishevelled old women with crutches thrust out their desiccated, parchment-like hands as they moaned:

'God give you good health, handsome gentleman!'

'Have pity on a poor old woman . . .'

'Give to the poor, my dear, and God will be good to you . . .'

Capes, coats, bonnets with ear-flaps, peasants in sheepskin caps, red-cheeked girls, retired civil servants with a pale mark on their cap where the badge had been removed, elderly women with protruding bellies, nimble-footed children, cossacks in greatcoats and shaggy fur hats with tops of different colors - blue, red, green, magenta with gold and silver piping, with tassels from the fringes of coffin-palls: they poured out on to the cathedral courtyard like a black sea, yet the cathedral doors still gave forth wave upon wave.

Heartened by the fresh air, the procession gathered its forces, rearranged itself, straightened up and glided off in an orderly and proper sequence of heads wearing check scarves, mitres, stovepipe hats, bareheaded deacons with their long flowing hair, skullcapp-ed monks, painted crosses on gilded poles, banners of Christ the Saviour and the Virgin and Child and a host of ikons in curved and wrought covers, gold, magenta, covered in Slavonic script.

Now like a gray snake winding its way through the City, now like brown turbulent rivers flowing along the old streets, the

innumerable forces of Petlyura made their way to the parade on St Sophia's Square. First, shattering the frost with the roaring of trumpets and the clash of glittering cymbals, cutting through the black river of the crowd, marched the tight ranks of the Blue Division.

In blue greatcoats and blue-topped astrakhan caps set at a jaunty angle the Galicians marched past. Slanting forward between bared sabres two blue and yellow standards glided along behind a large brass band and after the standards, rhythmically stamping the crystalline snow, rank on rank of men marched jauntily along dressed in good, sound