Up to the last hour he had feared the enemy might thwart our plans and surprise ,a us. Only now, on the evening of the 25th of October, he composed himself and gave his sanction finally to the course that events had taken. These endless questions and suggestions were superficially without any connection, but they had their origin in one and the same intense inner comprehension, which had grasped at once the whole extent of the uprising. One must stop trying not to hasten too quickly into the events of the revolution. When the revolutionary stream mounts steadily, and the forces of the uprising grow automatically, while those of the reaction waver according to fate and fall to pieces, the temptation is very near to yield to the elementary course of events.
Quick success disarms as much as defeat.
One dare not lose sight of the clew to the events. That was Lenin's grasp of the situation, his way of action and method, the organic essence of his political character, of his revolutionary spirit. I have already told once how Dan, on the way to a partial-session of the Mensheviki, recognized Lenin in disguise at the Second Congress of Soviets, as he sat with us at a little table in a passageway. This subject has been preserved in a picture, which, so far as I can judge from the reproduction, has nothing in common with the reality of the time. That is, however, the fate of historical painting in general and not its fate alone.