“My saber had long been enclosed, and I stood in the interval between the Moscow square and the column of the Guards crew, pulling my hat down and clasping my hands, repeating to myself the words of Ryleev that we are breathing freedom. “I saw with grief that this breathing was constrained. Our freedom and the screams of the soldiers were more like groans, like the wheezing of a dying man. In fact: we were surrounded on all sides; inaction struck the minds into numbness; the spirit has fallen, for the one who stops once in the beginning of the race is already half defeated..."