how is it that a nondescript, that is, ordinary crowd of petitioners — seventy men strong, to be sure — was nonetheless, from the very first, the very outset, transformed into a rebellion that threatened to shake society to its foundations?
Pyotr Stepanovich and his manifestoes ad other antics have aready been harrowing on von Lembke's mind, causing him to perhaps be paranoid. This is probably exacerbated by his wife; he wants to prove (to himself and his wife more than anyone else) that he has the same level of authority and power in the town as she does.
