over all the
ancient temple its disgusting, clawing tentacles. And the priests,
themselves under sentence of death, push into the monster's grasp all
whom they can seize in their terrified, trembling fingers.

"Forgive me. What I have said is probably wild and incoherent. But I
am somewhat agitated. Forgive me. I continue. We thieves by profession
know better than any one else how these pogroms were organised. We
wander everywhere: into public houses, markets, tea-shops,
doss-houses, public places, the harbour. We can swear before God and
man and posterity that we have seen how the police organise the
massacres, without shame and almost without concealment. We know them
all by face, in uniform or disguise. They invited many of us to take
part; but there was none so vile among us as to give even the outward
consent that fear might have extorted.

"You know, of course, how the various strata of Russian society behave
towards the police? It is not even respected by those who avail
themselves of its dark services. But we despise and hate it three, ten
times more--not because many of us have been tortured in the detective
departments, which are just chambers of horror, beaten almost to
death, beaten with whips of ox-hide and of rubber in order to extort a
confession or to make us betray a comrade. Yes, we hate them for that
too. But we thieves, all of us who have been in prison, have a mad
passion for freedom. Therefore we despise our gaolers with all the
hatred that a human heart can feel. I will speak for myself. I have
been tortured three times by police detectives till I was half dead.
My lungs and liver have been shattered. In the mornings I spit blood
until I can breathe no more. But if I were told that I will be spared
a fourth flogging only by shaking hands with a chief of the detective
police, I would refuse to do it!

"And then the newspapers say that we took from these hands
Judas-money, dripping with human blood. No, gentlemen, it is a slander
which stabs our very soul, and inflicts insufferable pain. Not money,
nor threats, nor promises will suffice to make us mercenary murderers
of our brethren, nor accomplices with them."

"Never ... No ... No ... ," his comrades standing behind him began to
murmur.

"I will say more," the thief continued. "Many of us protected the
victims during this pogrom. Our friend, called Sesoi the Great--you
have just seen him, gentlemen--was then lodging with a Jewish
braid-make