betrayed them the peasants no longer went to confession, and to avoid
betraying themselves in a state of drunkenness abstained from the use of
brandy; but one man, tired and without food, took a glass. It made him
drunk, and in his drunkenness he spoke to the man who had sold him
spirits. He was arrested, and although he did not know all, gave enough
clue for the police to follow up, and all the leaders and over a
thousand persons were arrested. Two thousand others, who were affiliated
to the society, were warned in time and escaped. You can guess the fate
of those who were captured.

"Last year, three months before you came here, General Mezentsoff, the
head of the police, was assassinated, and since then we know that it is
open war between the Nihilists and the Czar. The police hush matters up,
but they get abroad. Threatening letters reach the Czar in his inmost
apartments, and it is known that several attempts have been made to
assassinate him, but have failed.

"One of the most extraordinary things connected with the movement is
that women play a large part in it. Being in the thick of every
conspiracy they are the life and soul of the movement, and they are of
all classes. There are a score of women for whose arrest the authorities
would pay any money, and yet they elude every effort. It is horrible.
This is what comes of women going to Switzerland and learning to look
upon religion as a myth and all authority as hateful, and to have wild
dreams of an impossible state of affairs such as never has existed in
this world. It is horrible, but it is pitiable. The prisons in the land
are full of victims; trains of prisoners set off monthly for Siberia. It
is enough to turn the brain to think of such things. How it is to end no
one can say."

But it was only in bated breath and within closed doors that the
discovery of the Nihilist plot was discussed in St. Petersburg.
Elsewhere it was scarcely alluded to, although, if mentioned, those
present vied with each other in the violence of their denunciation of
it; but when society from the highest to the lowest was permeated by
secret agents of the police, and every word was liable to be reported
and misinterpreted, a subject so dangerous was shunned by common
consent. It was known, though, that large numbers of arrests had been
made, but even those whose dearest friends had suddenly disappeared said
no word of it in public, for to be even a distant acquaintance of such a
p