kind--a traitor himself, a betrayer--a spy! Razumov told me he had
charged him with it by a sort of inspiration...."

"I had a glimpse of that brute," I said. "How any of you could have been
deceived for half a day passes my comprehension!"

She interrupted me.

"There! There! Don't talk of it. The first time I saw him, I, too, was
appalled. They cried me down. We were always telling each other, 'Oh!
you mustn't mind his appearance.' And then he was always ready to kill.
There was no doubt of it. He killed--yes! in both camps. The fiend...."

Then Sophia Antonovna, after mastering the angry trembling of her lips,
told me a very queer tale. It went that Councillor Mikulin, travelling
in Germany (shortly after Razumov's disappearance from Geneva), happened
to meet Peter Ivanovitch in a railway carriage. Being alone in the
compartment, these two talked together half the night, and it was then
that Mikulin the Police Chief gave a hint to the Arch-Revolutionist
as to the true character of the arch-slayer of gendarmes. It looks as
though Mikulin had wanted to get rid of that particular agent of his
own! He might have grown tired of him, or frightened of him. It must
also be said that Mikulin had inherited the sinister Nikita from his
predecessor in office.

And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a
mute witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my
Western eyes. But I permitted myself a question--

"Tell me, please, Sophia Antonovna, did Madame de S-- leave all her
fortune to Peter Ivanovitch?"

"Not a bit of it." The woman revolutionist shrugged her shoulders in
disgust. "She died without making a will. A lot of nephews and nieces
came down from St. Petersburg, like a flock of vultures, and fought
for her money amongst themselves. All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of
Honour--abominable court flunkeys. Tfui!"

"One does not hear much of Peter Ivanovitch now," I remarked, after a
pause.

"Peter Ivanovitch," said Sophia Antonovna gravely, "has united himself
to a peasant girl."

I was truly astonished.

"What! On the Riviera?"

"What nonsense! Of course not."

Sophia Antonovna's tone was slightly tart.

"Is he, then, living actually in Russia? It's a tremendous risk--isn't
it?" I cried. "And all for the sake of a peasant girl. Don't you think
it's very wrong of him?"

Sophia Antonovna preserved a mysterious silence for a while, then made a
statement. "He just s