recise particulars and details of the
affair--which, indeed, is very well known. Sonia had lived for the
last two years in Zurich, where her brother Boris, having escaped from
Siberia, joined her, his lungs gone; and during the summers she took him
for better air to the mountains. Bompard had often met them, attended
by friends who were all exiles, conspirators. The Wassiliefs, very
intelligent, very energetic, and still possessed of some fortune, were
at the head of the Nihilist party, with Bolibine, the man who murdered
the prefect of police, and this very Manilof, who blew up the Winter
Palace last year.

"_Boufre!_" exclaimed Tartarin, "one meets with queer neighbours on the
Rigi."

But here's another thing. Bompard took it into his head that Tartarin's
letter came from these young people; it was just like their Nihilist
proceedings. The czar, every morning, found warnings in his study, under
his napkin...

"But," said Tartarin, turning pale, "why such threats? What have I done
to them?"

Bompard thought they must have taken him for a spy.

"A spy! I!

"_Be!_ yes." In all the Nihilist centres, at Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva,
Russia maintained at great cost, a numerous body of spies; in fact, for
some time past she had had in her service the former chief of the French
Imperial police, with a dozen Corsicans, who followed and watched all
Russian exiles, and took countless disguises in order to detect them.
The costume of the Alpinist, his spectacles, his accent, were quite
enough to confound him in their minds with those agents.

"_Coquin de sort!_ now I think of it," said Tartarin, "they had at their
heels the whole time a rascally Italian tenor... undoubtedly a spy...
_Differemment_, what must I do?"

"Above all things, never put yourself in the way of those people again;
now that they have warned you they will do you harm..."

"Ha! _vai! harm!_.. The first one that comes near me I shall cleave his
head with my ice-axe."

And in the gloom of the tunnel the eyes of the Tarasconese hero glared.
But Bompard, less confident than he, knew well that the hatred of
Nihilists is terrible; it attacks from below, it undermines, and plots.
It is all very well to be a _lapin_ like the president, but you had
better beware of that inn bed you sleep in, and the chair you sit upon,
and the rail of the steamboat, which will give way suddenly and drop
you to death. And think of the cooking-dishes prepared, the glass rubbed