regretting nothing except the failure of their crime; and
hundreds more who were implicated in the plot were sent into perpetual
exile in Siberia. The hand never relaxed--nor was the Constitution
demanded by these atrocious means granted.

On the 13th of March, 1881, while the Emperor was driving, a bomb was
thrown beneath his carriage. He stepped out of the wreck unhurt. Then
as he approached the assassin, who had been seized by the police,
another was thrown. Alexander fell to the ground, exclaiming, "Help
me!" Terribly mutilated, but conscious, the dying Emperor was carried
into his palace, and there in a few hours he expired.

In the splendid obsequies of the Tsar, nothing was more touching than
the placing of a wreath upon his bier by a deputation of peasants. It
can be best described in their own words. The Emperor was lying in the
Cathedral wrapped in a robe of ermine, beneath a canopy of gold and
silver cloth lined with ermine. "At last we were inside the church,"
says the narrative. "We all dropped on our knees and sobbed, our tears
flowing like a stream. Oh, what grief! We rose from our knees, again
we knelt, and again we sobbed. This did we three times, our hearts
breaking beside the coffin of our benefactor. There are no words to
express it. And what honor was done us! The General took our wreath,
and placed it straightway upon the breast of our Little Father. Our
peasants' wreath laid on his heart, his martyr breast--as we were in
all his life nearest to his heart! Seeing this we burst again into
tears. Then the General let us kiss his hand--and there he lay, our
Tsar-martyr, with a calm, loving expression on his face--as if he, our
Little Father, had fallen asleep."

If anything had been needed to make the name Nihilism forever odious,
it was this deed. If anything were required to reveal the bald
wickedness of the creed of Nihilism, it was supplied by this aimless
sacrifice of the one sovereign who had bestowed a colossal reform upon
Russia. They had killed him, and had then marched unflinchingly to the
gallows--and that was all--leaving others bound by solemn oaths to
bring the same fate upon his successor. The whole energy of the
organization was centered in secreting dynamite, awaiting a favorable
moment for its explosion, then dying like martyrs, leaving others
pledged to repeat the same horror--and so _ad infinitum_. In their
detestation of one crime they committed a worse on