gether elapsed when at last, in those
vast dominions of the Czar, and amidst more thrilling events which began
to crowd upon public attention, she seemed to be really forgotten. In
this way she managed clandestinely to go back to the capital, whence
again she started for Pensa. It was there that, by chance, she learnt
from the _Novoje Vremja_ ("New Times,") the infamous treatment of
Bogoljuboff, a political prisoner, by the chief of the police at St.
Petersburg, the vile and universally despised Trepoff, the personal,
intimate, and pampered darling of Alexander II.

The flogging practices of this tyrannic head of the "Third Section" are
still in every one's recollection. In referring to the knouting applied
to Bogoljuboff, Vjera Sassulitch's counsel gave the following
description:--

"The sufferer whose human dignity is to be insulted, knows not why
he is to be punished. He thinks indignation will lend him strength
to resist those who throw themselves upon him. But he is grasped by
the iron grip of jailers' hands; he is dragged down; and in the
midst of the regular counting of the strokes by the leader of the
execution, a deep groan is heard--a groan not arising from mere
physical pain, but from the soul's grief of a down-trodden,
outraged man. At last, silence reigned again. The sacred act was
accomplished!"

It was the brooding over such disgrace and affront to which a political
prisoner had been subjected in the very capital by an official whose
department is under the Czar's direct control that pressed the weapon of
revenge into the hands of a tender woman--not so much for her own past
miseries as for those of a still suffering fellow-man.

Trepoff had been attacked by Vjera Sassulitch in his own Cabinet, in the
very midst of his minions. The jury which tried her was composed almost
exclusively of Aulic Councillors and such-like titled dignitaries.
Prince Gortschakoff sat among the audience; so did the pick and flower
of the upper classes of St. Petersburg. Who could doubt, in presence of
the open avowal of the accused, that the verdict would be "Guilty?"

Strange to say, even among the officially faultless remarks of the
Public Prosecutor there were some curious admissions. "I, for my part,"
Mr. Kessel said, "fully believe the statements made by Vjera Sassulitch.
I believe that facts appeared to her in the light in which they have
been placed here; and _I am ready t