streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in
the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics
no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
stimulated emotion of the platform.

For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.

In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty,
had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a
glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his
habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If
it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now
allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the
Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach, men
hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to them.
He was a leper among his own people.

"Do not go to the opera to-morrow," one lady would say to another. "I
have heard that the Czar is to be there."

"Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia," men said to one another; "the
street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it
is honeycombed by mines."

The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others
shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his
cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties
he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.

He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the
world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a
cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter
covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates,
the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was
planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything largely,
and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window than the
coldness of his home would allow.

The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands
of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving
even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart
the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.

Instead of retur