finally crossing the frontier and reaching the nest of
conspirators at Geneva. Here he is supposed to have taken part with
others in devising a new and what proved a fatal plot. Meanwhile a fresh
attempt was made on the life of the czar.

On February 5, 1880, Alexander II. was to entertain at dinner in the
Winter Palace a royal visitor, Prince Alexander of Hesse. Fortunately,
the czar was detained for a short time, and the hour fixed for the
dinner had passed when the party proceeded along the corridor to the
dining-hall. The brief delay probably saved their lives, for at that
moment a tremendous explosion took place, wrecking the dining-hall and
completely demolishing the guard-room, which was filled with dead and
dying victims, sixty-seven in all. It proved that a Nihilist had
obtained employment among some carpenters engaged in repairs within the
palace, and had succeeded in storing dynamite in a tool-chest in his
room. He escaped, and was never seen in St. Petersburg again. Two days
later the corpse of a murdered policeman was found on the frozen surface
of the Neva, a paper pinned to his breast threatening with death every
governor-general except Melikoff, the successor of the murdered
Krapotkin.

Their failures had proved so nearly successes that the Nihilists were
rather encouraged than depressed. New plans followed the failure of old
ones. It was proposed to poison the emperor and his son, the murder to
be followed by a revolt of the disaffected in Moscow and St. Petersburg,
the seizure of the palaces, and the establishment of a constitutional
government. This plan, however, was given up as not likely to have the
"_great moral effect_" which the Nihilists hoped to produce.

A Nihilist student in St. Petersburg had sent to the Paris committee of
the society a recipe for a formidable explosive of his invention. A
quantity of this dangerous substance was manufactured in France and
secretly conveyed to St. Petersburg, where bombs to contain it had been
prepared. The plans of the conspirators were now very carefully laid.
They did not propose to fail again, if care could insure success. A
cheesemonger's shop was opened on a street leading to the palace, under
which a mine was laid to the centre of the carriage-way, it being
proposed to kill the czar when out driving. If his carriage should take
another route and follow the street leading from the Catharine Canal, it
was arranged to wreck it with bombs flung by han