er my
personal control and direction, without however in any way creating the
suspicion that I was personally interested. Presently you will
understand more perfectly how this all came about, and in quite a
natural way it would seem, for always things accomplished seem easy
enough to the casual observer; and you who read are only observers
after all. You are receiving a bit of unwritten history which closely
concerned the Russian empire and without which the assassination of
Alexander would undoubtedly have happened many years before it did, for
I give to myself the credit of having extended the days of that really
great but much misunderstood Moscovite gentleman.

At the time of my appearance in St. Petersburg the forces of nihilism
had assumed proportions greater than they had ever attained before or
will ever attain to again, thanks to my activities. The palace itself
was a hotbed of conspiracy; the rank and file of the army was so
disaffected that the officers never knew whom they could depend upon or
whom they might trust; a secret pressure of the thumb, indeterminate in
its character but nevertheless significant, was likely to be received
from any hand clasp, no matter where given or with whom exchanged, and
a princess or a countess was as likely to bestow it upon you as any
ordinary person whom you might chance to meet. The pressure itself was
merely a tentative question which might be translated by the words:
"Are you a nihilist?" and you might understand it and reply to it by a
returning pressure of acquiescence, or ignore it utterly, as you
pleased. The pressure itself was so slight, was carelessly given and
might so readily be attributed to a careless motion of the hand that it
could not betray the person who made it; nor could the answering
pressure do so.

I had not been long at the palace before I discovered that many of the
high officials who had ready and constant access there had become
inoculated with the nihilistic bacilli and although I had no doubt that
many of them were at heart loyal to the emperor, I already knew better
than they did the immensity of the obligation they had undertaken in
swearing allegiance to an association of persons dominated by fanatics
and by actual criminals whose trade was murder and whose chiefest
pleasures and relaxation was the study of how best to bring about
entire social upheaval.

The confession of Moret enabled me to read every sign however slight
that was made