by these persons and the four weeks of my domicile in the
apartment of the palace that had been assigned to me served me as
nothing else could have done in this respect.

You have already been told that this was by no means my first
experience in St. Petersburg and with nihilism; but I must confess that
extensive as my information had been and was I had never for a moment
contemplated the vast resources of this revolutionary order, its
unlimited ramifications and its boundless possibilities for evil. To
discover as I speedily did that princes of the blood, that ladies high
in place, that generals in the army and lesser officers under them were
among the ranks of the nihilists, was an astounding fact which I had
not contemplated and which I was ill prepared to receive so soon after
my arrival. It extended the requirements of my operation; it increased
ten fold, nay a hundred fold, my obligations to the czar in whose
service I was now sworn.

It seems difficult to imagine a beautiful woman as being at the head
and front of such an organization which discusses murder and which
arranges for wholesale assassination with the same equanimity of
conscience that a hunting party at an English country estate would
arrange for the slaughter of rabbits and pheasants.

But I was destined soon to discover that even this could be true. I was
destined soon to be brought in contact with a beautiful woman who was
not only high in place and a favorite with the czar himself, but who
was veritably a leader in the plots against him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRINCESS' ORIENTAL GARDEN

In order better to carry out the plans I had made it was necessary that
I should depart from the palace and I secured apartments in a
respectable but quiet section of the city, where I established myself
under the name of Dubravnik; and it was generally understood by those
who came in contact with me that I was a pardoned exile who had been
permitted to return under stipulated conditions, as such men are
sometimes, though rarely, allowed to do. In the mean time I had
gathered around me several certain individuals whom I had known and
employed in the past, and whom I knew from experience that I could
trust; and there was not one Russian among them. The Russian may be
trusted always wherever his heart is involved and his political
conscience is at rest, but never unless those forces are working in
sympathy with the employment of his hands and head.

I s