fellow must die. Alexandra Feodorovna has willed it. While he lives
he will always be a constant menace. He must die! He _shall_ die!"

Our national hymn, "Boje Tzaria khrani" ("God save the Tsar"), was being
sung at the moment in the streets, because news of a victory in Poland
had just been given out to the public.

Already the foundation stone of the revolution had been laid, and M.
Miliukoff, with purely patriotic motives, had assisted in cementing it.
The Senatorial revision which was ordained to inquire into General
Soukhomlinoff's treachery had, owing to Miliukoff's activity, ordered a
search at the amorous old fellow's private abode early in the spring,
with the result that he found himself incarcerated in the fortress of
Peter and Paul. When the general was arrested, madame his wife--an
adventuress named Gaskevitch, who had commenced life as a typist in a
solicitor's office, and who was many years his junior--had a terrible
attack of hysteria, for things had taken for her a most unexpected turn.
The woman had been implicated in intrigue and treachery ever since. After
copying some secret papers for a man in Kiev, she had blackmailed him,
obtained a big sum of money, and then married a man named Boulovitch, a
prosperous landed proprietor. By thus entering the higher circle of
society in Kiev, she got to know General Soukhomlinoff, its
Governor-General, who connived with her to obtain a divorce from
Boulovitch, so that she subsequently married the bald-headed old Don Juan
a few months after his appointment as War Minister.

Madame and Rasputin were ever hand-in-glove. From the moment the general
was arrested she had worked with singular energy and adroitness to
retrieve her husband's fallen fortune, and in doing so she assisted to
lay the beginning of the first Revolution. She enlisted the sympathy of
Rasputin, Anna Vyrubova and the Empress, all of whom were gravely
apprehensive as to what might come out at the general's trial. She even
threw herself at the feet of Alexandra Feodorovna, imploring her to
intercede with the Emperor so as to save her calumniated and injured
husband. And at last she succeeded.

The inquiries were suspended, the newspapers were silent regarding the
scandal, and suddenly it became known that, "owing to the general's
mental state," it had been decided, on the advice of a board of
well-known medical specialists, to liberate him!

This astounding news passed from mouth to mouth, and M