g
seized and dealt out amongst another lot of people who were behaving
exactly like those who had authority before. The arbitrary authority was
there just the same, only it had changed hands, and this puzzled me very
much, and I began to ask myself, 'Where is the truth?'"

"What did your husband think?" asked the thin lady.

"My husband did not like to talk about these things," she answered. "He
says, 'I am in the Service, and I have to serve. It is not my business
to have opinions.'"

"But all those Republics didn't last very long," rejoined the thin lady.

"No," continued the other; "we never had a Republic, and after a time
they arrested the chief agitator, who was the soul of the revolutionary
movement in our town, a wonderful orator. I had heard him speak several
times and been carried away. When he was arrested I saw him taken to
prison, and he said 'Good-bye' to the people, and bowed to them in the
street in such an exaggerated theatrical way that I was astonished and
felt uncomfortable. Here, I thought, is a man who can sacrifice himself
for an idea, and who seemed to be thoroughly sincere, and yet he behaves
theatrically and poses as if he were not sincere. I felt more puzzled
than ever, and I asked my husband to let me go and see him in prison. I
thought that perhaps after talking to him I could solve the riddle, and
find out once for all who was right and who was wrong. My husband let me
go, and I was admitted into his cell.

"'You know who I am,' I said, 'since I am here, and I am admitted
inside these locked doors?' He nodded. Then I asked him whether I could
be of any use to him. He said that he had all that he wanted; and like
this the ice was broken, and I asked him presently if he believed in
the whole movement. He said that until the 17th of October, when the
Manifesto had been issued, he had believed with all his soul in it; but
the events of the last months had caused him to change his mind. He now
thought that the work of his party, and, in fact, the whole movement,
which had been going on for over fifty years, had really been in vain.
'We shall have,' he said, 'to begin again from the very beginning,
because the Russian people are not ready for us yet, and probably
another fifty years will have to go by before they are ready.'

"I left him very much perplexed. He was set free not long afterwards, in
virtue of some manifesto, and because there had been no disorders in our
town and he had not b