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 Morét enabled me to read every sign however slight
that was made 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.