“But the people did not understand its friends, and showed itself hostile to them.  It turned out that institutions born in slavery could not serve as a foundation for the new construction, and that the man who was yesterday a serf, though capable of taking part in disturbances, is not fitted for conscious revolutionary work.  With pain in their heart the revolutionists had to confess that they were deceived in their hopes of the people.  Around them were no social revolutionary forces on which they could lean for support, and yet they could not reconcile themselves with the existing state of violence and slavery.  Thereupon awakened a last hope—­the hope of a drowning man who clutches at a straw:  a little group of heroic and self-sacrificing individuals might accomplish with their own strength the difficult task of freeing Russia from the yoke of autocracy.  They had to do it themselves, because there was no other means.  But would they be able to accomplish it?  For them that question did not exist.  The struggle of that little group against autocracy was like the heroic means on which a doctor decides when there is no longer any hope of the patient’s recovery.  Terrorism was the only means that remained, and it had the advantage of giving a natural vent to pent-up feelings, and of seeming a reaction against the cruel persecutions of the Government.  The party called the Narodnaya Volya (National Will) was accordingly formed, and during several years the world witnessed a spectacle that had never been seen before in history.  The Narodnaya Volya, insignificant in numbers but strong in spirit, engaged in single combat with the powerful Russian Government.  Neither executions, nor imprisonment with hard labour, nor ordinary imprisonment and exile, destroyed the energy of the revolutionists.  Under their shots fell, one after the other, the most zealous and typical representatives of arbitrary action and violence. . . .”

It was at this time, in 1877, when propaganda and agitation among the masses were being abandoned for the system of terrorism, but before any assassinations had taken place, that I accidentally came into personal relations with some prominent adherents of the revolutionary movement.  One day a young man of sympathetic appearance, whom I did not know and who brought no credentials, called on me in St. Petersburg and suggested to me that I might make public through the English Press what he described as a revolting act of tyranny and cruelty committed by General Trepof, the Prefect of the city.  That official, he said, in visiting recently one of the prisons, had noticed that a young political prisoner called Bogolubof did not salute him as he passed, and he had ordered him to be flogged in consequence.  To this I replied that I had no reason to disbelieve the story, but that I had equally no reason to accept it as accurate, as it rested solely on the evidence of a person with whom I was totally unacquainted.  My informant took the objection in good part, and offered me the names and addresses of a number of persons who could supply me with any proofs that I might desire.