by name as a person who was in the habit of visiting daily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—­doubtless with the nefarious purpose of obtaining by illegal means secret political information—­and the police had concluded that I was a fit and proper person to be closely watched.  In reality, my relations with the Russian Foreign Office, though inconvenient to the ex-ambassador, were perfectly regular and above-board—­sanctioned, in fact, by Prince Gortchakoff—­but the indelicate attentions of the secret police were none the less extremely unwelcome, because some intelligent police-agent might get onto the real scent, and cause me serious inconvenience.  I determined, therefore, to break off all relations with Dimitri Ivan’itch and his friends, and postpone my studies to a more convenient season; but that decision did not entirely extricate me from my difficulties.  The collection of revolutionary pamphlets was still in my possession, and I had promised to return it.  For some little time I did not see how I could keep my promise without compromising myself or others, but at last—­after having had my shadowers carefully shadowed in order to learn accurately their habits, and having taken certain elaborate precautions, with which I need not trouble the reader, as he is not likely ever to require them—­I paid a visit secretly to Dimitri Ivan’itch in his small room, almost destitute of furniture, handed him the big parcel of pamphlets, warned him not to visit me again, and bade him farewell.  Thereupon we went our separate ways and I saw him no more.  Whether he subsequently played a leading part in the movement I never could ascertain, because I did not know his real name; but if the conception which I formed of his character was at all accurate, he probably ended his career in Siberia, for he was not a man to look back after having put his hand to the plough.  That is a peculiar trait of the Russian revolutionists of the period in question.  Their passion for realising an impossible ideal was incurable.  Many of them were again and again arrested; and as soon as they escaped or were liberated they almost invariably went back to their revolutionary activity and worked energetically until they again fell into the clutches of the police.

From this digression into the sphere of personal reminiscences I return now and take up again the thread of the narrative.

We have seen how the propaganda and the agitation had failed, partly because the masses showed themselves indifferent or hostile, and partly because the Government adopted vigorous repressive measures.  We have seen, too, how the leaders found themselves in face of a formidable dilemma; either they must abandon their schemes or they must attack their persecutors.  The more energetic among them, as I have already stated, chose the latter alternative, and they proceeded at once to carry out their policy.  In the course of a single year (February, 1878, to February, 1879) a whole series of terrorist crimes was committed; in