Katia Turchaninova followed him to the metropolis, and went to visit him in prison.  She was not admitted on the day she came, and was told to come on the day fixed by regulations for visits to the prisoners.  When that day arrived, and she was finally allowed to see him, she had to talk to him through two gratings separating the prisoner from his visitor.  This visit increased her indignation against the authorities.  And her feelings become all the more revolutionary after a visit she paid to the office of a gendarme officer who had to deal with the Turin case.  The officer, a handsome man, seemed obviously disposed to grant her exceptional favours in visiting the prisoner, if she would allow him to make love to her.  Disgusted with him, she appealed to the chief of police.  He pretended—­just as the officer did when talking officially to her—­to be powerless himself, and to depend entirely on orders coming from the minister of state.  She sent a petition to the minister asking for an interview, which was refused.

Then she resolved to do a desperate thing and bought a revolver.

XXII

The minister was receiving petitioners at the usual hour appointed for the reception.  He had talked successively to three of them, and now a pretty young woman with black eyes, who was holding a petition in her left hand, approached.  The minister’s eyes gleamed when he saw how attractive the petitioner was, but recollecting his high position he put on a serious face.

“What do you want?” he asked, coming down to where she stood.  Without answering his question the young woman quickly drew a revolver from under her cloak and aiming it at the minister’s chest fired—­but missed him.

The minister rushed at her, trying to seize her hand, but she escaped, and taking a step back, fired a second time.  The minister ran out of the room.  The woman was immediately seized.  She was trembling violently, and could not utter a single word; after a while she suddenly burst into a hysterical laugh.  The minister was not even wounded.

That woman was Katia Turchaninova.  She was put into the prison of preliminary detention.  The minister received congratulations and marks of sympathy from the highest quarters, and even from the emperor himself, who appointed a commission to investigate the plot that had led to the attempted assassination.  As a matter of fact there was no plot whatever, but the police officials and the detectives set to work with the utmost zeal to discover all the threads of the non-existing conspiracy.  They did everything to deserve the fees they were paid; they got up in the small hours of the morning, searched one house after another, took copies of papers and of books they found, read diaries, personal letters, made extracts from them on the very best notepaper and in beautiful handwriting, interrogated Katia Turchaninova ever so many times, and confronted her with all those whom they suspected of conspiracy, in order to extort from her the names of her accomplices.