Thou art the judge, the headsman I; And as a servant I obey; The sentence which thou dost imply, E'en though unjust, I never stay.
In ancient Rome, a lictor dark An axe before the consul bore; Thou hast a lictor too, but mark! The axe comes after, not before.
I am thy lictor; and alway With bare, bright axe behind thee tread; I am the deed, be what it may, Begotten from thy thought unsaid."
In the year 1869 a sudden end was put to Netschajew's activity in Russia. Among his most trusted friends in Moscow was a certain Iwanow, one of the most respected and influential members of the secret society. Iwanow himself lived in ascetic seclusion, and in his leisure time gave the peasants instruction gratis, establishing classes of poor students, and so forth. He was a fanatic in his belief in the social revolution. He had also established cheap eating-houses for poor students, and one day these were closed by the police, and their founder vanished, because Netschajew had placarded revolutionary appeals in them. In despair at this, Iwanow wished to retire from the secret society. Netschajew, believing that he might betray its secrets, enticed Iwanow one evening into a remote garden, and with the help of two fellow-conspirators, Pryow and Nicolajew, shot him, and threw the corpse into a pond. He then fled, and arrived safely in Switzerland, where, in conjunction with Bakunin, he produced the literary efforts referred to above. Soon, however, he quarrelled with Bakunin, owing to certain sharp practices of which he was guilty, went to London, edited a paper called The Commonwealth (Die Giemeinde), in which he bitterly attacked his former master, and at last, in 1872, was handed over to Russia at the request of the Russian Government. Since then nothing more was heard of him; Netschajew disappeared, like the demon in a pantomime, "down below."
