The martyr who unflinchingly faces death for the sake of his faith, the Nihilist who exposes himself to imprisonment or death in the hope of attaining constitutional liberty, are examples of the heroic endurance of minds exalted by principle. The Jew's devotion to his religion has always been most intense when intolerance and persecution were at their height. In like manner the love of liberty is developed to its greatest extent when despotism seeks to stifle it.
"Brightest in dungeons, liberty thou art,
For there the habitation is the heart."
Twenty-one persons were arrested in Kief, and almost as many in Kharkov, and still Nihilism was not stamped out. Phœnix-like it arose from the ashes of its martyrs.
On February the 17th, 1880, just as the imperial family were about to dine, a mine was exploded beneath the winter palace, the guard-room was demolished, ten soldiers were killed and forty-five wounded; but, the divinity which sometimes hedges a king preserved the royal family from harm.
Excitement was intense. A commission of public safety, with authority to preserve order at any cost, was at once appointed, with General Melikoff at the head.
On the second day of March, during the festival, General Melikoff was shot at as he alighted from his carriage. The would-be assassin was so close that the General struck him in the face, and the man was arrested.
At the trial it was discovered that the malefactor was a baptized Jew, by the name of Wadetsky Minsk. The trial excited universal interest. The culprit was asked by the judge why he had deserted his faith.
"Because I found it impossible to live as a Jew," he replied, bitterly. "You took from me my children to send them to the army; you deprived me of the lands I had cultivated and left me penniless; you despised and degraded me, and when I had suffered until the fibres of my heart were torn, you showed me a glowing picture of the happiness that awaited me here and in heaven if I became a Christian. I allowed myself to be baptized."
Minsk paused, and the expression of his face showed the mental anguish he was at that moment enduring. Suddenly, he continued, with great vehemence:
"Yes, I became a Christian, or rather a godless hypocrite, who had bartered away the sympathy of his co-religionists as well as his self-respect. How did you treat me after I had embraced your faith? Humiliations, worse than any I had experienced as a Jew, were showered upon me. I was regarded as something impure, shunned and execrated. It was too late to turn back, and in spite of your treatment, I remained a Christian, I adhered to the glorious faith which teaches 'Peace on earth and good-will to men.' In sheer desperation, I joined the band of unfortunates as reckless as myself, whose self-imposed mission it is to pave the way to liberty."