“If, in the case of Mlle. Vietroff, the authorities could not follow their usual tactics, it means that they must have been directly responsible for the miserable end of the wretched creature. If this had not been the case, why, during the two long days that the unfortunate girl’s dying agony lasted, were her parents, relations, and friends not informed of her fate? Why was the mere fact of her death kept secret from them for two whole weeks, and why were even books taken over for her in order to allow her people to believe her to be alive? Why was the fact of her death only revealed when the details of it began to ooze through to the public from the tales of the prisoners who, after having shared her captivity in the fortress for some time, had been released from it?
“If the people to whom we have just now been alluding had no hand in the death of Mlle. Vietroff, they would surely have advised her family of it earlier. If they had not been the direct cause of her suicide they would have allowed her to see her friends before she died, to whom she might have explained the reasons which induced her to take such a terrible resolution; and this alone would have turned suspicion away from them.
“Nothing of the kind was done, and this points clearly the part which the executioners of the Tsar have had in this tragedy. As if we did not know their way of acting! As if we are so very far away from the times when girls were beaten to death, and when they also preferred suicide to an existence which would have been otherwise spent in the shame of disgraceful remembrances! As if the tortures invented by the Tsar’s janissaries were a mystery to us!
“We are convinced that only the feeling that she had been placed in some position from which there was no escape could have driven Mlle. Vietroff to the dreadful necessity of doing away with herself, and to prefer suicide to a life tainted with unbearable remembrances. We know not what was done to her by the mysterious executioners who drove her to her death; and such a death—a death the very mention of which sends a cold shudder through our bodies. Such facts cannot be kept secret; they must be made public, if only in order to avoid their recurrence; they must be proclaimed everywhere, and in writing this letter we are deeply convinced that thousands of people will be eager to assist at the funeral service for the dead victim, Marie Feodorovna Vietroff!”
Thousands of people did assist at these prayers. The vast square before the Kazan Cathedral was thronged with men and women, crying and sobbing; and in spite of the repeated warnings of the police the vast crowd would not disperse.
Such a manifestation, indeed, as followed upon the appeal that I have just now reproduced had not taken place in St. Petersburg since the troubled times which had preceded the assassination of Alexander II. It created a deep impression on all those who chanced to see it; it opened a new era in the history of modern Russia. It was the forerunner of the great storm which a few short years later nearly drove the Romanoffs from their Throne.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION
As can easily be imagined, the reverses which followed each other from the very beginning of the war, were deeply reflected in the country, and gave but too good an opportunity to all the adversaries of the Government to try to discredit it in public opinion. After the assassination of M. Plehve the anarchists grew bolder, and, encouraged by success, went on with their murderous designs. Moscow, which formerly was the centre of conservatism, had become, by a strange freak of destiny, the bulwark of revolution. The spirit of the town had always been independent, and adverse to the Central Government established in St. Petersburg; but, on the other hand, it had always remained faithful to its Tsars.
After Khodinka things altered, and distrust of the Sovereign, as well as dislike for his Ministers and advisers, replaced the former devotion for the person of the monarch. The Grand Duke Sergius was intensely disliked, in spite of the great popularity of his wife. He was made the scapegoat of the mistakes committed by others, and people often accused him of things he had been unable to prevent as well as of those of which he personally disapproved. His entourage, too, were in part responsible for the hatred which the population of Moscow professed for his person. They were for the most part composed of people absolutely devoid of political sense, who were too weak even to flatter, but who thought themselves strong, because they advocated the use of the stick or of the lash as the remedy for all kind of possible evils.