At the time of my appearance in St. Petersburg the forces of nihilism had assumed proportions greater than they had ever attained before or will ever attain to again, thanks to my activities. The palace itself was a hotbed of conspiracy; the rank and file of the army was so disaffected that the officers never knew whom they could depend upon or whom they might trust; a secret pressure of the thumb, indeterminate in its character but nevertheless significant, was likely to be received from any hand clasp, no matter where given or with whom exchanged, and a princess or a countess was as likely to bestow it upon you as any ordinary person whom you might chance to meet. The pressure itself was merely a tentative question which might be translated by the words: "Are you a nihilist?" and you might understand it and reply to it by a returning pressure of acquiescence, or ignore it utterly, as you pleased. The pressure itself was so slight, was carelessly given and might so readily be attributed to a careless motion of the hand that it could not betray the person who made it; nor could the answering pressure do so.
I had not been long at the palace before I discovered that many of the high officials who had ready and constant access there had become inoculated with the nihilistic bacilli and although I had no doubt that many of them were at heart loyal to the emperor, I already knew better than they did the immensity of the obligation they had undertaken in swearing allegiance to an association of persons dominated by fanatics and by actual criminals whose trade was murder and whose chiefest pleasures and relaxation was the study of how best to bring about entire social upheaval.
The confession of Morét enabled me to read every sign however slight that was made by these persons and the four weeks of my domicile in the apartment of the palace that had been assigned to me served me as nothing else could have done in this respect.
You have already been told that this was by no means my first experience in St. Petersburg and with nihilism; but I must confess that extensive as my information had been and was I had never for a moment contemplated the vast resources of this revolutionary order, its unlimited ramifications and its boundless possibilities for evil. To discover as I speedily did that princes of the blood, that ladies high in place, that generals in the army and lesser officers under them were among the ranks of the nihilists, was an astounding fact which I had not contemplated and which I was ill prepared to receive so soon after my arrival. It extended the requirements of my operation; it increased ten fold, nay a hundred fold, my obligations to the czar in whose service I was now sworn.
It seems difficult to imagine a beautiful woman as being at the head and front of such an organization which discusses murder and which arranges for wholesale assassination with the same equanimity of conscience that a hunting party at an English country estate would arrange for the slaughter of rabbits and pheasants.
But I was destined soon to discover that even this could be true. I was destined soon to be brought in contact with a beautiful woman who was not only high in place and a favorite with the czar himself, but who was veritably a leader in the plots against him.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRINCESS' ORIENTAL GARDEN
In order better to carry out the plans I had made it was necessary that I should depart from the palace and I secured apartments in a respectable but quiet section of the city, where I established myself under the name of Dubravnik; and it was generally understood by those who came in contact with me that I was a pardoned exile who had been permitted to return under stipulated conditions, as such men are sometimes, though rarely, allowed to do. In the mean time I had gathered around me several certain individuals whom I had known and employed in the past, and whom I knew from experience that I could trust; and there was not one Russian among them. The Russian may be trusted always wherever his heart is involved and his political conscience is at rest, but never unless those forces are working in sympathy with the employment of his hands and head.