Such a house would be the last to be thought of in con- nection with revolutionary ideas; and yet it was in that house that I made my first acquaintance with the revolution- ary literature of the times. The great refugee, Hérzen, had just begun to issue at London his review, ‘ The Polar Star,’’ which made a commotion in Russia, even in the palace circles, and was widely circulated secretly at St. Petersburg. My cousin got it in some way, and we used to read it together. Her heart revolted against the obstacles which were put in the way of her happiness, and her mind was the more open to the powerful criticisms which the great writer launched against the Russian autocracy and all the rotten system of misgovernment. With a feeling near to worship I used to look on the medallion which was printed on the paper cover of ‘The Polar Star,” and which repre- sented the noble heads of the five ‘“‘ Decembrists ” whom Nicholas I. had hanged after the rebellion of December 14, 1825, — Bestiizheff, Kahdvskiy, Péstel, Ryléeff, and Mu- tavidv-A péstol.
The beauty of the style of Hérzen, — of whom Turgué- neff has truly said that he wrote in tears and blood, and that no other Russian had ever so written, — the breadth of: his ideas, and his deep love of Russia took possession of — - me, and I used to read and re-read those pages, even more ‘ull of heart than of brain.
In 1859, or early in 1860, I began to edit my first revo- Utionary paper. At that age, what could I be but a con- stitutionalist?— and my paper advocated the necessity of a constitution for Russia. I wrote about the foolish 128 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST expenses of the court, the sums of money which were spent at Nice to keep quite a squadron of the navy in attendance on the Dowager-Empress, who died in 1860; I mentioned the misdeeds of the functionaries which I continually heard spoken of, and I urged the necessity of constitutional rule, I wrote three copies of my paper, and slipped them into the desks of three comrades of the higher forms, who, I thought, might be interested in public affairs. I asked my readers to put their remarks behind the Scotch clock in our library.
With a throbbing heart, I went next day to see if thell was something for me behind the clock. Two notes were there, indeed. ‘Two comrades wrote that they fully sym- pathized with my paper, and only advised me not to risk too much. I wrote my second number, still more vigor- ously insisting upon the necessity of uniting all forces in the name of liberty. But this time there was no reply behind the clock. Instead the two comrades came to me.
“We are sure,” they said, “ that it is you who edit the paper, and we want to talk about it. We are quite agreed with you, and we are here to say, ‘ Let us be friends.’ Your paper has done its work, —it has brought us together; but there is no need to continue it. In all the school there are only two more who would take any interest in such mat- ters, while if it becomes known that there is a paper of this kind, the consequences will be terrible for all of us. Let us constitute a circle and talk about everything; perhaps we shall put something into the heads of a few others.”
This was so sensible that I could only agree, and we sealed our union by a hearty shaking of hands. From that time we three became firm friends, and used to read a ao deal together and discuss all sorts of things.
> .
\ The abolition of serfdom was the question which the engrossed the attention of all thinking men.
FIRST STEPS TOWARD EMANCIPATION 129 The revolution of 1848 had had its distant echo in the hearts of the Russian peasant folk, and from the year 1850 the insurrections of revolted serfs began to take serious pro- portions. When the Crimean war broke out, and militia was levied all over Russia, these revolts spread with a violence never before heard of. Several serf-owners were killed by their serfs, and the peasant uprisings became so serious that whole regiments, with artillery, were sent to quell them, whereas in former times small detachments of soldiers would have been sufficient to terrorize the peasants into obedience.
_ These outbreaks on the one side, and the profound aversion to serfdom which had grown up in the generation which came to the front with the advent of Alexander II. to the throne, rendered the emancipation of the peasants more and more imperative. The Emperor, himself averse to serfdom, and supported, or rather influenced, in his own family by his wife, his brother Constantine, and the Grand Duchess Hélene Pavlovna, took the first steps in that direc- tion. His intention was that the initiative of the reform should come from the nobility, the serf-owners themselves. But in no province of Russia could the nobility be induced jo send a petition to the Tsar to that effect. In March, 1856, he himself addressed the Moscow nobility on the aecessity of such a step; but astubborn silence was all their veply to his speech, so that Alexander II., growing quite amgry, concluded with those memorable Shee of Hérzen: ‘It is better, gentlemen, that it should come from above shan to wait till it comes from beneath.” Even these words aad no effect, and it was to the provinces of Old Poland, — sr6dno, Wilno, and Kdévno,—where Napoleon I. had ibolished serfdom (on paper) in 1812, that recourse was had. The governor-general of those provinces, Nazimoff, managed 10 obtain the desired address from the Polish nobility. In November, 1857, the famous “ rescript” to the governor: 130 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST.
general of the Lithuanian provinces, announcing the inten- tion of the Emperor to abolish serfdom, was launched, and we read, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful article of Hérzen, ‘Thou hast conquered, Galilean,” in which the refugees at London declared that they would no more look upon Alexander II. as an enemy, but would support him in the great work of emancipation.
The attitude of the peasants was very remarkable. No sooner had the news spread that the liberation long sighed for was coming than the insurrections nearly stopped. The peasants waited ‘now, and during a journey which Alexander made in Middle Russia they flocked around him as he passed, beseeching him to grant them liberty, — a petition, however, which Alexander received with great repugnance. It is most remarkable — so strong is the force of tradition —that the rumor went among the peasants that it was Napoleon III. who had required of the Tsar, in the treaty of peace, that the peasants should be freed. I frequently heard this rumor; and on the very eve of the emancipa- tion they seemed to doubt that it.would be done without pressure from abroad. ‘‘ Nothing will be done unless Gari- baldi comes,” was the reply which a peasant made at St. Petersburg to a comrade of mine who talked to him about ‘‘ freedom coming.”
But after these moments of general rejoicing years of in- certitude and disquiet followed. Specially appointed com- mittees in the provinces and at St. Petersburg discussed the proposed liberation of the serfs, but the intentions of Alexander II. seemed unsettled. A check was continually put upon the press, in order to prevent it from discussing details. Sinister rumors circulated at St. Petersburg and reached our corps.
There was no lack of young men amongst the nobility who earnestly worked for a frank abolition of the old ser vitude; but the serfdom party drew closer and closer round EMANCIPATION WIDELY DISCUSSED 131 the Emperor, and got power over his mind. They whis pered into his ears that the day serfdom was abolished the peasants would begin to kill the landlords wholesale, and — Russia would witness a new Pugachoff uprising, far more terrible than that of 1773. Alexander, who was a man of weak character, only too readily lent his ear to such predic- tions. But the huge machine for working out the emanci- pation law had been set to work. The committees had their sittings; scores of schemes of emancipation, addressed to the Emperor, circulated in manuscript or were printed at London. Herzen, seconded by Turguéneff, who kept him well informed about all that was going on in government circles, discussed in his ‘‘ Bell” and his “ Polar Star” the details of the various schemes, and Chernyshévsky in the “(* temporary ” (Sovreménnik). The Slavophiles, espe- cially Aksakoff and Bélydeff, had taken advantage of the ‘first moments of relative freedom allowed the press to give ‘the matter a wide publicity in Russia, and to discuss the ‘features of the emancipation with a thorough understanding of its technical aspects. All intellectual St. Petersburg was with Heérzen, and particularly with Chernyshévsky, and /I remember how the officers of the Horse Guards, whom I ‘saw on Sundays, after the church parade, at the home of my cousin (Dmitri Nikolaevich Kropétkin, who was aide- de-camp of that regiment and aide-de-camp of the Emperor), used to side with Chernyshévsky, the leader of the advanced party in the emancipation struggle. The whole disposition ‘of St. Petersburg, in the drawing-rooms and in the street, ‘was such that it wasimpossible to go back. The liberation ‘of the serfs had to be accomplished; and another impor- ‘tant point was won, — the liberated serfs would receive, ‘besides their homesteads, the land that they had hitherto cultivated for themselves. However, the party of the old nobility were not discour- aged. They centred their efforts on obtaining a postpone- 132 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ment of the reform, on reducing the size of the allotments, and on imposing upon the emancipated serfs so high a re- demption tax for the land that it would render their econom- ical freedom illusory; and in this they fully succeeded. Alexander II. dismissed the real soul of the whole business, Nicholas Milutin (brother of the minister of war), saying to him, “I am so sorry to part with you, but I must: the nobility describe you as one of the Reds.” ‘The first com-— mittees, which had worked out the scheme of emancipation, were dismissed, too, and new committees revised the whole work in the interest of the serf-owners; the press was muz- zled once more.
Things assumed a very gloomy aspect. The question whether the liberation would take place at all was now asked. I feverishly followed the struggle, and every Sun- day, when my comrades returned from their homes, I asked them what their parents said. By the end of 1860 the news became worse and worse. “The Valueff party has got the upper hand.” ‘They intend to revise the whole work.” ‘The relatives of the Princess X. [a friend of the Tsar] work hard upon him.” ‘The liberation will be postponed: they fear a revolution.”
In January, 1861, slightly better rumors began to circu- late, and it was generally hoped that something would be heard of the emancipation on the day of the Emperor’s. accession to the throne, the 19th of February.
The 19th came, but it brought nothing with it. I was. on that day at the palace. There was no grand levee, only a small one; and pages of the second form were sent to such levees in order to get accustomed to the palace ways. It was my turn that day; and as I was seeing off one of the grand duchesses who came to the palace to assist at the mass, her husband did not appear, and I went to fetch him. He was called out of the Emperor’s study, and I told him, THE EMANCIPATION MANIFESTO 133 in a half jocose way, of the perplexity of his wife, without having the slightest suspicion of the important matters that may have been talked of in the study at that time. Apart from a few of the initiated, no one in the palace suspected that the manifesto had been signed on the 19th of February, and was kept back for a fortnight only because the next Sunday, the 26th, was the beginning of the carnival week, and it was feared that, owing to the drinking which goes on in the villages during the carnival, peasant insurrections might break out. Even the carnival fair, which used to be held at St. Petersburg on the square near the winter palace, was removed that year to another square, from fear of a popular insurrection in the capital. Most terrible instruc- tions had been issued to the army as to the ways of repress- ing peasant uprisings.
A fortnight later, on the last Sunday of the carnival (March 5, or rather March 17, New Style), I was at the corps, having to take part in the military parade at the rid- ing-school. JI was still in bed, when my soldier servant, Ivdnoff, dashed in with the tea tray, exclaiming, ‘ Prince, freedom! The manifesto is posted on the Gostinoi Dvor” (the shops opposite the corps).
‘‘Did you see it yourself? ” ‘Yes. People stand round; one reads, the others listen. It is freedom!”
- In a couple of minutes I was dressed, and out. A com- cade was coming in.
‘‘Kropétkin, freedom!” he shouted. ‘Here is the manifesto. My uncle learned last night that it would be read at the early mass at the Isaac Cathedral; so we went. [here were not many people there; peasants only. The manifesto was read and distributed after the mass. They well understood what it meant. When I came out of the thurch, two peasants, who stood in the gateway, said to me n such a droll way, ‘ Well, sir? now —all gone?’ ” 134 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST And he mimicked how they had shown him the way out, Years of expectation were in that gesture of sending away the master.
I read and re-read the manifons It was written in an elevated style by the old Metropolitan of Moscow, Phila- rete, but with a useless mixture of Russian and Old Sla- vonian which obscured the sense. It was liberty; but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to remain serfs for two years more, till the 19th of February, 1863. Not- withstanding all this, one thing was evident: serfdom was abolished, and the liberated serfs would get the land and their homesteads. They would have to pay for it, but the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be slaves no more; the reaction had not got the upper hand.
We went to the parade; and when all the military performances were over, Alexander II., remaining on horse- back, loudly called out, “The officers to me!” They gath- ered round him, and he began, in a loud voice, a speech about the great event of the day.: ‘The officers...the representatives of the nobility in the army’? —these scraps of sentences reached our ears — “an end has been put to centuries of injustice...I expect sacrifices from the nobility...the loyal nobility will gather round the throne”...andso on. Enthusi- astic hurrahs resounded amongst the officers as he ended.
We ran rather than marched back on our way to the corps, — hurrying to be in time for the Italian opera, of which the last performance in the season was to be given” that afternoon; some manifestation was sure to take place | then. Our military attire was flung off with great haste, and several of us dashed, lightfooted, to the sixth-story gallery. The house was crowded.
During the first entr’acte the smoking-room of the opera filled with excited young men, who all talked to one an- other, whether acquainted or not. We planned at once to eet iy oe ENTHUSIASM OF THE eturn to the hall, and to sing, w; 1 mass choir, the hymn “ God Sg However, sounds of music r aurried back to the hall. Thé ulready playing the hymn, which n enthusiastic hurrahs coming [saw Bavéri, the conductor of out not a sound could be hen Bavéri stopped, | ihe stick waved again moving, and musicia igain the sound of vegan conduct oF A REVOLUTIONIST nisunderstandings and immediately bo remained quiet, — more quiet 1 good sense, the peasants had as done away with, that ‘ freeaccepted the conditions imposed Monditions were very heavy.
ugust, 1861, and again in the eg with the quiet, intelliad accepted the new vell how difficult it or the land, which les in lieu of the EFFECTS OF EMANCIPATION 137 out the worst of all. They got no land, and would hardly have known what to do with it if they had. They got freedom, and nothing besides. In our neighborhood nearly all of them left their masters; none, for example, remained in the household of my father. ‘They went in search of positions elsewhere, and a number of them found employ- ment at once with the merchant class, who were proud of having the coachman of Prince So and So, or the cook of General So and So. Those who knew a trade found work in the towns: for instance, my father’s band remained a band, and made a good living at Kaluga, retaining amiable ‘relations with us. But those who had no trade had hard times before them; and yet, the majority preferred to live anyhow, rather than remain with their old masters, As to the landlords, while the larger ones made all possible efforts at St. Petersburg to reintroduce the old conditions under one name or another (they succeeded in doing so to some extent under Alexander III.), by far the greater number submitted to the abolition of serfdom as to a sort of necessary calamity. The young generation gave to Russia that remarkable staff of ‘‘ peace mediators” and justices of the peace who contributed so much to the peace- ful issue of the emancipation. As to the old generation, most of them had already discounted the considerable sums of money they were to receive from the peasants for the land which was granted to the liberated serfs, and which was valued much above its market price; they schemed as to how they would squander that money in the restaurants of the capitals, or at the green tables in gambling. And they did squander it, almost all of them, as soon as they got it.
For many landlords, the liberation of the serfs was an excellent money transaction. Thus, land which my father, in anticipation of the emancipation, sold in parcels at the rate of eleven rubles the Russian acre, was now estimated at 188 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST forty rubles in the peasants’ allotments, — that is, three and a half times above its market value, — and this was the rule in all our neighborhood; while in my father’s Tambovy estate, on the prairies, the m¢— that is, the village com- munity — rented all his land for twelve years, at a price which represented twice as much as he used to get from that land by cultivating it with servile labor.
Eleven years after that memorable time I went to the Tambéov estate, which I had inherited from my father. I stayed there for a few weeks, and on the evening of my departure our village priest — an intelligent’ man of inde- pendent opinions, such as one meets occasionally in our southern provinces — went out for a walk round the village. The sunset was glorious; a balmy air came from the prairies. He found a middle-aged peasant — Antén Savé- lheff — sitting on a small eminence outside the village and reading a book of psalms. ‘The peasant hardly knew how to spell, in Old Slavonic, and often he would read a book from the last page, turning the pages backward; it was the process of reading which he liked most, and then a word would strike him, and its repetition pleased him. He was reading now a Sicris of which each verse began with the word ‘‘ rejoice.”
“‘ What are you reading? ”’ A was asked.
“Well, father, I will tell you,” was his reply. “ Four- teen years ago the old prince came here. It was in the winter. I had just returned home, almost frozen. <A snow- storm was raging. I had scarcely begun undressing, when we heard a knock at the window: it was the elder, who was shouting, ‘Go to the prince! Hewants you!’ Weall — my wife and our children — were thunderstruck. ‘ What can he want of you?’ my wife cried, in alarm. I signed myself with the cross and went; the snowstorm almost blinded me as I crossed the bridge. Well, it ended all THE OLD AND THE NEW 139 right. The old prince was taking his afternoon sleep, and when he woke up he asked me if I knew plastering work, and only told me, ‘Come to-morrow to repair the plaster in that room.’ So I went home quite happy, and when I came to the bridge I found my wife standing there. She had stood there all the time in the snowstorm, with the baby in her arms, waiting for me. ‘What has happened, Savélich? ” she cried. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘no harm; he only asked me to make some repairs.’ That, father, was under the old prince. And now, the young prince came here the other day. I went to see him, and found him in the garden, at the tea table, in the shadow of the house; you, father, sat with him, and the elder of the canton, with his mayor’s chain upon his breast. ‘ Will you have tea, Savélich?’ he asks me. ‘Take achair. Petr Grigdrieff,’ —he says that to the old one,—‘give us one more chair.’ And Petr Grigorieff — you know what a terror for us he was when he was the manager of the old prince — brought the chair, and we all sat round the tea table, talking, and he poured out tea for all of us. Well, now, father, the evening is so beautiful, the balm comes from the prairies, and I sit and read, ‘ Rejoice! Rejoice!’ ” This is what the abolition of serfdom meant for the peasants.
IX In June, 1861, I was nominated sergeant of the corps of pages. Some of our officers, I must say, did not like the idea of it, saying that there would be no “discipline” with. me acting as a sergeant; but it could not be helped; it was usually the first pupil of the upper form who was nominated sergeant, and I had been at the top of our form for several years in succession. This appointment was considered very enviable, not only because the sergeant occupied a privileged position in the school and was treated’ like an officer, but especially because he was also the page de chambre of the Emperor for the time being; and to be personally known to the Emperor was of course considered as a stepping-stone to further distinctions. The most important point to me was, however, that it freed me from all the drudgery of the inner service of the school, which fell on the pages de chambre, and that I should have for my studies a separate room, where I could isolate myself from the bustle of the school. ‘True, there was also an important drawback to it: I had always found it tedious to pace up and down, many times a day, the whole length of our rooms, and used there- fore to run the distance full speed, which was severely pro- hibited; and now I should have to walk very solemnly, with the service-book under my arm, instead of running! A consultation was even held among a few friends of mine upon this serious matter, and it was decided that from time to time I could still find opportunities to take my favorite runs; as to my relations with all the others, it depended upon myself to put them on a new comrade-like footing, and - this I did.
COURT LIFE 141 The pages de chambre had to be at the palace frequently, in attendance at the great and small levees, the balls, the receptions, the gala dinrers, and so on. During Christmas, New Year, and Easter weeks we were summoned to the palace almost every day, and sometimes twice a day. More- over, in my military capacity of sergeant I had to report to the Emperor every Sunday, at the parade in the riding- school, that “all was well at the company of the corps of ' pages,’ even when one third of the school was ill of some contagious disease. ‘Shall I not report to-day that all is not quite well?” I asked the colonel on this occasion. “God bless you,” was his reply, ‘‘ you ought only to say so if there were an insurrection! ” Court life has undoubtedly much that is picturesque about it. With its elegant refinement of manners, — superficial though it may be, —its strict etiquette, and its brilliant surroundings, it is certainly meant to be impressive. <A great levee is a fine pageant, and even the simple reception of a few ladies by the Empress becomes quite different from 4 common call, when it takes place in a richly decorated drawing-room of the palace, — the guests ushered by cham- _berlains in gold-embroidered uniforms, the hostess followed by brilliantly dressed pages and a suite of ladies, and every- thing conducted with striking solemnity. To be an actor in the court ceremonies, in attendance upon the chief per- sonages, offered something more than the mere interest of curiosity for a boy of my age. Besides, I then looked upon Alexander IT. as a sort of hero; a man who attached no importance to the court ceremonies, but who, at this period of his reign, began his working day at six in the morning, and was engaged in a hard struggle with a powerful re- actionary party in order to carry through a series of reforms, in which the abolition of serfdom was only the first step.
But gradually, as I saw more of the spectacular side of court life, and caught now and then a glimpse of what was 142 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST going on behind the scenes, I realized not only the futility of these shows and the things they were intended to conceal, but also that these small things so much absorbed the court as to prevent consideration of matters of far greater im- portance. The realities were often lost in the acting. And then from Alexander II. himself slowly faded the aureole with which my imagination had surrounded. him; so that by the end of the year, even if at the outset I had cherished some illusions as to useful activity in the spheres nearest to the palace, I should have retained none.
On every important holiday, as also on the birthdays and name days of the Emperor and Empress, on the coro- nation day, and on other similar occasions, a great levee was held at the palace. Thousands of generals and officers of all ranks, down to that of captain, as well as the high functionaries of the civil service, were arranged in lines in the immense halls of the palace, to bow at the passage of the Emperor and his family, as they solemnly proceeded to the church. All the members of the imperial family came on those days to the palace, meeting together in a drawing-room, and merrily chatting till the moment arrived for putting on the mask of solemnity. Then the column was formed. The Emperor, giving his hand to the Em- press, opened the march. He was followed by his page de chambre, and he in turn by the general aide-de-camp, the aide-de-camp on duty that day, and the minister of the imperial household; while the Empress, or rather the im- mense train of her dress, was attended by her two pages de chambre, who had to support the train at the turnings and to spread it out again in all its beauty. The heir apparent, who was a young man of eighteen, and all the other grand dukes and duchesses came next, in the order of their right of succession to the throne,—each of the grand duchesses followed by her page de chambre; then there was a long procession of the ladies in attendance, old 5 : LEVEES AND BALLS AT THE PALACE 142 and young, all wearing the so-called Russian costume, — that is, an evening dress which was supposed to resemble the costume worn by the women of Old Russia.
As the procession passed, I could see how each of the eldest military and civil functionaries, before making his bow, would try to catch the eye of the Emperor, and if he had his bow acknowledged by a smiling look of the Tsar, or by a hardly perceptible nod of the head, or perchance by a word or two, he would look round upon his neighbors, full of pride, in the expectation of their congratulations.
From the church the procession returned in the same way, and then every one hurried back to his own affairs. Apart from a few devotees and some young ladies, not one in ten present at these levees regarded them otherwise than as a tedious duty.
Twice or thrice during the winter great balls were given -at the palace, and thousands of people were invited to them. After the Emperor had opened the dances with a polonaise, full liberty was left to every one to enjoy the time as he liked. There was plenty of room in the im- 'mense brightly illuminated halls, where young girls were easily lost to the watchful eyes of their parents and aunts, and many thoroughly enjoyed the dances and the supper, during which the young people managed to be left to them- selves. 5 _ My duties at these balls were rather difficult. Alex- ‘ander II. did not dance, nor did he sit down, but he moved all the time amongst his guests, his page de chambre hav- ing to follow him at a distance, so as to be within easy call, and yet not inconveniently near. This combination of presence with absence was not easy to attain, nor did the Emperor require it: he would have preferred to be left ‘entirely to himself; but such was the tradition, and he had to submit to it. The worst was when he entered a dense crowd of ladies who stood round the circle in which the 144 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST grand dukes danced, and slowly circulated among them. It was not at all easy to make a way through this living garden, which opened to give passage to the Emperor, but closed in immediately behind him. Instead of dancing themselves, hundreds of ladies and girls stood there, closely packed, each in the expectation that one of the grand dukes would perhaps notice her and invite her to dance a waltz or a polka. Such was the influence of the court upon St. Petersburg society that if one of the grand dukes cast his eye upon a girl, her parents would do all in their power to make their child fall madly in love with the great personage, even though they knew well that no marriage could result from it, —the Russian. grand dukes not being allowed to marry ‘‘ subjects’? of the Tsar. The conversations which I once heard in a “ respectable” family, connected with the court, after the heir apparent had danced twice or thrice with a girl of seventeen, and the hopes which were ex- pressed by her parents gi ate all that I could possibly have imagined.
Every time that we were at the palace we had lunch or dinner there, and the footmen would whisper to us bits of news from the scandalous chronicle of the place, whether we cared for it or not. They knew everything that was going on in the different palaces, — that was their domain.
For truth’s sake, I must say that during the year which I speak of, that sort of chronicle was not as rich in events as it became in the seventies. The brothers of the Tsar were only recently married, and his sons were all very young.
But the relations of the Emperor himself with the Princess X., whom Turguéneff has so admirably depicted in ‘Smoke ” under the name of Irene, were even more freely — spoken of by the servants than by St. Petersburg society.
One day, however, when we entered the room where we used to dress, we were told, “The X. has to-day got her POLICE ESPIONAGE 145 dismissal, —a complete one this time.” Half an hour later, we saw the lady in question coming to assist at mass, with eyes swollen from weeping, and swallowing her tears ‘during the mass, while the other ladies managed so to stand at a distance from her as to put her in evidence. ‘The footmen were already informed about the incident, and commented upon it in their own way. There was some- thing truly repulsive in the talk of these men, who the day before would have crouched down before the same lady.