Our peasants' wreath laid on his heart, his martyr breast--as we were in all his life nearest to his heart! Seeing this we burst again into tears.

Then the General let us kiss his hand--and there he lay, our Tsar-martyr, with a calm, loving expression on his face--as if he, our Little Father, had fallen asleep." If anything had been needed to make the name Nihilism forever odious, it was this deed.

If anything were required to reveal the bald wickedness of the creed of Nihilism, it was supplied by this aimless sacrifice of the one sovereign who had bestowed a colossal reform upon Russia.

They had killed him, and had then marched unflinchingly to the gallows--and that was all--leaving others bound by solemn oaths to bring the same fate upon his successor.

The whole energy of the organization was centered in secreting dynamite, awaiting a favorable moment for its explosion, then dying like martyrs, leaving others pledged to repeat the same horror--and so _ad infinitum_.