The disclosure of them came through the infidelity of the messenger.
The 1917 edition is published with a prologue and an epilogue, like a drama, which indeed it is, with all the ingredients of melodrama--a villain, a mysterious woman, a Grand Duke, a conspiracy to destroy the world, and a saint--Nilus, who convicts himself in his own writings of falsification in the giving of these various accounts of how the Protocols came into his possession.
Nothing is known of Sergius Nilus.

Russian standard reference books and encyclopedias contain no mention of his name.
The anonymous American editor of the Nilus book gives the following information about Nilus: "Serge Nilus, in the 1905 edition of whose book was first published the _Zionist Protocols_, was, as he states, born in the year 1862, of Russian parents holding liberal opinions.

His family was fairly well known in Moscow, for its members were educated people who were firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church.

On one side he is said to have been connected by marriage with the nobility of the Baltic provinces.

Nilus himself was graduated from the University of Moscow and early entered the civil service, obtaining a small appointment in the law courts.