Three years ago, while I was writing a novel which deals with Nihilism,
and which brought the heavy hand of the Press Bureau at Petersburg upon
me, I contrived, in order to sketch my characters from life, to obtain
an introduction to the little colony of Russian revolutionists which
exists in secret in a northwestern suburb of London. I eventually won
their confidence, and ingratiated myself with them by advocating Russian
freedom in a series of articles in a certain London journal, which had
the effect of enlisting public sympathy with the exiles in such a
manner, that the editor received a number of donations, which he handed
to me, while I in turn conveyed the money to my friend, Paul
Grigorovitch, the head of the branch of the Narodnoe Pravo.
I was sitting at home, reading and smoking, in a very lazy mood, one
winter's evening, when the servant girl entered and handed me a soiled,
crumpled letter, which, she said, had been left by a strange-looking
foreign woman. This did not surprise me, for I sometimes received
mysterious unsigned notes from my friends the refugees when they desired
to see me. The exiles are continually under the observation of the
"Okhrannoe Otdelenie," or Secret Police attached to the Russian Embassy,
hence the cautiousness of their movements.