On the train between Basel and Geneva Christian learned from some
fellow travellers that an attempt to assassinate Ivan Michailovitch
Becker had been made in Lausanne. A student named Sonya Granoffska had
fired at him.
Christian knew nothing of the events that explained the deed. He
neither read newspapers nor took any interest in public events. He now
asked some questions, and was told what all the world was talking about.
The _Matin_ of Paris had printed a series of articles that had caused
intense excitement all over Europe, and had been widely reprinted
and commented on. They were signed by a certain Jegor Ulitch, and
consisted of revelations concerning the Russian revolution, its foreign
committee, and the activities of the terrorists. They dragged evidence
with so wide a net that they materially strengthened the case of the
Russian state against the workingmen’s delegate Trotzky, who was then
being tried at Petrograd, and thus contributed to his condemnation.
Jegor Ulitch remained in the background. The initiated asserted that
there was no such person, and that the name was the mask assumed by
a traitor to the revolution. The _Gaulois_ and the Geneva _Journal_
published vitriolic attacks on the unknown writer. Ulitch did not
hesitate to reply. To justify himself he published letters and
secret documents that vitally incriminated several leaders of the
revolutionary party.
With increasing definiteness the authorship of the _Matin_ articles
was being assigned to Becker. The newspapers openly voiced this
suspicion, and had daily reports of his supposed activities. During a
strike of the dock-hands of Marseilles, he was said to have appeared
at a strikers’ meeting in the garb of a Russian pope; a report had it
that he had addressed a humble letter to the Czarina, another that
he had become an outcast fleeing from land to land, a third, that he
had succeeded in mediating between the Russian police and his exiled
country-men, and that hence the Western Powers, who were slavishly
supine before Czarism, had somewhat relaxed their cruel vigilance.
Yet Becker’s very face remained a mystery and a source of confusion,
and the knowledge of his mere existence spread a wide restlessness.
And Christian sought him. He sought him in Geneva, Lausanne, Nice,
Marseilles. Finally he followed a hint that led him to Zürich. There he
happened to meet the Russian Councillor of State Koch, who introduced
him to several of his compatriots. These finally gave him Becker’s
address.