366 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
On the day which WJLS to bring about such great results St. Petersburg was unusually gay*, and to a stranger it might even have seemed as if, for the time being, both military and police had made some special relaxation in their discipline and duties of surveillance.
But everything in St. Petersburg is more or less myste- rious. No man can account for the under-current, which ebbs and flows and rushes hither and thither beneath the surface of its ordinary life. It is a calm sea, that flows insidiously above jutting rocks, moving sands, and danger- ous eddies.
The police of Russia are as secret as the Revolutionists. Both are as active ; and on this momentous occasion, the authorities, instead of having relaxed their watchful guar- dianship over the Imperial power, were especially lynx- eyed, well informed, and alert, as was only too completely manifested to the little band of conspirators under the leadership of Andrea Ferrari.
It is a rare occurrence in open daylight for the police to disturb the citizens by an important arrest. These operations are generally reserved for the stillness and repose of the night ; but on this busy sunny day a little troop of police and military were taking very devious routes outside the leading thoroughfares, quietly surrounded a house near the Tavreda Gardens, which had been for four and twenty hours under the eye of an astute detective force. The result was one of much greater importance to St. Petersburg and the Czar than his officers understood. It prevented the ignition of that train of fire which had been laid with so much skill and patience ; and it added to Russia's political prisoners, among others in whom the readers of this history are interested, Anna Klosstock, Andrea Ferrari, Philip Forsyth, Ivan Kostanzhoglo, and Paul Petroski. Fortunately, so far as their immediate ex- istence was concerned, the plot, as it presented itself to
