It is, then, carefully seen that in Russia, as elsewhere, emperors--and other people--do not hear the truth. The autocracy, or rather bureaucracy, surrounds itself with bulwarks which nothing can penetrate. It will need an earthquake to make a breach. This earthquake is, indeed, according to the common opinion of all thinking Russians, nearer than is generally supposed. It is the financial breaking-up of a system now held together only by foreign loans.
At a social gathering which I must not describe because I do not wish to make it recognizable, I had an unusual privilege. We were drinking tea and talking--politics, of course, for no one any longer talks of anything else in Russia--when the door opened and a tall and very stately couple entered. A general exclamation hailed the new arrivals. They were welcomed with striking heartiness and invited to the table, as people who had returned from a long journey. When introduced to them I, of course, did not understand their names, and contented myself with enjoying the handsome appearance and elegance of the gentleman as well as of the lady until I could ask my neighbor at table why these people were welcomed with such surprising warmth.
"He has just come out of prison," was the hastily whispered reply.
The communication had such an effect that I was unable to finish the meal. It is not a usual thing for a western European to sit among the guests of a prominent family with people who have just been discharged from prison. Moreover, among us, culprits do not look like this uncommonly handsome pair. Finally, it is not customary with us to receive with such heartiness people who have just discarded prison shackles. I therefore asked for the name and crime of the new-comer. I was told, and at once I understood everything.
This courtly gentleman was a Russian noble and a prominent lawyer. At my request he related in German his prison experiences. He had, it seems, been arrested at night and immediately incarcerated. His wife had taken the children out of bed, because even the beds had to be searched for forbidden literature, and the like. The pretext for this night visit of the police had been that the lawyer had been informed against as having given shelter to a political fugitive. For this reason search was made even in the cradle of the smallest child, in order to make sure that the criminal was not hidden there. The true ground, however, was that Mr. von X----, as a lawyer, defended political criminals and must be dealt with accordingly. Eleven days were spent in examining him. The search of the house revealed nothing; for only the most reckless have a trace of forbidden literature in their houses, although Struve's _Osvobozhdenie_[7] is read almost everywhere. No other accusation could be brought against a man so highly honored. He was also not altogether without means of defence in his large clientage. His case had caused a great sensation. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war had, however, caused the authorities to content themselves with treating him to the pleasures of a short residence in a police hole, and they refrained for the time being from exiling or banishing him from the place of his practice--an experience which might easily enough happen after a much longer investigation to lawyers less noted or of lower rank.