Towards the end of this conversation, a man who belonged to no party came into the room and overheard the talk. When they had finished talking he said: “As to Witte, the question seems to me to lie in this: is he acting consciously and with foresight or is he merely making the best of chance? We are all praying for a genius to appear in Russia. But, when geniuses do come, nobody ever recognises the fact until it is too late and they are dead. If Witte is acting consciously then he is a genius indeed. If he has foreseen all along what would happen, and, in a few years’ time, is President of the Federation of Russian United States, having decentralised what he has so capably centralised, then I think he will be one of the greatest men who have ever lived; but, if he is merely acting as the occasion presents itself, I do not rate him higher than a Boulanger with a head for figures.” “In any case,” said the Zemstvo representative, “he will provide glorious food for discussion for the future historian, and even at present the world would be a duller and greyer place without this enigmatical chameleon.” ST. PETERSBURG, _February 17th_. I have frequently heard the opinion expressed that the Russian Revolution can inspire nothing but disgust owing to the fact that it has produced no great men, and to its lack of big, stirring epic events, in contradistinction to the French Revolution, which was so rich in all these things. It is, therefore, interesting to note what impression the events of the French Revolution produced on impartial foreign contemporary opinion.