There was good reason for the change; the various classes of police, instead of helping, hampered and interfered with each other. There were three police forces in the capital and all large cities; that of the Minister of the Interior, the city police, and the Third Section, already described. They were perpetually getting in each other's way, and it was said that the State confided to their care was in as bad a way as the baby with five nurses. Often enough, like the famous detectives of the French farce, _Tricoche et Cacolet_, policemen hunted policemen; they were all suspicious of people who seemed too much on the alert, and the consequence was that much time and trouble was wasted in mutual surveillance. Sometimes it happened that the agents of the Third Section, fancying they had made an important arrest, found to their chagrin that they had only caught their comrades; meanwhile, the Nihilists had a practically free hand and terrorised the whole country. The absolute incompetence of his protectors appears to have been brought home to Alexander II. by the incident known as the "Paris box of pills." A parcel arrived one morning labelled "Pills for asthma and rheumatism: Dr. Jus, Paris." It was addressed direct to the Czar, who was reported to be suffering from these complaints. Alexander handed the box over to his private physician for examination, and the moment it was opened one of the pills exploded. More care was shown in verifying the remaining pills, and it was found that they were filled with dynamite. There have been times when the police of Russia were stirred to the utmost activity. After the murder of General Mezentzoff in broad daylight and in one of the principal squares of St. Petersburg, such profound dismay prevailed that the police were unceasingly on the _qui vive_. The perpetrators of the deed, nevertheless, had disappeared, leaving no trace, and the police in their frenzied eagerness turned the city upside down. Searches innumerable of all suspected houses were made, and the most arbitrary arrests took place on the slightest whisper of anything wrong. Reports at the time put the numbers taken into custody at quite a thousand.