opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of their fatherland, thanks to the ammunitions and provisions they would be able to deliver for the use of the army in the field, and which that army never got at all. The system of an organised plundering which in the present war has had such mournful and such tragical consequences, was then inaugurated with a success that went far beyond the most sanguine expectations of those who indulged in it. Huge fortunes were made in the space of a few months whilst our troops were in want of everything, and enduring cold, hunger and thirst. The Czar remained in utter ignorance of all that was being done in his name. He never suspected anything. But his people never forgave him for this indifference to its fate. One sees it to-day. One wonders what was in the mind of this Sovereign, who having ascended the throne amidst so many sympathies, had contrived to lose them within the space of a few months! Did he ever realise the importance of the ocean of unpopularity which was submerging him slowly, and the waves of which were rising higher and higher, with each day that passed? One would like to know it now, when one tries to go back to the sources of the tragedy to which he has fallen a victim. Or was his character so shallow and so careless, that he only looked at the outside of things, and could not appreciate their real depth? He was of a very reticent nature and disposition, and rarely confided in any one, not even in his wife, whose inspiration and advice he was nevertheless to follow so blindly. And the tastes for solitude which he was to develop so strongly later on soon brought him to lead a kind of existence that can be compared only to that of the Mikado of Japan, before the reforms that were to change everything in that country. That he was surrounded by flatterers goes without saying, but he could nevertheless have manifested some desire to learn the truth, and not have been so continually busy with the exclusive wish to maintain his own authority, which in spite of his efforts to the contrary, no one in the whole of Russia either respected or feared. All the concessions which politically were squeezed out of him, came too late, or else were accepted by him at the wrong time. Even when he seemed in the eyes of the public to be following the advice which was given to him by disinterested and honest persons, he tried in an underhand way to counteract the efficacy of the measures he had himself ordered to be taken, and whenever he resigned himself to the inevitable, he did not understand the reason why he was so doing.