[Illustration: “It was a singular scene, as I stood there laying down pile after pile of greasy ten-thousand-rouble notes on a richly inlaid table.”] I obeyed. It was a singular scene as I stood there laying down pile after pile of greasy ten thousand rouble notes on a richly inlaid table, while one of the highest personages in the proudest Court of Europe or Asia stood beside me, his tall figure glistening with gold ornaments and jewelled decorations, and his dark Slavonian features flushed with excitement and greed. As the last note left my fingers, he bent down and breathed in my ear-- ‘_Take the Siberian railway, and use your eyes._’ I am ready to admit that my first feeling, after hearing those few words which had cost me a hundred thousand roubles each, was one of sickening disappointment. But a very little consideration served to show me that the Grand Duke had told me enough to place success within my reach, and that the information which he thus put it in my power to acquire by my own observation was calculated to be of greater value than any mere statement made at second-hand. Somewhere along the vast, just completed track which connects the Baltic with the Pacific lay the key to the true purpose of that famous rescript which had imposed on all the statesmen of the world, and only vigilance and circumspection were required to find it. Never was there a journey more fraught with peril than that which I now undertook. I had to disappear from civilisation for an unknown length of time, and plunge into a region shrouded in mysterious dread, the land of prison and exile; the gloomy realm which forms the background to the showy life of the capital beside the Neva, like a dark subterranean dungeon hidden beneath a glittering palace. From Siberia few enemies of the Russian Government ever return. My safety depended on my keeping up the character of a financial agent, on the look-out for sources of wealth requiring French capital for their development. In that character I was sure of a cordial reception, and it served as a convenient cloak for some curiosity about the country I was passing through. Not daring to intrust my secret to a companion, I was obliged to go without sleep from the moment of leaving the Ural mountains behind. The utmost indulgence I could allow myself was such a light doze as left the attention ready to leap into activity at the least provocation. At every stopping place I got out and made a careful examination of the neighbourhood. The one thing I had to fear was the night. In the Cimmerian darkness of a northern winter I might have been carried past an army without perceiving it.