In New York another comrade, Dr. Ingermann, received me, and I stayed in his house four weeks; after which I embarked in the English steamship _Satrapia_ for Liverpool. I pass over my voyage, a stay of two weeks in London, and the same in Paris, as containing nothing worthy of note. Everywhere on the Continent I met with old comrades, many of whom had changed much during the long years of our separation. Some could not recognise me at all, others only with difficulty; all regarded me as one come from another world. From Paris I went to Zurich. This was the final point of my six months’ journey from Blagovèstshensk, and here dwelt my old friends the Axelrods,[117] from whom I had parted seventeen and a half years before. After a journey round the world of not quite the usual type, I returned to them again on November 5th, 1901. Footnote 117: See chap. i. _et seq._—_Trans._ “Look! he hasn’t changed a bit,” cried Axelrod, as he pointed me out to his wife at the station. But it was only at the first moment of meeting that it seemed so to him. * * * * * For over a year now I have been living again in freedom, going about from one town to another. During that time I have learned to feel at home in more than one European country; but it may be readily believed that what is passing in my native land interests me beyond everything else. Eighteen years make but a brief span in the life of a nation; yet during that period a transformation has come over Russia that must meet the eyes of even a superficial observer. At the time of my arrest at Freiburg, in 1884, there were but a few groups of revolutionists, and they were recruited chiefly from the young student classes, who rebelled against existing social and political conditions. And, as I have explained, owing to the methods of wholesale executions and arrests adopted by the Government, these organisations dwindled and almost entirely disappeared; so that from the end of the eighties thorough-going reaction was triumphant for a time. Of late years, however, it has been quite otherwise. The publications issued by our secret press and distributed throughout the length and breadth of the Russian Empire, calling on the people to rise against the existing despotism, number above one hundred thousand, and they meet with energetic response among the population of large towns and factory districts. Workmen collect in great crowds in the streets along with the students, and by means of monster demonstrations they voice their demand for political freedom and the abolition of autocratic government. The Tsar and his ministers endeavour by the most cruel and severe measures to quench the torch that has been kindled in the land: the greater part of Russia has been placed under martial law; the prisons can hardly contain the numbers of their captives; those who protest against such a régime are sent to Siberia by the trainload. But nothing can stem the