In the summer of 1879 I again came repeatedly in contact with her. While two years before she had impressed me as a very young propagandist, ready to accept without question the views of her comrades, she had now formed her own independent and keenly logical powers of judgment. As I have previously said, this was a time of hot discussion as to our future programme. Some held the opinion that the whole strength of our party should be concentrated on the terrorist struggle to overthrow the existing machinery of State by attempting the lives of the Tsar and the lesser representatives of despotism. Others contended that revolutionary propaganda ought still to be tried and carried further than hitherto; that revolutionists should work among the people, colonise the villages, and instruct the peasants in the manner of the organisation _Zemlyà i Vòlya_ (Land and Freedom). Vera Figner was one of the most strenuous supporters of the former view. I remember well, how once, when our whole circle had met together at Lesnoye, a summer resort near Petersburg, we were arguing hotly with her as to how propaganda among the peasantry might be made to yield the most fruitful results. She had just returned from a small village on the Volga, where she had been living as a peasant, for purposes of propaganda. The impressions she had received there had stirred her deeply, and she described in graphic language the fathomless misery and poverty, the hopeless ignorance of the provincial working classes. The conclusion she drew from it all was that under existing conditions there was no way of helping these people. “Show me any such way; show me how under present circumstances I can serve the peasants, and I am ready to go back to the villages at once,” she said. And her whole manner left no doubt of her absolute sincerity and readiness to keep her word. But her experience had been that of many others who had idealised “the people,” and also their own power of stirring them; and we were none of us prepared with any definite counsel that could deter her from the new path she had determined to tread—simply because she could see no other leading to the desired end. When I went to Odessa in the late autumn of the same year I found Vera Figner there. In conjunction with Kibàltchitch, Frolènko,[51] Kolotkèvitch, and Zlatopòlsky she was busy with preparations for an attempt on the life of Alexander II., who was about to return to Petersburg from Livadia. The dynamite was stored in her house; she had now put aside all doubt, and devoted herself with her whole soul to terrorist activity.[52] Footnote 51: See chap. xi. p. 98, note.—_Trans._ Footnote 52: Kibàltchitch was executed for participation in the attempt against Alexander II. in March, 1881. The others mentioned here were all condemned to penal servitude for life and imprisoned in Schlüsselburg, where Kolotkèvitch and Zlatopòlsky died. Frolènko is still alive (1902).