Now let me call attention to two other very interesting facts in connection with this story of 1917. The first is that Nilus omits the very important statement made in the edition of 1905 that the alleged protocols were "signed by representatives of Zion of the Thirty-third Degree," without offering the slightest explanation of that most important omission. The second fact is even more conclusive as evidence of the man's absolute untrustworthiness. Having told us in the edition of 1905 that the friend who gave him the protocols assured him that they had been "stolen by a woman," and in 1917 that it was Nicholaievich Sukhotin from whom he received the documents, who not only told him that they had been stolen by a woman, but told him also the name of the thief (which he has forgotten, unfortunately), he proceeds, in the Epilogue of the 1917 edition, to tell a very different story. He says in this Epilogue that the protocols "were stealthily removed from a large book of notes on lectures. _My friend_ found them in the safe of the headquarters offices of the Society of Zion, which is situated at present in Paris." Was ever perjurer more confused? First we have an unknown woman stealing the documents from "one of the most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry"; next, we have a "noblewoman of Tshernigov" as the thief and Sukhotin as the intermediary through whose hands they reached his friend Nilus. Now, finally, Nilus says that his friend--_i.e._, _Sukhotin_--was the thief, and not a woman at all! Instead of being stolen from the person of "one of the most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry," they are "found" in a safe in Paris! The woman has disappeared; the highly initiated Freemason has disappeared. Now it is Sukhotin who is identified as the thief, and he is pointed out as having robbed a safe in Paris. So much for the perjury of Nilus. I may add that I am assured--though I cannot vouch for the statement--that Sukhotin was not outside of Russia between 1890 and 1905.