In the winter of 1881 there took place in Cracow one of those great socialistic trials with which in those days it was hoped in Austria to smother the socialistic movements which were imported by unscrupulous agitators. The trial is known in the annals of social-democracy as the proceedings against Warnynski and his accomplices. Thirty-five men were indicted, among them twenty Russians from Volhynia, mostly students of the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg, who had been arrested in the work of agitation in Galicia. The prisoners noticed during the proceedings that they were conducted one at a time, under one pretext or another, out through a special door of the courtroom, and they could discover no explanation of this queer course of action. Finally, one of them, in passing through the door, found the reason. It was a double door provided with a deep niche. In this niche was a Russian functionary acting as a voluntary menial to the Austrian police, and at the same time as a spy in the Russian service, who took this opportunity of taking cognizance of his own people among those who were led by. Of course the matter was not closed without the gravest insults to those caught, who could only be protected against further abuse by the court constabulary. And this police devotee, who showed such zeal in putting down international revolution, was no one else than the present all-powerful figure in Russia, his excellency the minister of the interior, M. von Plehve, at that time states-attorney in Warsaw. With this bit of sleuthing, which the Poles very well remember to this day, this fortune-favored statesman made his début in the world outside of Russia. He has remained true to his character. He is to-day, at the head of the greatest state in the world, nothing else but the greatest police spy in the world. His politics are stamped with all the characteristics of a police origin, police in the Machiavellian sense--_i. e._, crime in the service of order. In all Russia I spoke to no one who would have chosen for the description of Plehve's character any other expressions than those which serve for the delineation of the lowest level of moral existence. I shall here try to make a sketch of Plehve in accordance with the statements about him which were made to me with perfectly astonishing unanimity.