The bourgeois press of Paris announces with great pomp that 
the police have uncovered a very vile plot. A number of “Russian 
Nihilists” have conspired to dispatch to eternity the gentle Tsar 
and Autocrat of All the Russias*; but the police have been on their 
guard, the “transgressors and aggressors” have been caught, the 
magnanimous Father of the Russian Fatherland has been saved. 

Seen in the light of day it turns out that the “Russian Nihilists” 
deserve this name insofar as they have nihil—nothing—to do with 
Russians. They are simply Poles who only have the misfortune to 
have been born under the sceptre of the Little Father in 
Petersburg, people who lived very quietly and retiringly in Paris, 
and were not simple-minded enough to hatch murder plots— 
sensible people today leave such business to the police. The simple 
necessity of presenting to the public the Polish names of these 
“Russian Nihilists” was sufficient to make untenable the whole 
rigmarole of murder and plotting even for the police. They had to 
instruct their Havas-Reuter*” that the persons would simply be 
expelled from France. 

Why such a hubbub everywhere? Very simple. 

The rulers of the opportunist-radical bourgeois republic—the 
ministers, senators, deputies—are, all of them, mixed up in the 
Panama scandal,** some as bribe-takers, others as accomplices and 
hushers-up. In their view, the public has occupied itself long 
enough with this side of their grimy existences. They think: the 
world has now said enough about us discrediting the Republic 
with our swindling. Let us now demonstrate that we are also 

@ Alexander I[].— Ed. 

On the Latest Caper of the Paris Police 355 

capable of discrediting this Republic politically. Let us demonstrate 
that in grovelling to the Tsar we can beat the blessed Bismarck by 
six boot-licking lengths. The Russian Embassy wishes to inspect the 
papers of the Polish émigrés, so let us prove our burning desire to 
lay before it everything it wants: not only the papers, but the Poles 
themselves at the same time, and the whole of France if need be. 

We cannot complain if the bourgeois Republic ruins itself in this 
way. Its heirs stand at the door: not the monarchists, busily 
plotting again but not dangerous for all that, but the socialists who 
will be the heirs. But what is beyond the pale, even for us, is the 
stupidity of these people, the powers-that-be in France at this time. 
They beg for the grace and favour of official Russia, they lick its 
boots, they demean themselves before this Russian robber band, 
they appoint the Tsar real ruler of France and director of French 
policy—and this Tsar is in a position of impotence which makes it 
absolutely impossible for him to render any sort of real service to 
France. The present winter proves that a permanent state of 
starvation for years to come has been declared in Russia*; the 
resources of the country have been exhausted for a long time to 
come, the financial situation is absolutely desperate. It is not 
France which needs Russia, on the contrary, it is Russia which 
would be completely paralysed without the moral support of 
France. If these French bourgeois had a bit of sense, they could 
force their Russian ally to anything which involved no money and 
no war. Instead they lie prostrate before it in the dust, allowing 
themselves to be exploited for Russian state ends as not even 
Prussia was in its deepest abasement. And they imagine that they 
are being cunning and have no idea, the stupid devils, how they 
are being laughed at in Petersburg. 

Paris vaut bien une messe— Paris is worth a mass, as Henri IV said 
when he obtained the surrender of Paris by converting to 
Catholicism. La France vaut bien une Marseillaise— France is worth a 
Marseillaise—said Alexander III when, at the moment of his 
greatest political helplessness and perplexity, Admiral Gervais 
handed him France on a plate.**