the proceedings taken against one of the principal upholders of this sect, we find the following curious conversation between him and the judge.

"Your religion?"

"I have none."

"In what God do you believe?"

"In none. Your God is your own, like the Devil, for you have created both. They belong to you, like the Tsar, the priests, and the officials."

These people believe neither in generosity nor in gratitude. Men give away only what is superfluous, and the superfluous is not theirs. Labour should be free; consequently they kept no servants. They rejected both trade and money as useless and unjust. "Give to thy neighbour what thou canst of that of which he has need, and he in turn will give thee what thou needest." Love should be entirely free. Marriage is an absurdity and a sin, invented by man. All human beings are free, and a woman cannot belong to any one man, or a man to any one woman.

Here are some extracts taken from some other legal records. Two of the believers were brought before the judge, accompanied by a child.

"Is this your wife?" the judge inquired of the man.

"No, she is not my wife."

"How is it then that you live together?"

"We live together, but she is not mine. She belongs to herself."

Turning to the woman, the judge asked:

"Is this your husband?"

"He is not mine. He does not belong to me, but to himself."

"And the child? Is he yours?"

"No, he is not ours. He lives with us; he is of our blood; but he belongs to himself."

"But the coat you are wearing—is that yours?" demanded the exasperated judge.

"It is on my back, but it is not mine. It belonged once to a sheep; now it covers me; but who can say whose it will be to-morrow?"

The Negativists invented, long before Tolstoi, the doctrine of inaction and non-resistance to evil. They were deceived, robbed and ruined, but would not apply to the law, or to the police. Their method of reasoning and their way of speaking had a peculiar charm. A solicitor who visited one of the Siberian prisons reports the following details concerning a man named Rojnoff. Arrested and condemned to be deported for vagabondage, he escaped repeatedly, but was at length imprisoned. The inspector was calling the roll of the prisoners, but Rojnoff refused to answer to his name. Purple with rage, the inspector approached him and asked, "What is your name?"

"It is you who have a name. I have none."

After a series of questions and answers exchanged between the ever more furious official and the prisoner, who remained perfectly calm, Rojnoff was flogged—but in spite of raw and bleeding wounds he still continued to philosophise.

"Confess the truth," stormed the inspector.

"Seek it," replied the peasant, "for yourself, for indeed you have need of it. As to me, I keep my truth for myself. Let me be quiet—that is all I ask."

The solicitor visited him several months later, and implored him to give his name, so that he might obtain his passport and permission to rejoin his wife and children.

"But I have no need of all that," he said. "Passports, laws, names—all those are yours. Children, family, property, class, marriage—so many of your cursed inventions. You can give me only one single thing—quietness."

The Siberian prisons swarmed with these mysterious beings. Poor souls! Their one desire was to quit as soon as possible this vale of injustice and of tears!

CHAPTER II

THE WHITE-ROBED BELIEVERS

Sometimes this longing for a better world, where suffering would be caused neither by hunger nor by laws, took touching and poetic forms.

About the month of April, 1895, all eyes in the town of Simbirsk were turned upon a sect founded by a peasant named Pistzoff. These poor countryfolk protested against the injustices of the world by robing themselves in white, "like celestial angels."

"We do not live as we should," taught Pistzoff, an aged, white-haired man. "We do not live as our fathers lived. We should act with simplicity, and follow the truth, conquering our bodily passions. The life that we lead now cannot continue long. This world will perish, and from its ruins will arise another, a better world, wherein all will be robed in white, as we are."

The believers lived very frugally. They were strict vegetarians, and ate neither meat nor fish. They did not smoke or drink alcohol, and abstained from tea, milk and eggs. They took only two meals daily—at ten in the morning, and six in the evening. Everything that they wore or used they made with their own hands—boots, hats, underclothing, even stoves and cooking utensils.

The story of Pistzoff's conversion inevitably recalls that of Tolstoi. He was a very rich merchant when, feeling himself inspired by heavenly truth, he called his employés to him and gave them all that he had, including furniture and works of art, retaining nothing but white garments for himself and his family. His wife protested vehemently, especially when Pistzoff forbade her to touch meat, on account of the suffering endured by animals when their lives are taken from them. The old lady did not share his tastes, and firmly upheld a contrary opinion, declaring that animals went gladly to their death! Pistzoff then fetched a fowl, ordered his wife to hold it, and procured a hatchet with which to kill it. While threatening the poor creature he made his wife observe its anguish and terror, and the fowl was saved at the same time as the soul of Madame Pistzoff, who admitted that fowls, at any rate, do not go gladly into the cooking-pot.

The number of Pistzoff's followers increased daily, and the sect of the "White-robed Believers" was formed. Their main tenet being loving-kindness, they lived peacefully and harmed none, while awaiting the supreme moment when "the whole world should become white."

For the rest, the white-robed ones and their prophet followed the doctrines of the molokanes, who drank excessive quantities of milk during Lent—hence their name. This was one of the most flourishing of all the Russian sects. Violently opposed to all ceremonies, they recognised neither religious marriages, churches, priests nor dogmas, claiming that the whole of religion was contained in the Old and New Testaments. Though well-educated, they submitted meekly to a communal authority, chosen from among themselves, and led peaceful and honest working lives. All luxuries, even down to feminine ornaments or dainty toilettes, were banned. They considered war a heathen invention—merely "assassination on a large scale"—and though, when forced into military service, they did their duty as soldiers in peace-time, the moment war was in view it was their custom to throw away their arms and quietly desert. There were no beggars and no poor among them, for all helped one another, the richer setting aside one-tenth of their income for the less fortunate.

Hunted and persecuted by the government, they multiplied nevertheless, and when banished to far-away districts they ended by transforming the waste, uncultivated lands into flourishing gardens.

CHAPTER III

THE STRANGLERS

A sect no less extraordinary than the last was that of the Stranglers (douchiteli). It originated towards the end of 1874, and profited by a series of law cases, nearly all of which ended in acquittal. The Stranglers flourished