Europe has been distressed or amused this week by stories
intended to imply that the Czar has either gone mad, or has fallen into a state of nervous fury which renders him irrespon- sible. It has been stated publicly that he strangled a gardener at Gatschina, that he killed a Court physician, that he made away with Colonel Villaume, the Military Attaché to the German Embassy, and that he shot Major Reutern, an Aide-de- Camp attached to his own person. As regards the first two stories, there is absolutely no evidence whatever; and the third has been denied on the authority of Colonel Villaume himself, who is not dead, but living. The fourth story, which has been repeated for weeks with minute details, was on Wednesday declared by the Paris correspondent of the Times to be " cer- tainly" true; but on Thursday he quoted a letter, which he presumably believes, absolutely denying it. The Pall Malt Gazette, however, which is always absolutely Russian, and calls all the stories "lies," says this particular denial is incorrect, for it refers to the death not of Major Reutern, but of his brother. The reasonable conclusion from all these tales is that the Czar, a moody recluse, occasionally indulges in the bursts of fury which have marked so many members of his House, that the specific stories are the sort of stories which at such a time circulate in a capital without a free Press, and that nobody has died, unless, as may easily have happened, from fright and agitation. In the East, the rapid and continuous diffusion of such stories would portend a Palace revolution ; but Russia is not in " the East."
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