The Times this morning publishes once more a new variant on the old story that the Czar had killed his aide-de-camp, and various other legends equally startling adorn the columns of the morning papers. A representative of the Pall Mall Gazette therefore called on Mdme. de Novikoff this morning, to ascertain whether anything was known in Russia concerning these bulletins from Paris and Vienna.

Mdme. Novikoff smiled on hearing the inquiry. Glancing at the telegram, she remarked, “I see, they have discovered at last that when they killed Count Reutern, in their first telegram, they performed a miracle, for they killed a man who does not exist.”

“But this time they are quite sure they have got hold of the right man. It was Major Reutern, not Count Reutern.”

“So I see, but if so then a still more marvellous miracle must have taken place, for M. Reutern, after being killed, has been raised to life again. My brother wrote me some time ago from St. Petersburg, long after the ‘killing’ was said to have taken place, that he had just met M. Reutern, who was in his usual health, and seemed none the worse for the violent death he was reported in the English papers to have suffered.”

“Then are the other stories equally false?—about the Czar’s timidity, his drunkenness, &c., &c.?”

“Really is it worth while asking questions about such absurdities? They are all lies, lies, lies. It is a perfect campaign of calumny. The Emperor is the most abstemious of mortals. His nerve is of iron. In his private life at home with his wife and his children no one could be more simple, more admirable.”

“Then no one has been asking him to resign?”

“Pardon me, but that story shows an even greater ignorance than the others. If you had the least conception of our autocracy you would not need to ask that question. Who is there to ask a Czar to resign and to make room for the Czarewitch?—a boy who only the other day was old enough to be allowed to smoke a cigarette! No, it is really too ridiculous.”

“Then who invents these stories?”

“Do not ask me; ask the people who publish them. I see the Standard has at last discovered that Prince Alexander, who has been meeting and intriguing with the Bulgarian delegates, is not quite the truthful hero it has taken him to be. Perhaps it may discover other truths in time. Nous verrons.”