Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1887-04-02 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO ASSASSI NATE THE CZAR.  MURDER OF A MILLIONARE IN ST. PETERSBURG.  _ _  In spite of all the precautions taken by the Russian police and military authorities to protect the life of the Czar since the recent attack on His Majesty's hfe, the emissaries of the terrible arid pewrirfril Secret Society ii Russia have made yet another attempt to 4rry out their desperate purpose. A Aeater's telegram from Berlin states that another attempt has been made on the life of the Czar at Gatschina. His Majesty was not injured. On Wednesday • wholesale merchant and millionaire at St. Petersburg was killed by four snots from s revolver which a young man fired, after having asked him for 60,000 ronbles for Nihilist purposes. The murderer tried to escape, but was arrested. Much excitement prevails in St. Petersburg on account of the receipt by many capitalists of threatening letters calling upon them to give money for the common cause. A l'aris correspondent says :—" Why on earth noes the Czar, by sticking to the throne, remain a butt for dpiamiters ? Ile conld—b's personal fortune being euornious—retire from the regal business with overflowing coffers. Living in a palace is not, in our time, the exceptional thing that it was a quarter of a century back. Most palaces are cut out by the grand modern hotels if Paris, Switzerland, the Riviera. arid Northumberland-avenue in London. A monarch who does his duty to the State is very nearly in the position of a person residing in one of these caravanserais in a grand private unite of rooms and always surrounded by waiters—only in his case the waiters are called Chamberlains and Gentlemen Ushers, and are a little more obsequious than ordinary hotel attendants hungering for tips. The Czar was here incognito last winter. He had with him an aide-de-camp, a secretary, a valet, and a dog. As he gave stringent orders that his incognito was to be respected by his suite, the gentlemen fell back upon the mastiff as an objective for the reverence which they were in the habit of lavishing on the master. Russian courtiers used to be, in the presence of their Sovereign, much more free and easy and caressingly familiar than Britons of a corresponding rank. But the present autocrat, suspecting everyone of being either a Nihilist or a Constitutionalist (which in his mind is the worse of the two) makes his gentlemen keep their distance. The aides-de-camp of the late Czar astonished the French generals, when that ill-starred Sovereign was lodged at the Elysi,e, by kissing his arm from the wrist up to the shoulder when. ever he said anything to them which was kind or gra •ious. Alexander 111. does not suffer such eloie contact, and, as old habits cannot be rooted cut in • day, the courtiers paid to the dog the homage they used to render to its master. The Czar, when here incognito, lodged in the Rue de la Beetle in • fiat lent him by a Russian. An English friend, who resides in the same house, watched closely the movements of his Imperial fellow-lodger and those of his suite. He tells me that Alexander was just like • freshlyemancipated schoolboy, so overjoyed was he at being freed from the dread of dynamite, and that he expressed his state of feelings in gleeful manifestations and boyish practical jokes. The dog shared his joy, and the two courtiers followed, not the Czar's, but the dog's lead. Does it not strike you as incomprehensible that Alexander 111, who has certainly no genius for government, and prefers chopping wood and playing the piano to State affairs, should, when be can be so happy in private life, cling to his exposed and dreary position? As an Entpereur cu exit, were the exile voluntary, he could be as happy as the day is long, if, of course, he retired with a fall pocket—which there is nothing to prevent him from doing.