LADY NIHILISTS IN RUSSIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6099, 4 June 1881, Page 7

LADY NIHILISTS IN RUSSIA.

Sophy Perovsky, who acknowledges to a direct responsibility in the assassination of the late Czar, is a young lady, not only, of exceedingly good education, but also of very good family. She is a,descendant of the famous Marshal .Perovsky, and 1 has a near relative now aide-de-camp to the Grand Duke Alexis. She is 'good-looking and ladylike in appearance. When stopped in the street by the police officer who arrested her, she did not for one moment lose her presence of mind. She assured the officer with much dignity that he was grievously mistaken as to her identity, and at the same time begged him not to involve a lady, in any disgraceful scandal in the street, but to escort her promptly and quietly to the nearest police-station. Iu St. Petersburg the story goes that, en route to the policeoffice, she opened • negotiations with her captor, who demanded' fifty roubles for her release. The young, lady had uufortunately but thirty in' her" pocket, .and the myrmidon' of the law would., not 'trust her for the. balance. The; disciples ,of Nihilism professedly despise both the marriage-tie 'and all those delicate' sentiments which customarily characterise the relations between the sexes. Sophy Perovsky, though delicately nurtured and brouglit up in': refinedsociety, was living da wife when' she gave the signal for the' attempt to blow up the" Imperial train at* Moscow. 'Shd returned but recently .from Abroad, to take an active part in the late plot;.and,-on arrival,! immediately joined Jehabbff,. the chief 'conspirator, and lived irith' luhvas his wife till the: moment of his arrest. : Many. young ladies of position appear i to have been' beguiled into more or less, co&plicity with 1 the Nihilist party.,. It is said'Ahat an intiinate friend of the Duchess of Edinburgh, a young lady who only the other dp,y' was.orie of the party who officially received the duchess on" her arrival in ; St. Petersburg, has . since, under the pangs of -remorsg, : . confessed'to a very close acquaintance' with: Nihilist leaders and their doings. 7, ; I heroil-aa a fact jthat another young lady of rank, on attending confessional subsequent tp~Kie catastrophe of March 13, discovered ; her confessor that beyond the . peccadilloes .concerning which she easily unburdened: her mind,' there was one really dead secret in' her bosom. The. holy: father plied! her so'skilfully with interrogations,'• ind worked so successfully on her feelings, "that stie became hysterical'; but divulge she, would not.- Disturbed at the excitement of mind he had produced, : the father informed the young lady's parents of what:had passed, and begged them to look'after her. | The unfortunate girl blew out her brains with a pistol the next day.—The.World. •••«•. I