"Burn that thing," commanded the emperor, "and don't talk about it."
Subsequently Oscar had a long interview with the head of his secret police, with whom he had lately had every reason to be satisfied: secret printing-presses of anarchist papers, which were continually being distributed, had been ferreted out; a plot to wreck the imperial train on its way from Castel Xaveria, the summer-palace in Xara, to Lipara had been frustrated; suspicion of being connected with anarchist committees had fallen upon a clerk in one of the government-offices and even upon a young officer and it was proved that the suspicion was correct in both cases. Quite recently the police had discovered a workshop in which men were taught how to manufacture dynamite-bombs and infernal machines. But who the insolent miscreants were who succeeded in flinging their threatening letters into the emperor's own room: this they had not been able to discover. For a whole week the windows had been watched from the park and all that time nothing had been seen; it was now a couple of days since that secret watch had been given up. The head of the secret police felt convinced that the culprits were lurking in the Imperial itself and acquainted with the emperor's private habits. Sudden visits were paid to the rooms of any servants at the Imperial of whom there was the least doubt; and, when a groom was found to be in possession of an anarchist leaflet containing words of insult directed against the emperor, the man was banished to one of the convict sections of the eastern quick-silver-mines. This banishment was the introduction to numberless other banishments; they followed one another in quick succession; the victims were soldiers, sailors, many minor provincial officials: the press had even ceased to report all the banishments. The censorship was rendered more severe; newspapers were continually being suspended, their editors fined and imprisoned; the imperialist papers, Count Myxila's organs, almost despotically indicated the required tone. A socialist meeting was dispersed by hussars with drawn swords; serious disturbances followed in the capital and infected the other large towns, Thracyna, Xara, even Altara. A strike of dock-labourers filled Lipara for weeks with rising insubordination; policemen were cruelly murdered at the docks in broad daylight.