278 CENTRAL SIBERIA. 



and was buried by the monks of the Alexis monastery 

 in the town, leaving behind him a memory which at the 

 present day is held in reverent awe by the people. But 

 there was something more than the extreme piety and 

 asceticism of his life to excite the worship which is now 

 accorded him ; and herein lies the mystery, for there is 

 no doubt whatsoever that, whoever the wanderer who 

 reached Tomsk in 1849 to make it his final home may 

 in reality have been, the vast majority of its inhabitants 

 are firmly convinced that in the person of the lonely 

 monk there was living among them no less a personage 

 than the abdicated monarch, Alexander I. 



The story is one of absorbing interest, and is worthy 

 of a foremost place among those strange romances with 

 which the annals of Russian history are fraught. 



As far as recorded history goes, we are led to believe 

 that Alexander I. died in November, in the year 1825, 

 at the town of Taganrog, whither he had repaired for 

 the benefit of his health. But, as is not unusually the 

 case in the history of Russia, there is much that requires 

 explanation and elucidation in connection with what is 

 described by the historian Bambaud as " the premature 

 and mysterious death of Alexander." The circumstances 

 attendant on his departure from his capital are suffi- 

 ciently strange. " At the moment of his departure 

 he appears to have been shaken by gloomy presenti- 

 ments, and insisted on a requiem mass being said at the 

 monastery of Saint Alexander Nevski. In broad day- 

 light, lighted tapers were left in his room. ... At 

 Taganrog Alexander received circumstantial accounts 

 as to the conspiracy of the Society of the South and its 

 schemes of regicide. Cruel recollections of 1801 may 

 have mingled with his melancholy. He thought sadly 

 of the terrible embarrassments which he would bequeath 

 to his successor ; of his lost illusions ; of his liberal 



