usual, all things refracted into Trinities. Using the pun ("Ham" in Russian, along with a Biblical character's name, meaning 'lout', 'boor') the author described the three "faces of Ham'stvo" (son of Noah's new incarnation as kind of nasty, God-jeering scoundrel Russian): the past (Russian Orthodox Church's hypocrisy), the present (the state bureaucracy and monarchy) and the future – massive "boorish upstart rising up from society's bottom." Several years on the book was regarded as prophetic by many. In spring 1906, Merezhkovsky and Filosofov went into a self-imposed European exile in order to promote what they termed "the new religious consciousness." In France they founded Anarchy and Theocracy magazine and released a compilation of essays called Le Tsar et la Revolution. In one of the articles he contributed to it, Revolution and Religion, Merezhkovsky wrote: "Now it's almost impossible to foresee what a deadly force this revolutionary tornado starting upwards from the society's bottom will turn out to be. The church will be crashed down and the monarchy too, but with them — what if Russia itself is to perish — if not the timeless soul of it, then its body, the state?" Again, what at the time was looked upon as dull political grotesque a decade later turned into grim reality. In 1908 the play about "the routinous side of the revolution," Poppy Blossom (Makov Tzvet) came out, all three Troyebratstvo members credited as co-authors. It was followed by "The Last Saint" (Posledny Svyatoy), a study on Seraphim Sarovsky, this time Merezhkovsky's own work. More significant were two of his socio-political/philosophical essays, "Not Peace But Sword" and "In Sill Waters". In them, working upon his concept of "the evolutionary mysticism," Merezhkovsky argued that revolution in both Russia and the rest of the world (he saw the two as closely linked: the first "steaming forward," the latter "rattling behind") was inevitable, but could succeed only if preceded by "the revolution of the human spirit," involving the Russian intelligentsia's embracing his idea of the Third Testament. Otherwise, Merezhkovsky prophesied, political revolution will bring nothing but tyranny and the "Kingdom of Ham." Among people whom Merezhkovskys talked with in Paris were Anatole France, Rudolf Steiner, Bergson, leaders of the French Socialists. Disappointed by the general polite indifference to their ideas, husband and wife returned home in the late 1908, but not before Merezhkovsky's historical drama Pavel the First (Pavel Pervy) was published. Confiscated