the while contributing to Otechestvennye Zapiski. In December he left Russkaya Retch (for personal, rather than ideological reasons) and moved back to Saint Peterburg where in January 1862 he joined the staff of the Northern Bee (Severnaya ptchela), a liberal newspaper edited by Pavel Usov. There Leskov met journalist Arthur Benni, a Polish-born British citizen, with whom he forged a great friendship and later came to defend, as leftist radicals in Petersburg started to spread rumours about his being "an English spy" and having links with the 3rd Department. For Severnaya ptchela Leskov (now writing as M. Stebnitsky, a pseudonym he used in 1862–1869) became the head of the domestic affairs department, writing sketches and articles on every possible aspect of everyday life, and also critical pieces, targeting what was termed nihilism and "vulgar materialism". He had some support at the time, from several prominent journalists, among them Grigory Eliseev, who wrote in the April 1862, Sovremennik issue: "Those lead columns in Ptchela make one pity the potential that is being spent there, still unrealised elsewhere." At a time of intense public excitement, as D. S. Mirsky pointed out, Leskov was "absorbed by the public interest as much as anyone, but his eminently practical mind and training made it impossible for him to join unreservedly any of the very impractical and hot-headed parties of the day. Hence his isolation when, in the spring of 1862, an incident occurred that had a lasting effect on his career." On 30 May 1862, Severnaya ptchela published an article by Leskov on the issue of the fires that started on 24 May, lasting for six days and destroying a large part of the Apraksin and Schukin quarters of the Russian capital, which popular rumour imputed to a group of "revolutionary students and Poles" that stood behind the "Young Russia" proclamation. Without supporting the rumour, the author demanded that the authorities should come up with a definitive statement which would either confirm or confute those allegations. The radical press construed this as being aimed at inciting the common people against the students and instigating police repressions. On the other hand, the authorities were unhappy too, for the article implied that they were doing little to prevent the atrocities. The author's suggestion that "firemen sent to the sites would do anything rather than idly stand by" angered Alexander II himself, who reportedly said: "This shouldn't have