CHANGED CONDITIONS—A FRUSTRATED PLAN—THE MINISTER’S VISIT—A SECRET OF STATE—MY LITERARY NEIGHBOUR

When the officer of gendarmerie handed me over to the governor of the gaol, he pointed with his finger to a sentence in my charge-sheet, whereupon the governor looked at me sharply. It was clear his attention was being drawn to the warning of my former escapes, and the need for strict surveillance.

I saw from the first that prison rules were less strict here. My belongings, after examination, were brought into my cell. As soon as I could look them over, I sought for the hidden money and scissors, and behold, there they were! The careful scrutiny, both at the fortress and here, had been no more successful in detecting them than had previous examinations. The scissors I again concealed; but I wanted to change the German notes, so as to have at any rate part of my money available, and that was not a very simple matter. I began to observe the warders carefully; there were three of them on my corridor. The man who had searched my luggage seemed to me the most promising, and I determined to bribe him. When he came on duty I took the money out of its hiding-place, and called him into my cell.

“What do you want?” he asked, coming in and shutting the door behind him.

“Did you search my luggage properly when I arrived here?”

59“Yes, of course; is anything wrong?” he asked, quite alarmed.

“Oh, nothing much!” I said soothingly. “Only, I had better tell you that you don’t know how to search. Look here! you never found these!” and I held the bank-notes under his nose.

“Impossible!” he cried; “where were they hidden?”

“Well, that is my secret,” said I. “But listen! It is German money, and if changed would come to about fifty roubles.[28] Take it, and when you are off duty go to a money-changer—there are several on the Nevsky Prospekt—and get it changed for Russian money. Half shall be yours, and half mine. Is that agreed?”

“All right. I’ll see to it,” he said, and went off with the money.

“He bites,” I thought to myself; and at once began building castles in the air. I knew from experience that the great thing was to establish communication with the outer world, and this we revolutionists had often effected by bribing warders to take letters into and out of prison. In Ki?v and the south we called such warders “carrier-pigeons.” When I saw how easily this one fell in with my proposal, I immediately began to plan out further steps.

“After a few days,” I said to myself, “we will try him with a letter for the post; and next I shall send him to someone I know with a commission. When once things are in train, who knows? something may come of it.”

It was in the morning that I had given the warder my money, and I was in great excitement all day. Several times he looked through the peephole in my door, smiled and nodded at me, and of course I replied in similar fashion. Towards evening he came into my cell again, and laid my notes down on the table. “Take them back,” he said; “I am afraid of getting into trouble. See here; a little while ago one of the others had two watches given 60him, and they were found on him, and he was dismissed. You see, I’ve a good place here, and get twenty-five roubles[29] a month. I shouldn’t get so much again in a hurry. No, I’m afraid; take it back!”

Of course I did not press him, for I knew that without courage he would never make a “carrier-pigeon.” I saw no chance now of changing the notes secretly, so I told him to take them to the governor, that they might be added to the rest of my money.

“Tell him you found them in searching my luggage.”

“No, no, that won’t do. There would be no end of a fuss because I hadn’t given them up directly. I’d rather tell the truth, and say you had just given them to me.”

Thus did my visions end in smoke. The money was taken charge of, and no further inquiry made.

Soon after this my books were brought to me, and I could also use the prison library. After being for so long prevented from reading, this was a great boon; and as writing materials were also allowed me, I was altogether far better off here than in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Still, the little cell with its stone floor became a perfect oven in the heat of summer, most unpleasantly stuffy and dusty; and the food was inferior both in quantity and quality. But the walks were what was most disagreeable. Imagine a huge circle, divided into sections by partitions running from centre to circumference. In these cattle-pens we were allowed to disport ourselves singly, carefully watched all the while by warders stationed on a raised platform at the centre of the circle, commanding all the “cattle-pens”; so that the prisoners had no chance of communicating with each other. One could see nothing but the wooden partitions, the back of the prison buildings, and a narrow strip of sky; but every day we had to breathe the air here for three-quarters of an hour, which seemed an endless time for such “recreation.”

In comparison with the uncanny stillness of the fortress, 61things here seemed full of life and bustle. The windows of the corridor looked into the street, and its noises could be heard in the cells—the rumbling of carriages, the cries of street-hawkers, or the dulcet music of an organ-grinder. One felt so near freedom that the burden of prison life was the heavier.

One day I heard unusually lively sounds in the corridor—scrubbing, sweeping, and a general tidying-up. Some important visit seemed to be expected, and I soon learned that the Minister of Justice, Nabòkov, was coming to inspect the prison. Shortly after, he appeared in my cell, accompanied by a numerous suite; and when my name was pronounced, he greeted me and said—

“I have read your deposition, and was much pleased with its frankness. I hope you will speak out in the same way before the court.”

I replied that, as I have already said, it was my object to state the exact historical truth.

He went, but came back again, and put one or two unimportant questions to me, looking, however, as though there were something else he would have liked to say. He bent forward a little in speaking, and held his hand to his ear. His whole bearing was simple and unaffected.

Kotliarèvsky was among the suite. He remained behind a moment, and told me he wanted to speak to me when the minister had gone. Some time after I was taken to him in a room that served as the prison schoolroom.

“I am not here on business,” said he, “but I should like to have a chat with you about old times.”

So we sat down on a school-form and talked. Following a remark of mine, Kotliarèvsky touched on the question I had raised before as to the reason for my confinement in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

“Why, you see, there were very important interests of State to consider,” he said. “It was like this: if you were brought before an ordinary tribunal and only prosecuted on the Gorinòvitch count, you might be merely 62condemned to seven or eight years in Siberia; and that would not be agreeable in high quarters.” He accented the last words.

“But they cannot try me otherwise,” I cried. “Germany only extradited me on that stipulation.”

“Well, that remains to be seen,” said he. “We are at present on very good terms with Bismarck, and he would not mind at all giving us this little proof of his friendship. Or, if necessary, it could easily be made out that you had committed some offence after your extradition. Which reminds me—the Germans have sent us on all the notes that you made in Freiburg gaol.”

I was utterly astonished. I remembered that from sheer ennui I had now and then written down odds and ends of notes, plans, etc., while I was at Freiburg, but I could not conceive how those scraps could have ............