§11
Sokolovski had hardly got to an end of his narrative before others began to tell their story, several speaking at the same time. It was as if we had returned from a long journey—there was a running fire of questions and friendly chaff.
Satin had suffered more in body that the rest of us: he looked thin and had lost some of his hair. He was on his mother’s estate in the Government of Tambóv when he heard of our arrest, and started at once for Moscow, that his mother might not be terrified by a visit from the police. But he caught cold on the journey and was seriously ill when he reached Moscow. The police found him there in his bed. It being impossible to remove him, he was put under arrest in his own house: a sentry was posted inside his bedroom, and a male sister of mercy, in the shape of a policeman, sat by his pillow; hence, when he recovered from delirium, his eyes rested on the scrutinising looks of one attendant or the sodden face of the other.
When winter began he was transferred to a hospital. It turned out that there was no unoccupied room suitable for a prisoner; but that was a trifle which caused no difficulty. A secluded corner without a stove was discovered in the building, and here he was placed with a sentry to guard him. Nothing like a balcony on the Riviera for an invalid! What the temperature in that stone box was like in winter, may be guessed: the sentry suffered so much that he used at night to go into the passage and warm himself at the stove, begging his prisoner not to tell the officer of the day.
But even the authorities of the hospital could not continue this open-air treatment in such close proximity to the North Pole, and they moved Satin to a room next to that in which people who were brought in frozen were rubbed till they regained consciousness.