§6
There were other questions of a more complicated kind, in which various traps and tricks, familiar to the police and boards of enquiry, were made use of, in order to confuse me and involve me in contradictions. Hints that others had confessed, and moral torture of various kinds, came into play here. They are not worth repeating; it is enough to say that the tricks all failed to make me or my three friends betray one another.
When the last question had been handed out to me, I was sitting alone in the small room where we wrote our replies. Suddenly the door opened, and Golitsyn junior came in, wearing a pained and anxious expression.
“I have come,” he said, “to have a talk with you before the end of your replies to our questions. The long friendship between my late father and yours makes me feel a special interest in you. You are young and may have a distinguished career yet; but you must first clear yourself of this business, and that fortunately depends on yourself alone. Your father has taken your arrest very much to heart; his one hope now is that you will be released. The President and I were discussing it just now, and we are sincerely ready to make large concessions; but you must make it possible for us to help you.”
I saw what he was driving at. The blood rushed to my head, and I bit my pen with rage.
He went on: “You are on the road that leads straight to service in the ranks or imprisonment, and on the way you will kill your father: he will not survive the day when he sees you in the grey overcoat of a private soldier.”
I tried to speak, but he stopped me. “I know what you want to say. Have patience a moment. That you had designs against the Government is perfectly clear; and we must have proofs of your repentance, if you are to be an object of the Tsar’s clemency. You deny everything; you give evasive answers; from a false feeling of honour you protect people of whom we know more than you do, and who are by no means as scrupulous as you are; you won’t help them, but they will drag you over the precipice in their fall. Now write a letter to the Board; say simply and frankly that you are conscious of your guilt, and that you were led away by the thoughtlessness of youth; and name the persons whose unhappy errors led you astray. Are you willing to pay this small price, in order to redeem your whole future and to save your father’s life?”
“I know nothing, and will add nothing to my previous disclosures,” I replied.
Golitsyn got up and said in a dry voice: “Very well! As you refuse, we are not to blame.” That was the end of my examination.