§7
When we got back, we found great excitement there too: three fires had broken out during the evening, and the Commissioners had sent twice to ask what had become of me and whether I had run away. If Tsinski had not abused my escort sufficiently, the police-magistrate fully made up for any deficiencies; and this was natural, because he himself was partly to blame for not asking where exactly I was to be sent.
In a corner of the office there was a man lying on two chairs and groaning, who attracted my attention. He was young, handsome, and well-dressed. The police-surgeon advised that he should be sent to the hospital early next morning, as he was spitting blood and in great suffering. I got the details of this affair from the corporal who took me to my room. The man was a retired officer of the Guards, who was carrying on a love affair with a maid-servant and was with her when a fire broke out in the house. The panic caused by incendiarism was then at its height; and, in fact, never a day passed without my hearing the tocsin ring repeatedly, while at night I could always see the glow of several fires from my window. As soon as the excitement began, the officer, wishing to save the girl’s reputation, climbed over a fence and hid himself in an outbuilding of the next house, intending to come out when the coast was clear. But a little girl had seen him in the court-yard, and told the first policeman who came on the scene that an incendiary was hiding in the shed. The police made for the place, accompanied by a mob, dragged the officer out in triumph, and dealt with him so vigorously that he died next morning.
The police now began to sift the men arrested for arson. Half of them were let go, but the rest were detained on suspicion. A magistrate came every morning and spent three or four hours in examining the charges. Some were flogged during this process; and then their yells and cries and entreaties, the shrieks of women, the harsh voice of the magistrate, and the drone of the clerk’s reading—all this came to my ears. It was horrible beyond endurance. I dreamed of these sounds at night, and woke up in horror at the thought of these poor wretches, lying on straw a few feet away, in chains, with flayed and bleeding backs, and, in all probability, quite innocent.