§9
Sokolovski, the author of Creation and other meritorious poems, had a strong natural gift for poetry; but this gift was neither improved by cultivation nor original enough to dispense with it. He was not a politician at all, he lived the life of a poet. He was very amusing and amiable, a cheerful companion in cheerful hours, a bon-vivant, who enjoyed a gay party as well as the rest of us, and perhaps a little better. He was now over thirty.
When suddenly torn from this life and thrown into prison, he bore himself nobly: imprisonment strengthened his character.
He was arrested in Petersburg and then conveyed to Moscow, without being told where he was going. Useless tricks of this kind are constantly played by the Russian police; in fact, it is the poetry of their lives; there is no calling in the world, however prosaic and repulsive, that does not possess its own artistic refinements and mere superfluous adornments. Sokolovski was taken straight to prison and lodged in a kind of dark store-room. Why should he be confined in prison and we in barracks?
He took nothing there with him but a couple of shirts. In England, every convict is forced to take a bath as soon as he enters prison; in Russia, precautionary measures are taken against cleanliness.
Sokolovski would have been in a horrible state had not Dr. Haas sent him a parcel of his own linen.