Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting with homesickness and anguish at the thought of his mother, he heard a rapid succession of fine, dry sounds on the right wall. He started, and, breathless and flushed with excitement, he listened. “Who are you?” the mould-grown wall demanded.
Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and seeing no eye in it, he took a turn or two up and down the room and stopped hard by the wall, upon which he rapped out his reply:
“Boulatoff. Who are you?”
“The Emperor of all Africa,” came the answer.
“What?” Pavel asked in perplexity. “You have not finished your sentence, what were you saying?”
“Begone!” the wall returned. “How dare you doubt my title? I am the Emperor of all Africa. How dare you speak to me? Away with you!”
Pavel’s heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
“Dear friend, dear comrade!” he implored. “Can’t you try and remember your name?”
“Begone, or I’ll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!” This was followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears in his eyes.
In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of his connection with the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now. Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled Makar’s vision of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.