When he had done, he began hastily to wrap up the Gospel and the Cross; and the President, barely rising in his seat, told him he might go. Then he turned to me and translated the priest’s address into the language of this world. “One thing I shall add to what the priest has said—it is impossible for you to conceal the truth even if you wish to.” He pointed to piles of papers, letters, and portraits, scattered on purpose over the table: “Frank confession alone can improve your position; it depends on yourself, whether you go free or are sent to the Caucasus.”
Questions were then submitted in writing, some of them amusingly simple—“Do you know of the existence of any secret society? Do you belong to any society, learned or otherwise? Who are its members? Where do they meet?”
To all this it was perfectly simple to answer “No” and nothing else.
“I see you know nothing,” said the President, reading over the answers; “I warned you beforehand that you will complicate your situation.”
And that was the end of the first examination.
§5
Eight years later a lady, who had once been beautiful, and her beautiful daughter, were living in a different part of this very house where the Commission sat; she was the sister of a later Chief Commissioner.
I used to visit there and always had to pass through the room where Tsinski and Company used to sit on us. There was a portrait of the Emperor Paul on the wall, and I used to stop in front of it every time I passed, either as a prisoner or as a visitor. Near it was a little drawing-room where all breathed of beauty and femininity; and it seemed somehow out of place beside frowning Justice and criminal trials. I felt uneasy there, and sorry that so fair a bud had found such an uncongenial spot to open in as the dismal brick walls of a police-office. Our talk, and that of a small number of friends who met there, sounded ironical and strange to the ear within those walls, so familiar with examinations, informations, and reports of domiciliary visits—within those walls which parted us from the mutter of policemen, the sighs of prisoners, the jingling spurs of officers, and the clanking swords of Cossacks.
§6
Within a week or a fortnight the pock-marked policeman came again and went with me again to Tsinski’s house. Inside the door some men in chains were sitting or lying, surrounded by soldiers with rifles; and in the front room there were others, of various ranks in society, not chained but strictly guarded. My policeman told me that these were incendiaries. As Tsinski himself had gone to the scene of the fires, we had to wait for his return. We arrived at nine in the evening; and at one in the morning no one had asked for me, and I was still sitting very peacefully in the front hall with the incendiaries. One or other of them was summoned from time to time; the police ran backward and forward, the chains clinked, and the soldiers, for want of occupation, rattled their rifles and went through the manual exercise. Tsinski arrived about one, black with smoke and grime, and hurried on to his study without stopping. Half an hour later my policeman was summoned; when he came back, he looked pale and upset and his face twitched convulsively. Tsinski followed him, put his head in at the door, and said: “Why, the members of the Commission were waiting for you, M. Herzen, the whole evening. This fool brought you here at the hour when you were summoned to Prince Golitsyn’s house instead. I am very sorry you have had to wait so long, but I am not to blame. What can one do, with such subordinates? I suppose he has been fifty years in the service, and is as great a blockhead as ever. Well,” he added, turning to the policeman and addressing him in a much less polite style, “be off now and go back.”