All the way home the man kept repeating: “Lord! what bad luck! A man never knows what’s going to happen to him. He will do for me now. He wouldn’t matter so much; but the Prince will be angry, and the Commissioner will catch it for your not being there. Oh, what a misfortune!”
I forgave him the hock, especially when he declared that, though he was once nearly drowned at Lisbon, he was less scared then than now. This adventure surprised me so much that I roared with laughter. “How utterly absurd! What on earth took you to Lisbon?” I asked. It turned out that he had served in the Fleet twenty-five years before. The statesman in Gógol’s novel, who declares that every servant of the State in Russia meets with his reward sooner or later,[[69]] certainly spoke the truth. For death spared my friend at Lisbon, in order that he might be scolded like a naughty boy by Tsinski, after forty years’ service.
[69]. Gógol, Dead Souls, Part I, chap. 10.
Besides, he was hardly at all to blame in the matter. The Tsar was dissatisfied with the original Commission of Enquiry, and had appointed another, with Prince Serghéi Golitsyn as chairman; the other members were Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, another Prince Golitsyn, Shubenski, a colonel of police, and Oranski, formerly paymaster-general. As my Lisbon friend had received no notice that the new Commission would sit at a different place, it was very natural that he should take me to Tsinski’s house.
§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.
§8
In order to know what Russian prisons and Russian police and justice really are, one must be a peasant, a servant or workman or shopkeeper. The political prisoners, who are mostly of noble birth, are strictly guarded and vindictively punished; but they suffer infinitely less than the unfortunate “men with beards.” With them the police stand on no ceremony. In what quarter can a peasant or workman seek redress? Where will he find justice?