BUT meanwhile what about the charge against us? and what about the Commission of Enquiry?
The new Commission made just as great a mess of it as its predecessor. The police had been on our track for a long time, but their zeal and impatience prevented them from waiting for a decent pretext, and they did a silly thing. They employed a retired officer called Skaryatka to draw us on till we were committed; and he made acquaintance with nearly all of our set. But we very soon made out what he was and kept him at a distance. Some other young men, chiefly students, were less cautious, but these others had no relations of any importance with us.
One of the latter, on taking his degree, entertained his friends on June 24, 1834. Not one of us was present at the entertainment; not one of us was even invited. The students drank toasts, and danced and played the fool; and one thing they did was to sing in chorus Sokolovski’s well-known song abusing the Tsar.
Skaryatka was present and suddenly remembered that the day was his birthday. He told a story of selling a horse at a profit and invited the whole party to supper at his rooms, promising a dozen of champagne. They all accepted. The champagne duly appeared, and their host, who had begun to stagger, proposed that Sokolovski’s song should be sung over again. In the middle of the song the door opened, and Tsinski appeared with his myrmidons. It was a stupid and clumsy proceeding, and a failure as well.
The police wanted to catch us and were looking out for some tangible pretext, in order to trap the five or six victims whom they had marked down; what they actually did was to arrest a score of innocent persons.
§2
But the police are not easily abashed, and they arrested us a fortnight later, as concerned in the affair of the students’ party. They found a number of letters—letters of Satin’s at Sokolovski’s rooms, of Ogaryóv’s at Satin’s, and of mine at Ogaryóv’s; but nothing of importance was discovered. The first Commission of Enquiry was a failure; and in order that the second might succeed better, the Tsar sent from Petersburg the Grand Inquisitor, Prince A. F. Golitsyn.
The breed to which he belonged is rare with us; it included Mordvínov, the notorious chief of the Third Section, Pelikan, the Rector of Vilna University, with a few officials from the Baltic provinces and renegade Poles.
§3
But it was unfortunate for the Inquisition that Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, was the first member appointed to it. Staal was a brave old soldier and an honest man; he looked into the matter, and found that two quite distinct incidents were involved: the first was the students’ party, which the police were bound to punish; the second was the mysterious arrest of some men, whose whole visible fault was limited to some half-expressed opinions, and whom it would be difficult and absurd to try on that charge alone.