Nothing more gloomy and horrible can be imagined than imprisonment within one of these casemates, of which the Trubetskoi bastion boasts seventy-two, thirty-six on each tier. As they were originally designed for cannon they are considerably larger than an ordinary prison cell, but size is no mitigation of their horrors. Each casemate has a window, but it opens upon the baffling stone walls of the narrow outer court-yard, and is moreover set nine feet above the floor, in a deep arched recess, and guarded by heavy iron bars. The massive wooden door is equally disappointing, giving as it does on to the stone corridor that lies between the cells and inner court-yard; in the centre of each is a square aperture, which can be opened or closed at the will of the jailer, by a swinging panel, acting like a miniature portcullis, and which, when horizontal, serves as a shelf for the prisoner's food.
Directly above this panel is that horrible contrivance—more loathed and detested by the incarcerated wretch than any other of the diabolical arrangements—the "Judas" hagioscope or Squint, and which resembles a slit for letters more than anything else, with a nicely adjusted strip of wood that can be noiselessly raised or lowered from the outside, and through which the eyes of the guard can spy at any moment upon the occupant of the cell.
Only those who have tasted of this unending inevitable surveillance can appreciate its horrors. To be never free, never for one moment, whether in grief, or pain, or despair, from the espionage of unsympathetic eyes. To throw oneself upon one's knees before the image of Our Lady, with which each cell is supplied, to pour out all the woe and misery of one's breaking heart in the abandonment of desolation, and then, to hear the faint click of the revolving slide, and starting back, find the argus eyes of one's jailer peering through the detestable "Judas;" and to know the very words of supplication and invocation will be used against one to condemnation.
What wonder then that many who have entered Petropavlovsk bravely and with a good courage, believing their imprisonment to be but an affair of days, are never seen again, never emerge alive from its terrible dungeons; or lose mind and reason waiting for the day of deliverance that never comes?
No words can paint the growing horror and despair of a prisoner thus incarcerated. Day by day his terror expands and magnifies as hope dies in his heart, and the inexorable hand of Russia crushes out his very life.
Within the casemates there are, for furniture, an iron bedstead and table bolted into the wall, an iron oven of the commonest description, a stationary iron wash-hand basin and a statue of the Virgin, beneath which hangs a tin cup for catching the dripping moisture that exudes constantly from the stone walls.
On entering his cell for the first time, the poor victim is stripped of his clothes and given in exchange a loose blue linen dressing-gown, grey linen trousers and shirt, and a pair of soft noiseless list slippers. The guard, after making a minute personal examination, in search of some possible criminal matter, withdraws; the heavy door swings to with a dull echo, the bolts slip into the padlock, and the prisoner is left alone, in the midst of a stillness and silence like that of death.
Gloomy, forbidding, sombre, the walls and vaulted ceiling rise about and above him, the air is heavy and lifeless, the silence is profound; not even an echoing footstep in the corridor makes a welcome noise, for the guards creep about in felt slippers as noiseless and as muffled as his own. And thus the purgatory of his sentence begins; and who, save Almighty God, can say when it shall end! While hour by hour the chimes of the fortress-cathedral ring out their triumphant notes—a mockery of the poor soul in torment—or toll the miserere, that sounds a knell to all his hopes.
It was at the entrance to the Trubetskoi bastion that the Imperial party alighted. Extraordinary reports as to the violence and cruelty practised within the walls of Petropavlovsk had lately become so widely disseminated throughout Petersburg, mingled with such threats of summary justice to be shortly meted out to the officials by the hands of the enraged populace, and such sinister warnings of personal vengeance, that the press of all parties called upon the Tsar to prove himself Emperor in his own domains, by investigating and abolishing the scandals.
It was a time of grave anxiety; but he, listening to the counsels of those who had in past difficulties proved their loyalty and disinterestedness, yielded at last to their persuasions, and resolved to adopt the extreme measure of a personal inspection of the maligned fortress. The Empress, on hearing this decision, and who, despite her gentle looks and quiet manner, owned the courage and high spirit of her Danish ancestors, at once determined to accompany her husband.