MONSIEUR RUFIN PIOTROWSKI.
1846.
Of all the innumerable victims transported during the last century by the Russian government to Siberia, two alone were able to escape from that dreadful place; their names are Beniowski, whose escape we have already related, and M. Piotrowski. If, on one side, the adventures of the Hungarian magnate are as full of interest as any novel, on the other, the simple story of the modest and intrepid Polish soldier inspires one with quite a different feeling. There we have all the emotion excited by a pompous show; here the hidden drama, the laceration of every fibre of a heart tortured by slow and almost secret anguish. Beniowski, as a general and a prisoner of war, was treated according to his rank, and even among exiles was allowed a certain liberty and the privileges of his order. Piotrowski, the veteran warrior of 1831, being only the simple emissary of his exiled countrymen in France, was sent to Siberia, thrown into a convict’s den, and forced to obey the orders of a scoundrel himself condemned for theft. The half-savage population of the country gave the infamous appellation of “Varnak,” as well to the noble Pole transported for patriotism, as to the vilest forger and assassin. Rufin Piotrowski is in fact the Silvio Pellico of Poland. The book of Silvio Pellico raised against Austria the indignation of all civilized nations. Beaten at Solferino, annihilated at Sadowa, the jailors of Spielberg have nowhere met a look of pity. The “Memoirs of a Siberian” are a terrible witness against the jailors of Siberia.
M. Piotrowski being sent to Russia by the Polish Emigration Society, went in 1843 to Kamiéniec, in Podolia, under the supposed name and title of Catharo, an English subject. He had remained there about nine months as a professor of languages, when he was recognised as a Pole, arrested, and condemned to hard labour in Siberia. Transported in 1844 to the place of his exile, he was sent to the distillery of Ekaterininski-Zavod, three hundred kilometres north of Omsk, and for a year was obliged to perform the hardest and most repulsive labour. A word or sign on his part, or only a fit of ill temper on the part of those over him, would have exposed him to the bastinado or the knout; but being resolved on suffering everything rather than be struck, and cherishing always in his heart the hope of escape, he learnt to control himself sufficiently to show great docility, and a constant care to do thoroughly the work imposed on him. He so succeeded by this means in raising himself, that he was allowed to enter the distillery. “My office,” said he, “was the rendezvous for many travellers who came either for the sale of grains or for the purchase of spirits; peasants, townspeople, tradesmen, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. Of passing strangers I inquired with a curiosity that never flagged concerning Siberia. I talked with men who had been, some to Berezov, others to Nertchinsk, to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, among the steppes of Kirghis, and in Bokhara, so that without leaving my office I learned to know Siberia intimately. This acquired knowledge was in the future of immense use to me in my plan of escape. A circumstance that much softened my fate was the permission I obtained from the inspector to leave the barracks; by this means I was able to quit the ordinary dwelling-place of the convicts, and live with two of my countrymen in a house belonging to Siesicki.
“This man had succeeded little by little in building for himself a small wood cabin; thanks to his long stay at Ekaterininski-Zavod, and to the savings made out of his small pay. The house was not yet completed; in fact there was then no roof, but we nevertheless carried in our goods and chattels. The wind entered by every crack, but wood costing very little, we lit a large fire on the hearth every night. In spite of these inconveniences, we felt ourselves at home, and were relieved of the disagreeable companionship of the convicts; the soldiers alone, whom we had to pay, never leaving us. We spent the long winter evenings in thinking about those dear to us, and even in making plans for the future. Ah, if that house still exists, and if it shelters some unfortunate exiled brother, let him remember he is not the first who has wept in it, and invoked his absent country! I had quickly risen from the lowest to the highest degree which a convict of our establishment on the banks of the Irtiche could attain. In 1846, I could almost fancy myself a simple recruit, banished to distant shores, and under an inclement sky. How different was this to that terrible winter of 1844, when I swept out gutters, carried or split wood, and lived under the same roof with the scum of humanity! How many of my brethren, alas! were now groaning in the mines of Nertchinsk! How many even who had been condemned to a less severe punishment than mine, would have thought themselves happy in my position, though I had resolved on flying from it even at the risk of the knout, and the mysterious dungeons of Akatouïa!
“In 1845, the Emperor Nicholas had issued a decree, by which the situation of those exiled to Siberia was considerably aggravated. Commissions visited the penitentiary establishments with the object of proposing new measures of severity. The forced residence of all the convicts in the barracks was the first point conceded to the suspicious despotism of the czar. All this necessarily made me persist in a plan conceived long ago.
“During the summer of 1845, I had already made two attempts, rather hasty and thoughtless ones, and both having the same result, though neither, fortunately, creating any suspicions. In the month of June I had noticed a small skiff often left by carelessness on the banks of the river; I had thought of using this skiff to carry me down the river to Tobolsk; but scarcely had I loosed the boat, one dark night, and rowed a little way, when the moon shone out, lighting the country most dangerously, and at the same time I heard from the shore the voice of the inspector who was walking with some employés. I landed with as little noise as possible, thinking how fruitless that attempt had proved. The following month I perceived that the same boat had been left in a more advantageous place, on a lake leading, by a canal and the Irtiche, to a rather distant point of our establishment. A phenomenon pretty frequent on the waters of Siberia during this season formed an insurmountable barrier to this second attempt of mine. Caused by the sudden chill of the air at nightfall, there rise from the earth great columns of vapour, so thick as to make even the nearest things quite indistinguishable. It was in vain that I kept pushing my boat in all directions during the long mortal hours of that night of anxiety; the fog prevented my finding the canal which would have led me to the Irtiche. It was only at day-break that I at last discovered the long-sought issue, but it was already too late to proceed, so I returned home, rejoiced to be able to do that without mishap. From that time I gave up all thought of flight by the inclement waves of the Irtiche, and began in earnest to ripen my first plan of escape.”
After long and due meditation on all the different and possible ways of quitting the Russian empire, he resolved on effecting his escape by the north, the Oural Mountains, the steppe of Petchora, and Archangel.
“Slowly and with great difficulty I collected the necessary things for a journey, the first and chief of which was a passport. There are two kinds of passports for the Siberians; one being a sort of pass ticket, granted for a very limited time, and for places not far distant from each other; the other being a much more important document, given by the high authorities on stamped paper. I succeeded in forging both. I managed slowly also to get the clothes and other things necessary for my disguise. I endeavoured to transform myself into a native, ‘a man of Siberia’ (Sibirski tchèlovieck), as they say in Russia. Ever since my departure from Kiow, I had purposely allowed my beard to grow, and it had then reached quite a respectable and orthodox length. By great perseverance, I also became possessor of a wig,—a Siberian wig, that is a wig made of sheepskin turned inside out. Thanks to these various means, I was pretty sure of not being recognised. I had also 180 roubles (about 200 francs) left, a small enough sum for so long a journey, and which was destined by a fatal accident to become still much smaller. I was in no way blind to the difficulties of my enterprise, nor to the many dangers to which I was exposed at each step. One thing alone sustained me, and while aggravating my situation, at all events eased my conscience: it was the oath I had sworn to myself never to reveal my secret to any one till I was in a free country; to ask neither help, nor protection, nor advice of any living being, so long as I had not passed the limits of the czar’s empire; and rather to give up my own liberty than to endanger any one of my brethren. I might have brought my own sad fate on many of my poor countrymen by my stay at Kamiéniec, when I imagined I was fulfilling a mission of general interest. Now, my own personal safety was the only thing in question, therefore I ought to look to none but myself. God gave me grace to keep this resolution to the last, which after all, was simply an honest one; and who knows that it is not in consideration of this oath, which I swore on the outset of my attempt, that He has always stretched over me His protecting arm!
“About the end of January, 1846, I had finished my preparations, and the opportunity seemed all the more favourable to me from the fact of it being near the time for the large fair of Irbite, at the foot of the Oural Mountains,—one of those fairs only seen in eastern Russia. I thought I should be lost among such a migration of people, and hastened to profit by the occasion.