“I do not understand,” said I. “Will you please tell me where I am, and why I have been brought here?”
“This is the office of the gendarmerie headquarters; you have been brought here for examination, and will soon be taken before the Public Prosecutor. I only wanted to have a chat with you, and revive some old memories. We have many common acquaintances.”
“But how do you know me?” I asked, surprised.
“Oh, excuse me,” he cried, smiling, “there is hardly an intelligent person in all Russia who does not know you by name.”
The young gentleman appeared to class himself among the “intellectuals”—that set in Russian Society which just at this time was protesting against the reactionary tendency and making its influence felt in some of the best Russian journals. In the language of that section of the Press it was customary to designate the revolutionists by the harmless title of “intellectuals.”
“Oh, we have many common acquaintances,” the colonel resumed. “I knew all your comrades—Malinka, Drebyàsghin, Maidànsky. I was formerly adjutant of gendarmerie at Odessa, and made acquaintance with them there. They were really delightful people.”
Now I understood why this man was a colonel already, notwithstanding his youth. The big political cases during the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties had given many officers of gendarmerie and of the law grand opportunities for self-advancement. The lives and freedom of the “politicals” were the merchandise by which they founded their fortunes. This gentleman had no doubt played no insignificant part in condemning to penal servitude or to death those comrades of mine on whom he was now lavishing his compliments. Perhaps he had been the originator of the happy thought by which the traitor Kùritzin was induced to sacrifice so many victims.[[30]]
My interview with this engaging young man was not exactly to my mind, and I was glad to be called away. I was taken to a comfortably furnished apartment, where Kotliarèvsky was seated in an armchair before a large table, looking over some papers.
“I have some documents here that concern you,” he said, and began to read aloud:—
“In the beginning of August, 1878, the widow of the murdered Baron Gèhkin, adjutant in the gendarmerie, observed in the neighbourhood of General Mèzentzev’s house two young men who were apparently watching for the General.” The document went on to state that the Baroness had recognised one of these young men to be myself; and on the following day she had seen them again on the watch, her cousin Baron Berg being with her at the time. Then followed a paper in which Baron Berg corroborated the lady’s evidence. There was a time, 1878-9, when a good many people delighted in romancing about me, and persisted in ascribing to me a prominent rôle in events taking place in the most widely separated parts of Russia. These imaginings even found their way into the press, and I was often surprised to read in the papers accounts of my varied exploits; I seemed to be a perfect Stenka Rasìn![[31]]