It was a frightfully cold day, and despite the chains and our heavy clothing, we stepped out briskly as though we were in a hurry to get under lock and key. We knew that this was our last tramp in the open, that for many long years there would be only a trot round the prison-yard for us, and our thoughts dwelt dismally on the prospect.
“There is your prison,” said one of the soldiers, and pointed out, a little way ahead, a stockade made of tall posts set side by side.
Suddenly there appeared coming towards us a group of people—two women, a Cossack, and a man in civilian dress. “Victor!” I cried, recognising the latter as we approached nearer. It was my old friend Victor Kostyùrin, whom I had not seen for nine years.[[75]] He was now being removed from prison to his place of internment.
After hasty greetings he introduced me to the two ladies who accompanied him—Natalia Armfeld and Raissa Prybylyèva, both “colonists” in Kara. Kennan has given Natalia Armfeld’s story in his book,[[76]] and I will only mention here that in 1879 she (with Maria Kovalèvskaya) was implicated in armed resistance to the gendarmerie, and sentenced to fourteen years and ten months’ penal servitude. Raissa Prybylyèva had been a member of the Naròdnaia Vòlya, and had been sentenced in 1883 to four years’ “katorga.”
Victor and I had, of course, much to say to each other, but our time was short, for our guards naturally did not see the fun of remaining longer than necessary in the freezing cold of the open field, and a few brief sentences were all we could exchange.
“A Frenchman would have had a lot to say about this,” I said: “we two friends meeting on the threshold of a prison, one going in, the other coming out.”
Another pressure of the hand, and we parted.[[77]]
“Shall we ever meet again?” I asked.
“Ah yes!” cried one of the ladies. “We shall all meet in Petersburg at the triumph of the Russian revolution.”
For her, at least, that hope was vain. Natalia Armfeld died at Kara in 1887, and Raissa Prybylyèva (who married afterwards the exile Tiutchev) is also no longer among the living. Kostyùrin still lives in Tobolsk; but since that day our paths have never again crossed.