Suddenly Loris sprang to his feet and lifting his glass proposed the toast:
"To his excellency, the Governor of Kief, the champion of liberty, the enemy of the autocrat at St. Petersburg!"
"Long may he live!" shouted his associates.
Pomeroff sat in his chair as if thunderstruck. The suspicion which up to this moment had but faintly suggested itself had become a terrible certainty. As soon as he could master his excitement he arose.
"Gentlemen," he began, endeavoring to smile, "what jest is this? You are certainly in error. Allow me to correct it. I drink to the health and long life of his majesty the Czar!"
A storm of hisses greeted this toast and Pomeroff, after trying in vain to make himself heard above the din, sat down. His face was pale and his frame shook with suppressed anger.
Quiet was finally restored and Martinski rose and addressed the meeting, speaking more directly to the Governor. He rehearsed the outrages committed upon submissive Russians by the Czar Nicholas, whose despotic government had finally driven the country into the disastrous Crimean War. He spoke in terms of praise of the noble aims and ambitions of Alexander during the early years of his reign, only to denounce in unmeasured terms the reaction which had destroyed the little good that had been accomplished. He depicted the cruelty and the tyranny practised by the Czar upon those who had incurred his displeasure, the utter lack of educational facilities and the consequent ignorance of the masses, the rigorous censorship of the press and the arbitrary rule of the men in power. He pictured in vivid colors the cruelties of Siberian exile and the sufferings of the prisoners in those distant mines, from which there was no escape but through the valley of death.
"But," continued he, warming up to a genuine outburst of eloquence, "there is still a lower depth; a dungeon, a human slaughter-house rather, has recently been contrived, the horrors of which surpass anything hitherto conceived by man. It is the Troubetzkoi Ravelin, where convicts condemned upon the most trivial charges are confined for life; a hell for those for whom the mines of Siberia are not considered severe enough. Compared to this prison, the Bastile of France was a palace of luxury. Woe to him who is obliged to enter this frightful place: hardships, hunger, disease and insanity await him.
"The convicts of Siberia cry to us for help. The scurvy-stricken prisoners of the Troubetzkoi Ravelin appeal to us to avenge their wrongs upon the author of their misfortunes. The French destroyed their Bastile. Why should we not also demolish our dungeons before we ourselves are called upon to fill them. O, Russia, how pitiable is your condition! 'Despotism has blasted the high hopes to which the splendid awakening of the first half of the century gave birth. The living forces of later generations have been buried by the Government in the Siberian snows or Esquimaux villages. It is worse than the plague, for that comes and goes, but the Government has oppressed the country for years and will continue to do so. The plague strikes blindly but the present régime chooses its victims from the flower of the nation, taking all upon whom depend the fortune and glory of Russia. It is not a political party that they crush, it is a nation of a hundred millions that they stifle. That is what the Czar has done.'[14] Down with such despotism! Down with its instigator, the Czar!"
At these concluding words, the whole party arose and, holding out their right hands in token of allegiance to their cause, they repeated the cry: