Tyranny, which for a brief period had slept, was now wide-awake and aggressively active. Throughout the entire Empire despotism stalked unimpeded. The recent attempt upon the Czar's life had increased the vigilance of the police, and the most frightful atrocities were committed in the holy name of Justice. The blood curdles with horror when reading of the indignities and the injustice visited upon the people.
"When the police deem it best," says one writer,[16] in portraying the condition of that period, "they steal noiselessly through the streets and alleys, surround a private dwelling in the dead of the night, and under some false pretence, invade every room in the house, waking the sleeping occupants. Each member of the household is given in charge of a policeman, everything is turned topsy-turvy, books, papers, private letters are carefully inspected—nothing is secret. It is not necessary that the police should have any evidence for these searches. An anonymous charge, a mere suspicion is enough. Houses have sometimes been inspected seven times in a single day. If anything is discovered to excite the suspicions of the police an arrest follows and the supposed culprit is sent to the house of Preventive Detention. There he awaits his trial for weeks and months and sometimes for years. He is brought out occasionally for examination. If he confesses nothing he is sent back to reflect. Sometimes the wrong man is arrested and confined a year or two before the mistake is discovered."
The solitary confinement to which prisoners were doomed in this house of detention was often fatal. The hardships to which they were subjected frequently led to consumption, insanity or suicide. The examination of prisoners and witnesses was dragged out to an interminable length. In one celebrated case it lasted four years and over seven hundred witnesses were kept in jail during that time. The prosecutor admitted that only twenty persons deserved punishment, yet there were seventy-three who died from suicide or the effects of confinement.
Louder and louder grew the clamor of the masses and the threats against the imperial autocrat. Wholesale arrests could not quell the popular voice. A prisoner wrote from his living tomb in the Troubetzkoi Ravelin: "Fight on till the victory is won! The more they torment me in prison, the better it is for the struggle!"
Governor Drentell entered upon his new duties at a trying time. His existence was embittered by political strife and tumult, and by complications with which he found it difficult to cope.
Let us seek him in his palace, by the side of his wife, Louise.
When we first met Louise, she was young and frivolous; now she is old and frivolous. The years have dealt gently with her, however, for she is still quite handsome and as vivacious, as capricious, as kind-hearted and as religious as when we last parted from her, twenty-seven years ago.
"Poor Dimitri," she said, dolefully, after her husband had recounted the events of the day. "Eighteen persons exiled to Siberia and two sentenced to death. How hard you toil! You will kill yourself with overwork!"
The General sighed.
"I should think," continued Louise, "that Loris could be of service to you in these difficult affairs of State. Why don't you recall our boy?"