Those of my fellow-countrymen to whom the very names of Prince Bibikov and of M. Pissarev recall the sorrows of so many families, the blood and tears of so many noble victims, and of three provinces all outraged and oppressed under the pressure of the most haughty and rapacious of tyrannies, will no doubt be astonished—it may be, shocked—at what I have just related. Yet such undoubtedly was the conduct of these two men towards myself. I ought also here to declare that no attempt was ever made to inflict on me any of the tortures to which so many Poles have been subjected in Russian prisons—more than one of my fellow-accused being, alas! among the number. It is true that I was several times threatened with such measures, but the threat was never put into execution.

The inquest dragged out its length however, and I soon received the blessed permission to walk in the corridors every day for one hour—care being taken to clear them at that time of every living soul, except the two sentries. The corridor was narrow, dark, and damp; but at least I could satisfy the imperious necessity for exercise which I had felt, and I could also talk in secret from time to time with the sentries. If these soldiers chanced to be Poles—which they very often were, being even men who had served with us in our army of 1831—they always showed me more compassion, while they maintained also a far greater show of reserve. The Russian soldiers acted I think more from curiosity; but what surprised me most was the frequency with which I was asked whether I had never met, in foreign countries, with the Grand Duke Constantine, whom they firmly believed to be living in France or in England, and who should one day return to deliver them from Nicholas. I found however that I must renounce the real pleasure which I felt in talking to my sentries. One day the jailer surprised one of them in conversation with me. He was led off to receive sixty blows with the rods, and the cries of the unhappy man under punishment presently reached my ears.

I ought to say something in this place of my neighbours, viz. of those who inhabited the cells opposite my prison. Those who were implicated in my affair were lodged in another part of the fortress, and I never had any communication with them. Once only I caught a glimpse of the judge, Zawadzki, and I hardly recognised him again, for the man formerly so strong and very corpulent was reduced to a perfect skeleton. My neighbours in the corridor were not political criminals. One of them, a soldier named Toumanov, awaited in irons the execution of his sentence of four thousand blows with the rods, which had been passed on him for some insubordination to his superiors. He had no fear, counted on the ‘toughness of his hide,’ as he expressed it, cursed the Tzar, his officers, and his fate, and sang a great deal, especially an air of which the words began, ‘March to the sacking of Poland!’ When the moment of his execution arrived, his jailers made many brutal jests at his expense. ‘Now then, Toumanov, the devil will get your soul to-day; you will never live through the thing.’ The unhappy wretch replied, with coarser oaths, ‘I tell you I mean to live through it, and we will have a glass together yet before I am off to Siberia! I shall be better there than serving the Tzar.’ I heard afterwards from these same jailers that after two of the four thousand blows he fell senseless on the snow, which was red with his blood, and was carried back to prison. If he survived he was liable to receive, at some future day, the other half of his sentence!

The next of my neighbours was a peasant of the district of Poitava, short in stature, but of immense strength. He had deserted from the army, taken to the woods and a wild life among them, where he had killed several men. He also, when led away to punishment (for his sentence was the knout and penal servitude for life), replied to the hideous comments of his keepers, that he was not afraid. The third prisoner, like the two first, was also in chains, a young handsome soldier, who, while on a march with his battalion, had stopped at a village and loitered behind for a whole week, being ‘bewitched by a woman.’ The poor boy had then come of his own accord to give himself up, and he now expected his trial. His character seemed to be both good and gentle, and he was in the habit of singing an air of which the melody, though slightly monotonous, was so sweet and plaintive that I could not listen to him without emotion—such sweet tones could hardly have come from a vicious heart. When he left our prison I never was able to hear what became of him, but I regretted him and that plaintive strain which had so often charmed my ears. His cell was soon occupied again—by a subaltern convicted of having set fire to a magazine of forage which was under his care, the motive being the wish to conceal a certain deficit which had occurred. He had now gone mad, but in general his mania was of the inoffensive and quiet kind. He talked constantly, prepared for death, and exhorted his absent mistress to place over his remains a black cross, of which he described the shape and ornaments with the greatest exactness. Another day he complained that a gnat had stung him—that all the blood had been sucked out of his body, and that only water had been left. A pope was sent for, who recited a great number of prayers by way of exorcising him; but at last one day the prisoner would not permit him to leave the cell. A psalter in one hand and a crucifix in the other, the madman repeated, without ceasing, ‘Little father (batiouchka), I will break your head for you if you do not immediately give me the holy communion.’ The pope manœuvred cleverly so as to reach the door, assuring him that he was going to fetch the pyx; he then saved himself by making a rush, abandoning his crucifix and his psalter. On the following day the governor of the citadel had the maniac’s cell opened, though he took care himself to remain in the corridor. The prisoner, standing at the threshold, made him a sign to enter. ‘Come, your Excellency, I have a secret to whisper in your ear;’ but his Excellency was more prudent than the pope. Some soldiers soon advanced; they garotted and bound the poor fool, and they carried him off to the hospital.

In his place arrived a Circassian—a free lance of the Caucasus, who, having been taken prisoner and employed in the works of the fortress, had tried to make good his escape along with two countrymen of his own, his fellow-sufferers. Pursued by the troops, they defended themselves for a long time with their spades, which were their only weapons. One succeeded in escaping, one was killed by a thrust with a bayonet, the third fell into the hands of the soldiers and became my opposite neighbour. He was called ‘a mountain prince,’ and, with hands and feet in fetters, he was almost always to be seen seated on his couch, gloomy and silent, and with a proud look on his face. I never failed to make him a respectful bow when, in walking up and down the corridor, I passed the loophole in his cell.

In the meantime, weeks grew to months, and as the months succeeded each other, the cold of winter had given place to the heats of July. The stifling air of my prison reduced me to a state of extreme nervous irritability, which broke out over every trifle, and at night I could not sleep. I had forgotten to notice one permanent suffering in my captivity, of which the intensity can never be appreciated, except by those who may have made a personal trial of it: I mean the order given to the sentry to watch all my actions through the window in my door. No one can imagine what an indescribable torture it is to a man to see and to know that a watch is kept upon every movement. That strange eye, impassable and implacable, which meets yours at every moment—that eye which follows you everywhere and at all times—becomes to you a sort of infernal providence; and I abandon the task of making any one understand what it is that the prisoner feels who from the instant that he wakes in the morning sees from his bed those two eyes pointed towards him like two stilettos. Will it be believed, from the earliest dawn I longed for the night, even after a night which had been already very long and rayless; for then at least I was protected from those two eyes. Sometimes, impatient and distracted, I would go up to the loophole and oppose my feverish glare to those two persecuting eyes; and then I laughed like a savage, when I obliged the man to turn away for a moment.

It was in this state of extreme irritation that I received one day a visit from an aide-de-camp, accompanied by another official, by the jailer, and by some soldiers. He desired me to rise, and to undress.

‘But I am already undressed!’

‘No; but you must be stripped.’

‘Why?’