On December 31st, 1843, and just at the late dawning of the day, I felt myself shaken by the arm, and I was addressed in a loud voice by my assumed name. Though awake, I was in no hurry to reply; I wished to gain time to compose myself for my part. When at last I opened my eyes, I beheld in my room the Director of Police, Colonel Grunfield; a Commissary; and Major Poloutkovskoï, of the Council of Prince Bibikov, Governor-General of Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine; the Major having come from Kiow to take steps for my arrest. I expressed my surprise at so early a visit, and my astonishment was naturally redoubled at the intelligence that I must be taken, under escort, before the Governor. I did not, of course, fail to represent my rights as a British subject, or to remind them of the grave results that were likely to accrue to themselves for this inconceivable conduct towards me. After having thus gone through all the formalities necessary to keep up my character, I asked permission to go into the next room, to perform my toilet. While I was dressing, the Commissary took possession of my papers and effects, and we were soon on our way to the house of the Governor Radistchev, with whom I had been personally acquainted for some time.
This first interview was both short and indecisive. The Governor entered the room abruptly, and addressed me in Russian. I pretended not to understand what he said, and requested that I might be interrogated in French; above all I begged that he would explain the cause of my being arrested. ‘You will learn that presently;’ and, at a signal given by his hand, I was then hustled out of the room. I was conducted to the house of the Director of Police, and there installed in a room which opened into a saloon. The doors were locked, and the official in uniform left to keep me company strictly observed the rule that he was not to speak to me.
Up to this time I had preserved my presence of mind, and I had even been astonished at my own perfect calmness at the moment of my awakening; but now, when alone or nearly so, I suddenly felt a great sinking of my heart. The thought of the many sufferings in store for me, in store also for so many of my brothers, seemed to set my brain on fire, and tears forced themselves into my eyes. To hide this dangerous emotion, I turned to the wall, and leant my forehead against it; but through the walls I fancied that sighs and moans were audible, the voices of the companions of my unhappy fate. Determined to distract my thoughts as much as I could, I took up a pack of playing cards that lay on the round table. A child of the Ukraine, I was by nature a little superstitious; I began to draw the cards, and they promised ... my deliverance! Shall I say it? This fortunate augury only increased my irritation, and I was almost obliged to the head official who entered the room at this instant, and who, after enquiring into my wants, carried away with him The tempting game.
A few minutes later a distraction of a more important kind took the place of the childish consolation which I had found in the cards. Another officer had been sent to join the one already in charge of me, and between them a conversation soon began which certainly was not devoid of interest for me. I was so well known in Kaminieç, and everyone was so thoroughly convinced of my ignorance of the two languages used in the country, that even now these two officials still thought me a foreigner, and they put no restraint on the remarks which they made to each other in Russian and in a loud tone of voice. I need not say that I lost nothing from want of attention to such a colloquy.
‘It is a serious matter,’ said the one; ‘a political business. They have arrested twenty people in the town already this morning (he gave the names), and orders have been sent out to the country, and all on account of this foreigner, who, they say, is come here to intrigue against the Tzar, and who is accredited by some other power, England or France—the devil knows which! They do not speak very well either of President Abaza; if anything happens to him it will be a pity, for he is an honest man; but I must say that at his age it was an odd idea to wish to learn French! Much he is like to make by his French lessons!’... ‘What a pity! what a pity to be sure!’ answered the other one; ‘when this gentleman came here nine months ago I was ordered to watch him, as we do every new comer. I dogged his steps, I compassed him about on every side; but his conduct was so very open, his relations with both Russians and Poles so frank, and he appeared to me to be so really inoffensive, that at last I lost sight of him; and it seems he was a very pretty fellow after all, and now another man has been down upon him, and will claim the reward! Now I call that having no luck! Scoundrel that he is! bah! what a pity, what a pity to be sure!’... I could not help being amused at the strange way in which this poor wretch condoled with himself for having lost the opportunity of bringing about my ruin; but the rest of the information which I extracted from their talk gave, if possible, a graver turn to my thoughts. I could no longer doubt that many persons had been arrested on my account; but the names which I had just heard repeated belonged to such different classes of my acquaintances that I discerned in them at least one source of hope. They were evidently groping in the dark as yet, and arresting right and left, while suspicions reached as far, or rather were as far astray, as Monsieur Abaza! In another point of view I imitated the naive cynicism of my police official, and was quite ready to rejoice at the trouble in which I had landed the worthy President of the Chamber of Finance. If indeed the Russians whom I knew were to be implicated in the trial, the affair would get into a strange confusion, and who knows then whether my accomplices might not benefit by the perfect innocence of the others, which would certainly soon be made manifest?
At four o’clock in the afternoon I had a visit from the Governor, and from Major Poloutkovskoï. They represented to me that my position was an alarming one, and that it would be best for my own interest if I made the most complete confession. I persisted in my resolution. I declared I did not understand in the least what they wanted with me, and I spoke of writing to the English ambassador in St. Petersburg, and of claiming his protection. ‘You are then in a great hurry to leave Kaminieç?’ replied the Governor, ironically; ‘but keep yourself easy, I will furnish you with all the means for it.’ The same questions were repeated on the following days, either in the house of the Director of Police, where I was still detained, or in that of the Governor, who had me brought to him under an escort; the same arguments were urged, on the one side, to make me confess my real character, and there was, on the other side, the same obstinacy in keeping up the part which I had assumed. The manners of the Governor were generally cold but polite, sometimes however they were ironical, and even vehement. ‘It is in vain to say that you are a Maltese, and to play this comedy,’ cried he, in one of his examinations; ‘we know very well that you belong to the Ukraine, and so-and-so have already confessed that they have talked with you in Polish.’ He named to me two of the co-accused, the least initiated into my sayings and doings, and also the least firm. Twice over I was confronted with them. These interviews were most painful, and in spite of the flat denials which I opposed to those who thus denounced me, I saw the impossibility of persisting any longer in the line which I had hitherto followed. Every day more abundant and more precise information arrived about me, and it became clear that in prolonging a useless game I ran the risk of aggravating the situation of my accomplices; but I determined to collect the greatest possible number of the accused, and to make them witnesses to my confession, so that they might know its limits and follow my suit. I waited to be confronted with them in a body. I had not long to wait, and one evening when summoned to the Governor’s residence, I perceived in the hall a great number of my fellow-prisoners arranged along the two walls, and all standing up—they presented a moving spectacle, I might almost say a fantastic one. Many of them were persons with whom I had but a very slight acquaintance, others had been in my secret, all bore upon their faces the marks of suffering and fatigue. After a certain time spent as usual in pressing questions and in absolute denials, I exclaimed, as if out of patience, in a loud voice, and in my native tongue, ‘Well then, yes, I am not a British subject, I am a Pole; I was born in the Ukraine, I emigrated after the revolution of 1831, and I came back here. I came back into this country because a life of exile was no longer endurable to me, and because I wished to revisit Poland. I came here under a feigned name, because I was perfectly aware that bearing my own name I should not be suffered to remain; I was ready at any price to be quiet and inoffensive, asking nothing but to breathe my native air. I have confided my secret to a few of my fellow-countrymen, I have asked their help and their advice, I have asked them for nothing else, and I have nothing else to say to them.’ In spite of the certainty as to my identity which they must now have possessed for some time, the Governor and Major Poloutkovskoï could not suppress an exclamation of surprise at hearing me thus suddenly speak out in Polish; and while I was speaking I could see the Governor’s face expand; he rubbed his hands, walked up and down the room with long steps, and when I ceased came up to me with a benevolent air, as if he felt obliged to me for having put an end to a situation which was really untenable. After a few insignificant questions, he gave orders to have me removed.
On my return to the house where I was detained, being still under the influence of the late excitement, I took every one strangely by surprise by suddenly beginning to talk in Polish. In this language I addressed the director, the officials, and my keepers. I took a childish and feverish pleasure in making use of a freedom which had been so long denied me; and I behaved in the same way on the following day, though, from an obstinacy which had its root in repugnance, rather than in any calculation whatever, I pretended, as before, that I did not understand Russian. As to my native speech I used it to my heart’s content; it was as if I wished to make amends to myself by the liberty of a few hours for having had to abstain from it during an entire year.
Thus ended the preliminaries of my trial, and on the morrow Major Poloutkovskoï came to desire me to hold myself in readiness to depart on that very evening for Kiow.
It was on a fine but cold winter’s night that I quitted Kaminieç. I took my seat in a roomy open carriage alongside of Major Poloutkovskoï. Opposite us sat two soldiers, with loaded muskets, and we were followed by a second carriage, in which were two officers of the secret Police. Owing to the season, and the lateness of the hour, which was midnight, the town was dark, and the streets were deserted; but as I passed before certain houses which I knew well, and of which the inhabitants were united in the same lot with myself, I looked up, and I saw lights still burning. Was it as a message of farewell? or did they bear witness to vigils full of anguish which were being held within? The plaintive tinkling of bells, fastened, after the Russian fashion, to the shafts of the vehicle, which was drawn by three horses, alone broke the mournful silence of the night, and I sank into a reverie of indulged sadness. I was obliged to my companion for not interrupting the current of my thoughts by words; he did not speak even when we stopped to change horses, and it was not till the day began to break that he commenced a conversation. It turned at first only on France; her administration, her commercial arrangements, her agriculture, her commerce, these were all subjects in which he seemed to take a great interest. By degrees we began to talk of politics, even of emigration, and I had the opportunity of convincing myself how perfect was the knowledge which my interlocutor had been able to collect of our means, our men, and even of our smallest publications. I expressed my astonishment at this to him; he smiled and replied, ‘We are obliged to learn all these things, and the means of learning them are never wanting.’ In general, the Major, whom I had had the opportunity of studying during the examination that had taken place at Kaminieç, and whom I was to meet again later in the Commission of Inquiry at Kiow, showed himself, though cold and almost indifferent, to be a well-educated man. He was polite and courteous in his demeanour to me, and in all my interviews with the Governor of Kaminieç he had never failed to call General Radistchev to reason, whenever he gave vent to any burst of violence. A spring of my calèche having given way on the evening of our arrival at Mohilow, I had to be put into a kibitka with the two soldiers, while the Major in another preceded us, along with the officers of the secret Police; and we were carried along with a rapidity of which no one who has not seen a Russian convoy of this kind can form any idea. There it was that I met with an accident the nature of which I am still far from understanding and which I despair of describing to my readers. At one of those jolts of which the kibitka at its furious pace bestows so many on the traveller, I felt something snap in the tendons which attach the head, and a sharp and terrible pain made me give vent to such a savage cry of distress that I was heard in the accompanying carriage. The Major called a halt, and asked what was the matter with me. I was not able to reply, I was simply sobbing; he ordered them to go at a walk to the post-house, which relieved me much, but at the least jar the same frightful suffering recurred, and I screamed while I tried to steady my head between my hands. Arrived at the station I was not able to leave the carriage, and to my shame and distress I was crying like a child. Then the Major, who was obliged to press on in person to Braçlaw, left me in charge of one of the police officials and of the two soldiers, and desired them to go at a foot’s pace. Thus we continued our journey, but, at the end of some hours, my companion, wearied by the slowness of our march, ordered them to go quicker. Hardly had the horses broken into a gallop when the pain became really insupportable. I felt I was becoming mad, and warned by my piercing cries, my guardian called to the driver to stop. ‘You must go slowly; if you won’t, blow my brains out at once; believe me, if you continue to gallop, I shall not be able to support it more than five minutes; I shall be dead, and what will be your position then?’ I did not exaggerate in any way, and my words gaining force by my strong conviction, made an impression upon those who had the charge of me. We continued all that night walking slowly, and when at daybreak we reached a posting-house, they put me into a sledge, for the road, though not all covered with snow, was deep in mud. Finally, at one o’clock we reached Braçlaw, where Major Poloutkovskoï was in waiting for us. My deplorable condition touched him visibly; he put his hand on my arm, and looking at me with attention, he questioned me on the pain which I felt. It was the first and the only time that he showed me any true compassion. He told me that the wants of the service summoned him imperatively to Kiow, but that I should remain here until I had recovered my strength a little; he soon afterwards took leave of me, and after having pushed on a little longer, my sledge stopped in the town before a vast and sombre building. They bid me get out, the heavy gates grated on their hinges, and after having traversed several dim corridors, I found myself in the middle of a little room, which was tolerably clean, and of which the window was furnished with strong iron bars. I flung myself on the paillasse, which I saw in one corner, and covered myself with my cloak. A few moments afterwards I received a visit from the sous préfet, and from the doctor, a Pole, who examined me with much interest, prescribed repose, and some medicines; and I was again left alone with the two soldiers. Repose was in truth the only remedy for my pain, of which I felt nothing as long as I remained quiet and lying down. Thus long hours passed away, when all of a sudden breaking through the deep silence I heard a strange clinking which I was not able to explain; but I soon distinguished the sound of chains, both behind the wall and in the corridors. I was then in one of those great prisons, called Krepost; but who might my companions be? Simple criminals perhaps; or, it may be political prisoners, countrymen of my own? My doubts were soon cleared up; I heard a song rise, sonorous, choral, and only broken by the sound of fetters; the words were Polish, the melody a familiar one:—
In a cradle sleeping, the Babe Divine, ...