BROTHERS
The worst is, that the gendarmes cannot live without political plots; if they have none to deal with in reality, they must invent some; otherwise they run the risk of seeing their budget diminished for the next year. This is the reason why alarming reports as to future political attempts circulate as a rule a few weeks and even months before the renewal of the special budget serving to pay this sort of people.—Maxim Kovalevsky: Russian Political Institutions.
o time crept on with crippled feet, halting and limping on its broken crutches, held back by heavy ball and clanking chain. Thru the five feet of granite the sun could not penetrate, but grief came in thru the mortar. No oxygen passed the Judas, but with noisy wings sorrow flew in the embrasure. The oaken doors held freedom out, but sadness passed the bars of iron.
A great blow came to Kropotkin. He heard news which sickened him. Life lost its meaning. His stool remained unused in the corner.[33] All the day long, and during the endless hours of night, he wandered up and down his cell like a dazed animal. Friendly faces could not see him, but distress was his warder, and despair became his familiar visitor. He had learnt of the arrest of his brother Alexander[34]—the Sasha for whom he had saved the tiny tea-cakes.
The history of Peter Kropotkin can never be written and the name of Alexander left out. Tho only a year older, Sasha was in advance of him intellectually. This alone shows what a remarkable child he was, for Peter also was precocious: at twelve he dropped his title of prince, signing himself merely P. Kropotkin; at fourteen he wrote articles in favor of a constitution; and while still at school, he became the author of a text-book on physics which was printed for the use of his class-mates.
But more than anyone else, it was Sasha who opened unknown vistas to him, who stimulated his mind, who guided his studies, and directed his reading.
"What happiness," wrote Kropotkin many years later, "it was for me to have such a brother! To him I owe the best part of my development."