It may be a mooted point as to whether cossacks or gendarmes have been more successful in violating women, but all will agree that the former are pre-eminent in sabering students, while the latter receive the palm when it comes to searching houses. When half a dozen of them, accompanied by an officer,[36] burst into Sasha's flat after midnight, on Christmas eve, they excelled themselves. Against Alexander Kropotkin there was no accusation except that he had written a personal letter to a personal friend. Yet the Third Section kept him a prisoner for several months.
At this time his charming child, whom illness rendered still more affectionate and intelligent, was dying from consumption. It was not Sasha's nature to ask favors from his enemies, but when Death beckons with its bony finger, one cannot be proud. So Sasha asked permission to see his son for the last time. The request was refused. He begged to be allowed to go home for one hour, promising on his word of honor to return. The request was refused. Then the high-souled man cast his spirit in the dust before them and implored to be taken there in chains, and guarded by gendarmes. The request was refused.
The child died; the mother went half mad with grief; Sasha was told he would be transported to one of the loneliest towns in farthest Siberia; that he would travel in a cart between two gendarmes; that his wife could not go with him, but might follow later.
A year passed, and Sasha remained in exile. Another year, and he was still in Siberia. His sister Helene, without asking anyone, wrote a petition to the czar. She gave it to her cousin Dmitri Kropotkin, an unfeeling scoundrel who was afterwards killed by the revolutionist Goldenberg. At this time he was governor-general of Kharkoff, aide-de-camp of the emperor, and a favorite of the court. Heartless as he was, he thought it unjust for a non-political to be exiled so long, and he handed the petition personally to Alexander II., adding words of his own in support of it. Romanoff took the document and wrote upon it:
"Let him remain there."[37]
Ten years later. Sasha was still in bleak Siberia, cut off from his scientific work, severed from the intellectual world. A gloomy night—the wolves howled and Sasha lived. But these things could not go on forever. A silent night—the wail of the wolf ceased, and the soul of Sasha escaped.[38] Helene wrote no petitions to Death, but it was Death that liberated him.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Determining to preserve his physical vigor, Kropotkin mapped out for himself a course in gymnastics. Among other feats, he made excellent if undignified use of his weighty oak stool. He balanced it on his nose and lifted it with his teeth; he put it on the end of his foot and raised it at right angles to his body; he turned it on its edges and twirled it like a wheel; he tossed it from one hand to the other, faster and faster; and he hurled it between, under, and across his legs.
[34] That is, his arrest in 1875; for Alexander Kropotkin had previously been arrested and thrown into prison in 1858, for reading Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance," which was loaned to him by a university professor. For a portrait and his noble behavior on this occasion, see George Kennan's world-known "Siberia and the Exile System."