"You have been here long?"
Shaking his head in a feeble way, he mutters to himself, as it were, like one who is trying to recall a dream. I put the question again; this time in German. Then he faintly smiles; a big tear starting in his eye. "Excuse me, sir," he sighs, "I have forgotten most things; even the use of speech. Once I spoke French easily. Now I have all but forgotten my mother tongue."
"You have been here for years?"
"Yes; many. I wait upon the Lord. In His own time my prayer will be heard, and my deliverance come."
"You must not speak with this prisoner," says the officer on duty; "no one is allowed to speak with him." The lieutenant is not uncivil; but he stands in a place of trust; and he has to think of duty to his colonel before he can dream of courtesy to his guest.
In a moment we are in the pigeons' court. The iron gates are locked; the birds are fluttering on the sills; and the prisoners are alone once more.
CHAPTER XXII.
NICOLAS ILYIN.
Leaving Solovetsk for the south, I keep the figure of this aged prisoner in my mind, and by asking questions here and there, acquire in time a general notion of his course of life. But much of it remains dark to me, until, on my return from Kertch and Kief to St. Petersburg, the means are found for me of opening up a secret source.
The details now to be given from this secret source—controlled by other and independent facts—will throw a flood of light into some of the darkest corners of Russian life, and bring to the front some part of the obstacles through which a reforming Emperor has to march.