“Why didn’t I think of the matches, and oh! what a pity I failed to fill my pockets with them that night of the Professor’s dinner party! To think that matches are selling at this moment in Sweden two hundred and fifty for a halfpenny!” Guided by the spark at the end of his cigarette, he sought the bench and sat down upon it. He was surprised to find himself so little depressed as was actually the case. He did not feel in the least disheartened. Something was going to happen on his behalf; of that he was quite certain. It was perfectly ridiculous that even in Russia a loyal subject, who had never done any illegal act in his life, a nobleman of the empire, and a friend of the Czar, should be incarcerated for long without trial, and even without accusation. He had no enemies that he knew of, and many friends, and yet he experienced a vague uneasiness when he remembered that his own course of life had been such that he would not be missed by his friends. For more than a year he had been in England, at sea, and in America, so much absorbed in his researches that he had written no private letters worth speaking of, and if any friend were asked his whereabouts, he was likely to reply: “Oh, Lermontoff is in some German university town, or in England, or traveling elsewhere. I haven’t seen him or heard of him for months. Lost in a wilderness or in an experiment, perhaps.” These unhappy meditations were interrupted by the clang of bolts. He thought at first it was his own door that was being opened, but a moment later knew it was the door of the next cell up-stream. The sound, of course, could not penetrate the extremely thick wall, but came through the aperture whose roof arched the watercourse. From the voices he estimated that several prisoners were being put into one cell, and he wondered whether or not he cared for a companion. It would all depend. If fellow-prisoners hated each other, their enforced proximity might prove unpleasant. “We are hungry,” he heard one say. “Bring us food.” The gaoler laughed. “I will give you something to drink first.” “That’s right,” three voices shouted. “Vodka, vodka!” Then the door clanged shut again, and he heard the murmur of voices in Russian, but could not make out what was said. One of the new prisoners, groping round, appeared to have struck the stone bench, as he himself had done. The man in the next cell swore coarsely, and Lermontoff, judging from such snatches of their conversation as he could hear that they were persons of a low order, felt no desire to make their more intimate acquaintance, and so did not shout to them, as he had intended to do. And now he missed something that had become familiar; thought it was a cigarette he desired, for the one he had lit had been smoked to his very lips, then he recognized it was the murmur of the stream that had ceased.