Presently we sat down to dinner together, and during the meal Kassatkin showed himself to be an entertaining companion and vivacious talker. I sat next him, and he told us of the progress of the revolutionary movement in Novgorod, declaring that there were unmistakable signs of general upheaval, of an awakening of the public spirit, of patriotism, and of opposition, foreshadowing a coming struggle. He was bitter in his condemnation of the dark deeds of the Tzar’s officials, and expressed an opinion that if Russia could tell something approaching to the full truth about what was going on within her boundaries—the crimes committed in darkness, the malversations practised, the real state of the exchequer, the desperate tricks of the financiers—it would inflict upon the Autocracy a more severe blow than many conspiracies could strike. “Tell us of your escape,” I said, after he had related the story of his arrest and imprisonment for carrying on propaganda among the soldiers of the Novgorod garrison. “Ah!” he exclaimed, his face brightening. “It has been a terrible experience, but I was driven to desperation.” Turning to Pétroff he said: “You know the frightful horrors of Schlusselburg—the cold wet cells below the water?” “I have, alas! much cause to remember them,” Paul answered, with a heavy sigh. “My wife, whom I loved so well, was imprisoned there at the same time as myself. The solitary confinement and the horrors of her cell drove her hopelessly insane. She is now an inmate of the criminal asylum at Krasnoje Selo.” “Madness is the fate of the majority of prisoners there,” said Kassatkin. “In my case the many months of absolute silence and lack of exercise drove me into a state bordering on insanity. In order to check the imbecility that was slowly but surely taking possession of me, I used to pace my damp, dark cell and compose verses. For days, weeks, months, I had no other occupation than the composition of poems, which I afterwards committed to memory, having no writing materials. This was the only mental employment I had, and, although I grew strangely lightheaded, yet my self-imposed tasks prevented my mind becoming totally unhinged. An opportunity for escape presented itself in a most unexpected manner. A large batch of ‘common law’ prisoners had been sent from Petersburg, and the prison being already over-crowded, I was removed from my cell and confined in a room in the fire-tower. It thus happened that I was locked up in an ordinary room, with a window looking upon the bridge. It was rather high, but it was near the waterpipe running along the wall outside, and there was a slanting roof of the lower storey which could be utilised for the descent. I could not lose such an opportunity, and, in the dead of night, I opened the window and descended upon the bridge connecting the prison with the bank, congratulating myself upon a happy escape.” “Were you discovered?” I asked.