Our colonel was a nobleman who had seen much service, and when he was in full dress, his uniform was decked out with a fine array of orders and medals. In person he was diminutive and bandy-legged, but he had the aristocrat’s clear-cut, energetic features, flashing eyes, and delicate, well-kept hands. But he was chiefly distinguished by his long, white, exquisitely silken whiskers. Diminutiveness, whiskers, energy, bandy-legs combined to make him irresistibly comic to our men, who used to call him the “Hampelmann” (monkey on a stick). In drunkenness he yielded nothing to his soldiers, and I have seen him reeling through the camp, after a night spent over the bottle, denouncing punishments on everybody who crossed his path. When he was angry he used to draw his sword and strike with a scythe-like sweep at our legs. We easily ran away from him, and, once we were at a safe distance, there was not a soldier would have lifted a finger to bring us back to him again. For an officer and a nobleman his career had been peculiar. He had been commandant of the camp at Dauria, where suspicion had fallen upon him of embezzling state funds. His accomplice, a Greek civilian, was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, while he himself had been punished by being removed to Stretensk. Here he transferred his attentions to the money of the prisoners. All the sums sent to us were kept in the bank a certain period, until he had received his percentage on them. He was always issuing regulations cutting down the amount of money we might receive a month. At one time it was no more than five roubles. His accomplice at Stretensk was a banker from China, who, I regret to say, belonged to the Church of England. He was probably what the Jews call an Old-Protestant, _i.e._ one who has been baptized comparatively late in life. This amiable pair used to buy sugar for the camp at low rates long before it was needed, and then sell on a rising market, and the prisoners would have to go without. Once, however, the general on his tour of inspection discovered that the prisoners had no sugar, and the colonel had to buy it all back again on a market that had meanwhile risen considerably. The meat rations of the prisoners were regularly cut down far below what the Government allowed, and the difference went to fill the pockets of the colonel and his friends. They also kept pigs in the camp, and it was believed that the bread supplied to us was so bad in order that we might the more readily be induced to feed the colonel’s pigs with it. As a rule, we found that the officers who were hard with us were worse to their own men, and it is certain that the Russians hated the colonel far more than we. They used to tell us that he was afraid of going out at night because he was sure to be killed if he did. This seems fantastic; but the fact remains that he never came to us after dark. [SN: CAMP OFFICIALS]