However, we soon forget Sasha's abilities--great as they were--in the contemplation of his white soul, of his spotless character, of his open heart, of his affectionate and exceptional personality. When he grew to manhood, he departed from Russia. His spirit was too lofty to exist in this blood-soaked hell of ghoulish czars. He needed freedom like the eagle needs the mountain crag. Had he shared his brother's views, he would have remained to work and die for the Cause. But as it was his opinion that a popular uprising was an impossibility, he could take no part in political agitation, and he went to Switzerland with wife and child. Here his great scientific work assumed monumental proportions; it was to be a nineteenth century counterpart of the renowned _Tableau de la Nature_ of the Encyclopædists. He labored in love, for science was to him what it was to Darwin. Then he heard of Kropotkin's arrest. In a twinkling he left everything. He re-entered the gore-dripping cave of the Bloody Bear. For his loved brother's sake he breathed again the murderous miasma. Once more he walked in that cursed country where the nagaika of the cossack beats freedom to death. Better than anyone else, he knew that if Kropotkin could not write, he would die. The Geographical Society and the Academy of Sciences wished the prisoner to finish a volume on the glacial period, and using this as a support, Sasha petitioned the authorities to allow his brother resume work. He made every scholar in the capital miserable, and plagued every scientific association until they agreed to support his application. The fruit of this labor was that the governor entered Kropotkin's cell bearing precious gifts. It would take an Ippolit Mishkin in his most eloquent moment to describe the captive's unfathomable joy when he felt the paper beneath his palm and clutched in his hungry fingers, an inked pen! In the presence of gendarmes, the brothers were permitted to see each other.[35] Sasha was much agitated. He hated the very sight of the uniforms of the executioners, and was too frank to keep his feelings to himself. Kropotkin was happy to see his honest face, his eyes full of love, and yet he wished him as far away as Zurich, for he knew that tho Sasha now came to the Third Section by day of his own free will, the time would come when he would be brought there by night under the escort of blue-garbed gendarmes. Kropotkin was right. Sasha wrote a letter to his friend, the famous refugee and profound thinker, P. L. Lavrov, in which he mentioned his fears that his brother will fall ill in his armored chamber. The Third Section intercepted the letter and arrested the writer. This was the story which leaked into Kropotkin's cell and broke him down.