Looking on as an unbiassed spectator at the life and vivacity of the scene, the riches and luxury displayed day by day on the Nevski Prospekte, at the line of handsome equipages, the brilliant uniforms of the Tsar's Guard Imperial, at the laughing eyes and fair faces of the fairest women of the world, at the hourly ebb and flow of the splendid pageant, who could believe, or, believing, realise that not a stone's-throw away, beneath the horrible gloomy walls of Peter's fortress, there languished men and women, equal in birth and position to those gay _flâneurs_ of the present hour, and who once had flaunted their colours as bravely as the best, but who now, owing to the inexorable will of an acknowledged tyrant, wore their hearts away in imprisonment for some political lapse, some inadvertent dereliction, no matter how slight; perhaps but a word whispered in a lover's ear, a note given or taken, an uncontrolled exclamation, a gesture of emotion; and who, victims of that despotic secret police, betrayed, maybe, by their nearest and dearest, were hurled in one moment from comparative security and protection into the terrible, silent, unapproachable dungeons of Petropavlovsk, from which no word or sigh, no cry for help, no appeal for justice ever resounds, and into which no whisper of comfort or encouragement, no sign of love, friendship, or remembrance, ever penetrates, whose only outlook is the still more horrible sentence of exile to Siberia, or perhaps a merciful deliverance through death on the weary march thither? The very air of the gay city breathes disaffection and suspicion, while upon the brightest countenance, beneath the merriest jest and laugh, one reads the fleeting look of terror, or hears the echo of strained anxiety. It was of Venice that Lord Byron wrote his famous line: "A palace and a prison on each hand." And yet, surely, it may well be typical of great Petersburg, where fair, and grand, and imperial rises the Winter Palace, guarded night and day by ranks of soldiers and police, within which reign luxury, power, and wealth, though stalked by the grim shadows of treachery, deception, Nihilism; while hard by, the frowning bastions of Peter and Paul tell of the first Peter's cruel tyranny, as of the latter-day hand of iron despotism and oppression; within whose death-encircling walls languish many of Russia's proudest sons and daughters, who, grown hopeless from long and fruitless waiting for deliverance, have become "... Bowed and bent, Wax gray, and ghostly, withering ere their time." Thus does history but repeat itself, and the story of _Ivan Ivanowich_ is rehearsed again and again, only the actors changing, not the drama, or the _mise-en-scène_.