Perhaps one of the most celebrated of the female revolutionists was Madame Vera Phillipova, born Figner, who never found her way to the mines of Kara, where she would undoubtedly have become prominent among the most active champions of her party. She was long the most popular personage in the revolutionary movement; her name was in everybody’s mouth, her fine traits, her unfailing and unlimited constancy, her undefeated, self-sacrificing devotion to the cause, her talents for organisation, her boundless inventive powers, her tireless energy,—all won for her profound respect from her comrades; and even her enemies, the members of the court-martial which condemned her, were forced to admire her dignified demeanour when arraigned and tried for her life. A mere girl, of striking beauty, and possessing extraordinary personal influence, she freely spent herself in the service of her fellows. Like many other well-born girls, her chief aim was to help the peasants, and she devoted herself to the rough life in small villages on the Volga, enduring all the hardships and privations of the labouring classes, and her self sacrifice was greatly stimulated by what she saw of misery, poverty and hopeless ignorance. It was borne in on her that reform could only be effected by the most reckless measures, and she became a terrorist heart and soul, vowed to violence, and prepared to go to any extreme. In this temper, she readily joined in the plot for the assassination of the Czar, Alexander II, on his return from Livadia to St. Petersburg, and the dynamite for use in the bombs was stored in her house. This did not absorb all her energies, and she was still active in the organisation of secret societies and in preaching revolutionary principles among people of good society, to which she belonged by birth and education; for she was the daughter of a distinguished general and was well received by the best people. At Odessa she mixed much with the military set and thus became identified with the conspiracy of “the Fourteen.” Nearly all of those concerned were military or naval officers, five of whom, with Vera Figner and Ludmilla Volkenstein, were condemned to death. She knew that she and her companions had been betrayed, and she might have escaped by timely flight into another country, but she scorned to yield, although arrest was certain, and she held her ground, only to be convicted and thrown into the Schlüsselburg, condemned to imprisonment for the term of her natural life. [Illustration: _Russian Prisoners_ _After the painting by Marckl_ ] The Fortress of Schlüsselburg is situated on an island in Lake Ladoga, about forty miles from St. Petersburg. The worst of all fates meted out to political prisoners in Russia is imprisonment in the subterranean dungeons of this fortress. No news penetrates the walls of the isolated prison and no information from within leaks out. Few ever leave the prison alive except to be transferred to an insane asylum.