Whether he transmitted our protest I do not know; but anyhow, we were not again asked to undergo this degrading process until the end of our stay in this prison. * * * * * Russian prison regulations provide that prisoners belonging to the different categories shall be treated differently: the “administrative exiles” less severely than those banished to Siberia after a regular trial; and the latter again somewhat better than those condemned to penal servitude. But by the end of a month or two we had so contrived that this gradation was no longer apparent. We hard-labour prisoners only differed from the other “politicals” in having to wear the convict dress, and in not being allowed—as they were—to see our ladies, who were imprisoned in their own special tower. These interviews were only permitted to them when those who wished to meet were related, married, or betrothed to each other. But this was soon arranged. Various couples had an understanding on the subject, and addressed simultaneous petitions to the Governor of Moscow, asking to be allowed interviews with each other, as they were betrothed. In most cases this was a purely fictitious engagement, as the staff very well knew, and was only designed to vary the monotony of prison life; but not seldom the pretence led to a veritable attachment, as may easily be imagined. These were mostly young people of from eighteen to eight-and-twenty, and the nature of their surroundings shed a romantic glamour over their intercourse. The young pair met in the office of the prison, a dreary apartment with grated windows; and every word was listened to by an official. Prison life lent a poetical and spiritualised expression to their features, and there was much to awaken mutual interest and compassion. Sometimes this affection remained purely platonic; but in some cases an actual wedding was the upshot. Of course, in the latter event the young couple received the hearty sympathy of all their comrades, who also had personal reasons for rejoicing. The ceremony always took place in the prison chapel, and was a great occasion which pleasantly varied our dull existence. Prisoners were allowed at intervals to receive visitors from outside. These also must be near relations, and often other friends and acquaintances gave themselves out as betrothed to such and such a prisoner in order to be allowed entry. It occasionally happened in this way that an awkward situation came about, if a young man or a girl appeared to be betrothed to two or more different people; but the solution was generally a satisfactory one in the end.