We men were given a room in common, and the ladies were shown to another. The moment we were shut in I flew to the window, climbed up, and called the name of Maria Kovalèvskaya, for we had soon found out that her cell was over ours. She answered at once, and we talked together far into the night. In our walks we had subsequently many opportunities of meeting during our eight days’ stay here. The long years of separation had in no way impaired our intimacy. On the contrary, from the first moment of meeting, our mutual sympathy found expression without the need of many words, and we understood each other as old friends do. The sufferings she had undergone moved me to the deepest compassion. The hunger-strike of which I have spoken had taken place only a short time before our advent, and she bore terrible traces of its effect, looking as if but newly risen from the grave, though her spirit was unbroken. It was still the same enthusiastic, untameable, combative nature I had known so well. Even the officials could not withstand the fascination of her personality, but yielded respect to her strong sense of right and her inflexibility of purpose, as I soon observed. We had each, naturally, much to relate; and I marvelled that she could have retained such elasticity of mind, that the range of her quick intellect should have in no wise contracted, that despite all she had gone through she could laugh and jest as ever. Everything that was going on in the distant lands of freedom interested her keenly; she never wearied of questioning me about the state of public life in Western Europe and in Russia, and she soon managed to find out in what each of us could best instruct her. I, for instance, spent two or three evenings in describing to her the working-men’s organisations in Western Europe, and giving her my own impressions of life abroad. It was characteristic of her that she was able to appreciate the peculiar social conditions of other countries, although there was so much that was unsympathetic to her as a Russian. She was especially indignant about my treatment in German prisons. In her own views she still adhered to the policy of the Buntari, and this could hardly have been otherwise. Her past life entirely belonged to the period when their views and those of the Naròdniki governed the whole revolutionary movement, and there could be no question of criticism. The simple programme of “stirring up the people to uprisings and rebellions against the existing régime, in accordance with varying local circumstances,” was in consonance with her fiery temperament, impatient of all restraint.