This common life of so many young people in the prison had led to the development of a peculiar jargon. Each room had its nickname: the first was “the Sanhedrin,” the second “the nobles’ room,” the third “Yakutsk,” and the fourth “Volost,” _i.e._ “the commune.” These names had their origin in the dim and distant past, and I never discovered what had given rise to them. The inmates of the “nobles’ room,” in which I was located, were all clever, well-educated young men, full of life and vigour; each in a way represented a different type, and some had a really remarkable force of character. Among these latter I would especially class Nicholas Yatzèvitch, who was the son of a priest in Poltava. When a seventeen-year-old student in the Veterinary College at Kharkov he was arrested for attempting to rescue Alexei Medvediev[80] from prison, was tried, and sentenced to fifteen years’ “katorga.” He had escaped (as I have said before) from the Irkutsk prison, had been recaptured, and condemned to another fourteen years’ penal servitude. He was barely nineteen when brought to Kara, where he gained the goodwill of everyone by his admirable qualities. Modest even to bashfulness, silent and reserved, he yet exercised over his companions a quite wonderful influence. His thirst for knowledge was without limit; he studied various subjects with unflagging industry while in prison, especially natural science, philosophy, and literature, besides learning several languages. He found time, too, for manual work, at which he proved himself very quick and adroit. He was on friendly terms with every one of his comrades in prison without exception, always affectionate and ready to help. No wonder he gained the esteem of all, and was willingly looked up to as an authority, despite his youth (he was but five-and-twenty when I first went to Kara); whether the question were one of household affairs or an abstruse theoretical problem, his opinion was sure to find favour with the majority. The bent of his mind was towards metaphysics, and in philosophy as well as social science he gave himself out as an eclectic; he shared the opinions of Dühring and the Neo-Kantians, and in political economy was a follower of Carey, Bastian, and similar bourgeois theorists. Of course, therefore, he counted among the opponents of Marxism. Footnote 80: See chap. xxv. p. 262.