See note, page 189. Footnote 93: This punishment consists in fastening a wheelbarrow by chains to the prisoner so that he is obliged to push it about with him wherever he goes; and even when he wishes to sleep he must contrive to hoist it into such a position as will render lying down possible.—_Trans._ Naturally Fomitchov stood alone in this exaggeration of royalist enthusiasm, but as a Russophil he found many sympathisers. A certain number among us were firmly persuaded that Russian social and domestic conditions were far superior to those of Western Europe, and disputes about this supposed Russian perfection were endless; they were the occasion of many a wager, and not infrequently caused serious estrangements between friends, or—as our double-Dutch expressed it—“climatic disturbances.” This strange belief in the superiority of backward Russia was a ruling craze of the time in our country. The entire progressive press was Russophil in that sense; and the tendency had manifested itself even in Socialist literature, in the passionate insistence that, Russian conditions being perfectly different from those of any other country, the revolutionary struggle must proceed on essentially distinct lines. I must confess that I was often pained to hear men suffering for their convictions giving vent to opinions so strongly resembling the arguments of hardened reactionaries. One of the most strenuous advocates of these views in our room was a man who—strange to say—bore the reputation of being among the ablest in the prison. Nicholas Posen had been a village school-teacher who had taken no specially active part in the revolutionary movement, but had chanced to participate in armed resistance to the gendarmerie at Kiëv, and had been brought to trial in consequence, together with Maria Kovalèvskaya and others. He had been condemned to fourteen years and ten months’ “katorga,” subsequently increased by another fourteen years, for an attempt to escape from prison in Irkutsk. He was well educated and intelligent, but he had no political convictions worth mentioning. He had a passion for argument, and would discuss anything and everything by the hour, always ready to prove any given proposition, and seizing any pretext for a debate—a philosophical problem, or any everyday trifle. Serious study was not his forte, and his everlasting chatter disturbed others at their work; hardly had his eyes opened in the morning before his tongue was set in motion, and it never rested all day long.