“Oh, of course we know you; we’ve heard such a lot about you!” cried several. “Will you come and have some tea at once, or brush the dust off first?” they asked, and vied with each other in doing the agreeable and making me at home. It was a curious contrast to the manners of my German guards. The Russians were frank and simple; there was something of even friendly confidence in their behaviour. To the German police I was a dangerous criminal, who went about under false names. They had their orders, and followed them rigidly, not troubling themselves with anything beyond that, hoping thereby to gain a reward (as I gathered from their whispered talk when they supposed me asleep). To the Russian gendarmes,[22] who never have anything to do with common criminals, I was a “political offender,” a “State prisoner” (as we call it), whose name they had heard so often that they looked on me quite as an old acquaintance. I had not been in Russia for four years, and the first persons I met from whom I heard my mother tongue were gendarmes. The reader will be able to understand my mingled feelings. Any uninitiated person glancing into the room where I sat before the steaming samovar, refreshing myself with tea, and gossiping with the gendarmes standing round, might have thought we were a party of old friends enjoying a cosy chat. Footnote 22: See preface.—_Trans._ “Well, what’s it like in foreign parts?—not so nice as here, eh?” asked the lads; and I related how in “foreign parts” it was ever so much nicer than at home, in many ways. But that they would not allow to be possible, and we disputed about it, till at last everyone present, ten or twelve men, were all talking at once. When this topic was exhausted I asked what was the news at home, what was happening? They then described excitedly how all Russia had just been celebrating the majority of the heir-apparent, the present Tsar. The German police having fulfilled their commission and handed me over with bag and baggage, had departed, probably somewhat disappointed, for no reward had been given them—in Granitza, at least. After some hours an officer of the gendarmerie appeared, and commanded some of the men to be ready to escort me, as I was to go on by the next train. I saw that he gave over to one of them the money that had been taken from me by the German police. Unobserved, I immediately drew out the Russian money I had concealed about me, and then handed it to the officer, for I feared it might be discovered if I were carefully searched. He was greatly surprised, and asked if I had never been searched in Germany. He then ordered me to be searched again, which was done with every care; but all the same, the rest of my German money and the scissors were not found. Three gendarmes accompanied me on the journey to Petersburg. In Warsaw, where we arrived during the night, a colonel of gendarmerie was awaiting me. Like most of his kind, he was very polite and ready to converse.