“You were concerned in the Tchigirìn case?” he began; and when I assented, he continued confidentially, “Ah, that was a long while ago. Wasn’t it at the time of the Polish rising? Well, then, you will have the benefit of the coronation amnesty; they won’t have much against you.” At the time of the Polish insurrection, in 1863, I was only eight years old. This is an illustration of how much many of the officers of gendarmerie know about the political trials which are supposed to be their own special business. This friendly sympathy did not prevent him, of course, from giving my escort the strictest orders about my treatment, as I could hear when seated in the carriage. “Be sure you don’t fall asleep!” he whispered. The gendarmes, however, did not allow this to trouble their minds much, but continued to treat me in a very easy-going fashion, and did not manifest any fear of my running away. When we arrived in Petersburg a captain of gendarmerie met us, and took me at once in a closed carriage to the Fortress of Peter and Paul. [Illustration: FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL, ST. PETERSBURG To face page 48 ] CHAPTER VI THE FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL—THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR AS COMPATRIOT—A HARD-HEARTED DOCTOR—A FLEETING ACQUAINTANCE A strange feeling came over me when I saw that I was being conveyed to this prison, used by the Government of the Tsars for political offenders only; a place never spoken of in Russia without a shudder. I approached it with dark forebodings, but these gave place to interest. I knew well that a cruel severity ruled in this place, but I could not help being curious to experience it personally. The reality fully answered to my expectations. I was taken at once to a room where the governor of the prison, Colonel Lesnik of the gendarmerie, ordered me to strip to the skin. A couple of gendarmes examined me carefully, and then gave me, instead of my own clothes, prison under-linen, a striped cotton gown, such as is worn in hospitals, and a pair of slippers. My own clothes and other things were taken away. I was then shut up in a cell on the ground floor. Everything goes on here in utter silence; not a word is heard, the stillness is intense. No one could imagine that men lived here year after year; it felt like a house of the dead. Only the chimes of the clock broke upon the ear, sounding out every quarter of an hour the national hymn, “How glorious is our Lord in Zion!”