The days passed on in miserable inactivity. Then one morning a sound fell upon my ears, someone was knocking again, and in my immediate neighbourhood, as it seemed. Was it for me? I replied at once with the familiar signal. It was for me; what joy! Now I should know what comrades lay here, and should be able to exchange thoughts with a human being. “Who are you?” “In what case are you concerned?” were the questions I deciphered. I seized my comb, the only hard movable object to be found in my prison cell, and tapped the answer. My interlocutor expressed his surprise and asked, “How did you come here?” To my question, “Who are you?” the answer was “Kobiliànsky.” I was no less surprised to “meet” him here (if so one may express it). We had not previously known one another personally, but I knew that in 1880 he had been condemned to penal servitude for life, on account of his participation in various terrorist affairs, and had long ago been deported to the Siberian mines on the Kara. How came he, then, to be in the Fortress of Peter and Paul? I burned with impatience to learn his adventures, but he was just as anxious to hear mine, and I had to give way to him. Scarcely, however, had I told him as shortly as possible how I had been arrested in Germany and given up to Russia, when I was interrupted by a voice, “So you are knocking?” I sprang up and looked round. Before me stood Colonel Lesnik, accompanied by some gendarmes. The door had been noiselessly opened; I had been observed, and caught in the act; there was no getting out of it. “I give you fair warning, if you attempt such a thing again, you will be put back on the ground-floor, and deprived of tobacco and of exercise.” Thereupon he departed, and I felt like a naughty schoolboy, found out and disgraced. Moreover, I had to give up hope of learning why Kobiliànsky had been brought back from Siberia.[27] Footnote 27: I learned the following particulars later. In May, 1882, some of the political prisoners at Kara escaped. They were soon recaptured, and horribly severe measures were then set on foot in their prison. It was resolved to send away the “most dangerous element.” Thirteen men were chosen, on any kind of pretext, only four of them having been concerned in the escape, and they were all despatched to the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and afterwards to Schlüsselburg, the special prison for politicals. There the harshest régime prevails, and no one who enters is ever set free again. Kobiliànsky shared this fate, although he had not been one of those who had broken loose from prison. Nearly all these unhappy men met their death in Schlüsselburg: among them Butzìnsky, Gèhlis, I. Ivànov, Kobiliànsky, Shturkòvsky, and Shtchedrin. Only one survives (1902)—Michael Popov.