Now I understood why this man was a colonel already, notwithstanding his youth. The big political cases during the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties had given many officers of gendarmerie and of the law grand opportunities for self-advancement. The lives and freedom of the “politicals” were the merchandise by which they founded their fortunes. This gentleman had no doubt played no insignificant part in condemning to penal servitude or to death those comrades of mine on whom he was now lavishing his compliments. Perhaps he had been the originator of the happy thought by which the traitor Kùritzin was induced to sacrifice so many victims.[30] Footnote 30: Kùritzin was arrested in consequence of the attempt upon Gorinòvitch, and turned traitor unknown to his former comrades. He was shut up in a cell with the other prisoners, so that he might spy upon them; and through his information some of them were sent to the mines in Siberia, and many others delivered into the clutches of the law. I believe that he himself is now practising somewhere as a veterinary surgeon. My interview with this engaging young man was not exactly to my mind, and I was glad to be called away. I was taken to a comfortably furnished apartment, where Kotliarèvsky was seated in an armchair before a large table, looking over some papers. “I have some documents here that concern you,” he said, and began to read aloud:— “In the beginning of August, 1878, the widow of the murdered Baron Gèhkin, adjutant in the gendarmerie, observed in the neighbourhood of General Mèzentzev’s house two young men who were apparently watching for the General.” The document went on to state that the Baroness had recognised one of these young men to be myself; and on the following day she had seen them again on the watch, her cousin Baron Berg being with her at the time. Then followed a paper in which Baron Berg corroborated the lady’s evidence. There was a time, 1878-9, when a good many people delighted in romancing about me, and persisted in ascribing to me a prominent rôle in events taking place in the most widely separated parts of Russia. These imaginings even found their way into the press, and I was often surprised to read in the papers accounts of my varied exploits; I seemed to be a perfect Stenka Rasìn![31] Footnote 31: A noted Cossack chieftain of the seventeenth century, who has become a hero of Russian popular romance.—_Trans._ I remember, for example, that on May 25th, 1878, when I was still in prison at Kiëv, a rich lady of that place was murdered, evidently by thieves. Baron Gèhkin was shot on the following night, May 26th; and on the night _after_ that, May 27th, I and two comrades escaped from prison. I soon saw in the newspapers that, according to the opinion of many astute persons, the author of both these murders could be none other than myself!