On account of the conditions attached by the Grand Duke of Baden to my extradition, I had till now been treated sometimes as an ordinary criminal, sometimes as a “political”; but from the moment I joined this convoy I was treated frankly as a “political.”[42] This being so, I was not placed among the ordinary criminals when we reached the train, but was put in the compartment reserved for the escort. Here there was a fair amount of room, and one could be pretty comfortable, while the others were packed like herrings in a barrel; but, on the other hand, the society of the soldiers was not very enlivening, as they dared not exchange a word with me in presence of the officer. Footnote 42: The Russian Government has a twofold reason for making this careful distinction between ordinary and political prisoners after conviction. Firstly, in order that the supervision of the latter shall be stricter, and that they may be prevented from influencing the ordinary prisoners; and secondly, because the “politicals” were originally only recruited from the upper and privileged classes, and the tradition remains. After four-and-twenty hours we arrived at Kiëv, where we were to have a day’s rest. We got out of the train, were formed up in procession, encircled by the soldiers, and marched by a roundabout way through the suburbs to the prison. A strange emotion possessed me, when, after years of wandering both in Russia and abroad, I once again passed through the streets of my native town. I had not been here since I had fled from prison in 1878, six years before; and now I returned in chains, with the ominous yellow diamond on my back, a convict doomed to years of exile. “Get on, get on! Mind what you’re about!” I heard a rough voice say, and felt a poke in my back from the butt-end of a rifle. “This is the beginning,” I thought, and pictured all the humiliation and suffering that lay before me. However, the officer had remarked the incident, and coming up, reprimanded the soldier who had hustled me. When we came to the prison gate the convicts were told off one by one like sheep, and let through the door in turn. I was taken straight to the office. Here everything was altered, and everywhere faces were strange to me. Fat old Captain Kovàlsky was gone, and the rest of the staff had been changed too. “It was from this prison you escaped?” asked a haughty-looking man in uniform, the new governor, Simàshko. I assented. “Ah, you managed that very cunningly!” said he, laughing. In reality the thing had been very simple. One of my comrades, named Frolènko, had provided himself with a false passport, and had got employment in the prison; one night he took Stefanòvitch, Bohanòvsky and me away disguised as warders.[43] Footnote 43: