Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed, and whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to a large vault, partly lit. This was the mine. A deafening noise of pickaxes and hammers. There he saw some hundreds of wretched figures, with shaggy beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids; clad in tatters, some of them barefoot, others in sandals, fettered with heavy foot-chains. No song, no whistling. Now and then they shyly looked at the visitor and his companion. The water dripped from the stones; the tatters of the convicts were thoroughly wet. One of them, a tall man, of suffering mien, laboured hard with gasping breath, but the strokes of his pickaxe were not heavy and firm enough to loosen the rock. "Why are you here?" Mr. Lemke asked. The convict looked confused, with an air almost of consternation, and silently continued his work. "It is forbidden to the prisoners," said the inspector, "to speak of the cause of their banishment!" Entombed alive; forbidden to say why! "But who is the convict?" Mr. Lemke asked the guide, with low voice. "It is Number 114!" the guide replied, laconically. "This I see," answered the visitor; "but what are the man's antecedents? To what family does he belong?" "He is a count," replied the guide; "a well-known conspirator. More, I regret to say, I cannot tell you about Number 114!" The visitor felt as if he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere--as if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly asked by that officer-- "Well, what impression did our penal establishment make upon you?" Mr. Lemke stiffly bowing in silence, the officer seemed to take this as a kind of satisfied assent, and went on-- "Very industrious people, the men below; are they not?" "But with what feelings," Mr. Lemke answered, "must these unfortunates look forward to the day of rest after the week's toil!" "Rest!" said the officer; "convicts must always labour. There is no rest for them. They are condemned to perpetual forced labour; and he who once enters the mine never leaves it!" "But this is barbarous!" The officer shrugged his shoulders, and said, "The exiled work daily for twelve hours; on Sundays too. They must never pause. But, no; I am mistaken. Twice a year, though, rest is permitted to them--at Easter-time, and on the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor." IX. Can we wonder, when we see the ultra-Bulgarian atrocities practised in Russia, that "Terror for Terror!" should at last have become the parole of the men of the Revolutionary Committee?