It was this G--kof who sent B--ski and myself to work in his bureau, for he was partial to exiled nobles. When he left, our condition was still fairly endurable, for there was another engineer there who showed us much sympathy and friendship. We copied reports for some time, and our handwriting was getting to be very good, when an order came from the authorities that we were to be sent back to hard labour as before; some spiteful person had been at work. At bottom we were rather pleased, for we were quite tired of copying. For two whole years I worked in company with B--ski, all the time in the shops, and many a gossip did we have about our hopes for the future and our notions and convictions. Good B--ski had a very odd mind, which worked in a strange, exceptional way. There are some people of great intelligence who indulge in paradox unconscionably; but when they have undergone great and constant sufferings for their ideas and made great sacrifices for them, you can’t drive their notions out of their heads, and it is cruel to try it. When you objected something to B--ski’s propositions, he was really hurt, and gave you a violent answer. He was, perhaps, more in the right than I was as to some things wherein we differed, but we were obliged to give one another up, very much to my regret, for we had many thoughts in common. As years went on M--tski became more and more sombre and melancholy; he became a prey to despair. During the earliest part of my imprisonment he was communicative enough, and let us see what was going on in him. When I arrived at the prison he had just finished his second year. At first he took a lively interest in the news I brought, for he knew nothing of what had been going on in the outer world; he put questions to me, listened eagerly, showed emotion, but, bit by bit, his reserve grew on him and there was no getting at his thoughts. The glowing coals were all covered up with ashes. Yet it was plain that his temper grew sourer and sourer. “_Je hais ces brigands_,”[10] he would say, speaking of convicts I had got to know something of; I never could make him see any good in them. He really did not seem to fully enter into the meaning of anything I said on their behalf, though he would sometimes seem to agree in a listless sort of way. Next day it was just as before: “_je hais ces brigands_.” (We used often to speak French with him; so one of the overseers of the works, the soldier, Dranichnikof, used always to call us _aides chirurgiens_, God knows why!) M--tski never seemed to shake off his usual apathy except when he spoke of his mother. “She is old and infirm,” he said; “she loves me better than anything in the world, and I don’t even know if she’s still living. If she learns that I’ve been whipped----”