Through a door at one side of the room unshaven soldiers, in mud-colored uniforms, passed ceaselessly in and out. Most of the occupants were women, poor women with _platoks_ tied over their heads, and prosperous, well dressed women with diamonds in their ears. Some sat dejectedly against the wall, waiting. Some, in high-pitched, nervous voices, demanded to see their sons and brothers immediately. The guards replied wearily but patiently. Daddy R. was for quietly sitting down with the waiting ones, in Russian fashion. We prodded him into action, and made our way past two sentries to an inner office. At the desk sat a soldier _commissaire_. His eyes were heavy with sleep and his young face gray with fatigue. In a corner of the office two exhausted comrades lay asleep on the floor. By sheer effort of will, the _commissaire_ kept on answering questions fired at him from a dozen tongues. In time our turn came. He read our passes, glanced at the seals, gave a hurried order to a guard, and bowed us out. We passed through a succession of dingy offices, up a dark stairway, and down a long corridor. “It’s the Troubetskoy bastion,” Mikhailoff whispered in an awed undertone. Our guide motioned us to wait. At the other end of the hall some sailors and soldiers were talking. One of them looked up, saw me, and, detaching himself from his comrades, brought a chair, which he offered with a pleasant “Pazhal’sta.” A few minutes later the commandant of the bastion appeared, a bunch of keys jangling in his hand. He wore the uniform of an officer, and spoke a little English. Like the others, he was pale and haggard, and later in the day he confided to me that he could not live through another five days like those just past. “Up to the time of the last Revolution,” he said, “there were only three or four members of the old régime in the entire prison. We were not prepared with food or fuel to take care of many more. Suddenly, in a single day, we had to find quarters and provisions for nearly three hundred. Then, there were the mobs. I have not felt secure for a single second.” He took us first to a tier of cells in which the military school cadets were imprisoned. At the door of the first cell he asked if we preferred to talk to the boys alone. “They might feel freer,” I said, and he nodded and withdrew. They all told virtually the same story. They had been terribly frightened on their way to the prison, for the crowds had tried to take them from the convoy. “They have killed our comrades!” the mobs shouted. “They are trying to destroy our Revolution. It is time to stop their cake-eating. Throw them in the river! Put a bullet through them!” Once a group of them were lined up against a wall; but the convoy fought off the crowd. In the first twenty-four hours in prison, things had been bad because the cells were damp and cold and there was no food; but the boys explained the conditions as the commandant had done, and blamed no one.