The plan we finally adopted was a simple one: In the door of our cell was a small window looking into the corridor. Every time we heard a footstep up or down the corridor we placed our faces close to the little window and raised our voices right lustily in a prolonged _miserere_. We fairly yelled ourselves hoarse. At last an officer had to come to see who the two disturbers were. By this man we sent a third appeal to the commanding officer of the prison, and a third message was brought back to us: “I command the prisoners to be silent.” * * * * * The third day of our arrest we were paroled pending an investigation by order of the governor--who, by the way, was M. Stolypin, soon to be introduced to the world as the prime minister of Russia. Nothing of a serious nature was discovered against us, and in due time we were released. There was no apology, no explanation. The espravnik ventured to congratulate us that we were not flogged by some of the gendarmes. This often happens, he told us, and we were lucky to have escaped. We had evidently run amuck of the unutterably stupid police administration which the peasants are finding intolerable. During the year 1906 I was arrested five times, and this instance is thoroughly characteristic of each performance. A traveler, like myself, finds it inconvenient and annoying. The peasants find it brutal and not infrequently cruel. Whatever of faith has been lost in the Czar, the direct aim of the _jacquerie_ of the next few years will be the landlords and the police administration. CHAPTER VIII A VISIT TO MARIE SPIRADONOVA A tyrannical régime--A young girl’s daring--Tortures and outrages--Entertained by the governor--A kindly police-master--Grim prison walls--Difficulties--Appeal to the governor--Shackled prisoners--Marie Spiradonova--A terrible tale--Interruptions--A Spartan mother--Letters from the fair prisoner--“Greetings to France, to England, and to America.” Adjoining the province of Saratoff, where I was arrested, is Tamboff, another government within the famine belt, where the long northern winters are more bitter because of the cruel ravages of starvation and hideous disease; and where there is--worst of all--the living, stalking dread of inhuman officialdom, martial law (which means Cossack excesses), police brutality, and governmental impositions that warrant the maddest crimes of men. Here lived a young woman of twenty-one--a modern Charlotte Corday--who, early in the year 1906, killed the lieutenant-governor of the province. When her ghastly deed had been noised abroad--and the penalty she paid--the peasants gathered in their churches to offer thanksgiving and praise for using this girl as an instrument of His Divine Justice.