At four o’clock in the afternoon I had a visit from the Governor, and from Major Poloutkovskoï. They represented to me that my position was an alarming one, and that it would be best for my own interest if I made the most complete confession. I persisted in my resolution. I declared I did not understand in the least what they wanted with me, and I spoke of writing to the English ambassador in St. Petersburg, and of claiming his protection. ‘You are then in a great hurry to leave Kaminieç?’ replied the Governor, ironically; ‘but keep yourself easy, I will furnish you with all the means for it.’ The same questions were repeated on the following days, either in the house of the Director of Police, where I was still detained, or in that of the Governor, who had me brought to him under an escort; the same arguments were urged, on the one side, to make me confess my real character, and there was, on the other side, the same obstinacy in keeping up the part which I had assumed. The manners of the Governor were generally cold but polite, sometimes however they were ironical, and even vehement. ‘It is in vain to say that you are a Maltese, and to play this comedy,’ cried he, in one of his examinations; ‘we know very well that you belong to the Ukraine, and so-and-so have already confessed that they have talked with you in Polish.’ He named to me two of the co-accused, the least initiated into my sayings and doings, and also the least firm. Twice over I was confronted with them. These interviews were most painful, and in spite of the flat denials which I opposed to those who thus denounced me, I saw the impossibility of persisting any longer in the line which I had hitherto followed. Every day more abundant and more precise information arrived about me, and it became clear that in prolonging a useless game I ran the risk of aggravating the situation of my accomplices; but I determined to collect the greatest possible number of the accused, and to make them witnesses to my confession, so that they might know its limits and follow my suit. I waited to be confronted with them in a body. I had not long to wait, and one evening when summoned to the Governor’s residence, I perceived in the hall a great number of my fellow-prisoners arranged along the two walls, and all standing up--they presented a moving spectacle, I might almost say a fantastic one. Many of them were persons with whom I had but a very slight acquaintance, others had been in my secret, all bore upon their faces the marks of suffering and fatigue. After a certain time spent as usual in pressing questions and in absolute denials, I exclaimed, as if out of patience, in a loud voice, and in my native tongue, ‘Well then, yes, I am not a British subject, I am a Pole; I was born in the Ukraine, I emigrated after the revolution of 1831, and I came back here. I came back into this country because a life of exile was no longer endurable to me, and because I wished to revisit Poland.