It was on a fine but cold winter’s night that I quitted Kaminieç. I took my seat in a roomy open carriage alongside of Major Poloutkovskoï. Opposite us sat two soldiers, with loaded muskets, and we were followed by a second carriage, in which were two officers of the secret Police. Owing to the season, and the lateness of the hour, which was midnight, the town was dark, and the streets were deserted; but as I passed before certain houses which I knew well, and of which the inhabitants were united in the same lot with myself, I looked up, and I saw lights still burning. Was it as a message of farewell? or did they bear witness to vigils full of anguish which were being held within? The plaintive tinkling of bells, fastened, after the Russian fashion, to the shafts of the vehicle, which was drawn by three horses, alone broke the mournful silence of the night, and I sank into a reverie of indulged sadness. I was obliged to my companion for not interrupting the current of my thoughts by words; he did not speak even when we stopped to change horses, and it was not till the day began to break that he commenced a conversation. It turned at first only on France; her administration, her commercial arrangements, her agriculture, her commerce, these were all subjects in which he seemed to take a great interest. By degrees we began to talk of politics, even of emigration, and I had the opportunity of convincing myself how perfect was the knowledge which my interlocutor had been able to collect of our means, our men, and even of our smallest publications. I expressed my astonishment at this to him; he smiled and replied, ‘We are obliged to learn all these things, and the means of learning them are never wanting.’ In general, the Major, whom I had had the opportunity of studying during the examination that had taken place at Kaminieç, and whom I was to meet again later in the Commission of Inquiry at Kiow, showed himself, though cold and almost indifferent, to be a well-educated man. He was polite and courteous in his demeanour to me, and in all my interviews with the Governor of Kaminieç he had never failed to call General Radistchev to reason, whenever he gave vent to any burst of violence. A spring of my _calèche_ having given way on the evening of our arrival at Mohilow, I had to be put into a _kibitka_ with the two soldiers, while the Major in another preceded us, along with the officers of the secret Police; and we were carried along with a rapidity of which no one who has not seen a Russian convoy of this kind can form any idea. There it was that I met with an accident the nature of which I am still far from understanding and which I despair of describing to my readers. At one of those jolts of which the _kibitka_ at its furious pace bestows so many on the traveller, I felt something snap in the tendons which attach the head, and a sharp and terrible pain made me give vent to such a savage cry of distress