They were continually haunted by the fear of my dying or committing suicide. When we had a river to cross, they sat by me in the boat, and held me by both arms, in case I should leap into the water; and at our meals they gave me meat cut into little squares, from which the bones had been carefully removed, and which I had to eat with a spoon. Thus, without being positively cruel, these soldiers showed an astonishing indifference to my sad position. In the conversation, for instance, which I have just cited, it will be seen that they made an abstraction of me: I ceased to be a man, a creature of God, suffering in body and in misery of mind; I was only a dangerous charge, to be got rid of as quickly as possible; and the only thing they could find pity for was for themselves. But it was not in them alone that I had to remark a charity so nicely restricted, or such indifference to the pains of other men. At one of the places where we changed horses, the new postilion, a great rough fellow, came up to me and asked me: ‘Are you a Pole? How many _kibitkas_ are following you, then?’ ‘None.’ ‘What! none? As soon as you see a _kibitka_ with a Pole, one may always bet that there will be no end to them; these Poles must be in swarms, and yet I can’t think how we are not come to the last of them by this time.’ At the same time I should be singularly ungrateful and unjust if I did not declare that such speeches as these were rare and exceptional, and that they stood out in contrast with the general manner of the country people towards me. These showed themselves full of compassion, and even of solicitude; and after entering Russia Proper, as I advanced by degrees into the interior, I never ceased to receive from them unequivocal marks of their sympathy and pity. How often was I not followed by travellers, especially by ladies, who pressed gifts of money on my acceptance! How often have I not seen at our halting places young girls stop and look at me with sadness, even with tearful eyes! One rich merchant, who was returning from the fair at Nijni-Novgorod, pressed upon me with real eagerness the sum of two hundred roubles, saying it was nothing for him to lose, and might be of the greatest use to me. If I always thought it right to refuse such presents, of which, moreover, I should have been doubtless deprived by the Russian authorities, I accepted without hesitation and with much gratitude the articles of food and drink brought to me on all sides by the inhabitants. It was rarely that the master of any posting-house failed to offer me either tea or brandy at the stations where we stopped; his wife or his daughters presented me with cakes, dried fish, or fruits, while the neighbours would hasten to do the same. At one of these stations, not far from Toula, I saw an official in a uniform arrive, and I was timidly offered by him a little parcel wrapped in a silk handkerchief. As he gave it me, he said, ‘Accept this from my