these strange companions, studied their characters, and heard from them their different histories and the events of their lives. I am certainly not about to become the historian of these heroes of the bagnio; but I will give one tale, which is not without interest, and which shows that a false Byronism of deed and thought was not unrepresented among them. One of our felons, Kantier by name, was sentenced to hard labour for life. He was still young, a man short of stature, but strongly built, of a clear and dark but pale complexion; he had black and burning eyes, and his whole physiognomy bespoke a firm and daring disposition. He had been clerk to a wine merchant at St. Petersburg; and when I asked him one day what was the cause of his sentence and punishment, he replied, ‘It is because I killed the girl with whom I was in love. I suspected her of being unfaithful to me. I had suffered horribly, and I was determined to be revenged upon her. In order to execute my design with greater ease, I pretended to make it up with her; and, by dint of coaxing, got her to promise, on a certain holiday, to go on an excursion into the country with me. She hesitated about it a long time, as if she had had a presentiment of some mischief; but at last she consented, upon the condition that she might bring a female friend along with her. _That_ did not suit my plans very well, but I had to put up with it. On the appointed day we started, all three of us. Armed with a pistol and a dagger, I walked alongside of my mistress and talked to her. She had never seemed to me either so pretty or so loving as she did then; but that only added to my jealousy and my thirst for revenge. More than once I was on the point of dispatching her, but her face disarmed me. At last I stopped; it was in a field; I pointed out something in the view to my sweetheart which made her turn away her head. At that moment I put the pistol to her temple, and pulled the trigger. My hand shook, and I only wounded her; the friend screamed and ran. She, slightly hurt and stunned by the shot, turned round two or three times, then, throwing herself on her knees before me, “Forgive me!” she cried in a voice so touching and heart-rending that I shuddered. But I answered by sinking the dagger into her heart, the weapon going in up to its hilt. She fell down stiff and dead. I stabbed her in the breast with my knife, and then ran to give myself up to the police; and here I am, after the knout, for life....’ ‘But are you not sorry for having killed her? Does not your conscience reproach you bitterly for such a crime?’ ‘Yes, I am sorry for her. I shall never forget her as long as I live, and I shall never love any one else; but as to my conscience, I thought I was quite right in killing her.’ ‘But, if it were possible for her to be alive and come back to you, you surely would not do so by her again?’