There had been passed by the Emperor Nicholas, in the autumn of the year 1845, a decree, which I have already referred to, and of which the object was to aggravate the condition of the exiles in Siberia, by tightening round them the fetters which time and custom had slackened, and which become loose through the sheer impossibility of enforcing in all its strictness the severe law of the _katorga_. Commissions nominated for the purpose now visited all the penal settlements, and proposed new measures of severity in these places; and the enforced cohabitation in the barracks of all convicts, without any exceptions whatever, was the first point in which it was thought possible and desirable to yield to the present savage disposition of the Tzar. All this induced me to persist in the project which I had already conceived, and which had been long fructifying in my mind. At the very moment in which I had signed at Kiow the formula of the sentence which condemned me to convict labour for the rest of my natural life, I had formed the determination of flying from such an accursed sojourn and lot; and a vague hope of being again seen in the land of the living and among free men had entered my mind. The hard work to which I was set, during the first period of my _katorga_, was not calculated to encourage me; but my hopes rose as soon as I was able to have more relations with men and things, that is, as soon as I became a clerk in the counting-house of the establishment at Ekaterinski-Zavod; and, as early as the summer of 1845, I made two attempts, both of which were frustrated at the very outset, without, however, awakening any suspicion as to my intentions.