“The elder under arrest at once!” the inspector com- manded; and I, who was the first in the form, and conse- quently the elder, was marched to the black cell. That spared me seeing what followed. The director came; Ganz was asked to name the ringleaders, but he could name nobody. ‘They all turned their backs to me, and began the noise,’’ was his reply. Thereupon the form was taken downstairs, and although flogging had been completely abandoned in our school, this time the two who had been reported because they asked for a light were flogged with the birch rod, under the pretext that the benefit night was a revenge for their punishment.
A BENEFIT NIGHT 93 I learned this ten days later, when I was allowed to return to the class. My name, which had been inscribed on the red board in the class, was wiped off. To this I was indifferent; but I must confess that the ten days in the cell, without books, seemed to me rather long, so that I composed (in horrible verses) a poem, in which the deeds of the fourth form were duly glorified.
Of course, our form became now the heroes of the school. For a month or so we had to tell and retell all about the affair to the other forms, and received congratulations for having managed it with such unanimity that nobody was caught separately. And then came the Sundays —all the Sundays down to Christmas — that the form had to remain at the school, not being allowed to go home. Being all kept together, we managed to make those Sundays very gay. The mammas of the goody boys brought them heaps of sweets; those who had some money spent it in buying mountains of pastry, — substantial before dinner, and sweet after it; while in the evenings the friends from the other forms smuggled in quantities of fruit for the brave fourth form.
Ganz gave up inscribing any one; but drawing was totally lost for us. No one wanted to learn drawing from that _mercenary man.
III My brother Alexander was at that time at Moscow, in a corps of cadets, and we maintained a lively correspond- ence. As long as I stayed at home this was impossible, because our father considered it his prerogative to read all letters addressed to our house, and he would soon have put an end to any but a commonplace correspondence. Now we.were free to discuss in our letters whatever we liked. The only difficulty was to get money for stamps; but we soon learned to write in such fine characters that we could convey an incredible amount of matter in each letter. Alexander, whose handwriting was beautiful, contrived to get four printed pages on one single page of note-paper, and his microscopic lines were as legible as the best small type print. It is a pity that these letters, which he kept as precious relics, have disappeared. The state police, during one of their raids, robbed him even of these treasures.
Our first letters were mostly about the little details of my new surroundings, but our correspondence soon took a more serious character. My brother could not write about trifles. Even in society he became animated only when some serious discussion was engaged in, and he complained — of feeling ‘a dull pain in the brain” —a physical pain, as" he used to say — when he was with people who cared only for small talk. He was very much in advance of me in his intellectual development, and he urged me forward, rais- ing new scientific and philosophical questions one after. another, and advising me what to read or to study. What a happiness it was for me to have such a brother! —a_ brother who, moreover, loved me passionately. To him I owe the best part of my development.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH MY BROTHER 95 Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory. ‘“ Read poetry,” he wrote: “¢ poetry makes men better.”” How often, in my after life, I realized the truth of this remark of his! Read poetry: it makes men better. He himself was a poet, and had'a wonderful facility for writing most musical verses; indeed, I think it a great pity that he abandoned poetry. But the reaction against art, which arose among the Russian youth in the early sixties, and which Turguéneff has depicted in Bazraoff (“‘ Fathers and Sons”), induced him to look upon his verses with contempt, and to plunge headlong into the natural sciences. JI must say, however, that my favorite poet was none of those whom his poetical gift, his musical ear, and his philosophical turn of mind made him like best. His favorite Russian poet was Venevitinoff, while mine was Nekrasoff, whose verses were very often unmusical, but appealed most to my heart by their sympathy for “the downtrodden and ill-treated.”’
‘¢ One must have a set purpose in his life,’’ he wrote me ‘once. ‘* Without an aim, without a purpose, life is not life.’ And he advised me to get a purpose in my life worth living for. I was too young then to find one; but ‘something undetermined, vague, ‘‘ good” altogether, already irose under that appeal, even though I could not say what ithat ‘good ” would be.
Our father gave us very little spending money, and I ‘never had any to buy a single book; but if Alexander got a few rubles from some aunt, he never spent a penny of it ‘for pleasure, but bought a book and sent it tome. He ‘objected, though, to indiscriminate veading. ‘One n ae have some question,” he wrote, “addressed to the book oe is going to-read.” However, I did not then appreci- ate this remark, and cannot think now without amazement of the number of books, often of a quite special character, 96 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST which I read in all branches, but particularly in the domain of history. JI did not waste my time upon French novels, since Alexander, years before, had characterized them in one blunt sentence: “They are stupid and full of bad language.”
The great questions concerning the conception we should form of the universe —our Weltanschawung, as the Ger- mans say — were, of course, the dominant subjects in our correspondence. In our childhood we had never been reli- gious. We were taken to church; but ina Russian church, in a small parish or in a village, the solemn attitude of the people is far more impressive than the mass itself. Of all that I ever had heard in church only two things had impressed me: the twelve passages from the Gospels, rela- tive to the sufferings of the Christ, which are read in Russia at the night service on the eve of Good Friday, and the short prayer condemning the spirit of domination, which is recited during the Great Lent, and is really beautiful by reason of its simple, unpretentious words and feeling. Push- kin has rendered it into Russian verse.
Later on, at St. Petersburg, I went several times to a Roman Catholic church, but the theatrical character of the service and the absence of real feeling in it shocked me, the more so when I saw there with what simple faith some retired Polish soldier or a peasant woman would pray in a remote corner. I also went toa Protestant church; but coming out of it I caught myself murmuring Goethe’s words: — ‘‘But you will never link hearts together Unless the linking springs from your own heart.’?
Alexander, in the meantime, had embraced with his usual passion the Lutheran faith. He had read Michelet’s book on Servetus, and had worked out for himself a reli- gion on the lines of that great fighter. He studied with enthusiasm the Augsburg declaration, which he copied out RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 97 and sent me, and our letters now became full of discussions about grace, and of texts from the apostles Paul and James. I followed my brother, but theological discussions did not deeply interest me. Since I had recovered from the typhoid fever I had taken to quite different reading.
Our sister Héléne, who was now married, was at St. Petersburg, and every Saturday night I went to visit her. Her husband had a good library, in which the French phi- losophers of the last century and the modern French histori- ans were well represented, and I plunged into them. Such books were prohibited in Russia, and evidently could not be taken to school; so I spent most of the night, every Saturday, in reading the works of the encyclopedists, the philosophical dictionary of Voltaire, the writings of the Stoics, especially Marcus Aurelius, and so on.. The infinite immensity of the universe, the greatness of nature, its poetry, its ever throbbing life, impressed me more and more; and that never ceasing life and its harmonies gave me the ecstasy of admiration which the young soul thirsts for, while my favorite poets supplied me with an expression in words of that awakening love of mankind and faith in its progress which make the best part of youth and impress man for a life.
Alexander, by this time, had gradually come to a Kantian agnosticism, and the “relativity of perceptions,” “ percep- tions in time and space, and time only,’ and so on, filled pages and pages in our letters, the writing of which became more and more microscopical as the subjects under discussion grew in importance. But neither then nor later on, when we ' ased to spend hours and hours in discussing Kant’s philoso- phy, could my brother convert me to become a disciple of the Kénigsberg philosopher.
Natural sciences— that is, mathematics, physics, and astronomy — were my chief studies. In the year 1858, before Darwin had brought out his immortal work, a pro- 98 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST fessor of zodlogy at the Moscow University, Roulier, pul lished three lectures on transformism, and my brother took up at once his ideas concerning the variability of species. He was not satisfied, however, with approximate proofs only, and began to study a number of special books on heredity and the like; communicating to me in his letters the main facts, as well as his ideas and his doubts. The appearance of “‘The Origin of Species”? did not settle his doubts on several special points, but only raised new ques- tions and gave him the impulse for further studies. We afterward discussed — and that discussion lasted for many years — various questions relative to the origin of variations, their chances of being transmitted and being accentuated; in short, those questions which have been raised quite lately in the Weismann-Spencer controversy, in Galton’s researches, and in the works of the modern Neo-Lamarckians. Owing to his philosophical and critical mind, Alexander had noticed at once the fundamental importance of these questions for the theory of variability of species, even though they were so often overlooked then by many naturalists.
I must also mention a temporary excursion into the domain of political economy. In the years 1858 and 1859 every one in Russia talked of political economy; lectures on free trade and protective duties attracted crowds of people, and my brother, who was not yet absorbed by the variabil- ity of species, took a lively though temporary interest in economical matters, sending me for reading the “ Political Economy” of Jean Baptiste Say. I read a few chapters only: tariffs and banking operations did not interest me in tne least; but Alexander took up these matters so passion- ately that he even wrote letters to our stepmother, trying to interest her in the intricacies of the customs duties, Later on, in Siberia, as we were re-reading some of the letters of that period, we laughed like children when we) fell upon one of his epistles in which he complained of our A GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT 99.
stepmother’s incapacity to be moved even by such burning questions, and raged against a greengrocer whom he had caught in the street, and who, ‘would you believe it,’’ he wrote with signs of exclamation, “although he was a trades- man, affected a pig-headed indifference to tariff questions! ”’ Every summer about one half of the pages were taken to a camp at Peterhof. The lower forms, however, were dis- pensed from joining the camp, and I spent the first two summers at Nikdélskoye. ‘To leave the school, to take the train to Moscow, and there to meet Alexander was such a happy prospect that I used to count the days that had to pass till that glorious one should arrive. But on one occa- sion a great disappointment awaited me at Moscow. Alex- ander had not passed his examinations, and was left for another year in the same form. He was, in fact, too young to enter the special classes; but our father was very angry with him, nevertheless, and would not permit us to see each other. I felt very sad. We were not children any more, and had so much to say to each other. I tried to obtain permission to go to our aunt Sulima, at whose house I might meet Alexander, but it was absolutely refused. After our father remarried we were never allowed to see our mother’s relations.
That spring our Moscow house was full of guests. Every night the reception-rooms were flooded with lights, the band played, the confectioner was busy making ices and pastry, and card-playing went on in the great hall till a late hour.
I strolled aimlessly about in the brilliantly illuminated rooms, and felt unhappy.
One night, after ten, a servant beckoned me, telling me . to come out to the entrance hall. I went. ‘Come to the _ tcachmen’s house,” the old major-domo Frol whispered to me. ‘ Alexander Alexéievich is here.”
I dashed across the yard, up the flight of steps leading to 100 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the coachmen’s house, and into a wide, half-dark room, where, at the immense dining-table of the servants, I saw Alexander.
‘“‘Sdsha, dear, how did you come?” and in a moment we rushed into each other’s arms, hugging each other and unable to speak from emotion.
“ Hush, hush! they may overhear you,” said the servants’ cook, Praskévia, wiping away her tears with her apron. ‘¢Poor orphans! If your mother were only alive”? — Old Frol stood, his head deeply bent, his eyes also twinkling.
“Took here, Pétya, not a word to any one; to no one,” he said, while Praskdvia placed on the table an earthenware jar full of porridge for Alexander.
He, glowing with health, in his cadet uniform, already had begun to talk about all sorts of matters, while he rap- idly emptied the porridge pot. I could hardly make him tell me how he came there at such a late hour. We lived then near the Smolénsky boulevard, within a stone’s throw of the house where our mother died, and the corps of cadets was at the opposite outskirts of Moscow, full five miles away.
He had made a doll out of bedclothes, and had put it in his bed, under the blankets; then he went to the tows, descended from a window, came out unnoticed, and waliod the whole distance.
‘‘Were you not afraid at night, in the deserted fields round your corps?” I asked. | ‘‘What had I to fear? Only lots of dogs were apon me; I had teased them myself. To-morrow I shall ta<e my sword with me.”
The coachmen and other servants came in and out; they sighed as they looked at us, and took seats at a dislanve, along the walls, exchanging words in a subdued tone, «9 48 not to disturb us; while we two, in each other’s arms, o% STOLEN INTERVIEWS 101 there till midnight, talking about nebule and Laplace’s hypothesis, the structure of matter, the struggles of the papacy under Boniface VIII. with the imperial power, and so on.
From time to time one of the servants would hurriedly run in, saying, “ Pétinka, go and show thyself in the hall; they are moving about and may ask for thee.”
I implored Sdsha not to come next night; but he came, nevertheless, — not without having had a scrimmage with the dogs, against whom he had taken his sword. TI re- sponded with feverish haste, when, earlier than the day before, I was called once more to the coachmen’s house, Alexander had made part of the journey in a cab. The previous night, one of the servants had brought him what he had got from the card-players and asked him to take it. He took some small coin to hire a cab, and so he came earlier than on his first visit.
He intended to come next night, too, but for some reason it would have been dangerous for the servants, and we decided to part till the autumn. A short “ official ” note made me understand next day that his nocturnal escapades had passed unnoticed. How terrible would have been the punishment, if they had been discovered! It is awful to think of it: flogging before the corps till he was carried away unconscious on a sheet, and then degradation to a soldiers’ sons’ battalion, — anything was possible, in those times.
What our servants would have suffered for hiding us, if information of the affair had reached our father’s ears, would have been equally terrible; but they knew how to keep secrets, and not to betray one another. They all knew of the visits of Alexander, but none of them whispered a word 0 any one of the family. They and I were the only ones in the house who ever knew anything about it, IV THAT same year I made my start as an investigator of popular life. This work brought me one step nearer to our peasants, making me see them under a new light; later, it also helped me a great deal in Siberia.
Every year, in July, on the day of “ The Holy Virgin of Kazan,”’ which was the féte of our church, a pretty large fair was held in Nikdlskoye. Tradesmen came from all the neighboring towns, and many thousands of peasants flocked from thirty miles round to our village, which for a couple of days had a most animated aspect. A remarkable de- scription of the village fairs of South Russia had been pub- lished that year by the Slavophile Aksakoff, and my bro- ther, who was then at the height of his politico-economical enthusiasm, advised me to make a statistical description of our fair, and to determine the returns of goods brought in and sold. I followed his advice, and to my great amaze- ment I really succeeded: my estimate of returns, so far as” T can judge now, was not more unreliable than many similar estimates in books of statistics.
Our fair lasted only a little more than twenty-four hours. On the eve of the féte the great open space given to the fair was full of life and animation. Long rows of stalls, to be used for the sale of cottons, ribbons, and all sorts of peasant women’s ‘attire, were hurriedly built. The restau- rant, a substantial stone building, was furnished with tables, chairs, and benches, and its floor was strewn over with bright yellow sand. Three wine shops were erected, and freshly cut brooms, planted on high poles, rose high in the air, to attract the peasants from a distance. Rows and rows of FAIR AT NIKOLSKOYE 103 smaller stalls, for the sale of crockery, boots, stoneware, gin- gerbread, and all sorts of small things, rose as if by a magic wand, while in a special corner of the fair ground holes were dug to receive immense cauldrons, in which bushels of millet and sarrazin and whole sheep were boiled, for sup- plying the thousands of visitors with hot schi and kdsha (soup and porridge). In the afternoon, the four roads lead- ing to the fair were blocked by hundreds of peasant carts, and heaps of pottery, casks filled with tar, corn, and cattle were exhibited along the roadsides.
The night service on the eve of the féte was performed in our church with great solemnity. Half a dozen priests and deacons, from the neighboring villages, took part in it, and their chanters, reinforced by young tradespeople, sang in the choirs such ritornellos as could usually be heard only at the bishop’s in Kaltiga. The church was crowded; all prayed fervently. The tradespeople vied with one another in the number and sizes of the wax candles which they lighted before the ikons, as offerings to the local saints for the success of their trade, and the crowd being so great as not to allow the last comers to reach the altar, candles of all sizes —thick and thin, white and yellow, according to the offerer’s wealth — were handed from the back of the church through the crowd, with whispers: “‘To the Holy Virgin of Kazan, our Protector;” ‘‘To Nicholas the Fa- vorite;”’ “To Frol and Laur” (the horse saints, —that was from those who had horses to sell); or simply to ‘‘ The Saints,’ without further specification.
Immediately after the night service was over, the ‘‘ fore- fair” began, and I had now to plunge headlong into my work of asking hundreds of people what was the value of the goods they had brought in. To my great astonishment I got on admirably. Of course, I was myself asked ques- tions: “ Why do you do this?” ‘Js it not for the old prince, who intends increasing the market dues?” But MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST the assurance that the ‘old prince ” knew and would know nothing of it (he would have thought it a disgraceful occu- pation) settled all doubts at once. I soon caught the proper way of asking questions, and after I had taken half a dozen cups of tea, in the restaurant, with some trades- people (oh, horror, if my father had learned that!), all went on very well. Vasily Ivanoff, the elder of Nikdlskoye, a beautiful young peasant, with a fine intelligent face and a silky fair beard, took an interest in my work. ‘ Well, if thou wantest it for thy learning, get at it; thou wilt tell us later on what thou hast found out,’? was his conclusion, and he told some of the people that it was ‘all right.”
In short, the imports were determined very nicely. But next day the sales offered certain difficulties, chiefly with the drygoods merchants, who did not themselves yet know how much they had sold. On the day of the féte the young peasant women simply stormed the shops; each of them, having sold some linen of her own make, was now buy-_ ing some cotton print and a bright kerchief for herself, a colored handkerchief for her husband, perhaps some lace, a ribbon or two, and a number of small gifts for grand- mother, grandfather, and the children who had remained at home. As to the peasants who sold crockery, or ginger cakes, or cattle, or hemp, they at once determined their sales, especially the old women. ‘‘ Good sale, grand- mother?”? I would ask. ‘No need to complain, my son. Why should I anger God! Nearly all is sold.” And out of their small items tens of thousands of rubles grew in my notebook. One point only remained unsettled. A wide space was given up to many hundreds of peasant women) who stood in the burning sun, each with her piece of hand- woven linen, sometimes exquisitely fine, which she had brought for sale. Scores of buyers, with gypsy faces and shark-like looks, moved about in the crowd, buying. Only rough estimates of these sales could be made. | A » PRY? perme?
THE EDUCATED AND THE UNEDUCATED 105 — I made no reflections at that time about this new experience of mine; I was simply happy to see that it was not a failure. But the serious good sense and sound judgment of the Russian peasants which I witnessed during this couple of days left upon me a lasting impression. Later, when we were spreading socialist doctrines amongst the peasants, I could not but wonder why some of my friends, who had received a seemingly far more democratic education than myself, did not know how to talk to the peasants or to the factory workers from the country. They tried to imitate the “ peasants’ talk”? by introducing a pro- fusion of so-called “ popular phrases,” but they only rendered themselves the more incomprehensible.
Nothing of the sort is needed, either in talking to peas- ants or in writing for them. The Great Russian peasant perfectly well understands the educated man’s talk, provided it is not stuffed with words taken from foreign languages. What the peasant does not understand is abstract notions when they are not illustrated by concrete examples. But my experience is that when you speak to the Russian peas- ant plainly, and start from concrete facts, —and the same is true with regard to village folk of all nationalities, — there is no generalization from the whole world of science, social or natural, which cannot be conveyed to a man of average intelligence, if you yourself understand it concretely. The chief difference between the educated and the uneducated man is, I should say, that the latter is not able to follow a chain of conclusions. He grasps the first of them, and may be the second, but he gets tired at the third, if he does not see what you are driving at. But how often do we meet the same difficulty in educated people.
One more impression I gathered from that work of my.
boyhood, an impression which I did not formulate till after- ward, and which will probably astonish many a reader. It is the spirit of equality which is highly developed in the 106 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Russian peasant, and in fact in the rural population every; © where. The Russian peasant is capable of much servile obedience to the landlord and the police officer; he will bend before their will in a servile manner; but he does not consider them superior men, and if the next moment that same landlord or officer talks to the same peasant about hay or ducks, the latter will reply to him as an equal to an equal. I never saw in a Russian peasant that servility, grown to be a second nature, with which a small func tionary talks to one of high rank, or a valet to his master. The peasant too easily submits to force, but he does not worship it.
I returned that summer from Nikdlskoye to Moscow in a new fashion. There being then no railway between Kaluga and Moscow, there was a man, Buck by name, who kept some sort of carriages running between the two towns. Our people never thought of traveling in these carriages: they had their own horses and conveyances; but when my father, in order to save my stepmother a double journey, proposed to me, half in joke, that I should travel alone in that way, I accepted his offer with delight.
“A tradesman’s wife, old and very stout, and myself on the back seats, and a tradesman or artisan on the front seat, were the only occupants of the carriage. I found the journey very pleasant, — first of all because I was traveling by myself (I was not yet sixteen), and next because the old lady, who had brought with her for a three days’ journey a colossal hamper full of provisions, treated me to all sorts of home-made delicacies. The surroundings during that journey were delightful. One evening especially is . still vivid in my memory. We came to one of the great villages and stopped at an inn. The old lady ordered a samovar for herself, while I went out into the street, walking about anywhere. A small ‘ white inn,” at which AT A WHITE INN 107 only food is served, but no drinks, attracted my attention, and I went in. Numbers of peasants sat round the small tables, which were covered with white napkins, and enjoyed their tea. I followed their example.
Everything there was new to me. It was a village of “Crown peasants,” that is, peasants who had not been serfs, and enjoyed a relative well-being, probably owing to the weaving of linen, which they carried on as a home industry. Slow, serious conversations, with: occasional laughter, were going on at the tables, and after the usual introductory ques- tions, I soon found myself engaged in a conversation with a dozen peasants about the crops in our neighborhood, and answering all sorts of inquiries. They wanted to know all about St. Petersburg, and especially about the rumors con- cerning the coming abolition of serfdom. A feeling of sim- plicity and of natural relations of equality, as well as of hearty goodwill, which I always felt afterwards when among peasants or in their houses, pervaded me at that inn. Nothing extraordinary happened that night, so that I even ask myself whether the incident is worth mentioning at all; and yet, that warm dark night in the village, that small inn, that talk with the peasants, and the keen inter- est they took in hundreds of things lying far beyond their habitual surroundings, have made a poor “white inn” more _attractive to me ever since than the best restaurant in the world, V V Srormy times came now in the life of our corps. When Girardot was dismissed, his place was taken by one of our officers, Captain B He was rather good-natured than otherwise, but he had got it into his head that he was not treated by us with due reverence corresponding to the high | position which he now occupied, and he tried to enforce | upon us more respect and awe towards himself. He began by quarreling over all sorts of petty things with the upper form, and — what was still worse in our opinion — he at- tempted to destroy our “liberties,” the origin of which was lost in “the darkness of time,” and which, insignificant in themselves, were perhaps on that very account only the dearer to us.
The result of it was that for several days the school was in an open revolt, which ended in wholesale punishment, and in the exclusion from the corps of two of our favorite pages de chambre.
Then the same captain began to intrude into the class- | rooms, where we used to spend one hour in the morning in ~ preparing our lessons, before the classes began. We were © considered to be there under our teaching staff, and were ~ happy to have nothing to do with our military officers. We resented that intrusion very much, and one day I loudly ex-— pressed our discontent by telling the captain that this was the place of the inspector of the classes, not his. I spent weeks under arrest for that frankness, and perhaps would have been excluded from the school, had it not been that the inspector of the classes, his aid, and even our old director judged that, after all, I had only expressed aloud what they all used to say to themselves.
Pu THE BURIAL OF AN EMPRESS 109 No sooner were these troubles over, than the death of the Dowager-Empress, the widow of Nicholas I., brought a new interruption in our work.
The burial of crowned heads is always so arranged as to produce a deep impression on the crowds. The body of the Empress was brought from Tsdrkoye Seld, where she died, to St. Petersburg, and here, followed by the imperial family, all the high dignitaries of the state, and scores of thousands of functionaries and corporations, and preceded by hundreds of clergy and choirs, it was taken from the railway station, through the main thoroughfares, to the fortress, where it had to lie in state for several weeks. A hundred thousand men of the guard were placed along the streets, and thou- sands of people, dressed in the most gorgeous uniforms, preceded, accompanied, and followed the hearse in a solemn procession. Litanies were sung at every important crossing of the streets, and here the ringing of the bells on the church towers, the voices of the vast choirs, and the sounds of the military bands united in the most impressive way, so as to make people believe that the immense crowds really mourned the loss of the Empress.
As long as the body lay in state in the cathedral of the fortress, the pages, among others, had to keep watch round it, night and day. Three pages de chambre and three maids of honor always stood close by the coffin, which was placed on a high pedestal, while some twenty pages were stationed on the platform, upon which litanies were sung twice every day, in the presence of the Emperor and all his family. Consequently, every week nearly one half of the corps was taken in turns to the fortress, to lodge there. We were relieved every two hours, and in the daytime our service was not difficult; but when we had to rise in the night, to dress in our court uniforms, and then to walk through the dark and gloomy inner courts of the fortress to the cathedral, to the sound of the gloomy chime of the for- 110 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST tress bells, a cold shiver seized me at the thought of the prisoners who were immured somewhere in this -Russian Bastille. ‘ Who knows,” thought I, “ whether in my turn I shall not also have to join them some day.”