Sixteen years in Siberia

-THE FRANKFORT AND BERLIN PRISONS-THE FRO

ck was brought into the station, where it was attached to a passenger train, I observed an unusual commotion on the platform, and my guards, who noticed it too, whispered together excitedly. From chance words that I caught I gathered that an arrest was being made, and wondered if it could have anything to do with me. Years

is own reasons for such tactics, as will subsequently appear. When I asked if I might write a post card to my friends in Switzerland, he assured me most obligingly that it should be forwarded 43at once,

d very good to me, as during the last day or two excitement had kept me from eating. Seeing that the journey threatened to be tedious, I wanted to get some books, and the obliging governor offered to buy them for me at a

account of all his experiences, and then suddenly asked

rt from the fact that (as I heard afterwards from the policemen in my cell) he drew a considerable profit, not only from my food, but even on the books he got me, he also had his eye on the rew

and had no choice in the matter, so I had to submit. Even this was not their final precaution. When we passed on to the railway platform, one man, a giant in stature, took me by the arm in a friendly way; another went a few steps in front, and the third came a little behind, so that we must have appeared to the uninitiated like a trio of boon companions. We installed ourselves in a carriage among the ordinary travellers, and it probably never dawned on any of them that they were sitting cheek by jowl with a fet

e, nor had I any inclination to gossip with them. I felt heavy at heart, enervated, and exhausted. My mind seemed dormant, nothing attracted my attention during the whole journey; I seemed to hear and see nothing t

window,) and the sour-faced warders, who never seemed to look one straight in the eyes, forced on me the thought that people who were compelled to inhabit this place for long were much to be pitied. I have made acquaintance with many prisons, both in Russia and West

his. Their company was not exactly enlivening, but the presence of another human being mitigated the dreariness of the prison atmosphere. Fortunately I was not

this was a very roundabout way to have come, and I suppose it must have been chosen from fear of a rescue being attempted at the frontier. This is the more likely, as shortly before the Polish Socialist, Stanislas

ine gave me renewed strength. I had scarcely descended from the train wit

ere their greetings. I saw round me the fresh, smiling faces of young Russian peasant lads, surmounting the hate

ked them, as we went towar

who went about under false names. They had their orders, and followed them rigidly, not troubling themselves with anything beyond that, hoping 47thereby to gain a reward (as I gathered from their whispered talk when they supposed me asleep). To the Russian gendarmes,[22] who never have anything to do with common criminals, I was a "political offender," a "State prisoner" (as we call it), whose name they had heard so often that they looked on

that they would not allow to be possible, and we disputed about it, till at last everyone present, ten or twelve men, were all talking at once. When this topic was exhausted I

be ready to escort me, as I was to go on by the next train. I saw that he gave over to one of them the money that had been taken from me by the German police. Unobserved, I immediately drew out the Russian money I had concealed about me, and then handed it to the officer, for I feare

where we arrived during the night, a colonel of gendarmerie was awaiti

dentially, "Ah, that was a long while ago. Wasn't it at the time of the Polish rising? Well,

heir own special business. This friendly sympathy did not prevent him, of course, from giving my escort the strictest orders about my treatment, as I could hear when seated in the carriage. "Be sure you don'

darmerie met us, and took me at once in a clos

ND PAUL, ST. PETERS