Sixteen years in Siberia

UIRY INTO THE CASE OF GENERAL MEZENTZEV'S

first arrest. At Freiburg I had been in a chronic state of excitement and unrest, longing for the freedom that seemed so near. In

thy, but one does somehow get accustomed to it. At times there will arise sudden hopes, dreams of unexpected luck, of happiness in a distant future; and then wild visions chase one another in dazzling pictures through one's brain. But I had lived through too many bitter self-deceptions of the kind

? Something must be happening." I had begun to fidget in this way occasionally, when one July morning, as I came back from my walk feeling rather cheerful, the warder said to me, "Make yourself ready; they have come to fetch you!" A hired droschky awaited me at the door, and I and a gendarme got into it. From him I could learn nothing as to our destination, an

ked, hesitatingly open

" said I. The door opened, and smiling apologetically, a you

"-he bowed and clicked his sp

ll you please tell me where I am,

examination, and will soon be taken before the Public Prosecutor. I only wanted to h

know me?" I as

re is hardly 69an intelligent person in

as protesting against the reactionary tendency and making its influence felt in some of the best Russian journals. In the lan

rades-Malinka, Drebyàsghin, Maidànsky. I was formerly adjutant of gendarmerie at O

rand opportunities for self-advancement. The lives and freedom of the "politicals" were the merchandise by which they founded their fortunes. This gentleman had no doubt played no insignificant part in condemning to penal

ad to be called away. I was taken to a comfortably furnished apartment, where Kotl

re that concern you," he sa

se young men to be myself; and on the following day she had seen them again on the watch, her cousin Baron Berg being with her at the time. Then followed a paper in which Baron Berg corroborated the lady's evidence. There was a time, 1878-9, when a good many people delighted in romancing about me

es. Baron Gèhkin was shot on the following night, May 26th; and on the night after that, May 27th, I and two comrades escaped from prison. I so

entzev was in the same way complete nonsense. When Kotliarèvsky h

e me in affairs not specified in the extradition treaty," I said; "I sha

d he clapped the papers together again. "Besides, I may as well tell you that I attach no importance to the tes

s in that direction he began to chat about indifferent matters, asking me questions as to our Socialist propaganda

e gentleman who had been by way of identifying me at Freiburg. He greeted me, and sat down at the table.

s it is now a thing of the past, when did you

rious to know when exactly the Baden authorities had found out with whom they were dealing; and when I asked him this, Bogdanòvitch replied, "They knew some weeks before the extradition tha

o a different cell, and also why Herr von Berg ha

whether I should soon be brought before a fully qualified tribunal. He could give me n

ct of some political trials had been considered altogether too mean; it not only drew down on him the bitter hatred of the accused, but was too much even

t day after day went by without anything fresh. July came, then August, and I was still waiting in my cell. One day towards the end of August gendarmes again came for me, and I was ordered to prepare for a j