Читать книгу Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875 - Various - Страница 1

All the languages of continental Europe have some phrase by which a parting people express the hope of meeting again. The French au revoir, the Italian à rivederla, the Spanish hasta mañana, the German Auf Wiedersehen,—these and similar forms, varied with the occasion, have grown from the need of the heart to cheat separation of its pain. The Poles have an expression of infinitely deeper meaning, which embodies all that human nature can utter of grief and despair—"To meet nevermore." This is the heart-rending farewell with which the patriot exiled to Siberia takes leave of family and friends.

There is indeed little chance that he will ever again return to his country and his home. Since Beniowski the Pole made his famous romantic flight from the coal-mines of Kamschatka in the last century, there has been but a single instance of a Siberian exile making good his escape. In our day, M. Rufin Piotrowski, also a Polish patriot, has had the marvelous good-fortune to succeed in the all but impossible attempt; and he has given his story to his countrymen in a simple, unpretending narrative, which, even in an abridged form, will, we think, be found one of thrilling interest.

In January, 1843, we find Piotrowski in Paris, a refugee for already twelve years, and on the eve of a secret mission into Poland of which he gives no explanation. By means of an American acquaintance he procured a passport from the British embassy describing him as Joseph Catharo of Malta: he spoke Italian perfectly, English indifferently, and was thus well suited to support the character of an Italian-born subject of Queen Victoria. Having crossed France, Germany, Austria and Hungary in safety, he reached his destination, the town of Kamenitz in Podolia, on the Turkish frontier. His ostensible object was to settle there as a teacher of languages, and on the strength of his British passport he obtained the necessary permission from the police before their suspicions had been roused. He also gained admission at once into the society of the place, where, notwithstanding his pretended origin, he was generally known as "the Frenchman," the common nickname for a foreigner in the Polish provinces. He had soon a number of pupils, some of them Poles—others, members of the families of Russian resident officials. He frequented the houses of the latter most, in order not to attract attention to his intercourse with his compatriots. He spoke Russian fluently, but feigned total ignorance both of that and his own language, and even affected an incapacity for learning them when urged to do so by his scholars. Among the risks to which this exposed him was the temptation of cutting short a difficult explanation in his lessons by a single word, which would have made the whole matter clear. But this, although the most frequent and vexatious, was not the severest trial of his incognito. One day, while giving a lesson to two beautiful Polish girls, daughters of a lady who had shown him great kindness, the conversation turned upon Poland: he spoke with an indifference which roused the younger to a vehement outburst on behalf of her country. The elder interrupted her sharply in their native language with, "How can you speak of holy things to a hare-brained Frenchman?" At another Polish house, a visitor, hearing that M. Catharo was from Paris, was eager to ask news of his brother, who was living there in exile: their host dissuaded him, saying, "You know that inquiries about relations in exile are strictly forbidden. Take care! one is never safe with a stranger." Their unfortunate fellow-countryman, who knew the visitor's brother very well, was forced to bend over a book to hide the blood which rushed to his face in the conflict of feeling. He kept so close a guard upon himself that he would never sleep in the room with another person—which it was sometimes difficult to avoid on visits to neighboring country-seats—lest a word spoken in his troubled slumbers should betray him. He passed nine months in familiar relations with all the principal people of the place, his nationality and his designs being known to but very few of his countrymen, who kept the secret with rigid fidelity. At length, however, he became aware that he was watched; the manner of some of his Russian friends grew inquiring and constrained; he received private warnings, and perceived that he was dogged by the police. It was not too late for flight, but he knew that such a course would involve all who were in his secret, and perhaps thousands of others, in tribulation, and that for their sakes it behooved him to await the terrible day of reckoning which was inevitably approaching. The only use to which he could turn this time of horrible suspense was in concerting a plan of action with his colleagues. His final interview with the chief of them took place in a church at the close of the short winter twilight on the last day of the year. After agreeing on all the points which they could foresee, they solemnly took leave of each other, and Piotrowski was left alone in the church, where he lingered to pray fervently for strength for the hour that was at hand.

The next morning at daybreak he was suddenly shaken by the arm: he composed himself for the part he was to play, and slowly opened his eyes. His room was filled with Russian officials: he was arrested. He protested against the outrage to a British subject, but his papers were seized, he was carried before the governor of the place, and after a brief examination given into the custody of the police.

He was examined on several successive days, but persisted in his first story, although aware that his identity was known, and that the information had come from St. Petersburg. His object was to force the authorities to confront him with those who had been accused on his account, that they might hear his confession and regulate their own accordingly. One day a number of them were brought together—some his real accomplices, others mere acquaintance. After the usual routine of questions and denials, Piotrowski suddenly exclaimed in Polish, as one who can hold out no longer, "Well, then, yes! I am no British subject, but a Pole of the Ukraine. I emigrated after the revolution of 1831: I came back because I could bear a life of exile no longer, and I only wished to breathe my native air. I came under a false name, for I could not have come in my own. I confided my secret to a few of my countrymen, and asked their aid and advice: I had nothing else to ask or tell them."

The preliminary interrogatories concluded, he was sent for a more rigid examination to the fortress of Kiow. He left Kamenitz early in January at midnight, under an escort of soldiers and police. The town was dark and silent as they passed through the deserted streets, but he saw lights in the upper windows of several houses whose inmates had been implicated in his accusation. Was it a mute farewell or the sign of vigils of anguish? They traveled all night and part of the next day: their first halt was at a great state prison, where Piotrowski was for the first time shut up in a cell. He was suffering from the excitement through which he had been passing, from the furious speed of the journey, which had been also very rough, and from a slight concussion of the brain occasioned by one of the terrible jolts of the rude vehicle: a physician saw him and ordered repose. The long, dark, still hours of the night were gradually calming his nerves when he was disturbed by a distant sound, which he soon guessed to be the clanking of chains, followed by a chant in which many voices mingled. It was Christmas Eve, old style, as still observed in some of the provinces, and the midnight chorus was singing an ancient Christmas hymn which every Polish child knows from the cradle. For twelve years the dear familiar melody had not greeted his ears, and now he heard it sung by his captive fellow-countrymen in a Russian dungeon.

Two days later they set out again, and now he was chained hand and foot with heavy irons, rusty, and too small for his limbs. The sleigh hurried on day and night with headlong haste: it was upset, everybody was thrown out, the prisoner's chain caught and he was dragged until he lost consciousness. In this state he arrived at Kiow. Here he was thrown into a cell six feet by five, almost dark and disgustingly dirty. The wretched man was soon covered from head to foot with vermin, of which his handcuffs prevented his ridding himself. However, in a day or two, after a visit from the commandant, his cell was cleaned. His manacles prevented his walking, or even standing, and the moral effect of being unable to use his hands was a strange apathy such as might precede imbecility. He was interrogated several times, but always adhered to his confession at Kamenitz; menaces of harsher treatment, even of torture, were tried—means which he knew too well had been resorted to before; his guards were forbidden to exchange a word with him, so that his time was passed in solitude, silence and absolute inoccupation. Since Levitoux, another political prisoner, fearful that the tortures to which he was subjected might wring from him confessions which would criminate his friends, had set fire to his straw bed with his night-lamp and burned himself alive, no lights were allowed in the cells, so that a great portion of the twenty-four hours went by in darkness. After some time he was visited by Prince Bibikoff, the governor-general of that section of the country, one of the men whose names are most associated with the sufferings of Poland: he tried by intimidation and persuasion to induce the prisoner to reveal his projects and the names of his associates. Piotrowski held firm, but the prince on withdrawing ordered his chains to be struck off. The relief was ineffable: he could do nothing but stretch his arms to enjoy the sense of their free possession, and he felt his natural energy and independence of thought return. He had not been able to take off his boots since leaving Kamenitz, and his legs were bruised and sore, but he walked to and fro in his cell all day, enjoying the very pain this gave him as a proof that they were unchained. Several weeks passed without any other incident, when late one night he was surprised by a light in his cell: an aide-de-camp and four soldiers entered and ordered him to rise and follow them. He thought that he was summoned to his execution. He crossed the great courtyard of the prison supported by the soldiers; the snow creaked under foot; the night was very dark, and the sharp fresh air almost took away his breath, yet it was infinitely welcome to him after the heavy atmosphere of his cell, and he inhaled it with keen pleasure, thinking that each whiff was almost the last. He was led into a large, faintly-lighted room, where officers of various grades were smoking around a large table. It was only the committee of investigation, for hitherto his examinations had not been strictly in order.

This was but the first of a series of sittings which were prolonged through nearly half a year. During this time his treatment improved; his cell was kept clean; he had no cause to complain of his food; he was allowed to walk for an hour daily in the corridor, which, though cold and damp, in some degree satisfied his need of exercise. He was always guarded by two sentinels, to whom he was forbidden to speak. He learned in some way, however, that several of his co-accused were his fellow-prisoners: they were confined in another part of the fortress, and he but once caught a glimpse of one of them—so changed that he hardly recognized him. His neighbors on the corridor were common criminals. The president of the committee offered him the use of a library, but he only asked for a Bible, "with which," he says, "I was no longer alone." His greatest suffering arose from the nervous irritability caused by the unremitting watch of the sentinel at his door, which drove him almost frantic. The sensation of being spied at every instant, in every action, of meeting this relentless, irresponsive gaze on waking, of encountering it at each minute of the day, was maddening. From daybreak he longed for the night, which should deliver him from the sight. Sometimes, beside himself, he would suddenly put his own face close to the grating and stare into the tormenting eyes to force them to divert their gaze for a moment, laughing like a savage when he succeeded. He was in this feverish condition when called to his last examination. He perceived at once, from the solemnity of all present, that the crisis had come. His sentence was pronounced: death, commuted by Prince Bibikoff's intercession to hard labor for life in Siberia. He was degraded from the nobility, to which order, like half the inhabitants of Poland, he belonged, and condemned to make the journey in chains. Without being taken back to his cell, he was at once put into irons, the same rusty, galling ones he had worn already, and placed in a kibitka, or traveling-carriage, between two armed guards. The gates of the fortress closed behind him, and before him opened the road to Siberia.

His destination was about two thousand miles distant. The incidents of the journey were few and much of the same character. Charity and sympathy were shown him by people of every class. Travelers of distinction, especially ladies, pursued him with offers of assistance and money, which he would not accept. The only gifts which he did not refuse were the food and drink brought him by the peasants where they stopped to change horses: wherever there was a halt the good people plied him with tea, brandy and simple dainties, which he gratefully accepted. At one station a man in the uniform of the Russian civil service timidly offered him a parcel wrapped in a silk handkerchief, saying, "Accept this from my saint." Piotrowski, repelled by the sight of the uniform, shook his head. The other flushed: "You are a Pole, and do not understand our customs. This is my birthday, and on this day, above all others, I should share what I have with the unfortunate. Pray accept it in the name of my patron saint." He could not resist so Christian an appeal. The parcel contained bread, salt and some money: the last he handed over to the guards, who in any case would not have let him keep it: he broke the bread with its donor. His guards were almost the only persons with whom he had to do who showed themselves insensible to his pain and sorrow. They were divided between their fears of not arriving on the day fixed, in which case they would be flogged, and of his dying of fatigue on the route, when they would fare still worse. The apprehension of his suicide beset them: at the ferries or fords which they crossed each of them held him by an arm lest he should drown himself, and all his meat was given to him minced, to be eaten with a spoon, as he was not to be trusted for an instant with a knife. Thus they traveled night and day for three weeks, only stopping to change horses and take their meals; yet he esteemed himself lucky not to have been sent with a gang of convicts, chained to some atrocious malefactor, or to have been ordered to make the journey on foot, like his countryman, Prince Sanguzsko. At last they reached Omsk, the head-quarters of Prince Gortchakoff, then governor-general of Western Siberia. By some informality in the mode of his transportation, the interpretation of Piotrowski's sentence depended solely on this man: he might be sent to work in one of the government manufactories, or to the mines, the last, worst dread of a Siberian exile. While awaiting the decision he was in charge of a gay, handsome young officer, who treated him with great friendliness, and in the course of their conversation, which turned chiefly on Siberia, showed him a map of the country. The prisoner devoured it with his eyes, tried to engrave it on his memory, asked innumerable questions about roads and water-courses, and betrayed so much agitation that the young fellow noticed it, and exclaimed, "Ah! don't think of escape. Too many of your countrymen have tried it, and those are fortunate who, tracked on every side, famished, desperate, have been able to put an end to themselves before being retaken, for if they are, then comes the knout and a life of misery beyond words. In Heaven's name, give up that thought!" The commandant of the fortress paid him a short official visit, and exclaimed repeatedly, "How sad! how sad! to come back when you were free-in a foreign country!" The chief of police, a hard, dry, vulture-like man, asked why he had dared to return without the czar's permission. "I could not bear my homesickness," replied the prisoner. "O native country!" said the Russian in a softened voice, "how dear thou art!" After various official interviews he was taken to the governor-general's ante-chamber, where he found a number of clerks, most of whom were his exiled compatriots and received him warmly. While he was talking with them a door opened, and Gortchakoff stood on the threshold: he fixed his eyes on the prisoner for some moments, and withdrew without a word. An hour of intense anxiety followed, and then an officer appeared, who announced that he was consigned to the distilleries of Ekaterininski-Zavod, some two hundred miles farther north.

Ekaterininski-Zavod is a miserable village of a couple of hundred small houses on the river Irtish, in the midst of a wide plain. Its inhabitants are all in some way connected with the government distillery: they are the descendants of criminals formerly transported. Piotrowski, after a short interview with the inspector of the works, was entered on the list of convicts and sent to the guard-house. "He is to work with his feet in irons," added the inspector. This unusual severity was in consequence of a memorandum in Prince Gortchakoff's own writing appended to the prisoner's papers: "Piotrowski must be watched with especial care." The injunction was unprecedented, and impressed the director with the prisoner's importance. Before being taken to his work he was surrounded by his fellow-countrymen, young men of talent and promise, who were there, like himself, for political reasons. Their emotion was extreme: they talked rapidly and eagerly, exhorting him to patience and silence, and to do nothing to incur corporal punishment, which was the mode of keeping the workmen in order, so that in time he might be promoted, like themselves, from hard labor to office-work. At the guard-house he found a crowd of soldiers, among whom were many Poles, incorporated into the standing army of Siberia for having taken up arms for their country. This is one of the mildest punishments for that offence. They seized every pretext for speaking to him, to ask what was going on in Poland, and whether there were any hopes for her. Overcome by fatigue and misery, he sat down upon a bench, where he remained sunk in the gloomiest thoughts until accosted by a man of repulsive aspect, branded on the face—the Russian practice with criminals of the worst sort—who said abruptly, "Get up and go to work." It was the overseer, himself a former convict. "O my God!" exclaims Piotrowski, "Thou alone didst hear the bitter cry of my soul when this outcast first spoke to me as my master."

Before going to work his irons were struck off, thanks to the instant entreaties of his compatriots: he was then given a broom and shovel and set to clear rubbish and filth off the roof of a large unfinished building. On one side was a convict of the lowest order, with whom he worked—on the other, the soldier who mounted guard over them. To avoid the indignity of chastisement or reproof—indeed, to escape notice altogether—he bent his whole force to his task, without raising his head, or even his eyes, but the iron entered into his soul and he wept.

The order of his days knew no variation. Rising at sunrise, the convicts worked until eight o'clock, when they breakfasted, then until their dinner at noon, and again from one o'clock until dark. His tasks were fetching wood and water, splitting and piling logs, and scavenger-work of all sorts: it was all out of doors and in every extreme of the Siberian climate. His companions were all ruffians of a desperate caste: burglary, highway robbery, rape, murder in every degree, were common cases. One instance will suffice, and it is not the worst: it was that of a young man, clerk of a wine-merchant in St. Petersburg. He had a mistress whom he loved, but suspected of infidelity; he took her and another girl into the country for a holiday, and as they walked together in the fields fired a pistol at his sweetheart's head: it only wounded her; the friend rushed away shrieking for help; the victim fell on her knees and cried, "Forgive me!" but he plunged a knife up to the hilt in her breast, and she fell dead at his feet. He gave himself up to justice, received the knout and was transported for life.

The daily contact with ignorant, brutish men, made worse than brutes by a life of hideous crime, was the worst feature in his wretched existence. He had determined never to submit to blows, should the forfeit be his own life or another's, and the incessant apprehension kept his mind in a state of frightful tension: it also nerved him to physical exertions beyond his strength, and to a moral restraint of which he had not deemed himself capable in the way of endurance and self-command. But in the end he was the gainer. After the first year he was taken into the office of the establishment, and received a salary of ten francs a month. He was also allowed to leave the barracks where he had been herded with the convicts, and to lodge with two fellow-countrymen in a little house which they built for themselves, and which they shared with the soldiers who guarded them. It was a privilege granted to the most exemplary of the convicts to lodge with one or other of the private inhabitants of the village; but besides their own expenses they had to pay those of the soldier detailed to watch them. In the course of the winter they were comforted by the visit of a Polish priest. A certain number are permitted, to travel through Siberia yearly, stopping wherever there are Polish prisoners to administer the sacraments and consolations of their Church to them: there is no hardship which these heroic men will not encounter in performing their thrice holy mission. Piotrowski, who, like all Poles, was an ingrained Roman Catholic, after passing through phases of doubt and disbelief had returned to a fervent orthodoxy: this spiritual succor was most precious to himself and his brother-exiles.

One idea, however, was never absent from his mind—that of escape. At the moment of receiving his sentence at Kiow he had resolved to be free, and his resolution had not faltered. He had neglected no means of acquiring information about Siberia and the adjacent countries. For this he had listened to the revolting confidences of the malefactors at the barracks—for this he heard with unflagging attention, yet with no sign of interest, the long stories of the traders who came to the distillery from all parts of the empire to sell grain or buy spirits. The office in which he passed his time from eight in the morning until ten or eleven at night was their rendezvous, and by a concentration of his mental powers he acquired a thorough and accurate knowledge of the country from the Frozen Ocean to the frontiers of Persia and China, and of all its manners and customs. The prisoner who meditates escape, he says, is absorbed in an infinitude of details and calculations, of which it is only possible to give the final result. Slowly and painfully, little by little, he accumulated the indispensable articles—disguise, money, food, a weapon, passports. The last were the most essential and the most difficult: two were required, both upon paper with the government stamp—one a simple pass for short distances and absences, useless beyond a certain limit and date; the other, the plakatny, or real passport, a document of vital importance. He was able to abstract the paper from the office, and a counterfeiter in the community forged the formula and signatures. His appearance he had gradually changed by allowing his hair and beard to grow, and he had studied the tone of thought and peculiar phraseology of the born Siberian, that he might the better pass for a native. More than six months went by in preparations: then he made two false starts. He had placed much hope on a little boat, which was often forgotten at evening, moored in the Irtish. One dark night he quietly loosed it and began to row away: suddenly the moon broke through the clouds, and at the same instant the voices of the inspector and some of his subordinates were heard on the banks. Piotrowski was fortunate enough to get back unperceived. On the second attempt a dense fog rose and shut him in: he could not see a yard before him. All night long he pushed the boat hither and thither, trying at least to regain the shore; at daybreak the vapor began to disperse, but it was too late to go on; he again had the good luck to land undiscovered. Five routes were open to him—all long, and each beset with its own perils. He decided to go northward, recross the Uralian Mountains, and make his way to Archangel, nearly a thousand miles off, where, among the hundreds of foreign ships constantly in the docks, he trusted to find one which would bring him to America. Nobody knew his secret: he had vowed to perish rather than ever again involve others in his fate. He reckoned on getting over the first danger of pursuit by mingling with the crowds of people then traveling from every quarter to the annual fair at Irbite at the foot of the Urals.

Finally, in February, 1846, he set out on foot. His costume consisted of three shirts—a colored one uppermost, worn, Russian fashion, outside his trousers, which were of heavy cloth, like his waistcoat—and a small sheepskin burnous, heavy high boots, a bright woolen sash, a red cap with a fur border—the dress of a well-to-do peasant or commercial traveler. In a small bag he carried a change of clothing and his provisions: his money and passports were hidden about his person; he was armed with a dagger and a bludgeon. He had scarcely crossed the frozen Irtish when the sound of a sleigh behind him brought his heart to his mouth: he held his ground and was hailed by a peasant, who wanted to drive a bargain with him for a lift. After a little politic chaffering he got in, and was carried to a village about eight miles off at a gallop. There the peasant set him down, and, knocking at the first house, he asked for horses to the fair at Irbite. More bargaining, but they were soon on the road. Erelong, however, it began to snow; the track disappeared, the driver lost his way; they wandered about for some time, and were forced to stop all night in a forest—a night of agony. They were not twelve miles from Ekaterininski-Zavod: every minute the fugitive fancied he heard the bells of the pursuing kibitkas; he had a horrible suspicion, too, that his driver was delaying purposely to betray him, as had befallen a fellow-countryman in similar circumstances. But at daybreak they found the road, and by nightfall, having changed horses once or twice and traveled like the wind, he was well on his way. At a fresh relay he was forced to go into a tavern to make change to pay his driver: as he stood among the tipsy crowd he was hustled and his pocket-book snatched from his hand. He could not discover the thief nor recover the purse: he durst not appeal to the police, and had to let it go. In it, besides a quarter of his little hoard of money, there was a memorandum of every town and village on his way to Archangel, and his plakatny. In this desperate strait—for the last loss seemed to cut off hope—he had one paramount motive for going on: return was impossible. Once having left Ekaterininski-Zavod, his fate was sealed if retaken: he must go forward. Forward he went, falling in with troops of travelers bound to the fair. On the third evening of his flight, notwithstanding the time lost, he was at the gates of Irbite, over six hundred miles from his prison. "Halt and show your passport!" cried the sentinel. He was fumbling for the local pass with a sinking heart when the soldier whispered, "Twenty kopecks and go ahead." He passed in. The loss of his money and the unavoidable expenses had reduced his resources so much that he found it necessary to continue the journey on foot. He slept at Irbite, but was up early, and passed out of an opposite gate unchallenged.

Now began a long and weary tramp. The winter of 1846 was one of unparalleled rigor in Siberia. The snow fell in enormous masses, which buried the roads deep out of sight and crushed solidly-built houses under its weight. Every difficulty of an ordinary journey on foot was increased tenfold. Piotrowski's clothes encumbered him excessively, yet he dared not take any of them off. His habit was to avoid passing through villages as much as possible, but, if forced to do so to inquire his way, only to stop at the last house. When he was hungry he drew a bit of frozen bread from his wallet and ate it as he went along: to quench his thirst he often had no resource but melting the snow in his mouth, which rather tends to increase the desire for water. At night he went into the depths of the forest, dug a hole under the snow, and creeping in slept there as best he might. At the first experiment his feet were frozen: he succeeded in curing them, though not without great pain. Sometimes he plunged up to the waist or neck in the drifts, and expected at the next step to be buried alive. One night, having tasted to the full those two tortures, cold and hunger—of which, as he says, we complain so frequently without knowing what they mean—he ventured to ask for shelter at a little hut near a hamlet where there were only two women. They gave him warm food: he dried his drenched clothes, and stretched himself out to sleep on the bench near the kitchen stove. He was roused by voices, then shaken roughly and asked for his passport: there were three men in the room. With amazing presence of mind he demanded by what right they asked for his passport: were any of them officials? No, but they insisted on knowing who he was and where he was going, and seeing his pass. He told them the same story that he had told the women, and finally exhibited the local pass, which was now quite worthless, and would not have deceived a government functionary for a moment: they were satisfied with the sight of the stamp. They excused themselves, saying that the women had taken fright and given the alarm, thinking that, as sometimes happened, they were housing an escaped convict. This adventure taught him a severe lesson of prudence. He often passed fifteen or twenty nights under the snow in the forest, without seeking food or shelter, hearing the wolves howl at a distance. In this savage mode of life he lost the count of time: he was already far in the Ural Mountains before he again ventured to sleep beneath a roof. As he was starting the next morning his hosts said, in answer to his inquiries as to the road, "A little farther on you will find a guard-house, where they will look at your papers and give you precise directions." Again how narrow an escape! He turned from the road and crossed hills and gorges, often up to the chin in snow, and made an immense curve before taking up his march again.

One moonlight night, in the dead silence of the ice-bound winter, he stood on the ridge of the mountain-chain and began to descend its eastern slope. Still on and on, the way more dangerous than before, for now there were large towns upon his route, which he could only avoid by going greatly out of his way. One night in the woods he completely lost his bearings; a tempest of wind and snow literally whirled him around; his stock of bread was exhausted, and he fell upon the earth powerless; there was a buzzing in his ears, a confusion in his ideas; his senses forsook him, and but for spasms of cramp in his stomach he had no consciousness left. Torpor was settling upon him when a loud voice recalled him to himself: it was a trapper, who lived hard by, going home with his booty. He poured some brandy down the dying man's throat, and when this had somewhat revived him gave him food from his store. After some delay the stranger urged Piotrowski to get up and walk, which he did with the utmost difficulty: leaning upon this Samaritan of the steppes, he contrived to reach the highway, where a small roadside inn was in sight. There his companion left him, and he staggered forward with unspeakable joy toward the warmth and shelter. He would have gone in if he had known the guards were there on the lookout for him, for his case was now desperate. He only got as far as the threshold, and there fell forward and rolled under a bench. He asked for hot soup, but could not swallow, and after a few minutes fell into a swoon-like sleep which lasted twenty-four hours. Restored by nourishment, rest and dry clothes, he set forth again at once.

During the first part of his journey he had passed as a commercial traveler; after leaving Irbite he was a workman seeking employment in the government establishments; but now he assumed the character of a pilgrim to the convent of Solovetsk on a holy island in the White Sea, near Archangel. For each change of part he had to change his manners, mode of speech, his whole personality, and always be probable and consistent in his account of himself. It was mid-April: he had been journeying on foot for two months. Easter was approaching, when these pious journeys were frequent, and not far from Veliki-Oustiog he fell in with several bands of men and women—bohomolets, as they are called—on their way to Solovetsk. There were more than two thousand in the town waiting for the frozen Dwina to open, that they might proceed by water to Archangel. It being Holy Week, Piotrowski was forced to conform to the innumerable observances of the Greek ritual—prayers, canticles, genuflexions, prostrations, crossings and bowings, as manifold as in his own, but different. His inner consciousness suffered from this hypocrisy, but it was necessary to his part. They were detained at Veliki-Oustiog a mortal month, during which these acts of devotion went on with almost unabated zeal among the boholomets. At length the river was free, and they set out. Their vessel was a huge hulk which looked like a floating barn: it was manned by twenty or thirty rowers, and to replenish his purse a little the fugitive took an oar. The agent who had charge of the expedition required their passports: among the number the irregularity of Piotrowski's escaped notice. The prayers and prostrations went on during the voyage, which lasted a fort-night. One morning the early sunshine glittered on the gilded domes of Archangel: the vessel soon touched the shore, and his passport was returned to him uninspected, with the small sum he had earned by rowing.

He had reached his goal; a thousand miles of deadly suffering and danger lay behind him; he was on the shores of the White Sea, with vessels of every nation lying at anchor ready to bear him away to freedom. Yet he was careful not to commit himself by any imprudence or inconsistency. He went with the pilgrims to their vast crowded lodging-house, and for several days joined in their visits to the different churches of Archangel; but when they embarked again for the holy island he stayed behind under the pretext of fatigue, but really to go unobserved to the harbor. There lay the ships from every part of the world, with their flags floating from the masts. Alas! alas! on every wharf a Russian sentinel mounted guard day and night, challenging every one who passed, and on the deck of each ship there was another. In vain he risked the consequences of dropping his character of an ignorant Siberian peasant so far as to speak to a group of sailors, first in French and then in German; they understood neither: the idlers on the quays began to gather round in idle curiosity, and he had to desist. In vain, despite the icy coldness of the water, he tried swimming in the bay to approach some vessel for the chance of getting speech of the captain or crew unseen by the sentinel. In vain he resorted to every device which desperation could suggest. After three days he was forced to look the terrible truth in the face: there was no escape possible from Archangel.

Baffled and hopeless, he turned his back on the town, not knowing where to go. To retrace his steps would be madness. He followed the shore of the White Sea to Onega, a natural direction for pilgrims returning from Solovetsk to take. His lonely way lay through a land of swamp and sand, with a sparse growth of stunted pines; the midnight sun streamed across the silent stretches; the huge waves of the White Sea, lashed by a long storm, plunged foaming upon the desolate beach. Days and nights of walking brought him to Onega: there was no way of getting to sea from there, and after a short halt he resumed his journey southward along the banks of the river Onega, hardly knowing whither or wherefore he went. The hardships of his existence at midsummer were fewer than at midwinter, but the dangers were greater: the absence of a definite goal, of a distinct hope which had supported him before, unnerved him physically. He had reached the point when he dreaded fatigue more than risk. In spite of his familiarity with the minutiae of Russian customs, he was nearly betrayed one day by his ignorance of tolokno, a national dish. On another occasion he stopped at the cabin of a poor old man to ask his way: the gray-beard made him come in, and after some conversation began to confide his religious grievances to him, which turned upon the persecutions to which a sect of religionists is exposed in Russia for adhering to certain peculiarities in the forms of worship. Happily, Piorowski was well versed in these subjects. The poor old man, after dwelling long and tearfully on the woes of his fellow-believers, looked cautiously in every direction, locked the door, and after exacting an oath of secresy drew from a hiding-place a little antique brass figure of Byzantine origin, representing our Saviour in the act of benediction with two fingers only raised, according to the form cherished by the dissenters.

Following his purposeless march for hundreds of miles, the fugitive reached Vytegra, where the river issues from the Lake of Onega. There, on the wharf, a peasant asked him whither he was bound: he replied that he was a pilgrim on his way from Solovetsk to the shrines of Novgorod and Kiow. The peasant said he was going to St. Petersburg, and would give him a passage for his service if he would take an oar. The bargain was struck, and that night they started on their voyage to the capital of Poland's arch-enemy, the head-quarters of politics, the source whence his own arrest had emanated. He had no design: he was going at hazard. The voyage was long: they followed the Lake of Onega, the Lake of Ladoga and the river Neva. Sometimes poor people got a lift in the boat: toward the end of the voyage they took aboard a number of women-servants returning to their situations in town from a visit to their country homes. Among them was an elderly woman going to see her daughter, who was a washerwoman at St. Petersburg. Piotrowski showed her some small kindnesses, which won her fervent gratitude. As they landed in the great capital, which seemed the very focus of his dangers, and he stood on the wharf wholly at a loss what should be his next step, the poor woman came up with her daughter and offered to show him cheap lodgings. He followed them, carrying his protectress's trunk. The lodgings were cheap and miserable, and the woman of the house demanded his passport. He handed it to her with a thrill of anxiety, and carelessly announced his intention of reporting himself at the police-office according to rule. She glanced at the paper, which she could not read, and saw the official stamp: she was satisfied, and began to dissuade him from going to the police. It then appeared that the law required her to accompany him as her lodger; that a great deal of her time would be lost in the delays and formalities of the office, which, being a working-woman, she could ill afford; and as he was merely passing through the city and had his passport, there could be no harm in staying away. The next day, while wandering about the streets seeking a mode of escape, the pilot of a steam-packet to Riga asked him if he would like to sail with them the next day, and named a very moderate fare. His heart leapt up, but the next instant the man asked to see his passport: he took it out trembling, but the sailor, without scrutiny, cried, "Good! Be off with you, and come back to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." The next morning at seven he was on board, and the boat was under way.

From Riga he had to make his way on foot across Courland and Lithuania to the Prussian frontier. He now made a change in his disguise, and gave himself out as a dealer in hogs' bristles. In Lithuania he found himself once more on his beloved native soil, and the longing to speak his own language, to make himself known to a fellow-countryman, was almost irresistible; but he sternly quelled such a yearning. As he neared the frontier he had the utmost difficulty in ascertaining where and how it was guarded, and what he should have to encounter in passing. At length he learned enough for his purpose: there were no guards on the Prussian side. Reaching a rampart of the fortifications, he waited until the moment when the two sentinels on duty were back to back on their beats, and jumped down into the first of the three ditches which protected the boundary. Clambering and jumping, he reached the edge of the third: shots were fired in several directions; he had been seen. He slid into the third ditch, scrambled up the opposite side, sprang down once more, rushed on until out of sight of the soldiers, and fell panting in a little wood. There he lay for hours without stirring, as he knew the Russian guards sometimes violated the boundary in pursuit of fugitives. But there was no pursuit, and he at last took heart. Then he began a final transformation. He had lately bought a razor, a pocket-mirror and some soap, and with these, by the aid of a slight rain which was falling, he succeeded with much difficulty in shaving himself and changing his clothes to a costume he had provided expressly for Prussia. When night had closed he set forth once more, lighter of heart than for many long years, though well aware that by international agreement he was not yet out of danger. He pushed on toward the grand duchy of Posen, where he hoped to find assistance from his fellow-countrymen, who, being under Prussian rule, would not be compromised by aiding him. He passed through Memel and Tilsit, and reached Königsberg without let or hindrance—over two hundred miles on Prussian soil in addition to all the rest. There he found a steamboat to sail the next day in the direction which he wished to follow. He had slept only in the open fields, and meant to do so on this night and re-enter the town betimes in the morning. Meanwhile he sat down on a heap of stones in the street, and, overcome by fatigue, fell into a profound sleep. He was awakened by the patrol: his first confused words excited suspicion, and he was arrested and carried to the station-house. After all his perils, his escapes, his adventures, his disguises, to be taken by a Prussian watchman! The next morning he was examined by the police: he declared himself a French artisan on his way home from Russia, but as having lost his passport. The story imposed upon nobody, and he perceived that he was supposed to be a malefactor of some dangerous sort: his real case was not suspected. A month's incarceration followed, and then a new interrogation, in which he was informed that all his statements had been found to be false, and that he was an object of the gravest suspicion. He demanded a private interview with one of the higher functionaries and a M. Fleury, a naturalized Frenchman in some way connected with the police-courts. To them he told his whole story. After the first moment's stupefaction the Prussian cried, "But, unhappy man, we must send you back: the treaty compels it. My God! my God! why did you come here?"—"There is no help for us," said M. Fleury, "but in Heaven's name write to Count Eulenberg, on whom all depends: he is a man whom everybody loves. What a misfortune!"

He was taken back to prison. He wrote; he received a kind but vague reply; delays followed, and investigations into the truth of his story; his anguish of mind was reaching a climax in which he felt that his dagger would be his best friend after all. A citizen of the place, a M. Kamke, a total stranger, offered to go bail for him: his story had got abroad and excited the deepest sympathy. The bail was not effected without difficulty: ultimately, he was declared free, however, but the chief of police intimated that he had better remain in Königsberg for the present. Anxious to show his gratitude to his benefactors, fearful, too, of being suspected, he tarried for a week, which he passed in the family of the generous M. Kamke. At the end of that time he was again summoned to the police-court, where two officials whom he already knew told him sadly that the order to send him back to Russia had come from Berlin: they could but give him time to escape at his own risk, and pray God for his safety. He went back to his friend M. Kamke: a plan was organized at once, and by the morrow he was on the way to Dantzic. Well provided with money and letters by the good souls at Königsberg, he crossed Germany safely, and on the 22d of September, 1846, found himself safe in Paris.