Title: The Story of a Siberian Exile: followed by A Narrative of Recent Events in Poland
Author: Pietrowski, M. Rufin
Language: English
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EXILE ***



RECOLLECTIONS OF SIBERIA.



  LONDON

  PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.

  NEW-STREET SQUARE



  THE STORY

  OF

  A SIBERIAN EXILE.

  BY

  M. RUFIN PIETROWSKI.

  FOLLOWED BY

  A NARRATIVE OF RECENT EVENTS IN POLAND.

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

  LONDON:
  LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN.
  1863.



TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.


It has not been thought advisable to give these papers to the public
without a few words of explanation to those readers who see them for
the first time in an English dress. It may seem that the three parts
of which the book is composed have little connection with each other,
but this is not the case. Along with the story of a Polish Exile in
Siberia will be found two chapters on the political aspects of Poland.
The first of these contains an account of those measures and events
by which the dismemberment of ancient Poland was effected. But the
Poles contend that the wrong done to their country has not stopped
there; and that she has been not only dismembered, but denationalised.
On referring to the Treaty of Vienna they find that this loss of
nationality was not contemplated by the European powers, and that it is
contrary both to the letter and to the spirit of the Treaties of 1815.
By degrees, however, whether rightly or wrongly, Russian supremacy has
asserted itself, and the story of M. Rufin Pietrowski is intended to
demonstrate what are the amenities of that régime. The Poles will not
submit to a government in which they are not allowed to participate;
and they are engaged in ceaseless attempts to elude its vigilance, and
to defy its power. They wish to organise themselves; and the executive,
obliged to act both on the defensive and the offensive towards
them, has recourse to cruel and arbitrary methods of repression.
The narrative of the Siberian Exile is a strange one, but there is
no reason to believe that his tale is otherwise than authentic. The
candour and moderation with which he speaks of the Russian officials
is highly creditable, and it deserves to be noticed, that it is the
system, rather than the men, which he attacks.

The last paper in this book will be found, without doubt, to be the
most interesting. A moment’s reflection will convince its readers
that there is no European country in which so great a change is being
effected, and of which they hear so little, as Russian Poland. Yet the
events which have recently agitated Poland are events of historical
interest, and they are not in themselves unimportant to Western Europe.
An outline of their nature and extent is given here. This history of
‘twelve months of agitation’ makes us spectators of a struggle which
the Poles have maintained against the Czar, and in which they have
proved themselves to be still full of that high, haughty, and stubborn
spirit of liberty which Edmund Burke discerned in them of yore. Their
recent efforts towards civilization and self-improvement will not
fail to ensure for them the sympathy of all who can discern in its
energy and its self-control the true greatness of a nation. Sketches
of some of the leading men of Poland will be found here: and, at this
crisis, it has been thought that an account of the career of Count
Andrew Zamoyski could hardly fail of being acceptable. If the destiny
of Poland, as a nation, be eventful and yet obscure, the destiny of
individuals has often proved under the Muscovite rule to be more tragic
and even more obscure. The Polish party in emigration, who now welcome
Count Zamoyski, have great cause to congratulate themselves that their
‘civic hero’--the best and worthiest of their patriots--has not been
sent to expiate a life devoted to his country’s good in the fortress
of Akatouïa, or in some of the desolate wastes of the Russian Empire in
the East.

The translator is in no wise responsible for any of the sentiments
to be found in this book. His task has been simply that of rendering
into English the thoughts and words of other men. In the story of
M. Rufin Pietrowski he has felt the disadvantages that attend upon
the translation of a translation; but he has striven to preserve the
integrity of the narrative, even in the smallest particulars. It is
with a view to this end that he has adopted all those Russian and
Polish phrases, idioms, and words which occur in the text of M. Klackso.

  LONDON:
  _November 1862_.



  CONTENTS.


  INTRODUCTION.                                                 Page 1-9

  Siberia--Adventures of Beniowski--Madame Felinska--M. Rufin
  Pietrowski

  CHAPTER I.

  OF A MISSION INTO POLAND.

  A passport--The journey--The Russian frontier--Kaminieç--A
  teacher of languages--Annoyances of disguise--M. Abaza--Suspicions
  of the Police                                                    10-24

  CHAPTER II.

  OF MY ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT AT BRAÇLAW.                        25-40

  Arrest--Examination--Major Poloutkovskï--Journey to Braçlaw--An
  accident--The prison--A Russian scene--Kiow

  CHAPTER III.

  OF MY IMPRISONMENT AT KIOW, AND MY DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA.        41-59

  The fortress at Kiow--Prince Bibikov--Examination--A Commission
  of Inquiry--A Bible--Fellow-prisoners--The maniac--Preparations
  for ‘Deportation’--The Sentence

  CHAPTER IV.

  OF DEPORTATION, AND THE LIFE OF AN EXILE IN SIBERIA.             60-81

  The _knout_ and the _plète_--Running the gauntlet--Gangs of
  exiles--Grand-Duchess Marie--The journey--Russian alms--A ‘pope’--The
  Russian soldier--Omsk--Prince Gortchakov--Ekaterinski-Zavod

  CHAPTER V.

  THE KATORGA.                                                    82-102

  Companions in exile--The katorga--A murderer--The felons--Kantier--Pay
  and punishments--The counting-house

  CHAPTER VI.

  SIBERIA.                                                       103-114

  Siberia--Hardships of deportation--Breaking the ban--The Abbé
  Sierocinski--His conspiracy and execution

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE FLIGHT.                                                    115-152

  An attempt--My route--My funds--My dress--A sledge--A
  Russian theft--The journey--Irbite--On foot--A night’s
  lodging--Danger--Cold and famine--Paouda--The _izbouchka_--The crest
  of the Ourals--Lost in the forest--Sleep--Alms--Véliki-Oustiong


  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE PILGRIM AND THE PILGRIMAGE.                                153-169

  Pilgrimages--The Bohomolets--Manners and customs in Véliki-Oustiong
  --On the Dvina--Archangel--The devotions of the pilgrims--Difficulties
  --Hope deferred

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE WHITE SEA.                                                 170-194

  The monastery of Solovetsk--The prisoner of Solovetsk--Heterodoxy
  and orthodoxy--The promontory--A farther journey--Onega--St.
  Petersburg

  CHAPTER X.

  THE RETURN TO PARIS.                                           195-208

  The moujik’s passage--Lithuania--The Prussian frontier--Königsberg
  --Arrest and captivity--M. Kamke--Bail--Flight--Arrival
  in Paris--The end


  POLAND

  A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION:                                  211-263

  AND THE LATE AGITATION IN WARSAW.

  A century--1772--Battle of Macejowice and Kosciusko--Treaty of
  1815--Opinion of M. de Talleyrand--Cracow--Treaty of Vienna,
  Article 6--Policy of Alexander--Policy of Prussia--Policy of the
  Emperor of Austria--Nicholas the Tzar--Violent assimilation of
  Poland with Russia--Posen--Cracow--The last thirty years--Massacre
  in Galicia--1848--Crimean war--The Polish question--Efforts
  for internal reform--Temperance league--The Agricultural
  Society--Count Andrew Zamoyski--Krasinski--‘Aurora’--Amnesty
  of Alexander II.--Conference at Warsaw--Position of Russia

  A YEAR OF AGITATION IN POLAND.                                 267-321

  Solution of the Polish question--War in the Crimea--Congress in
  Paris--Allocution of the Czar--1856--‘No dreams’--1860--February
  25, 1861--Count Andrew Zamoyski--Prince Gortchakof--His
  death--General Souchozanett--The Marquis Wiélopolski--Vacillating
  policy of Russia--7th and 8th of April, 1861--A contested
  nationality--Horoldo--The procession--The Polish eagle--The
  elections--State of siege--15th and 16th of October--General
  Lambert--Exiles--Catholicism in Poland--The _Welicorus_--Poland
  and Russia



THE STORY OF A SIBERIAN EXILE.



INTRODUCTION.

 SIBERIA--ADVENTURES OF BENIOWSKI--MADAME FELINSKA--M. RUFIN PIOTROWSKI.


There is an expression in use in Poland which surpasses all that human
eloquence has ever employed to give intensity to despair; it consists
of the words ‘_we never meet again_:’ and thus it is that any political
exile, when about to depart for Siberia, takes leave of his family and
of his friends; ‘_we never meet again!_’ for the only way in which an
exile could find himself once more among those whom he loves would
be for him to meet them in the same place of torment. The conviction
is deep that they who are once transported to those regions of pain
can quit them no more; that Siberia never relinquishes her prey. For
nearly a century she has torn from Poland her most devoted women, her
most generous sons. Back to those realms of snow and of blood fly the
thoughts of every Pole who inquires into the past fortunes of his
family; and when the poet dreams for his country a future which is all
liberty and bliss, it is again Siberia which rears herself before his
eyes, ready after victory itself still to demand her victims. It is a
mysterious and dismal land!--a land ‘from which one returns no more,’
as the Polish peasants say, or, as Hamlet speaks of that other region
which Siberia so fatally resembles, it is an ‘undiscovered country
from whose bourne no traveller returns.’ And yet now and then some one
does come back. Sometimes at the accession of a Czar to the throne,
an amnesty (which, however incomplete it may be, receives no less the
surname of general) sends back to heart-broken families some of those
who have not wholly succumbed to pain. At least, this did happen twice
in one century; at the accession of Paul I. and of Alexander II.:
the Emperor Nicholas never felt a similar weakness. In other cases,
very rare ones, and therefore not hard to enumerate, entreaties and
prayers backed by some distinguished protection have, after years
of persevering efforts, obtained the return of the condemned exile.
Finally, we have even seen, reappearing in the light, and among the
living, those who, neither waiting nor hoping for an amnesty, whether
general or particular, have found, in their own courage and in their
own despair, a way of extricating themselves from their horrible fate;
but such a phenomenon as this is not to be met with twice in any
hundred years. Several of those who have thus returned, like ghosts
from the tomb, have afterwards written an account of their sojourn
in these desolate places; others again left notes on the spot, which
were afterwards to be piously collected; and thus it happens that the
literature of Poland possesses a complete collection of the writings of
Siberian exiles, a collection already sufficiently large, and which,
in spite of the monotony of the subject, certainly is not lacking in
interest.

Very strange in truth are the adventures of Beniowski, a soldier of
Bar, deported to Kamtschatka, organising there among its indigenous
savages a vast conspiracy, administering to them an oath of fidelity
to the confederation of Bar, passing Behring’s Straits, conquering
Madagascar, and coming to offer the sovereignty of it to the French
king. A very different fate awaited General Kopec, who was banished
some years later to the same district. Submissive, patient, almost
serene, during the time of his exile, his mind became clouded at the
moment when he was told that the hour of his deliverance had come. Joy
was too great for his soul, and he took back to his native country only
the remnants of his reason. He had some sane and lucid intervals, and
these he employed in dictating a few pages of a history of his past
sufferings, in a style at once sweet and subdued. During thirty years
did poor Adolphus Januszkiewicz, for the use of an aged mother, who
still lived in Lithuania, note down day by day the events of a life
which flowed away among the Kirghis of the Steppes; and a brother’s
hand has lately discovered to us how much filial piety and indomitable
courage filled that exile’s breast. We omit many other names; but how
can we avoid recalling Madame Eva Felinska and her book--that noble
lady and noble Christian, whom the severity of Nicholas sent to be a
dweller in Bérézov, in the middle of the Yakoutes and the Ostiaks, and
whose son has recently (April 1862) been promoted to the archbishopric
of Warsaw? What constitutes the sensible charm of Madame Felinska’s
work is not only the absence of all recrimination (the annals of the
Siberian exiles being in general free from all bitterness), but it
is the feminine modesty with which she instinctively conceals her
personal misfortunes. One might imagine while reading her pages that
they were the remarks of some enquiring person, who sojourned among
unreclaimed tribes out of pure eccentricity of mind, did not the
cries of a mother who asks for her poor little children undeceive us,
and make us only too often aware that the choice rested not in that
mother’s will. One day at Bérézov,[1] while digging a well, there was
discovered a corpse, which (thanks to the glacial nature of the soil)
seemed by its preservation, and the state of the brilliant uniform and
orders, to have been but a thing of yesterday. By dint of enquiries and
recollections, they succeeded, however, in proving that it was the body
of Prince Menstchikov, who more than a century ago had died an exile
on this very spot, after having lived the minister and the favourite
of Czars. Madame Felinska in recording the event contents herself with
exclaiming, ‘What a strange chance!’ She leaves to the mind of the
reader the task of filling in the outlines of this touching picture,
where a Polish woman, in this same land of banishment, finds herself
face to face with the man who first dared with impunity to trample on
the Sarmatian soil.

One of the most recent and remarkable publications in this the
literature of the deported (for so it is called in Poland to
distinguish it from the literature of the emigrated) is that which has
just been given to us by M. Rufin Piotrowski.[2] His book recommends
itself not only by the richness of its detail and the breadth with
which it is composed, but also, and chiefly, because the author of
it is an escaped ‘Siberian.’ In him, since the case of Beniowski, we
have the only example of a deported person who has attempted such
an enterprise, and who has also succeeded in it. It is the more
extraordinary because M. Piotrowski was also condemned to hard labour
in the public works. Beniowski, as we have seen, had much assistance
and many accomplices. A comparatively narrow tract alone separated him
from the land of freedom, whereas our contemporary had no one to rely
on but himself, and without map or succours, almost without money,
he had to traverse Siberia in its entire length, and a great part of
Russia in Europe in addition. On foot he made the long and perilous
journey from beyond Omsk in Western Siberia, penetrating the Oural
mountains to Archangel, Petersburg, Riga, even into Prussia, never
imparting to a living soul his fatal secret, in order not to involve
any one in his own probable and terrible fate. If the narrative of M.
Piotrowski has not all that romantic brilliancy which the story of
the confederate of Bar can afford, it reveals to us greater dangers
and a perseverance of will far superior in every way. Nor is the
marvellous element wanting to this strange Odyssey, albeit its hero is
no mythological being; he exists, nay, he lives among us, and we rub
shoulders with him every day. This escaped convict and exile from the
banks of Irtiche, this former _unhappy one_ (for thus do the natives
of Siberia call the deported Poles), is now a modest professor in that
excellent Polish school of the Batignolles, for which the emigrated
sons of Poland are partly indebted to the generosity of France. M.
Rufin Piotrowski was one of those heroic emissaries who, from the
extreme limits of Polish emigration, sought to carry back and impart
to an oppressed country the hopes, the ideas, and the dreams of exile;
and his narrative begins precisely at the point when he started from
Paris, on the journey which he undertook to Kaminiec in Podolia. These
emissaries brought with them, generally speaking, impossible plans,
and calls which could not be answered, because sufficient reflection
had not been bestowed upon them. Sometimes, too, they imported ideas
which were positively dangerous, and if they almost always half atoned
for their errors by a constancy which braved both death and danger;
they did not the less draw along with them in their own unhappy fate
some generous and innocent victims. M. Piotrowski has at least this
consolation, that he never made himself the apostle of perverse
doctrines, and that he never sowed the seeds of hatred. His actions as
an emissary were always enlightened by sentiments of that religious
charity to which mob law in all its meanings is utterly repugnant. The
same profoundly religious spirit characterises his book--a book which
was written now many years ago, but which, for reasons obvious in a
case of Polish publication, it was impracticable to publish before
1861. We have thought that the recollections of M. Piotrowski were
likely to find favour with the French public. At a time when nothing
else is heard of in Poland but sentences to Siberia pronounced upon
the most respectable of her citizens, upon canons, rabbins, provosts,
merchants, professors, students, and artisans, it surely cannot
be useless or amiss to explain by one striking example all that is
contained for Poland and the Poles in the single word ‘_deportation_.’
Is it necessary now to add that what we are about to read in these
pages is in every particular strict matter of fact? The narrative of M.
Piotrowski bears the stamp of truth, and of a good faith which pleads
for itself, and removes every suspicion of exaggeration. For the rest,
as we shall see, the author hardly, if ever, blames persons; as often
as not, he expresses himself with regard to them in words marked by a
lively sense of gratitude. It is the _system_ only which he accuses;
and, shall we confess it, the countrymen of M. Piotrowski, and above
all his companions in misfortune, while unanimous as to the perfect
authenticity of his tale, have rather reproached him with an excessive
indulgence in speaking of the Russian officials. How many Poles, for
example, have been surprised to see the portraits which he has sketched
of Prince Bibikov and of M. Pissarev, men whose names are so painfully
distinguished in the annals of the Poland of to-day? As we do not think
it necessary to anticipate or preach a conviction which will soon make
itself felt, it remains for us only to point out the method which we
have followed in borrowing here from the Polish original of the book.
A mere analysis would have effaced its character of individuality,
while it spoilt the originality of the book. What is presented here
is a faithful abridgement of a more detailed and lengthy narrative--an
abridgement of an abyss, if one may borrow Pascal’s energetic
phrase--for the ‘Recollections of a Siberian Exile’ reveal to us a
perfect abyss of suffering and of misery.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] We use here the Latin _v_ as the best equivalent for the _b_
(viedi) of the Russian alphabet, although the letters _f_ and _w_ in
Russian have nearly the same sound. To be consistent, it is necessary
to write not only Móskova, Iainbov, Bérézov, but Orlov, Menstchikov,
etc.: as for the name of Kiow, we adopt the orthography of the
inhabitants of this town (Little Ruthenes); the Russians alone write it
Kiew, pronouncing it always as Kiow.

[2] Pamietniki Rufina Piotrowskiego, 3 vols. in 8vo. Posen 1861.



CHAPTER I.

OF A MISSION INTO POLAND.

 A PASSPORT--THE JOURNEY--THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER--KAMINIEÇ--A TEACHER OF
 LANGUAGES--ANNOYANCES OF DISGUISE--M. ABAZA--SUSPICIONS OF THE POLICE.


I had long decided to take my departure for my native land, and was
only occupied by the necessary preparations for it, when I fell
suddenly sick in Paris. It was in the year 1842. I was received into
the hospital of _La Pitié_, then under the direction of Baron Lisfranc,
who had formerly served with Polish troops during the wars of the
Empire, and who still preserved towards them a friendly sentiment. A
number of my compatriots and companions in exile found themselves along
with me in the hospital, a prey to the two forms of disease so common
among us emigrants--consumption and madness. More than one of them died
in my ward, and at my side--a sight which was well calculated to sadden
my spirit, for they died, though without uttering a single complaint,
in utter prostration and gloom. One would almost have said that they
had felt, in leaving this world, as if, even in the next, for them
there might still be no country.

This sojourn in the hospital was nevertheless not without a good result
on my projects. I had the fortune to make the acquaintance of another
invalid, an American from the United States, who promised to get a
passport for me, a thing which was indispensable for my undertaking,
and which up to this time I had never been able to procure. Leaving,
after a detention of about six weeks, the hospital from which the
American had been discharged a few days earlier, I went at once to seek
him at the address which he had given me. He then and there handed
over to me an English passport, made out in the name of ‘_Joseph
Catharo, native of La Valette (Malta), aged 36_.’ The document was
quite regular, delivered at the English embassy in Paris, and signed
by the ambassador, Lord Cowley. I could desire nothing better. In my
situation an English passport was preferable to any other. I spoke
Italian perfectly, whereas I could only speak English very imperfectly;
but then my supposed Maltese antecedents would make good any failings
on that score. The different _visa_ of Baden, Wurtemberg, Bavaria,
Austria, and Turkey, were soon procured; but at the office of the
Minister for Foreign Affairs there had been put alongside of the seals
two printed lines containing these fatal words--‘Bound to present
himself at the Prefecture of the Police.’ Now I had all sorts of
reasons for not wishing to announce my departure at the Prefecture of
Police, where they might very likely have had more inquisitiveness than
I had found in my American friend. After casting about in my mind for a
long time how best to dispose of this luckless clause, I selected the
not very ingenious plan of spilling some ink over the two lines, thus
counterfeiting a big blot, and leaving nothing visible but the seal of
the Minister. The method was a rude enough one, but it was not the less
serviceable, and at none of the numberless police stations at which the
passport had afterwards to be presented was any exception taken to the
blot which disfigured it.

Thus accommodated, and furnished with 150 francs, which were to suffice
for the wants of a long journey, I left Paris on January 9, 1843.
After having traversed without hindrance Strasburg, Stuttgart, Munich,
Salzburg, and Vienna, I took the road from the last-named place to
Pesth. In the interests of my mission I was to make a month’s stay in
the capital of Hungary; and I profited by this delay, for I addressed
in the meantime to the English ambassador at Vienna the request that
he would renew my passport, my intention being to go to Russia instead
of to Constantinople, and to make a stay there of considerable length.
An answer was soon returned. At the end of a few days I received from
Vienna, in exchange for my old passport, a new one, of a recent date,
happily free from any ominous blots of ink, and _visé_ for Russia. On
February 28th, I quitted Pesth, meaning to reach Kaminieç in Podolia,
the term and goal of my voyage. I found that the small sum which I
had brought with me from Paris had, in spite of the most frugal way
of living, greatly diminished; and I resolved to make the rest of my
journey from Hungary to Podolia on foot. The season was favourable, the
scenery magnificent, the passage of the Carpathians so splendid as to
make me forget any slight fatigue. It was a strange, sometimes almost
a diverting, sensation for me thus to traverse Galicia, and to have to
ask my way in execrable German of the few Austrian officials, while the
peasants gave utterance to the most minute remarks upon me, all in that
Polish speech which I declared I did not understand. The pleasantries
of our peasants on the subject of ‘the dumb man’ did not, however, miss
fire or fail to amuse me greatly. To these jokes there were often added
on their part marks of respect to a stranger come from the ends of the
earth. ‘I am sure he comes a long way off,’ they would say to each
other; ‘from very far, from where even the crow brings no bones.’ At
last, on one fine March morning, 1843, I found myself at the boundary
which separates the Austrian and Russian territory, near the village
of Bojany. The frontier was marked by two barriers, which were distant
the one from the other by a few dozen paces. Upon showing my papers the
Austrian barrier was opened for me without any difficulty; but when I
arrived at the Russian side, it was in vain that I called and looked
round in all directions--no one came. Tired of waiting I passed by,
stooping under the beam, and directed my steps to a house at a little
distance, which seemed to be the Custom House office. The astonishment
there was great when I was seen to arrive thus unaccompanied by a
soldier.

‘How did you pass the frontier?’

‘At the barrier, down there.’

‘Who opened it for you?’

‘Nobody. I called in vain, and at last determined to slip underneath
it.’

‘What! the guard was not there at his post?’ cried the functionary, as
much exasperated he rushed out to give orders, of which his menacing
tones only too fully explained the nature. Having returned to his room,
he emptied out upon me the remains of his ill humour; but the sight of
the English passport had a sudden and pacifying effect on his wrath.
While my papers were being examined, and they took down the answers
which I made to sundry questions relating to my journey, I heard
the distant cries of the poor soldier, who was expiating under the
bastinado what had been either his negligence or perhaps indeed only
my hastiness. At last I was free to leave the office, with a feeling
of satisfaction which was not, however, wholly unalloyed. There was
indeed something ominous in this incident attending my entrance into
the territory of the Emperor Nicholas. From the first step I had defied
Russian vigilance, but I had at the same time, albeit involuntarily,
caused the punishment of an unhappy creature, and my heart was pained
at it.

On March 22nd, I reached Kaminieç, at midday. I had my portmanteau
in one hand, while with the other I opened the door of an inn that
had been pointed out to me, and I found myself suddenly in the middle
of a large assembly of people, and in a room where they were playing
billiards. I had purposely kept my hat on my head, and by this sign, so
contrary to our national habits, I was immediately recognised to be a
stranger or a _Frenchman_, for the two words are among us considered to
be synonymous. The sensation, which was evident in the room, was very
curious. ‘A _Frenchman_, a _Frenchman_,’ they murmured on all sides,
speaking with interest and even with sympathy, but with a manifest
fear of compromising themselves by an imprudent of even a friendly
word. Two men only ventured to come forward frankly and converse with
me--the one was a Pole from Cracow, only passing through Kaminieç,
and therefore less obliged to be circumspect; the other was a Russian
officer, who left the billiard-table when he heard me utter a few
sentences in French, and who immediately showed the greatest readiness
to make my acquaintance. ‘You are, then, come to stay here for some
time? Oh! pray remain, I beseech you. It is a fine country! beautiful
women, too! But it is at Warsaw especially that one finds charming
women. Ah! Warsaw! I have been garrisoned there: it is a famous place,
and _there_ really _are_ pretty faces!’ And the young man seemed not
to be able to stop in pouring forth praises which could not but be
disagreeable to me. Strange that this Poland, of which he trod the
soil, and of which he had visited all the principal towns, should have
given him nothing to see or to appreciate but the beauty of our women!
Not one word to say of the government, of the fate of the inhabitants,
of the misery of the people! His only subject of preoccupation, of
praise, and of conversation, was the female population of Poland. One
thing only turned him from this favourite topic. I happened to say
something incidentally of Paris; then he began to ask questions about
the Parisian womankind, and seemed at once pleased and excited at my
replies. On the whole he was not a bad fellow, this officer Rogatchev;
and he wound up by sharing with me the national dish of _pierogi_,
laughing all the time at the strong foreign accent with which I
pronounced the word: but he did me the justice to say soon after, that
in the matter of _pierogi_ my good appetite had made ample amends for
my bad pronunciation.

While we walked up and down the room and talked in a loud voice on
trifling subjects, the other occupants of it, all Poles and young
people, kept themselves apart and whispered together, directing towards
me from time to time oblique and curious glances. What a striking
contrast there was between their attitude of reserve and the full-blown
confidence of the happy Rogatchev! While keeping up my conversation
with the Russian officer, I endeavored to catch the words which were
passing among my countryman. ‘From France?’ ‘Does he know anything of
our people?’ ‘Do the French care about us?’ ‘Perhaps something new
is about to happen.’ My emotion was great, but I had to redouble the
animation with which I was describing to my new acquaintance the beauty
and the glories of Paris.

While so discoursing I did not omit to inform M. Rogatchev as well
as the other persons present that I had come to Kaminieç to push my
fortune as a teacher of languages, and that I desired nothing better
than to settle in the town, though, if my interests required it, I
might penetrate even to the interior of Russia. This declaration I
repeated next morning at the station of police, for I was anxious to
lose no time in establishing my position. The permission to remain
was accorded to me without hesitation. As regarded my intention of
giving lessons in private houses, I was warned that some formalities
must in the first place be attended to, and that I must formally ask
and obtain the consent of the military governor, of the director
of the Lyceum, &c. It was not long before I obtained the necessary
authorisation, and thanks to the recommendations of my officer and of
other persons whose acquaintance I made on the first day,--thanks,
above all, to those obliging cares of which a stranger is always the
object in our country, orders for lessons came to me from all sides,
and from the very first. I preferred, I must say, the houses of the
different Russian officials; it was the surest way to avoid suspicion
for myself, and to prevent compromising my countrymen. The offers made
to me by the Abaza family were really precious, and it may be supposed
that I did not neglect such connections as these; for Colonel Abaza,
President of the Chamber of Finance, was a Russian functionary at once
highly placed and very influential. I did not, however, refuse to
attend on Polish families; but I selected those which any discovery
would have the least affected, such as the houses of widows and elderly
gentlemen--those, in short, where there were no young people. After
a few weeks I had made good my position, and my relations were well
understood. I went into all circles, and all over the town I was well
known as the M. Catharo whom they persisted in calling a Frenchman.

Thus it was that, after having been an emigrant for twelve years, I
found myself again in my native land, not very far either from my own
family (which dwelt in the Ukraine), and in the quality of a Maltese,
a British subject, teaching foreign languages, and not understanding
a word of either the Russian or the Polish tongues. This last
circumstance was one which often put my caution and my _sang froid_
both to some severe trials, trials which my professorial office only
aggravated. How many times was I not tempted at some difficult idiom or
expression to explain myself to my pupils in a speech quite as familiar
to me as it was to themselves! One of my first pupils was a certain
Dmitrenko, a clerk in the Chamber of Finance, a cheerful being, who
was bitten all of a sudden with a fancy for learning French, of which
he did not know a single word. At the end of the pantomime which was
necessary to make us mutually understand each other during the lesson,
he wound up by proposing to give me some notions about Russian, with
which I was perfectly conversant; but he never managed to make me read
fluently, and he could not conceal his astonishment at this want of
intelligence in one of those Frenchmen whose wits he had heard so much
vaunted.

Among my own people, the incognito which I preserved exposed me very
often to scenes that made both my inward feelings and my sentiments as
a man of probity suffer acutely. I was the involuntary and helpless
confidant of the relations, even of the secrets, of families, who
thought that they concealed them perfectly from my knowledge by
speaking together in Polish. Nor in such conversations did I always
hear remarks that were flattering to myself. One day, for example, a
visitor who was unknown to me meeting me in a room for the first time,
and hearing that I had recently come from Paris, wished to ask me if I
knew anything of his brother, who lived in that capital, an emigrant,
and a man whom in truth I knew perfectly well; but the master of the
house dissuaded him warmly from it. ‘You know very well how strictly
we are forbidden to make any enquiries about our emigrated relations;
take care what you are about; one is never sure of one’s self with a
foreigner.’ I felt as if all the blood in my body were rushing to my
head, and I bent down quickly over the book in which I was cutting some
leaves.

I must be permitted one other recollection of this sort. I was
giving lessons to the two daughters of the good and amiable Madame
Piekutowska. One day, while conversing with them, I touched oh the
subject of Poland. The beautiful Matilda replied to my careless
expression with one of those words which we sometimes utter before a
stranger, not witting that we are making some deep wound bleed. The
elder sister took her up sharply in Polish, ’ How can you speak of
sacred things before a hair-brained Frenchman?’

Such incidents happened nearly every day, and they caused me sometimes
pleasure, sometimes annoyance; but that annoyance turned to a
concentrated rage when in Russian houses I was obliged to swallow in
silence, or discuss with the passionless calmness of a stranger,
topics wounding to my country, and such discussions as her oppressors
permitted themselves to indulge in. It was in the house of Monsieur
Abaza above all that I suffered this torture most frequently; and I
should try in vain were I to attempt to give any idea of it.

As my own safety, as well as that of others, would assuredly be
compromised were I suspected of knowing the language of the country,
I was obliged in this respect to keep a constant watch upon myself.
If I may use such an expression, I was forced to watch myself even in
sleep; and I always arranged (especially when I happened to be invited
to any of the dwellings in the neighbourhood) so as to sleep alone, and
in a separate room. I feared that during my slumbers I might chance to
mutter some sentences in Polish. But no incident disturbed me in the
part which I had assumed; and during nine months I was enabled either
to remain in Kaminieç, or to make short excursions into the provinces,
without awakening the suspicions of the police. In the eyes of Poles,
as well as Russians, I passed always for M. Catharo, an inoffensive
man, who liked society, and who was well received in it. As to the true
object of my stay, and my real character, some of my countrymen alone
became privy to it, and the secret was most rigorously kept. The alarm,
as I afterwards learnt, came from St. Petersburg, and Kaminieç was
convulsed with astonishment when it discovered all of a sudden that the
French teacher of languages whom it had harboured so long within its
walls, was a native, an emigrant, and an emissary of emigrants....

They say that men are often warned by a strange inward feeling that
danger is approaching. I had no need of such a supernatural gift to be
made aware, during the first days of the month of December, that peril
was imminent; I had only to keep my eyes about me. By the beginning
of December, I perceived that I was watched and spied upon at every
turn by emissaries of the police. The counsels which were given me
from different quarters, as well as the manner half inquisitive and
half constrained with which the Russian officials treated me, could
not but confirm my apprehensions. I have since heard that the moment
of my arrest was delayed not only from their wish to inform themselves
perfectly of my conduct, but from the difficulty which they experienced
in completely identifying my person; and their fear was lest, in case
of any mistake, they should get themselves into trouble by interfering
with a British subject; that is to say, with the subject of a power
well known not to stand any practices of that sort, or any joking on
such a matter. Very soon, however, I felt both that there was no doubt,
but that my arrest was close at hand, and also that it was time for me
to arrange my plans. Up to this moment flight had not been altogether
impossible, but it was repugnant to me. Why should I shun the dangers
to which my accomplices were exposed, who neither could nor ought to
choose the path of exile? It was therefore a strict duty which I owed
to them, and to hundreds of persons who had nothing whatever to do with
me, not to be absent when the day of enquiry came. To tell the truth,
the Russian plan, in any political search of the kind, is to arrest all
those who, from far or near, intimately or casually, may have known the
suspected person. Now, as I was acquainted with everybody, both in the
town and in its environs, the disappearance of the guilty principal
would only have served to aggravate the case of thousands of suspected
persons. The inquiry would have dragged on for years; it would perhaps
never have come to an end. My presence alone could prevent countless
misfortunes, and, if the worst came to the worst, it could limit the
number of the victims. I resolved therefore patiently to abide the
fatal hour; and I spent the days of freedom which yet remained to me
in concerting with my accomplices the plan of conduct which I ought
to follow. The last interview which I had with one of them was in a
church on the eve of my arrest. We agreed as much as possible upon all
points, and then embraced one another with an emotion which may easily
be understood. Remaining to the last, and alone in the church, I prayed
with fervour that God would give me strength to come through the trials
which might await me.

Like every Pole of my generation, I had imbibed from my mother’s
teaching a fervent attachment to the Catholic faith. But those
convictions had had their times of eclipse, and I can still recall
the moment at which they were for the first time absolutely shaken.
It was in 1831, when, after our glorious campaign, I passed into
Galicia with the corps under General Dwernicki. One day I was at
confession, when the priest, a brother of the order of St Bernard,
among other exhortations full of charity and of the spirit of the
Gospel, represented our revolution to me as a sin, and as a violation
of the oath of fidelity to Nicholas. Respect for the sacred precincts
prevented my replying to him, but, as I rose to go away, I said to
myself that the priests did not always teach the truth, and that there
were a good many tares among their wheat. Some time later, while living
in France, I began to take up, like the rest of the world, new ideas in
religion, as well as in politics. I neglected all religious exercises
and practices, and had come to look on Jesus Christ as an excellent
philosopher, or, at the best, as a democratic teacher. But the
frivolous pleasure of unbelief are soon exhausted; and long before the
period at which my narrative begins, and before my return to my native
land, I had reverted to the feelings and the belief which had guided my
youth, and in which I was to find the only true support throughout the
sad destiny that was in store for me.



CHAPTER II.

OF MY ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT AT BRAÇLAW.

 ARREST--EXAMINATION--MAJOR POLOUTKOVSKÏ--JOURNEY TO BRAÇLAW--AN
 ACCIDENT--THE PRISON AT BRAÇLAW--A RUSSIAN SCENE--KIOW.


On December 31st, 1843, and just at the late dawning of the day, I
felt myself shaken by the arm, and I was addressed in a loud voice by
my assumed name. Though awake, I was in no hurry to reply; I wished
to gain time to compose myself for my part. When at last I opened my
eyes, I beheld in my room the Director of Police, Colonel Grunfield;
a Commissary; and Major Poloutkovskoï, of the Council of Prince
Bibikov, Governor-General of Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine; the
Major having come from Kiow to take steps for my arrest. I expressed
my surprise at so early a visit, and my astonishment was naturally
redoubled at the intelligence that I must be taken, under escort,
before the Governor. I did not, of course, fail to represent my rights
as a British subject, or to remind them of the grave results that were
likely to accrue to themselves for this inconceivable conduct towards
me. After having thus gone through all the formalities necessary to
keep up my character, I asked permission to go into the next room, to
perform my toilet. While I was dressing, the Commissary took possession
of my papers and effects, and we were soon on our way to the house of
the Governor Radistchev, with whom I had been personally acquainted for
some time.

This first interview was both short and indecisive. The Governor
entered the room abruptly, and addressed me in Russian. I pretended not
to understand what he said, and requested that I might be interrogated
in French; above all I begged that he would explain the cause of my
being arrested. ‘You will learn that presently;’ and, at a signal given
by his hand, I was then hustled out of the room. I was conducted to
the house of the Director of Police, and there installed in a room
which opened into a saloon. The doors were locked, and the official in
uniform left to keep me company strictly observed the rule that he was
not to speak to me.

Up to this time I had preserved my presence of mind, and I had even
been astonished at my own perfect calmness at the moment of my
awakening; but now, when alone or nearly so, I suddenly felt a great
sinking of my heart. The thought of the many sufferings in store for
me, in store also for so many of my brothers, seemed to set my brain on
fire, and tears forced themselves into my eyes. To hide this dangerous
emotion, I turned to the wall, and leant my forehead against it; but
through the walls I fancied that sighs and moans were audible, the
voices of the companions of my unhappy fate. Determined to distract my
thoughts as much as I could, I took up a pack of playing cards that lay
on the round table. A child of the Ukraine, I was by nature a little
superstitious; I began to draw the cards, and they promised ... my
deliverance! Shall I say it? This fortunate augury only increased my
irritation, and I was almost obliged to the head official who entered
the room at this instant, and who, after enquiring into my wants,
carried away with him The tempting game.

A few minutes later a distraction of a more important kind took the
place of the childish consolation which I had found in the cards.
Another officer had been sent to join the one already in charge of
me, and between them a conversation soon began which certainly was
not devoid of interest for me. I was so well known in Kaminieç, and
everyone was so thoroughly convinced of my ignorance of the two
languages used in the country, that even now these two officials still
thought me a foreigner, and they put no restraint on the remarks which
they made to each other in Russian and in a loud tone of voice. I need
not say that I lost nothing from want of attention to such a colloquy.

‘It is a serious matter,’ said the one; ‘a political business. They
have arrested twenty people in the town already this morning (he gave
the names), and orders have been sent out to the country, and all on
account of this foreigner, who, they say, is come here to intrigue
against the Tzar, and who is accredited by some other power, England
or France--the devil knows which! They do not speak very well either
of President Abaza; if anything happens to him it will be a pity,
for he is an honest man; but I must say that at _his_ age it _was_
an odd idea to wish to learn French! Much he is like to make by his
French lessons!’... ‘What a pity! what a pity to be sure!’ answered
the other one; ‘when this gentleman came here nine months ago I was
ordered to watch him, as we do every new comer. I dogged his steps, I
compassed him about on every side; but his conduct was so very open,
his relations with both Russians and Poles so frank, and he appeared
to me to be so really inoffensive, that at last I lost sight of him;
and it seems he was a very pretty fellow after all, and now another
man has been down upon him, and will claim the reward! Now I call
_that_ having no luck! Scoundrel that he is! bah! what a pity, what a
pity to be sure!’... I could not help being amused at the strange way
in which this poor wretch condoled with himself for having lost the
opportunity of bringing about my ruin; but the rest of the information
which I extracted from their talk gave, if possible, a graver turn
to my thoughts. I could no longer doubt that many persons had been
arrested on my account; but the names which I had just heard repeated
belonged to such different classes of my acquaintances that I discerned
in them at least one source of hope. They were evidently groping in the
dark as yet, and arresting right and left, while suspicions reached as
far, or rather were as far astray, as Monsieur Abaza! In another point
of view I imitated the naive cynicism of my police official, and was
quite ready to rejoice at the trouble in which I had landed the worthy
President of the Chamber of Finance. If indeed the Russians whom I knew
were to be implicated in the trial, the affair would get into a strange
confusion, and who knows then whether my accomplices might not benefit
by the perfect innocence of the others, which would certainly soon be
made manifest?

At four o’clock in the afternoon I had a visit from the Governor, and
from Major Poloutkovskoï. They represented to me that my position was
an alarming one, and that it would be best for my own interest if I
made the most complete confession. I persisted in my resolution. I
declared I did not understand in the least what they wanted with me,
and I spoke of writing to the English ambassador in St. Petersburg, and
of claiming his protection. ‘You are then in a great hurry to leave
Kaminieç?’ replied the Governor, ironically; ‘but keep yourself easy,
I will furnish you with all the means for it.’ The same questions were
repeated on the following days, either in the house of the Director of
Police, where I was still detained, or in that of the Governor, who
had me brought to him under an escort; the same arguments were urged,
on the one side, to make me confess my real character, and there was,
on the other side, the same obstinacy in keeping up the part which
I had assumed. The manners of the Governor were generally cold but
polite, sometimes however they were ironical, and even vehement. ‘It is
in vain to say that you are a Maltese, and to play this comedy,’ cried
he, in one of his examinations; ‘we know very well that you belong to
the Ukraine, and so-and-so have already confessed that they have talked
with you in Polish.’ He named to me two of the co-accused, the least
initiated into my sayings and doings, and also the least firm. Twice
over I was confronted with them. These interviews were most painful,
and in spite of the flat denials which I opposed to those who thus
denounced me, I saw the impossibility of persisting any longer in the
line which I had hitherto followed. Every day more abundant and more
precise information arrived about me, and it became clear that in
prolonging a useless game I ran the risk of aggravating the situation
of my accomplices; but I determined to collect the greatest possible
number of the accused, and to make them witnesses to my confession,
so that they might know its limits and follow my suit. I waited to
be confronted with them in a body. I had not long to wait, and one
evening when summoned to the Governor’s residence, I perceived in
the hall a great number of my fellow-prisoners arranged along the two
walls, and all standing up--they presented a moving spectacle, I might
almost say a fantastic one. Many of them were persons with whom I had
but a very slight acquaintance, others had been in my secret, all bore
upon their faces the marks of suffering and fatigue. After a certain
time spent as usual in pressing questions and in absolute denials, I
exclaimed, as if out of patience, in a loud voice, and in my native
tongue, ‘Well then, yes, I am not a British subject, I am a Pole; I
was born in the Ukraine, I emigrated after the revolution of 1831,
and I came back here. I came back into this country because a life of
exile was no longer endurable to me, and because I wished to revisit
Poland. I came here under a feigned name, because I was perfectly
aware that bearing my own name I should not be suffered to remain; I
was ready at any price to be quiet and inoffensive, asking nothing but
to breathe my native air. I have confided my secret to a few of my
fellow-countrymen, I have asked their help and their advice, I have
asked them for nothing else, and I have nothing else to say to them.’
In spite of the certainty as to my identity which they must now have
possessed for some time, the Governor and Major Poloutkovskoï could not
suppress an exclamation of surprise at hearing me thus suddenly speak
out in Polish; and while I was speaking I could see the Governor’s face
expand; he rubbed his hands, walked up and down the room with long
steps, and when I ceased came up to me with a benevolent air, as if
he felt obliged to me for having put an end to a situation which was
really untenable. After a few insignificant questions, he gave orders
to have me removed.

On my return to the house where I was detained, being still under
the influence of the late excitement, I took every one strangely by
surprise by suddenly beginning to talk in Polish. In this language
I addressed the director, the officials, and my keepers. I took a
childish and feverish pleasure in making use of a freedom which had
been so long denied me; and I behaved in the same way on the following
day, though, from an obstinacy which had its root in repugnance, rather
than in any calculation whatever, I pretended, as before, that I did
not understand Russian. As to my native speech I used it to my heart’s
content; it was as if I wished to make amends to myself by the liberty
of a few hours for having had to abstain from it during an entire year.

Thus ended the preliminaries of my trial, and on the morrow Major
Poloutkovskoï came to desire me to hold myself in readiness to depart
on that very evening for Kiow.

It was on a fine but cold winter’s night that I quitted Kaminieç. I
took my seat in a roomy open carriage alongside of Major Poloutkovskoï.
Opposite us sat two soldiers, with loaded muskets, and we were followed
by a second carriage, in which were two officers of the secret
Police. Owing to the season, and the lateness of the hour, which was
midnight, the town was dark, and the streets were deserted; but as
I passed before certain houses which I knew well, and of which the
inhabitants were united in the same lot with myself, I looked up, and I
saw lights still burning. Was it as a message of farewell? or did they
bear witness to vigils full of anguish which were being held within?
The plaintive tinkling of bells, fastened, after the Russian fashion,
to the shafts of the vehicle, which was drawn by three horses, alone
broke the mournful silence of the night, and I sank into a reverie of
indulged sadness. I was obliged to my companion for not interrupting
the current of my thoughts by words; he did not speak even when we
stopped to change horses, and it was not till the day began to break
that he commenced a conversation. It turned at first only on France;
her administration, her commercial arrangements, her agriculture, her
commerce, these were all subjects in which he seemed to take a great
interest. By degrees we began to talk of politics, even of emigration,
and I had the opportunity of convincing myself how perfect was the
knowledge which my interlocutor had been able to collect of our
means, our men, and even of our smallest publications. I expressed my
astonishment at this to him; he smiled and replied, ‘We are obliged
to learn all these things, and the means of learning them are never
wanting.’ In general, the Major, whom I had had the opportunity of
studying during the examination that had taken place at Kaminieç,
and whom I was to meet again later in the Commission of Inquiry at
Kiow, showed himself, though cold and almost indifferent, to be a
well-educated man. He was polite and courteous in his demeanour to me,
and in all my interviews with the Governor of Kaminieç he had never
failed to call General Radistchev to reason, whenever he gave vent to
any burst of violence. A spring of my _calèche_ having given way on the
evening of our arrival at Mohilow, I had to be put into a _kibitka_
with the two soldiers, while the Major in another preceded us, along
with the officers of the secret Police; and we were carried along
with a rapidity of which no one who has not seen a Russian convoy of
this kind can form any idea. There it was that I met with an accident
the nature of which I am still far from understanding and which I
despair of describing to my readers. At one of those jolts of which
the _kibitka_ at its furious pace bestows so many on the traveller, I
felt something snap in the tendons which attach the head, and a sharp
and terrible pain made me give vent to such a savage cry of distress
that I was heard in the accompanying carriage. The Major called a halt,
and asked what was the matter with me. I was not able to reply, I was
simply sobbing; he ordered them to go at a walk to the post-house,
which relieved me much, but at the least jar the same frightful
suffering recurred, and I screamed while I tried to steady my head
between my hands. Arrived at the station I was not able to leave the
carriage, and to my shame and distress I was crying like a child. Then
the Major, who was obliged to press on in person to Braçlaw, left me
in charge of one of the police officials and of the two soldiers, and
desired them to go at a foot’s pace. Thus we continued our journey,
but, at the end of some hours, my companion, wearied by the slowness
of our march, ordered them to go quicker. Hardly had the horses broken
into a gallop when the pain became really insupportable. I felt I was
becoming mad, and warned by my piercing cries, my guardian called to
the driver to stop. ‘You must go slowly; if you won’t, blow my brains
out at once; believe me, if you continue to gallop, I shall not be
able to support it more than five minutes; I shall be dead, and what
will be your position then?’ I did not exaggerate in any way, and my
words gaining force by my strong conviction, made an impression upon
those who had the charge of me. We continued all that night walking
slowly, and when at daybreak we reached a posting-house, they put
me into a sledge, for the road, though not all covered with snow,
was deep in mud. Finally, at one o’clock we reached Braçlaw, where
Major Poloutkovskoï was in waiting for us. My deplorable condition
touched him visibly; he put his hand on my arm, and looking at me with
attention, he questioned me on the pain which I felt. It was the first
and the only time that he showed me any true compassion. He told me
that the wants of the service summoned him imperatively to Kiow, but
that I should remain here until I had recovered my strength a little;
he soon afterwards took leave of me, and after having pushed on a
little longer, my sledge stopped in the town before a vast and sombre
building. They bid me get out, the heavy gates grated on their hinges,
and after having traversed several dim corridors, I found myself in
the middle of a little room, which was tolerably clean, and of which
the window was furnished with strong iron bars. I flung myself on the
paillasse, which I saw in one corner, and covered myself with my cloak.
A few moments afterwards I received a visit from the _sous préfet_,
and from the doctor, a Pole, who examined me with much interest,
prescribed repose, and some medicines; and I was again left alone with
the two soldiers. Repose was in truth the only remedy for my pain, of
which I felt nothing as long as I remained quiet and lying down. Thus
long hours passed away, when all of a sudden breaking through the deep
silence I heard a strange clinking which I was not able to explain;
but I soon distinguished the sound of chains, both behind the wall and
in the corridors. I was then in one of those great prisons, called
Krepost; but who might my companions be? Simple criminals perhaps;
or, it may be political prisoners, countrymen of my own? My doubts
were soon cleared up; I heard a song rise, sonorous, choral, and only
broken by the sound of fetters; the words were Polish, the melody a
familiar one:--

  In a cradle sleeping, the Babe Divine, ...

It was then Christmas time, and these poor prisoners, my compatriots,
were intoning at midnight, after our ancient custom, the venerable
hymn which hails the Saviour’s birth. Then followed other canticles in
common use:--

  Thus to the shepherds did the angels say, ...

and

  To Bethlehem running, &c....

Ah, those Christmas hymns!--songs which had rocked my childhood and
pleased me in youth, and which I had not heard for the last twelve
years--ever since I had emigrated to another land. How after twelve
years was I to hear them again? Chanted by captives, and accompanied by
the rattle of their chains!

On both the following days I was visited repeatedly by the _sous
préfet_, and by the doctor. I felt very weak, but quite free from the
pain in my head; and upon being asked by the official in charge whether
I was ready to continue my journey, I replied in the affirmative, for
I was anxious to reach Kiow. As we were stepping into our sledges, I
noticed in the courtyard a regiment of soldiers, whose bearing was so
fine and so soldierly that I made a remark upon it to the _sous préfet_
as he stood beside me. ‘They are,’ he said, ‘Polish soldiers of 1831,
incorporated now into the army of the South.’ Thus did I meet again
after such a lapse of years my former companions in arms. I could not
help uncovering my head to them, and calling out loudly in Polish, ‘All
hail, comrades!’ ‘Forward!’ shouted the _sous préfet_ immediately; and
the horses went off like an arrow from a bow. We had hardly gone two
or three leagues out of Braçlaw when we met a carriage driving at a
fast and furious pace, and which pulled up alongside of us. An officer
of the armed Police sprang out of it, who, after conversing for a few
minutes with my companion, came up to me, and announced that for the
future I should consider myself under his guardianship.

He seemed a young man of about twenty, or a little older; very tall,
very slight, very tight in his uniform, with a waist like a wasp, and
with a hard haughty manner. He was, as I afterwards learnt, a German
by birth, and the sight of him gave me a curious sense of uneasiness,
so that I began to regret Major Poloutkovskoï. At one place he made
us drive off the high road, and we got out at a solitary house, a
guard-house apparently, and there they fitted me with a pair of
handcuffs. I was then led down to a hut, which was underground, and
to a sort of forge, where a soldier farrier had with some difficulty
lit the furnace fires. The officer produced some chains from some
corner or another, and he now stood contemplating them with an
expression of face which was both curious and fierce. These irons
were the most detestable things that can be imagined; red with rust,
they were composed of two long bars fastened in the middle by a bit
of chain, and having a foot-ring at each end. Having finished all the
preparations, the soldier tried the rings on me above each ankle, but
they were so tight that I could not help shouting with the pain. The
officer simply said, ‘Come, come!’ but when they were to be soldered
up I pulled my feet out, and declared that I would lodge a complaint
before the Governor-General if they did not let the rings out. This
made the officer pause for a moment. He ordered them to attend to my
demand, and bolts were at last let into them with hammers and punches;
but I suffered a great deal from them still, and they remained always
too tight, while the rusty bit of chain hindered the long bars from
turning, and left me wholly unable to walk. They lifted me up, and
hoisted me, thus trussed, into the carriage. Late in the night, and
after we had left Bialocerkiew behind, the sleigh in which I was
reached the top of an incline, and, coming upon some stumbling-block,
it upset. The soldiers were thrown off, I don’t know what became of the
coachman; as for myself, pinioned and unable to move, I was flung out,
but my fetters hooked on in some way to the vehicle, and I was dragged
along through the snow and the mud by the horses, which continued their
maddened course; my knees, elbows, and chest were bruised, and I
finally lost consciousness. When I came to myself again, I found that
I had been reinstalled into my sledge, and that all was restored to
order. The young officer standing alongside of me asked if I was much
hurt? I made no answer; and now began a scene which was truly Russian
in its character. The officer struck with his fists at the two unhappy
soldiers on account of an accident in which no one had had any part
but himself, for he had been constantly calling out to go quicker. The
soldiers, as soon as we were again under way, paid off on the driver
the blows they had received from the officer; and he, in return,
revenged himself on his horses by flogging them so brutally that we
ran every risk of having a repetition of the adventure. More dead than
alive, I saw all that was done; and, such is the weakness of our human
nature, I had but one feeling, the fear of a second accident. At each
pitch and at the least jolt I shut my eyes and nearly swooned; and yet
I was not naturally timid, and my nerves were not precisely of the most
delicate order. The following day I arrived before the fortress of
Kiow.



CHAPTER III.

OF MY IMPRISONMENT AT KIOW, AND MY DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA.

 THE FORTRESS AT KIOW--PRINCE BIBIKOV--EXAMINATION--A COMMISSION OF
 INQUIRY--A BIBLE--FELLOW-PRISONERS--THE MANIAC--PREPARATIONS FOR
 ‘DEPORTATION’--THE SENTENCE.


Carried in the arms of several soldiers, I was first deposited in the
business room of the Commandant of the place. Here I was searched,
registered, and inscribed on the books; while they plied me with
questions, to which I know not what answers I made, for I had no
knowledge either of what I was doing or of what I was saying. They set
me upright at last, and I walked, supported by soldiers, through an
endless number of rooms and corridors. A door was opened, I entered
the cell, and I fell exhausted on a mattress. Two jailers and an
aide-de-camp entered along with them, and the latter asked me if I
wanted anything. I requested to have my fetters changed, or to have
the foot-rings opened and made wider. He replied that he had no power
to do so, but that he would report the request. I was then left
alone, and at the end of a very few minutes I fell asleep. I slept
twenty-five hours without turning, and was only awakened at the end
of that time by my keepers, whom this prolonged slumber had alarmed.
Soon after, the colonel in command was ushered in. He was covered with
orders, and addressing me in Polish, he asked how I was, and what might
be the cause of my indisposition. I thanked him, but I said nothing
of the accidents of my journey; for where was the use of making any
complaints? He promised that some broth should be sent to me, and took
leave of me with these words, ‘Try to regain your strength, you are
much weakened; and here, in our prisons, one has need of health to bear
one’s many sufferings.

I was indeed very weak, but I was no longer tormented by that terrible
pain in my head, of which I was more afraid than of anything else.
There remained the pains in my chest, elbows and knees, which were the
consequences of the accident, and from which I was yet to suffer for
several months to come. I looked round my cell; it was six feet by
five, pretty high in the roof, in very bad repair, very dirty, and lit
by a small window placed close to the ceiling, and grated with iron
bars both within and without. Over my head I could read several names
cut with some difficulty on the wall; among others that of Rabczynski,
whom I was to meet hereafter in Siberia. The only furniture was a
little table, a wooden chair, and a great stove in earthenware. Some
broth and some bread were brought to me, but the difficulty of eating
in handcuffs was so great and irritated me so much that I finished my
meal before my appetite was appeased. Suddenly, the sight of the bread
that remained suggested to me a providential idea. It certainly was not
the first time that I had thought of Konarski, whose sufferings were
fresh in every memory. I knew that hunger had been one of the engines
of torture tried upon him, and I had no security that I might not have
to pass through a similar ordeal. So I determined to lay up a fund
against this extremity, and I hid the bread in a hole behind the stove,
high up in the wall; and this I did on the following days with the
bread that was supplied to me. I was quite pleased with the store of
biscuit thus prepared against the time of famine.

Somewhat revived by the food and by sleep, I now became sensible of
an annoyance which I could not at first account for. Presently I
discovered that I was literally covered with vermin, the mattress,
and the room were filthy with them, and the handcuffs prevented my
even attempting to destroy them. I looked round and caught two eyes
fixed upon me; it was the sentry on guard in the corridor, who had
orders to watch all my movements through the aperture cut in my door;
in vain, however, did I call to him, he paid me not the slightest
attention; but happily for me on the following day the Commandant of
the fortress caused me to be moved into the opposite cell, and had my
room purified. He gave orders at the same time to have me shaved; an
officer assisted at the operation, and when I requested that they would
leave my whiskers, I received an answer which, all things considered,
was rather out of place: ‘No, no; we will leave you nothing but your
moustaches, and that will be quite in the Polish fashion; the ancient
Poles wore nothing but a moustache.’ I soon returned to my cell, now
a little cleaner than it had been; but what most moved my gratitude
towards the Commandant was that he had my handcuffs taken off; and with
the recovered liberty of my hands I recovered, strange to say, all the
freedom and former energy of my mind. I kept constantly stretching out
my arms, hardly daring to believe in my happiness, and I felt like a
child escaped from its swaddling bands.

A week, or nearly a week, now elapsed without bringing any notable
change in my position. My food was wholesome and plentiful, the room
was cleansed every day, but the want of air and of exercise had
completely enervated me. My chains prevented my walking, or even
standing. I remained almost always lying on my paillasse, rising in
general only in the morning to kneel and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. The
nights were long and without any light, and their quiet was only broken
by the sound of the hammers, when they fitted or unfitted the fetters
of some of the prisoners. Although it was forbidden to the sentries
and keepers to speak to me, I soon managed to learn that all my accused
friends from Kaminieç were in the same prison with myself, though
lodged in different corridors.

One day, about noon, a great noise was heard at the entrance of my
cell, the door opened, and a man appeared before me in the undress of
a general officer, surrounded by generals and aides-de-camp, all in
full uniform, who stood back respectfully in the corridor. The man had
a tall figure, grey hair cut like a brush, an oval face without any
moustaches, and very piercing eyes: his left sleeve was fastened up to
one of the breast buttons of his coat, and the loss of an arm which
this indicated convinced me that I now beheld no less a person than
the Governor-General of Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, Prince
Bibikov.[3] He took off his cap, pushed the door close, without however
shutting it, sat down on the chair, and made me a sign to reseat myself
on the mattress from which I had risen. During the conversation which
followed he seemed very much annoyed at the bad air of the cell, and
turned mechanically to the high window several times, as if to breathe
freely. He addressed me in French.

‘You probably guess who I am?’

‘I believe that I have the honour of speaking to the Governor-General,
Prince Bibikov.’

‘Your name is Piotrowski; you are a native of the Ukraine; you took
part in the revolt of 1831, you emigrated to France. You afterwards
returned to Kaminieç under the name of Catharo.’

‘Yes, your Excellency.’

‘You pretend that your return had no other object than that of
revisiting your native land; but when after 1831 the Emperor granted an
amnesty, why did you not avail yourself of it?’

‘I do not wish to say anything that might be displeasing to your
Excellency, but at the same time the manner in which this amnesty
was drawn up was not of the nature to encourage us. Furthermore, the
amnesty only applied to subjects of the kingdom, the inhabitants of the
detached and outlying provinces were deprived of it; and to conclude,
before asking pardon, one must feel that one has been guilty.’

‘Who gave you that English passport?’

‘I found it in the street.’

‘You spent more than a month in Hungary; you see that I am well
informed about you. Why did you go there?’

‘To make my traces more difficult to follow, and to shorten the
journey.’

‘Oh! but you had some other reasons; you are a member of the Democratic
Society.’

‘I once formed a part of it, but I have withdrawn from it a long time
ago.’

‘You are an emissary of that society?’

‘No.’

‘Then in coming here you had no political mission?’

‘Certainly, I had none.’

‘Such assertions are not likely to improve your situation; I do not
hide from you that it is a very unpleasant one; and only a sincere and
complete confession can diminish your troubles, and above all make you
worthy of the indulgence of the Emperor. You knew Konarski?’[4]

‘No.’

‘But you have heard of him?’

‘Certainly, above all of the tortures inflicted upon him.’

‘Your case is similar to that of Konarski, and only the sincerity of
your confession can lessen its consequences. I do not wish to judge of
your sentiments, I only wish to know whom you have known at Kaminieç,
and in the provinces; I do not ask you to tell me what were your mutual
plans, tell me only with whom were you acquainted.’

‘Why, your Excellency, I knew almost everybody in Kaminieç, and in its
neighbourhood.’

‘That is not the question, and you know that it is not; the point is,
who were your intimates?’

‘I had none; it is true I was able to reveal my nationality to a few,
and to ask their help and counsel; but your Excellency must fully
understand why I ought not to name them.’

After some moments of silence, Prince Bibikov replied, ‘I do not
understand why the Poles and the Russians should hate and hurt each
other for ever; we are all Slaves, brought together by origin,
language, and manners, we ought to be united, and to march on together;
and he who thinks otherwise does not understand the true interests of
the two nations.’

‘I am quite of your Excellency’s way of thinking, and we indeed have
no feeling of ill-will towards the Russian nation; but we aspire to be
free, and as regards the government....’

‘I have no time to discuss this with you. I repeat it, your situation
is a most critical one, but you can improve it sensibly by making a
sincere avowal; I do not promise you complete or immediate liberty, for
I never promise that which I am not sure of being able to perform, but
I can intercede with the Emperor that he would give you permission to
serve for the future in the army of the Caucasus. The Poles, like all
the Slaves, are brave and courageous; you are still young, you are not
wanting in intellect, you would very soon become an officer, and then
your career would depend only on yourself.’

He pronounced these words in a loud and firm voice; then rising, he
added, with a certain gentleness: ‘For the rest, I do not ask for your
secrets; tell me only the names of the persons by whom you were known.
I have no wish to know what you said to them--their names are all that
is required; and I do not even exact from you that you should give them
in immediately. You are weak, and under impressions still too recent
and too lively. When you wish to speak to me, send to say so by the
orderly of the day; in the meantime, let me have a note from you, and
put your biography on paper.’ He made me a slight bow, and, as he went
out, stopped at the door, and said, ‘Have his chains taken off.’

Some minutes afterwards, the Commandant of the place came with a
farrier to see me delivered from my chains; and this was the first and
last benefit which I derived from the visit of the Governor-General;
but it was a very great advantage, and I was truly grateful to him for
it, for since my departure from Kaminieç I had not been able to take
my boots off once. My legs were much bruised, yet I walked up and down
my room the whole of that day; and I had almost a pleasure in the pain
which the exercise gave me, for it proved that my feet were free.

Some weeks passed; and one evening, at a pretty late hour of the night,
I saw a thing which had never yet entered my cell--it was a light. An
aide-de-camp, followed by four soldiers, bid me rise, and follow him.
Is the moment of execution arrived? I thought, as I threw round my cell
a glance which had in it something of a farewell. Supported under my
arms by the soldiers, I traversed the great court of the prison. The
snow creaked under our feet, the night was very dark; but the keen and
pure air, to which I was not accustomed, while it cut my breath, did
me an indescribable amount of good; and while I believed that I was on
the way to meet my fate, I felt, if I may so express it, a bitter-sweet
delight in inhaling the fresh gusts of wind. I was led into a large
room, which was feebly illuminated, and where officers of different
ranks were seated at a large round table covered with green cloth; they
smoked their cigars, talked in a loud voice, and laughed between times.
This was the Commission of Inquiry.

Among these gentlemen it was with real joy that I recognised the face
of Major Poloutkovskoï, and yet he it was who had arrested me! The
person who presided, and who seemed to be chairman of the commission,
was dressed in a plain black coat. He was a member of the third
division of the Imperial Cabinet (the secret Police) and a Privy
Councillor--in short, it was Pissarev, the _alter ego_ of Prince
Bibikov, a man of whom the remembrance is too terrible to be soon
effaced in the detached provinces. He made a sign to me to approach,
allowed me to be seated near him, and began his questions in French,
and in a very affable tone. Although with more of detail, they were
identical with those which had been put to me by Prince Bibikov. I made
the same answers--and such was the character of the many examinations
which I underwent before the Commission of Inquiry.

As I was of noble birth, I found, one day, at one of the sittings
of the Commission, the Marshal of the nobility of the province. His
presence was demanded by the laws; but he seemed to suffer from his
office, and evidently only went through a painful formality, while he
addressed me in Polish and put a few questions as to my family and
connections. On the whole, these gentlemen seldom failed to treat me
with consideration, in spite of the silence and the negatives with
which I met their demands. One day, the president even said to me, ‘You
must find the time in prison pass very slowly; my library is at your
disposal, if you wish to have some books. Do you prefer travels or
novels?’

‘Will you have the kindness to let me have a Bible?’

‘A Bible!’ he replied, looking at me with an odd expression; ‘upon my
word, I have not got such a thing; but I can procure one for you.’ And
he did send me a Bible, after which time I no longer felt that I was
alone.

Those of my fellow-countrymen to whom the very names of Prince Bibikov
and of M. Pissarev recall the sorrows of so many families, the blood
and tears of so many noble victims, and of three provinces all outraged
and oppressed under the pressure of the most haughty and rapacious of
tyrannies, will no doubt be astonished--it may be, shocked--at what
I have just related. Yet such undoubtedly was the conduct of these
two men towards myself. I ought also here to declare that no attempt
was ever made to inflict on me any of the tortures to which so many
Poles have been subjected in Russian prisons--more than one of my
fellow-accused being, alas! among the number. It is true that I was
several times threatened with such measures, but the threat was never
put into execution.

The inquest dragged out its length however, and I soon received
the blessed permission to walk in the corridors every day for one
hour--care being taken to clear them at that time of every living soul,
except the two sentries. The corridor was narrow, dark, and damp; but
at least I could satisfy the imperious necessity for exercise which I
had felt, and I could also talk in secret from time to time with the
sentries. If these soldiers chanced to be Poles--which they very often
were, being even men who had served with us in our army of 1831--they
always showed me more compassion, while they maintained also a far
greater show of reserve. The Russian soldiers acted I think more from
curiosity; but what surprised me most was the frequency with which
I was asked whether I had never met, in foreign countries, with the
Grand Duke Constantine, whom they firmly believed to be living in
France or in England, and who should one day return to deliver them
from Nicholas. I found however that I must renounce the real pleasure
which I felt in talking to my sentries. One day the jailer surprised
one of them in conversation with me. He was led off to receive sixty
blows with the rods, and the cries of the unhappy man under punishment
presently reached my ears.

I ought to say something in this place of my neighbours, viz. of those
who inhabited the cells opposite my prison. Those who were implicated
in my affair were lodged in another part of the fortress, and I
never had any communication with them. Once only I caught a glimpse
of the judge, Zawadzki, and I hardly recognised him again, for the
man formerly so strong and very corpulent was reduced to a perfect
skeleton. My neighbours in the corridor were not political criminals.
One of them, a soldier named Toumanov, awaited in irons the execution
of his sentence of four thousand blows with the rods, which had been
passed on him for some insubordination to his superiors. He had no
fear, counted on the ‘toughness of his hide,’ as he expressed it,
cursed the Tzar, his officers, and his fate, and sang a great deal,
especially an air of which the words began, ‘March to the sacking of
Poland!’ When the moment of his execution arrived, his jailers made
many brutal jests at his expense. ‘Now then, Toumanov, the devil will
get your soul to-day; you will never live through the thing.’ The
unhappy wretch replied, with coarser oaths, ‘I tell you I mean to live
through it, and we will have a glass together yet before I am off
to Siberia! I shall be better there than serving the Tzar.’ I heard
afterwards from these same jailers that after two of the four thousand
blows he fell senseless on the snow, which was red with his blood, and
was carried back to prison. If he survived he was liable to receive, at
some future day, the other half of his sentence!

The next of my neighbours was a peasant of the district of Poitava,
short in stature, but of immense strength. He had deserted from the
army, taken to the woods and a wild life among them, where he had
killed several men. He also, when led away to punishment (for his
sentence was the knout and penal servitude for life), replied to the
hideous comments of his keepers, that he was not afraid. The third
prisoner, like the two first, was also in chains, a young handsome
soldier, who, while on a march with his battalion, had stopped at a
village and loitered behind for a whole week, being ‘bewitched by a
woman.’ The poor boy had then come of his own accord to give himself
up, and he now expected his trial. His character seemed to be both good
and gentle, and he was in the habit of singing an air of which the
melody, though slightly monotonous, was so sweet and plaintive that I
could not listen to him without emotion--such sweet tones could hardly
have come from a vicious heart. When he left our prison I never was
able to hear what became of him, but I regretted him and that plaintive
strain which had so often charmed my ears. His cell was soon occupied
again--by a subaltern convicted of having set fire to a magazine of
forage which was under his care, the motive being the wish to conceal a
certain deficit which had occurred. He had now gone mad, but in general
his mania was of the inoffensive and quiet kind. He talked constantly,
prepared for death, and exhorted his absent mistress to place over his
remains a black cross, of which he described the shape and ornaments
with the greatest exactness. Another day he complained that a gnat had
stung him--that all the blood had been sucked out of his body, and
that only water had been left. A _pope_ was sent for, who recited a
great number of prayers by way of exorcising him; but at last one day
the prisoner would not permit him to leave the cell. A psalter in one
hand and a crucifix in the other, the madman repeated, without ceasing,
‘Little father (_batiouchka_), _I_ will break your head for you if you
do not immediately give me the holy communion.’ The pope manœuvred
cleverly so as to reach the door, assuring him that he was going to
fetch the pyx; he then saved himself by making a rush, abandoning his
crucifix and his psalter. On the following day the governor of the
citadel had the maniac’s cell opened, though he took care himself to
remain in the corridor. The prisoner, standing at the threshold, made
him a sign to enter. ‘Come, your Excellency, I have a secret to whisper
in your ear;’ but his Excellency was more prudent than the _pope_. Some
soldiers soon advanced; they garotted and bound the poor fool, and they
carried him off to the hospital.

In his place arrived a Circassian--a free lance of the Caucasus, who,
having been taken prisoner and employed in the works of the fortress,
had tried to make good his escape along with two countrymen of his own,
his fellow-sufferers. Pursued by the troops, they defended themselves
for a long time with their spades, which were their only weapons. One
succeeded in escaping, one was killed by a thrust with a bayonet,
the third fell into the hands of the soldiers and became my opposite
neighbour. He was called ‘a mountain prince,’ and, with hands and feet
in fetters, he was almost always to be seen seated on his couch, gloomy
and silent, and with a proud look on his face. I never failed to make
him a respectful bow when, in walking up and down the corridor, I
passed the loophole in his cell.

In the meantime, weeks grew to months, and as the months succeeded
each other, the cold of winter had given place to the heats of July.
The stifling air of my prison reduced me to a state of extreme nervous
irritability, which broke out over every trifle, and at night I could
not sleep. I had forgotten to notice one permanent suffering in my
captivity, of which the intensity can never be appreciated, except by
those who may have made a personal trial of it: I mean the order given
to the sentry to watch all my actions through the window in my door.
No one can imagine what an indescribable torture it is to a man to see
and to know that a watch is kept upon every movement. That strange eye,
impassable and implacable, which meets yours at every moment--that
eye which follows you everywhere and at all times--becomes to you a
sort of infernal providence; and I abandon the task of making any one
understand what it is that the prisoner feels who from the instant
that he wakes in the morning sees from his bed those two eyes pointed
towards him like two stilettos. Will it be believed, from the earliest
dawn I longed for the night, even after a night which had been already
very long and rayless; for then at least I was protected from those
two eyes. Sometimes, impatient and distracted, I would go up to the
loophole and oppose my feverish glare to those two persecuting eyes;
and then I laughed like a savage, when I obliged the man to turn away
for a moment.

It was in this state of extreme irritation that I received one day a
visit from an aide-de-camp, accompanied by another official, by the
jailer, and by some soldiers. He desired me to rise, and to undress.

‘But I am already undressed!’

‘No; but you must be stripped.’

‘Why?’

‘I have orders to take a complete description of you, and to note down
any marks you may have about your person.’

‘But that is something barbarous and savage! the description of my
features ought to suffice!’

‘My orders are precise, and I beg of you to undress.’

So there was no help for it.

If I had been better acquainted with the usages and customs in Russian
proceedings of the sort, this notification ought to have enlightened
me as to the nature of the punishment to which I was going to be
condemned, as well as upon the fact that my sentence was imminent, such
examinations being a preliminary to deportation. However, I was so far
from having any idea of this, that when some days later I was again
summoned before the Commission of Inquiry, I anticipated nothing more
than one of those interminable examinations which had already become
so familiar to me; but the unaccustomed solemnity of those who were
present soon gave me a presentiment that something extraordinary was
coming, and before long my sentence was read out. This sentence, which
was long and minutely drawn up, finished with ‘the pain of death,’
commuted, however, by Prince Bibikov, for that of penal servitude in
Siberia for the term of my natural life. I was, in addition, degraded
from the ranks of the nobility, and I was to make the journey in
fetters. After having heard this document, I was ordered to write at
the bottom of the paper the following words: ‘Rufin Piotrowski heard
this sentence on the 29th of July, O. S. 1844.’

I was immediately conducted to the dwelling of the commandant, where I
was to take my old travelling clothes, and have my feet put in irons.
To my horror, they presented me with the same rusty bars which had
caused my torment all the way to Kiow. In vain I besought and implored
the commandant to give me another set of chains, he would not consent
to do so; and all that I could obtain from him was an order given to
the gendarmes who were to be my convoy, that the tight foot-rings were
to be enlarged at one of the nearest stations. I was not permitted
either to revisit my cell or my companions in the corridor; I was
marched down into the courtyard, where a _kibitka_ with three horses
was in waiting, and I took my seat there between two gendarmes whose
muskets were loaded. The doors of the fortress closed behind the
_kibitka_, and before me opened the way to Siberia.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] Prince Bibikov had his arm carried away at the battle of Borodino:
all over Poland the answer is current, which he once made to a Polish
lady, who on her knees implored a pardon for her son: ‘The hand which
signs pardons, madam, I left at Borodino.’

[4] A celebrated emissary, executed at Wilna, in 1841, after a long and
cruel detention.



CHAPTER IV.

OF DEPORTATION AND THE LIFE OF AN EXILE IN SIBERIA.

 THE _KNOUT_ AND THE _PLÈTE_--RUNNING THE GAUNTLET--GANGS OF
 EXILES--GRAND-DUCHESS MARIE--THE JOURNEY--RUSSIAN ALMS--A ‘POPE’--THE
 RUSSIAN SOLDIER--OMSK--PRINCE GORTCHAKOV--EKATERINSKI-ZAVOD.


To be exempt from corporal chastisement is one of the privileges of a
Russian noble; and in cases of deportation a member of the nobility
should not be obliged to make the journey on foot, or in a gang of
convicts. This does not prevent the torture being applied to political
prisoners, even when nobles, during the progress of an examination; yet
their sentence is in general in accordance with the laws, and it is
seldom that the statutes are set aside, as they were in the case of the
Polish prince Roman Sanguszko, to whose sentence the Emperor Nicholas
undoubtedly added with his own hand the order that the prince’s journey
should be made _on foot_. Thanks to the accident of my birth, I had
never known the ordinary aggravations of such a lot as mine had now
become, I mean the knout, the _plète_, and the march in a gang; but as
many of my countrymen have undergone such punishments, and as I also
should forfeit (so said the decree against me) my right of being exempt
from them when I reached my destination, I shall give some more precise
details upon the subject, albeit a sad one.

The knout is a strip of hide, a thong which is steeped in some
preparation, and strongly glazed as it were with metal filings. By
this process it becomes both heavy and extremely hard, but before it
hardens care is taken to double down the edges, which are left thin on
purpose, and in this way a groove runs the whole length of the thong,
except the upper part, which is supple, and winds round the hand of the
executioner; to the other end a small iron hook is fastened. Falling
on the bare back of the sufferer the knout comes down on its concave
side, of which the edges cut like a knife. The thong thus lies in the
flesh, and the operator does not lift it up, but draws it towards
himself horizontally, so that the hook tears off long strips. If the
executioner has not been bribed, and does his business conscientiously,
the person under punishment loses consciousness after the third stroke,
and sometimes dies under the fifth. A peculiarity of the Russian law
may be also noted here, which orders that the number of blows from
the knout shall always be an unequal one! The scaffold on which the
sufferer is placed is called in Russ ‘a mare’ (_kobyla_). It is an
inclined plane, to which the man is tied with his back uncovered.
The head is firmly fastened to the upper part, the feet to the lower
end, and the hands, which are also knotted together, go round below
the plank; any movement of the body becoming in this way impossible.
After receiving the prescribed number of strokes, the poor wretch is
untied, and on his knees undergoes the punishment of being _marked_.
The letters _vor_ (meaning thief, or malefactor) are printed in
sharp-pointed letters on a stamp, which the executioner drives into
the forehead and into both cheeks, and while the blood runs, a black
mixture, of which gunpowder is an ingredient, is rubbed into the
wounds; they heal, but the bluish mark left remains for life. In old
days, after thus marking a man, they sometimes tore off his nostrils
with iron pincers; but a _ukase_ of the last years of Alexander I.
definitively abolished this additional piece of barbarity. I have
myself encountered in Siberia more than one criminal thus hideously
disfigured, but all dating from a time anterior to the publication of
the _ukase_ in question. As for those who had the triple inscription
of _vor_, I have seen an incalculable number in Siberia; but I believe
women cannot be punished in this way, and I never met with one who wore
the triple brand.

The _plète_, so often and so erroneously confounded with the knout,
is a less fearful instrument of punishment. Three stout thongs are
weighted at the ends with balls of lead, the other extremity winds up
the arm of the executioner, and according to the law it ought to weigh
from five to six pounds. When it comes down on the back it strikes
like three sticks; it does not tear up the flesh like the knout, but
the skin breaks under the blows, which make a lesion of the spinal
column, break the ribs, and I have been told detach even the viscera
from their places; and those who have suffered under the _plète_, if
they have received any great number of lashes, generally fall into
consumption and perish. In order to give himself greater purchase, the
person wielding it makes a run and does not strike till close to ‘the
mare.’ I have said that it is possible to gain over the operator, and
in this case he can manage not to touch the instrument with the little
finger of the hand. This lessens the blow, although the attention of
the superintending officer is not attracted by the practice, and any
reader by experimentalising with a stick may convince himself that it
does so. If however the sentence stands for a great number of strokes,
the executioner is then bribed to inflict the first with tremendous
violence, and as much upon the sides as possible, so that life is
sooner extinct, and death puts a speedier end to the sufferings of the
victim.

A third species of punishment is running the gauntlet (_skvos-stroï_,
literally ‘through the ranks’); it is generally reserved for soldiers,
and yet many of my countrymen have suffered thus for political
offences. It is inflicted with long rods newly cut, which have been
steeped in water for some days to make them more pliant. Soldiers
are arranged in two files, but each man stands at some distance from
the other, so that all may strike with a long swing without being in
each other’s way. The condemned person, stripped to the waist, passes
through the ranks, his hands are tied in front upon a musket of which
the bayonet rests on his chest; the butt-end is held by the soldier
who leads him. He walks slowly, receiving the rods on his back and
shoulders, and if he faints and falls he is picked up again. A _ukase_
of Peter the Great fixes the maximum of blows at twelve thousand, but
it is seldom that more than two thousand are given at one time, unless
for the sake of ‘setting an example;’ in general, after two thousand
the patient is carried off to the hospital, and when healed of his
wounds he pays the rest of his penalty.

After such patients as these have recovered a little health and
strength in a military hospital, they are hurried off to some one of
the head-quarters of the empire, where a large number being assembled,
they are classed according to their sentences, whether of simple
transportation (_possilenié_), or of hard labour in the public works
(_katorga_). Thus classified, they are told off into gangs of a hundred
at the least, and of two hundred and fifty at the greatest computation.
The gangs thus formed then separate for Siberia, and the time which
is spent on the road is one of the greatest elements of suffering in
their painful lot. For example, to go from Kiow to Tobolsk requires
a long year; and if the gang has a farther destination (say the mines
of Nertchinsk, in the government of Irkutsk), the journey will take
more than two years. Criminals condemned to hard labour are placed
under a stronger escort, and under a more severe watch than those who
are simply deported, and they generally form a brigade by themselves.
I met many of these caravans on my journey, and they travelled in the
following order. In front rode a Cossack at a walk, completely armed,
and with a lance in his hand; after him came men either singly or
chained together by hands and feet; these were followed by twenty,
all fastened at the wrists to long iron rods; the next were fettered
in the same way, with their feet chained in addition, but the women,
as far as I could judge, did not wear any irons. On both sides of the
gang marched soldiers with loaded arms, while some Cossacks rode up and
down. After the prisoners, and in the first carriage, one might see the
officer in charge with his head down, and smoking his pipe; the other
carriages brought the baggage and the sick, who wore a collar by which
they could be chained to a pole fixed in the vehicle.

My heart felt ready to break every time that I met a company of the
sort, and the sight of the women was most trying. A mournful silence
reigned in their groups, and it was only broken by the dull noise of
their chains. No doubt these men were in general real malefactors, the
off-scourings of any society; but who could say that among them there
were none that were innocent, no political criminals, no countrymen
of my own? Later, and when sojourning on the banks of the Irtiche, I
had for my companions two political exiles like myself, Siesieki and
Syezewski: these men had done the whole distance on foot and in a gang,
and they furnished me with every detail of their march. Thus, they told
me that none of these unhappy creatures can stir in his sleep without
awaking companions fastened to the same bar, and indeed without causing
them sharp pain, if the movement should happen to be a rough one, as
often is the case in sleep. At the times for halting and eating the
prisoners are huddled together in a circle, while the foot soldiers
watch them, and the Cossacks stray round them on horseback. The column
walks for two days and rests on the third; and for this purpose, beyond
Nijni-Novgorod, where the villages are few and far between, houses have
been constructed to shelter the gangs at distances calculated to suit
the recurrence of these days of rest. These buildings, long and low
(for they are only one story high), extending in the middle of wide
and desert plains, and only inhabited at intervals, are calculated to
leave a strange impression. Military stations are also established at
unequal distances along the route from Kiow to Smolensk, and even to
Nertchinsk. In each of these stations is to be found an officer with
a number of soldiers sufficient to replace the escort which arrives.
The officer is in all cases responsible for the prisoners, and has
over them a perfectly discretional power. He may punish them with
the bastinado, the rods, and the _plète_; and abuses are, as may be
supposed, inevitable, though, to the honour of humanity, it must be
said that very many of these officers, far from making a cruel use of
their dictatorship, often show themselves full of care and compassion
for the unhappy beings whom they are obliged to conduct. At times of
severe cold or of any great flood, the columns are obliged to stop at
any station where they may happen to be. These expeditions are sent off
in such a way that every week one gang enters Tobolsk as another leaves
it to continue its march. At Tobolsk sits what is called the Commission
of Deportation, whose business is to assign a definitive destination
to each man, according to local convenience, or the necessities of the
public works. It has been calculated that the number of transported
persons amounts every year to little short of ten thousand.

I must give one more detail, supplied to me by the same Siesieki whom
I have already mentioned. The train of which he formed a part was met
near Moscow by the Duke of Leuchtenberg and his wife, Grand-Duchess
Marie. The daughter of Nicholas, on learning that many Poles, condemned
for political offences, were to be found in the column, had them
pointed out to her, and remained for an hour in contemplation of the
body; no word escaped her lips, but she dried continually the big
tears which fell from her eyes. The Duke of Leuchtenberg approached
Siesieki, asked him his name, and said that he should seek for his
pardon at the hands of the Emperor. Did the Duke forget it, or did he
not dare to ask? Nothing can be known; but this I know for certain,
that, many a long day afterwards, I found Siesieki in Siberia, and that
I was one day to leave him there.

Were not these strange meetings? Carried away in my _kibitka_ towards
the land from which no man returns, a convict on his way to work out
his bitter sentence, I yet saw many shapes of misfortune worse than my
own. I could see faces of men in such gangs as I have described, who,
looking into mine, counted me as happy. Nay, I could say to myself,
I too had only escaped this, the last and lowest stage of misery
and shame, by means of the privilege which attached to my birth--a
privilege which my own convictions disallowed, but which the Tzar
himself maintained. Compared with the lot of this herd of the lost my
state certainly was more endurable. I was sure to arrive soon, only
too soon, at the place for which I was bound; I was not rivetted to
any parricide, or to a malefactor, and my hands at least were free.
The tight rings of my fetters alone caused me any suffering, and now
I almost blushed to speak of them; but the pain was really great, and
by dint of entreaties I prevailed on the soldiers to have the luckless
rings let out at one of the halting places, which after all was only
in accordance with the orders they had received at Kiow. At first,
these guardians of mine had obstinately refused to meet any of my
attempts at conversation with them, replying that they were forbidden
to address me. However, I kept up with them, and I ended in humanising
them. We soon talked freely, and drank together some glasses of that
Russian brandy of which I was learning to appreciate the salutary and
strengthening qualities. Neither of the men seemed to be bad-hearted in
any way, and they were more distressed than pleased by the business in
hand. One day, when, from sufferings of mind and bodily fatigue I fell
sick, and was lying down at one of the posting-houses, I overheard the
following conversation between them:

‘Well, we are very unlucky: if we do not arrive at Omsk on the day
appointed, we shall be beaten with rods; and if we hurry him too much,
and he dies of it, we shall be beaten all the same; we are in very bad
luck!’

They were continually haunted by the fear of my dying or committing
suicide. When we had a river to cross, they sat by me in the boat, and
held me by both arms, in case I should leap into the water; and at our
meals they gave me meat cut into little squares, from which the bones
had been carefully removed, and which I had to eat with a spoon.

Thus, without being positively cruel, these soldiers showed an
astonishing indifference to my sad position. In the conversation, for
instance, which I have just cited, it will be seen that they made an
abstraction of me: I ceased to be a man, a creature of God, suffering
in body and in misery of mind; I was only a dangerous charge, to be
got rid of as quickly as possible; and the only thing they could find
pity for was for themselves. But it was not in them alone that I had
to remark a charity so nicely restricted, or such indifference to the
pains of other men. At one of the places where we changed horses, the
new postilion, a great rough fellow, came up to me and asked me:

‘Are you a Pole? How many _kibitkas_ are following you, then?’

‘None.’

‘What! none? As soon as you see a _kibitka_ with a Pole, one may always
bet that there will be no end to them; these Poles must be in swarms,
and yet I can’t think how we are not come to the last of them by this
time.’

At the same time I should be singularly ungrateful and unjust if I did
not declare that such speeches as these were rare and exceptional, and
that they stood out in contrast with the general manner of the country
people towards me. These showed themselves full of compassion, and
even of solicitude; and after entering Russia Proper, as I advanced
by degrees into the interior, I never ceased to receive from them
unequivocal marks of their sympathy and pity. How often was I not
followed by travellers, especially by ladies, who pressed gifts of
money on my acceptance! How often have I not seen at our halting places
young girls stop and look at me with sadness, even with tearful eyes!
One rich merchant, who was returning from the fair at Nijni-Novgorod,
pressed upon me with real eagerness the sum of two hundred roubles,
saying it was nothing for him to lose, and might be of the greatest
use to me. If I always thought it right to refuse such presents, of
which, moreover, I should have been doubtless deprived by the Russian
authorities, I accepted without hesitation and with much gratitude
the articles of food and drink brought to me on all sides by the
inhabitants. It was rarely that the master of any posting-house failed
to offer me either tea or brandy at the stations where we stopped;
his wife or his daughters presented me with cakes, dried fish, or
fruits, while the neighbours would hasten to do the same. At one of
these stations, not far from Toula, I saw an official in a uniform
arrive, and I was timidly offered by him a little parcel wrapped in
a silk handkerchief. As he gave it me, he said, ‘Accept this from my
patron saint.’ I could not make out his meaning; and as the sight of an
uniform did not predispose me in his favour, I made a sign of refusing
it.

‘You are a Pole,’ he said, colouring a little; ‘and you are not
acquainted with our customs. This is my birthday, and on such a day it
is our bounden duty to share our goods with those who are in adversity;
accept this then I beseech you, in the name of my saint.’

I could not resist a petition so touching and so Christian in its
spirit. The parcel contained bread, salt, and a few coins; the money I
gave to the guards, and I broke bread with the official, who asked me:

‘Why are they taking you to Siberia?’

‘Because I have thought and felt as a Pole.’

‘You were right to do so, because you were in Poland; but why do the
Poles wish to plant their ways of thinking in Russia? In the garrison
of our town, there were about ten Poles incorporated into our army
after the revolution of 1831. Will you believe it, Sir, these Poles
excited our soldiers, persuaded them that they were very unhappy, that
the Tzar was the cause of it, and that his authority was not lawful?
Now what was the consequence of all this? They only made their own case
worse, and they drew upon themselves all the severities of the Russian
law. These Poles never reflected that every nation has, and ought to
have, a government suited to its nature. Now the Russian people are
rude, ignorant, and uncultivated; why think, when in such a state as
this, of any other authority or of any political reforms whatever?
However little we were to depart from the severity of our laws, we
should see the life and fortunes of our citizens seriously endangered,
and that before very long; we should have murders, fires, and rapine
of all sorts. I know my nation too well. In time we may proceed to some
changes, but it will not be very soon; and it is vain to think of it at
the present moment.’

Very different was a scene which was acted not far from Kazan. There,
on going into a station, I saw, to my great surprise, that with the
character of post-master my landlord combined that of priest (_pope_).
Surrounded by convivial peasants, the _batiouchka_ was delivering a
long peroration, while he swallowed great potations from a monstrous
bottle of brandy which was on the table by which he was seated. I do
not know by what sign he perceived that I was a Pole, but he rose
immediately and turned the torrent of his eloquence upon me, deploring
the seditious spirit of the Poles, their disobedience to the Tzar, and
the misfortunes which they drew upon themselves and upon Russia. All
these considerations did not however prevent his offering me a glass. I
drank and prudently beat a retreat, while the _pope_ made over my head
an infinite number of signs of the cross. I really do not know whether
a benediction was intended, or whether he hoped to drive out of me the
evil spirit of revolt.

Although thus an object of a general commiseration, which showed itself
by the touching offerings of the poor, and even in the enigmatical
benedictions of a tipsy priest, I nevertheless could practise charity
in my turn, for many begged from me. One day in particular I can
recall. It was, if I mistake not, at Saransk, as, with fetters on my
feet, I stood waiting for a relay of horses, that I saw a man stretch
out his hand towards me and ask for alms. He had on a military cap,
and the many medals on his coat showed that he had served in several
campaigns. He was, in fact, a soldier discharged from the service, and
even I could recognise that he had once been in the Imperial Guard.
What a strange contrast was here! A faithful and deserving servant of
the Tzar begging his bread from a man who, a rebel to this same Tzar,
was condemned by him to labour as a felon among felons! Without doubt,
the most hapless being in the universe, more unhappy than even the
convicts of Siberia, is the soldier of the Emperor of all the Russias.
I do not speak of those twenty or five-and-twenty years of service
which try his health and wear out his strength; I speak not either of
the thousands of blows which he receives during his long martyrdom;
but if, at the end of so many years passed under arms and under the
rod, he were in his old age protected from want and misery, it would
be well. At the most, however, the Russian government grants to some
decrepid and attenuated victim of military discipline permission to
settle upon the crown lands at some thousands of _verstes_ from his
family, and from the place of his birth, without even giving him what
is wanted for reclaiming the fields from which he is to scrape a
living. If he marries he is obliged to remit to the Emperor every male
child who attains the age of ten years; and thus he has the assurance
that there is prepared for his son a life and an old age as miserable
as his own. But it must not be supposed that all veterans are provided
for even after this fashion. By far the greater number are told off to
the fortresses or to the prisons of the government, or else sent back
to their old homes, where they survive, old, poor, and unfit for work,
as burdens upon families to whom they have become all but strangers;
though the government, in giving them their discharge, has taken care
to stipulate that there they shall neither be permitted to beg, nor
allow their beards to grow. Unfortunately, this last order is more
easily carried out than the first.

With the exception of that enforced halt which was occasioned by the
illness I have mentioned, we continued our course without stopping
anywhere except for our meals and to change horses. Day and night we
drove, sleeping as we sat in the _kibitka_, only that my slumbers
there were less profound than those of my keepers, for at each jolt
of the carriage (and such jolts were incessant) my chains were shaken
and knocked against my feet, so that I was obliged to draw them up and
hold them always in my hands. Often in this plight and tormented by
sleeplessness I sat alongside of my guardians, who slept so heavily
that more than once I caught their caps for them when they were on
the point of losing them from the wind; and I could not help smiling
as I looked at them, and thought that I might be fairly said to be
outwatching my watchers. The journey was monotonous, in spite of its
giddy and headlong pace, or rather this very pace made it monotonous
by confounding all impressions and preventing any contemplation of
the outside world. Going at the rate of about sixty-six _verstes_ or
_kilometres_ a day, I had traversed in succession the governments of
Tchernigov, Orel, Toula, Riazan, Vladimir, Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan,
Viatka and Perm; I had passed the mountain chains of Oural and Tobolsk,
and I found myself, at the end of twenty days, transported from the
fertile plains of Poland to the very centre of Siberia-West; and that
without, so to speak, any remembrance of the people or of the country
which I left behind me. At one of the last stations short of Omsk,
while a relay was being procured, a soldier passed, and stopping in
front of me began to whistle an air which made me quiver--Dombrowski’s
air, ‘No, never shall Poland perish!’ The man was a compatriot of
Mazovia, a soldier of 1831, an old brother in arms, now incorporated
into the army of Siberia. He stole furtively up to me and had only time
to say, ‘What are our people about? What do they think of us in France?’

At last, late in the night of August 20, 1844, we stopped before a
sort of castle. ‘Who goes there?’ cried the sentry from the top of the
bastion. ‘An unhappy one,’ replied the postillion of our _kibitka_.
Immediately the gates swung wide, and we were in Omsk. After the lapse
of about twenty minutes, and with all the feverish promptitude which
distinguishes the public service of Russia, a report of my arrival
reached the commandant of the fortress, and Prince Gortchakov, the
Governor-General of Western Siberia. The order was sent back to have me
conveyed to the station of the guard, close to the prince’s residence,
and there I was installed, having for my companion an officer under
arrest in this room, for some infraction of discipline. He was quite
a young man of good family, hardly twenty, good looking, pleasant and
gay, speaking French, and communicating something of his own good
humour to all who came near him. When I said that I was a Pole, he
gave me a more than hearty reception, pressing tea on me, and putting
himself to inconvenience in order to prepare a bed for me. In spite of
the fatigue of the long journey, I spent the greater part of that night
in talking with him, for I found much pleasure in his gay and natural
conversation. He knew the country well, and could give me information
which was at once precise in itself and of the greatest use to me; but
what most enchanted me was his unrolling before me a first-rate map of
Siberia. This I examined with feverish curiosity; I had all the marks
explained to me, I studied and strove to fix in my memory the different
routes and watersheds of the country. My heart beat violently, and I
could not take my eyes off the map. At last the officer noticed my
agitation. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I fear you meditate an evasion! pray, pray
do not think of it, it is perfectly impossible. Many of your countrymen
have tried it, and those may be said to have been happy who, tracked on
every side, tortured by hunger, and maddened by despair, have yet been
able to escape the consequences of their crazy undertaking by a timely
suicide. The consequences are certain to be the knout and a life of
misery such as I have no words to describe to you. For God’s sake, put
all such thoughts out of your mind!’

I asked my companion what was the cause of his detention.

‘Far be it from me to know,’ he replied. ‘This is not the first time
that I take off my hat to these walls. It is a pleasure that comes my
way at least twice a month. We have a colonel of the old school, quite
a martinet in discipline; and then, as you see, I have the luck, or the
bad luck, to be always in the most giddy spirits, and he puts me very
often under arrest, to see if it will make a wise man of me. What makes
him more angry is that I never ask him about anything, and he says,
that that is insolence, and that I have too much liberty of thought
(_volnodoumstoo_).’

He spoke to me afterwards of his intention to change his regiment,
because his colonel had decidedly taken a dislike to him. He expected
to be sent among the subjugated tribes of the Kirghis, whose language
he was learning, by talking with those of the natives who happened to
be prisoners in this castle. The next morning he had one of these sons
of the desert, a Khan, to breakfast with me; and thus I had for the
first time an opportunity of seeing a representative of those warlike
and nomadic races which occupy the steppes beyond Orenbourg.

The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, I was visited by the
commandant, Colonel De Grawe, a worthy old gentleman of alarming
corpulence but very obliging manners, and who was of Swedish
extraction. ‘What a pity, what a pity,’ he never ceased repeating,
‘that once free, and in a foreign country, you ever took it into your
head to come back!’ After him came the prefect of police in Omsk, M.
Nalabardine--tall, thin, dry, straight as an arrow, tight as a cord,
with a long face and little eyes, which were piercing and sunk. He
seemed a mixture of the Cossack, Kirghis and Tartar races. There was
something of a vulture in his physiognomy; and, indeed, I learnt
afterwards that he really was cruel and rapacious in the extreme. Yet
this man had some involuntary feeling. He asked me how it was that I
had dared to return to Poland without the permission of the Tzar; and
when I replied that I had yielded only to the pangs of home sickness,
he cried, with a voice which was unsteady with emotion, ‘Ah! native
country, native land, thou art indeed a beloved thing!’

At midday I was desired to wait on Prince Gortchakov, and shown into
a large waiting-room, where a number of persons in his employment sat
writing. After some minutes, several of them rose, and, holding out
their hands to me, addressed me in Polish. They were young Poles,
political prisoners, who worked at desks in the government offices.
Encouraged by their example, the Russians present also had the courage
to approach me, and to ask me about my lot; and from them I learnt that
this was a very decisive moment for me. I have stated before that the
Commission of Deportation held its permanent sittings at Tobolsk; that
it received the gangs, and assigned to each of the condemned his future
and final destination; but as I had not made the journey in a gang, it
was not the commission at Tobolsk, but the Governor-General of Siberia,
residing at Omsk, who was to point out my _settlement_. Now this was a
very important matter to me, because he might, for example, order me to
work out my sentence of penal servitude in any of the government works
or factories of the neighbourhood; or else he might send me to dig in
the mines of Nertchinsk. The hell of a Siberian convict has, alas! many
circles; and the question of determining which of them should be my
fate was precisely the one which was being discussed in the adjoining
room, where the Governor-General’s Council was sitting. They told
me I might pin my hopes chiefly on the presence at the board of M.
Kapoustine, an official of the highest rank and greatest influence
about the Prince--a man of generous instincts, and who always pleaded
in favour of deported persons convicted on political grounds. All of
a sudden, a sound was heard, everybody looked hard at the page before
him, and Prince Gortchakov appeared at the door of the room. He came
forward a step or two, fixed his eyes on me for some seconds, then
turning his back, he returned to his own apartments, without having
addressed me. An hour passed away in waiting in this cruel suspense.
At last we saw M. Kapoustine of the Council leave the inner room. He
announced to me, with a polite and kindly manner, that I was to be
sent to the works at the government distilleries, at Ekaterinski-Zavod
(established by the Empress Catherine), in the district of Tara, on
the banks of the Irtiche, at the distance of rather more than 300
kilometres from Omsk. Hardly had he ceased speaking and departed, than
the clerks began to offer me their congratulations. I bade farewell
to them, as well as to the two poor gendarmes who had brought me from
Kiow; then, stepping into a _kibitka_ which waited at the gate, I was
whirled away to the final term of my travels.



CHAPTER V.

THE KATORGA.

 COMPANIONS IN EXILE--THE ‘KATORGA’--A MURDERER--THE
 FELONS--KANTIER--PAY AND PUNISHMENTS--THE COUNTING-HOUSE.


About ten o’clock of a cold morning, for it was now the 4th of October,
I saw before me the outlines of a village composed of two hundred
miserable houses, all built of wood, lying near the river Irtiche,
and situated in a vast plain. Further back, upon a rising ground, and
in the middle of a fir wood, the buildings of a factory were visible.
This was Ekaterinski-Zavod. I was introduced into the counting-house
(_kazionnaia kantora_), and the _smotritel_, that is to say, the
inspector of the establishment, soon arrived; for to M. Aramilski the
gendarme had already carried all the papers which concerned me. He made
me strip to the waist before all the persons present, thus verifying
the description drawn up at Kiow, which he had in his hand. He then
ordered me to be inscribed in the register of convict labourers, not
under my name but under my number. I was then to be taken to the
station-house; and he added, as he went out, without even having
addressed me, ‘he will work with chains on his feet.’

When he was out of hearing, a young man, who, through all this
business, had continued writing like the other clerks in the office,
rose and threw himself into my arms. It was Charles Bogdaszewski of
Cracow, who, implicated in the affair of Erenberg the poet, had been
condemned for three years to hard labour, and to deportation for the
term of his natural life. Some moments afterwards, we were joined
by John Siesieki of Lublin, another political offender. They spoke
quickly, and with an emotion which they did not disguise. They conjured
me to show myself patient and submissive in every way, and not to
rebel at anything. It was only thus that I could arrive in time at
being employed in the office, instead of having to do the hard and
severe work of the factory itself; and at this price, above all, I
could purchase an immunity from those corporal punishments to which
every labouring convict is liable. I cannot describe what was the
character of this broken and breathless colloquy, or the shiver which
ran through my frame when I heard Polish lips speaking, as of a matter
of course, of their fear of blows and of the rods. They left me, but
it was to make haste to use their influence with the under-officials
of the establishment, with the treasurer and the forester, that they
might induce the _smotritel_ to go back from the order, which seemed
inconceivable to them, that I should work in irons, such a measure
not being in use here even in the case of murderers. I learnt later
what was the meaning of this unusual severity. At the bottom of my
certificated sentence, Prince Gortchakov had added with his own hand,
‘A special watch must be kept upon Piotrowski;’ and this extraordinary
recommendation had made a deep impression on M. Aramilski. ‘Since I
have been superintendent,’ he said to the forester, ‘nothing of the
sort ever occurred to me; this must be some diplomate’ (_eto dolgène
byt kakoï diplomat_).

The station-house, to which I was immediately directed, was full of
soldiers, many of them Poles who had fought in our war of independence.
These seized the least excuse to come up to me and ask me in whispers
what had become of Poland, what was happening in Europe, and whether
there were any hopes? (_Son Nadzieje?_)

Worn out with fatigue and by many emotions, I stretched myself on a
bench, and for two hours I remained plunged in a gloomy reverie. All
of a sudden I saw standing in front of me a strong truculent-looking
man, whose ignoble expression did not belie in any way the triple
mark of _vor_ which was printed on his forehead and on both cheeks.
He addressed me thus, ‘Get up, you must go and work.’ This was the
overseer of the convicts, a felon of distinction himself! Oh, my God!
Thou alone didst hear the cry of my soul, when for the first time I was
ordered about by an abject being like this! At these words of his I
darted a look at him in return which seemed to express all the desolate
indignation of my spirit, I do not know that it was so, but he stepped
back, dropped his eyes, and said with a sad air, ‘Well, what can I
do? They order me, and I must execute my orders.’ My breast heaved, I
pressed my head between my hands, for my brain felt on fire, a cold
sweat burst out all over me, and at last I breathed again. ‘Let us go,’
I said, as I rose up, and I went out, following the overseer.

He led me to a large forge close to the refining house, my feet were
placed in the anvil and my irons struck off, a deliverance which I owed
to the humane offices of my two countrymen; and thus for the first
time since I had left Kiow I was able to pull off my own boots! I was
then taken to a building which was only in part finished, a kiln for
drying the malt. The roof was not completed, and the wood-work had to
be cleared of a vast quantity of chips, litter and offensive refuse,
with which it was covered. I mounted by a ladder, and was followed by
the overseer, and by a soldier, who had orders for the future never to
let me out of his sight. On the roof I found another convict, whose
labours I was to share. A broom and a shovel were put into my hands by
my colleague, and by the overseer I was shown how to use them. The air
was cold, the sky clouded and dark, and the task imposed certainly
not a severe one; but in order to avoid any remonstrances, and to
escape being either spoken to or looked at, I worked away without ever
stopping or so much as lifting my eyes, and was soon drenched with
perspiration. Alas! I was weak, and what was more, I was weeping!

In his course of daily inspection M. Aramilski also came up upon
the roof where I was at work, followed by other officials of the
establishment. I continued to sweep without turning round, and I
avoided their eyes as much as if I had been a criminal. Some time after
they had left, the overseer said, ‘Now rest.’ I seated myself on a
heap of sweepings alongside of my companion, a young man, who was tall
and well-made, but who had the triple mark on his face, and who seemed
of an easy cheerful temper. Overcoming the hesitation which I felt, I
spoke first.

‘Have you been long in these works?’

‘Three years.’

‘To how many years’ labour are you sentenced?’

‘For life!’

‘What was your crime?’

‘I killed my master.’

I shuddered, but went on:

‘Without doubt it was an accident, you did not intend to kill him?’

‘Why, for the matter of that I did not _plan_ it,’ he said with a
sneering look; ‘I had an axe hanging at my girdle, I took it in both
my hands and split his head open for him.’

I was chilled with horror. After a few moments’ silence I said:

‘But why did you kill him so cruelly?’

‘Why? not for fun, you may be sure. No, our master was a bad man, very
cruel, who overworked us and beat us incessantly, almost to death;
and to deliver the neighbourhood from a ruffian like that I took upon
myself to kill him, and I did so. It was God’s providence that I did
not die under the knout, and now I am much happier and better off at
this _katorga_ (penal labour) than I ever was at home. The only thing
that I regret is my young wife, whom I had to leave; she is young and
pretty, and will soon find another husband.’

‘But you ought to repent of the sin of having slain a man.’

‘_That_ was not a man! That was a devil!’

We soon after this went to work again, and did not stop till nightfall.

I returned to the guard-house, and there my two countrymen came under
an escort to visit me, the _smotritel_ having given leave for this
indulgence. We conversed together in a low voice, and in the middle of
all the racket made by the soldiers and convicts we related to each
other the chief events of our lives. These poor friends did not cease
exhorting me to absolute patience and submission. They conjured me
to master my temper, to suppress all exhibitions of it, and not to
despair of seeing myself soon raised to a position which would be by
comparison more happy, and which they themselves now occupied--thanks
to their patient and irreproachable conduct. We embraced tenderly,
then separated, and I fell asleep. Thus ended my first day of convict
labour and of convict life: how many more of the same succeeded it and
resembled it!

I rose with the sun to go to the works, at eight I had breakfast, from
twelve to one we had an hour in the barracks for dinner and rest, and
then we worked till dark. The occupations were often varied according
to the wants of the establishment or the inclinations and temper of
the inspector. By day and by night I was associated with the other
felons, and always under the eye of the overseer and of the soldier in
charge of my person. On some days I swept the courtyards; sometimes I
carried wood and drew water; sometimes, again, I might be sent to hew
wood for fagots, and to stack them in symmetrical piles; and this last
employment in the open air, in the autumnal and winter months, in rain
and snow, and in the icy temperature of Siberia, was the most trying of
any. Long, gloomy, and mournful were the days, and it is needless to
dwell on them any further.

The dominant feeling in my mind was the wish to avoid any discussion
or wrangle with my superiors or with the overseers. Such an occurrence
would have brought about a terrible catastrophe, for I had made a
vow that I would not submit to corporal punishment, and that I would
resist it, whether at the price of my own life or of that of others;
and for this reason I worked beyond what was asked of me, and beyond my
own strength. I must do myself the justice to add that I neglected no
effort to conquer my feelings and moments of impatience, and I must do
my superiors the justice to say of them that they were neither teasing
nor gratuitously and wickedly unkind. Severe and hard as they often
were, they never treated me with the capricious rudeness of despots,
while the convicts who were my colleagues treated me with a deference,
I might almost say a kindness, for which I was heartily grateful.
They did not annoy me with any of those cruel jests by which the bad
even in very different ranks of life often insult any one superior to
themselves whom misfortune has brought down to their own level. More
than once I have known them offer to help me at some work which they
thought was too heavy for me, or they would change with me, taking
my task and giving me their own, if it happened to be a lighter one.
From a very early stage they ceased to speak to me with ‘_thee_’ and
‘_thou_,’ and called me ‘Sir;’ and certainly unmerited misfortune ought
to command the respect of untutored men, even of savages, where they,
in spite of bravado and seared consciences, feel themselves to be
really criminals. With the exception of a very few political offenders
like myself, all the convicts at Ekaterinski-Zavod (to the number of
three hundred souls) were really malefactors. One would have murdered
a wayfarer, another had committed a horrible rape, another would be an
utterer of false coin, another both a thief and a housebreaker. As a
daily intercourse with such men was inevitable, I had neither a false
shame nor a misplaced pride in my dealings with them. I often talked to
these strange companions, studied their characters, and heard from them
their different histories and the events of their lives. I am certainly
not about to become the historian of these heroes of the bagnio; but I
will give one tale, which is not without interest, and which shows that
a false Byronism of deed and thought was not unrepresented among them.

One of our felons, Kantier by name, was sentenced to hard labour for
life. He was still young, a man short of stature, but strongly built,
of a clear and dark but pale complexion; he had black and burning
eyes, and his whole physiognomy bespoke a firm and daring disposition.
He had been clerk to a wine merchant at St. Petersburg; and when I
asked him one day what was the cause of his sentence and punishment,
he replied, ‘It is because I killed the girl with whom I was in love.
I suspected her of being unfaithful to me. I had suffered horribly,
and I was determined to be revenged upon her. In order to execute my
design with greater ease, I pretended to make it up with her; and, by
dint of coaxing, got her to promise, on a certain holiday, to go on
an excursion into the country with me. She hesitated about it a long
time, as if she had had a presentiment of some mischief; but at last
she consented, upon the condition that she might bring a female friend
along with her. _That_ did not suit my plans very well, but I had to
put up with it. On the appointed day we started, all three of us. Armed
with a pistol and a dagger, I walked alongside of my mistress and
talked to her. She had never seemed to me either so pretty or so loving
as she did then; but that only added to my jealousy and my thirst for
revenge. More than once I was on the point of dispatching her, but her
face disarmed me. At last I stopped; it was in a field; I pointed out
something in the view to my sweetheart which made her turn away her
head. At that moment I put the pistol to her temple, and pulled the
trigger. My hand shook, and I only wounded her; the friend screamed
and ran. She, slightly hurt and stunned by the shot, turned round
two or three times, then, throwing herself on her knees before me,
“Forgive me!” she cried in a voice so touching and heart-rending that
I shuddered. But I answered by sinking the dagger into her heart, the
weapon going in up to its hilt. She fell down stiff and dead. I stabbed
her in the breast with my knife, and then ran to give myself up to the
police; and here I am, after the knout, for life....’

‘But are you not sorry for having killed her? Does not your conscience
reproach you bitterly for such a crime?’

‘Yes, I am sorry for her. I shall never forget her as long as I live,
and I shall never love any one else; but as to my conscience, I thought
I was quite right in killing her.’

‘But, if it were possible for her to be alive and come back to you, you
surely would not do so by her again?’

‘She made me first the happiest and then the most miserable of men;
and, if she could come back, I should certainly kill her again.’

‘Then, you mean to say you think you have committed no crime?’

‘Where is the crime? She took away my peace, and I took away her life;
she was the most to blame of the two.’

I must now say something about our village, and about the organisation
of the factory. The government distillery at Ekaterinski-Zavod was
founded in the reign of Catherine II., whose name it bears; and
the population consists of the descendants of former convicts. All
the interests of the village were centred in the distillery, which
produces annually from two to three million of _litres_ of alcohol,
and furnishes brandy to the country over a district of one or two
thousand _verstes_. The distillery was farmed by two rich merchants
of the government of Simbirsk, M. Orlov and M. Alexeiev, who must
have realised a considerable profit upon it, because, besides the
price which they paid as rent, and the augmented charges of pay
to the convict labourers, they had contracted for the pay of the
commanding officer and the keep of the garrison, viz. of a hundred and
one persons; and they were necessarily obliged to give constant and
valuable presents to the inspector and other government officials.
The inspector generally allowed them about half the force of convict
labourers for the distillery; the other half was employed in the
public service, as in road-making and mending, in the construction of
government buildings, and in sanitary works. Each of us received in
money three francs a month, and ninety pounds’ weight of corn, the
sale of which in the village was to furnish us with food; but the
gentlemen who farmed or rented the distillery from the crown, in order
to encourage their workpeople, raised the pay up to five, eight, and
even ten francs a month; the men employed in barrelling the spirit
being paid by the piece, and thus gaining more than the rest. In this
way, it was advantageous for the convicts to be in the employment of
the distillery, for they received a better salary, and were less likely
to encounter the trying interference of the government officials; but,
in any case of insubordination or idleness, the distillers or their
representative were obliged to refer to the inspector, who ordered the
punishment to be inflicted. This, I mean, was the case when it was
a question of the stick and the rods; as for blows and cuffs, the
convicts got plenty of them from everybody alike. The greater number
of convicts lived in barracks; the more favoured were allowed to lodge
in the village: but then they had to pay for the bed and board of the
soldier who lived there and watched them. From all this it will be seen
that, by those who had any education, the counting-house and office
of the factory were the posts especially desired, and that those who
occupied them were thought most worthy of envy; but it is needless
to add that all were alike in the eye of the law, that these steps
or grades could not give any acquired rights, and that at the good
pleasure of the inspector, or _smotritel_, one might be at any moment
‘removed to other functions.’

Thanks to the constant care with which I acquitted myself of the tasks
imposed upon me, thanks to the mastery which I had gained over myself,
and of which I certainly should not at one time have believed myself
capable, I passed, in the following year, not only into the service of
the lessees, but also was employed in their office; and in this way I
ceased to be in the constant society of persons who were unreclaimed,
and who lacked culture both morally and intellectually. I received
wages to the extent of ten francs a month, and my occupation was in
every way less painful than any former ones had been. I went to my
desk at eight in the morning, and I remained in the counting-house
till mid-day, where I was again from two in the afternoon to ten or
eleven at night; and although work was not pressing, and one was not
really wanted, yet it was incumbent on me to be always present. During
the long hours of ennui I wrote, took notes, and abandoned myself to
meditations, during which plans for the future slowly ripened in my
mind. My office, it happened, was the rendezvous of a great number
of travellers, who frequented it both for the sale of grain and in
order to buy spirituous liquors; they were peasants, townsfolk,
merchants, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. If I was very scant
of speech, and short in my communication with the official, with the
other convicts, and with the custom-house officers, I acquired, on the
contrary, with a curiosity that never flagged, from all these passing
travellers, all that was to be learnt of the peculiarities of Siberia.
I spoke to men some of whom had been to Berezov, others at Nertchinsk,
others had penetrated to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, to the
steppes of the Kirghis, even into Boukhara; and thus, without passing
the threshold of my office, I learnt to know Siberia, its nearest and
its furthest details. The knowledge thus acquired was to be of great
value to me afterwards, in forming the plan for my evasion.

One of my fellow-countrymen, Wysoçki, was head clerk in the
counting-house of the distillery; but my great ally there was the young
Russian, Stépan Bazanov, manager of the factory for the lessees, whose
relative he was. He was a lad of twenty or upwards, brave and upright,
whose only weakness was the most naïve adoration for the Emperor
Nicholas. He never would or could admit that Nicholas did wrong; all
the wrong, according to him, was owing to the Boyards, and he declared
that, were it not for the intervention of the nobility, the Tzar would
make his people the happiest in the world; and I am bound to say that,
as far as my experience has gone, this opinion is a pretty general one
in Russia, among the people, though not among the ‘staroviertsi.’ What
most disposed me to like Bazanov was that he confided his love griefs
to me. The poor boy, who was lamentably uneducated in every way, had
fallen violently in love with a cousin of his own; but the Orlovs put
difficulties in the way of the union which he so much desired. Fancy
hearing a lover’s confidences in an accursed place like this where
convicts worked! though to be sure the man who made them to me knew
that he was free, and that he did not awake every morning to fear the
stick and the rods!

I must say that the thought of being exposed at any moment, for any
trivial cause, and at the beck of any official, to treatment as
shameful as it is terrible, created in me a gloomy and fierce temper,
and that, in spite of the relative and very appreciable improvement in
my case, I was kept in a state of continual tension. I could not forget
the subject, there was no way of doing so; the punishments daily
inflicted on some one or other of the convicts, all my own equals in
the social hierarchy of the place, sent up a cry of _cras tibi_, enough
to drive anyone mad with despair. Moreover, the familiarities to which
the superiors often admit their deported labourers have a dangerous
side. There is no real trust to be placed in the caprices of a man
invested with arbitrary powers. His favours are likely to be capricious
also, for these men are generally of low minds and manners; and it
amuses them to make a sport of their fellow-creatures, raising them
one day only in order to humiliate them more deeply hereafter. This is
a snare into which many Poles, who like myself have been carried to
Siberia, are apt to fall; into which indeed they have fallen. Their
education, their manners, the noble nature of their misfortunes, all
attract to them a certain consideration, and sometimes even win for
them the good graces of their masters. Thus they rise above the level
of the common herd of the lost, and they beguile themselves with the
illusion that in this way they are reintegrated into society. But
the moment of awakening from this dream soon comes, and the deported
man, rudely reminded of his real state, may be called happy if he is
reminded of it only by word of mouth! Some years before my arrival at
Ekaterinski-Zavod, there was a Russian general, N----, who had been
condemned by Nicholas to penal servitude in Siberia. The _smotritel_,
respecting the high position and the advanced age of the prisoner,
set him to the lightest and least painful tasks, and admitted him to
society and his table. Unluckily, the general sometimes forgot himself
(especially if he drank a little too much), and, taking up the tone
of a senior and superior officer, showed himself recalcitrant. The
inspector then had him chained to the furnace of the distillery, and
obliged him for a month or a fortnight, during the extreme cold of
winter, to keep up the fires. The general, overheated and covered with
sweat and ashes, promised to amend, and recommenced his familiarities
with the _smotritel_ and other functionaries, only to find himself
again another time by the furnace. Having spent several years in this
way at the _katorga_, he was pardoned by the Tzar, and restored to his
old rank as a general officer.

One other amelioration took place in my lot, and that even before I
was told off for a clerkship in the counting-house, and it was, in my
estimation, a benefit as great as even that great improvement on my
former labours. The inspector gave me leave to live out of barracks;
and thus I was able to leave behind me that habitation which was the
ordinary dwelling of felons, and which was the scene of their drinking
and of their infamous debaucheries. I dwelt henceforth, along with my
two fellow-clerks and fellow-countrymen, in Siesieki’s house. Thanks
to the length of his long sojourn at Ekaterinski-Zavod, this exile
had scraped together, out of his slender salary, enough money to
construct a small wooden house, which was not complete as yet, and
indeed was not even roofed in; but thither notwithstanding we carried
our household goods. The wind whistled through numberless chinks, but
as wood cost next to nothing, we piled up a great fire on the earth
every night; and there we could feel not only that we were at home,
but that we were delivered from the horrible company of the common
criminals; although it must not be forgotten that we were watched, and
that we had to pay for the soldiers who mounted a ceaseless guard upon
our persons. Ah! if that little house is still standing, and shelters
perhaps at this moment some unhappy and deported brother, let him know
that he is not the first or the only one who within its modest walls
has wept as he invoked a distant and a beloved land! My friend Siesieki
had been, he told me, a prisoner in the citadel of Warsaw along with
the hapless Lévitoux, and had thus been, so to speak, an eyewitness
of his horrible death. Their cells opened into the same corridor; and
more than once Lévitoux, when returning covered with blood from the
inquest and the torture, would call to him, ‘I cannot bear it any
longer, I know that I shall go mad, and then I shall speak in spite
of myself!’ This fear haunted him continually; but one day, on his
return from one of these _blood-baths_, as he called them, he said to
his companion through the window in his door, that he begged he would
keep awake till about eleven that evening. Siesieki, without, however,
attaching much importance to this request, complied with it, and did
not go to bed or lie down: about ten at night he saw a great light
in Lévitoux’s cell. The sentry called, ‘Fire! fire!’ but before the
jailer could be fetched, or the keys of the cell found, some time was
of course allowed to elapse. The door was opened, a dense smoke filled
the corridor, and the poor fellow had just expired upon the straw
mattress, to which he had set fire with his own hands by means of his
night-light. Through his cell window my friend beheld the burnt corpse,
and saw the soldiers drag it along the corridor by the feet, a horrible
spectacle, with the head knocking upon the flags. It is said that at
the news of such a finale even Nicholas was moved, and gave orders that
in future political offenders should not be proceeded against with so
much severity; also, ever since this event, no person detained for a
political cause, and supposed to be gravely implicated in one, is ever
allowed a light in his room.

Siesieki had made, as I related before, the whole of the journey to
Siberia on foot, and had formed one of a gang. When he first arrived
at our factory, he had been put to the hardest labour, in company with
the other convicts; but some years later the forester required the
services of a clever and safe servant, and Siesieki was attached to
his department, the more readily because he added the qualifications
of a good sportsman and a good shot to those of being a clever and
an honest man. It may easily be guessed that the inspector and other
functionaries profited by the first-fruits of his chase, and that at
that price he gained permission to carry a gun. Indeed he was often
absent on leave for a week at a time, a proceeding of which we once
felt the inconvenience, for as Bogdaszewski and I were obliged to be
all day at the office, he ought to have been there to watch our house;
but profiting by one of his long absences some one robbed us! Our door
was broken in and our provisions of tea and corn stolen, a loss which
to us was no slight one.

In the neighbourhood lived several deported Poles, dwelling in Siberia
as simple exiles. They used to avail themselves of some saint’s day
or holiday to visit us, for, with permission of the authorities,
they were able to make excursions to Ekaterinski-Zavod. From them we
learnt the fate of many other exiles, and we would invoke together the
names of the thousands of our dead who had laid down their lives in
this land of expiation. The great event, however, of our monotonous
existence was the arrival among us of a Polish and Roman Catholic
priest. Four of our clergy are permitted by the Russian government to
traverse every part of Siberia. Once a year in this way they visit the
different establishments where the political offenders dwell, and offer
to them the rites and the consolations of their faith. The arrival of
one of these servants of God is made known in each district a few
days beforehand, and the faithful collect from different points. The
priest during his stay celebrates a mass, gives the Holy Communion, and
consecrates the graves of those who during the year have passed into
their rest. No honest, and above all no Christian mind, can fail to
appreciate the devotion of these four poor priests. It cannot be too
much admired, for it carries them along their ceaseless travels, and
supports them as, in their sledges, they journey through the intense
cold of Siberia, from Tobolsk to Kamtschatka, and from Nertchinsk to
the Polar Sea. The father who visited us in 1845 was a Dominican from
Samogitia; but he forbore to wear the gown of his order for fear of
outraging the Greek orthodoxy of the natives of Siberia. The inspector
had the kindness to allow us to hold service in his room, which was
the most spacious one in the village. We all went to confession, and
then approached the Lord’s Table. The crowd was great, for exiles and
Polish soldiers arrived from very great distances--even those Poles who
were not Roman Catholics did not fail to come with joy to the sacred
service, for, whether Catholics or not, to them the mass spoke of the
native land so hallowed by them and by all her children.



CHAPTER VI.

SIBERIA.

 SIBERIA--HARDSHIPS OF DEPORTATION--BREAKING THE BAN--THE ABBÉ
 SIEROCINSKI--HIS CONSPIRACY--HIS EXECUTION.


In this way I had mounted quickly from the lowest to the highest
status to which a convict can rise in this establishment of ours on
the banks of the Irtiche; and by the beginning of the year 1846 I
might almost have fancied myself merely as a recruit of the omnipotent
bureaucracy of Russia, sadly banished to these distant realms beneath
an inhospitable sky. Very different was this time from the terrible
winter of 1844, when I swept the gutters, hewed or carried wood, and
lived under one roof with all the offscourings of the human race! And,
alas! how many of my brothers, groaning at this moment in the mines
of Nertchinsk or in gangs under the lash--how many indeed of those
who had been condemned to a punishment less severe than my own, would
have thought themselves happy in the position which I had gained at
Ekaterinski-Zavod as early as 1846; and from which, however, I was
perfectly determined to slip away, at the risk even of encountering
the knout and the mysterious dungeons of Akatouia!

The word Siberia embraces a variety of miseries and of trials which
the nomenclature (already very rich) of the Russian penal code is yet
far from being able to define or even to specify. The two principal
categories, deportation (_possilenié_) and penal labour (_katorga_),
only indicate, so to speak, the two great exterior lines of an immense
_vagueness_, which can be filled up at will. Everything is arbitrary in
a sentence which is applied and interpreted by a host of dictators, by
a commission at Tobolsk, by a Governor-General in Siberia by the first
and the last comer, by an inspector and by an overseer.

It is one thing to be deported to Viatka, to Tobolsk, or even to Omsk;
it is another thing to be sent to Bérézov, as was our warm-hearted
Madame Felinska, or to Kamtschatka, like Beniowski or General Kopec,
and so many illustrious compatriots; it is another thing, again, to
serve in the army of the Caucasus, with the right of promotion, that is
to say, with the possibility and the hope of being one day protected
from corporal punishments, or of being placed in a Cossack regiment,
and sent to the Kirghis frontier. One may get off with the _katorga_
in some of the factories or government distilleries, as I did at
Ekaterinski-Zavod; but how many miserable beings labour in the horrible
mines at Nertchinsk, with irons on their feet, and only hoping for
some falling in of the mine to put an end quickly to a life which
has nothing more to hope or to expect in this world. The verdigris
mines are those which are the most dreaded. The disciplined gangs of
Orenbourg, and other places, have the reputation of leading a life yet
more awful than that at Nertchinsk. There the rod and the bastinado are
the daily bread of our poor students and artisans, who are in general
banished thither. There remains the fortress of Akatouia, not far from
Nertchinsk, the last punishment reserved for the greatest criminals,
and for convicts who revolt, or are taken in the attempt to break
their ban. Here it was that Peter Wysoçki, after the bad success of
his conspiracy in Siberia, was at last shut up. I know nothing of this
mysterious place, and I can say nothing about it, for I have never
seen any one who had penetrated its mystery; but I only know that,
throughout Siberia, the very name is pronounced with an indescribable
terror.

The contempt which the inhabitants of the country very naturally have
for the felon, falls back also upon the man who is simply deported; and
the exile may often hear himself insulted with the name of _varnak_, an
indigenous expression which conveys a concentrated notion of abjectness
and infamy. He who is deported has no civil rights, his deposition
cannot be taken in any court of justice, and his wife, if he has left
one in his native country, may contract a second marriage, because
he is counted among the dead. But the legislator who laid down this
last law with regard to the exile defeated his own object, which is
to increase, by any means, the population of Siberia. The convict or
the exiles in its regions can only marry into the worst class, and
among the least respectable of its inhabitants; and what is more, his
children, if any are born to him, must always remain serfs of the
crown. It is true that it is permitted to a wife to follow her husband
into Siberia, and that the most pitiless measures have not prevented
our seeing such instances of devotion as those of Princess Troubetskoï
and Madame Koszakiewicz, with many other Polish ladies; but then the
law forbids her again to leave the country, and her children born in
this land of exile become, in like manner, royal serfs; and we must
point out that there is a peculiarity in amnesties which, even when
granted, only apply to the parents. Any children of theirs that have
seen the light in Siberia cannot profit by the pardon, but require
a special decree. To the Emperor Nicholas, however, these many and
sad restrictions did not seem sufficient. In the month of December
1845, he issued a general order for Siberia, which, among many other
aggravating clauses, declared all deported persons to be incapable of
possessing any property whatever, even chattels and personalty; and
ordered that all who were sentenced to penal servitude should, without
any exceptions whatever, live in barracks. This command caused a
general consternation throughout the country, and the very officials
themselves were heard to declare that it was as cruel as it was
inopportune, inconvenient, and all but impracticable. I do not know if
it ever was rigorously carried into effect; but I may say that these
new measures went for a great deal in determining my resolution to fly
from Siberia; for I preferred exposing myself to every danger rather
than consent voluntarily to return, and be reinstalled in the barracks
of the felons.

However hard life in Siberia must of necessity appear to persons under
political sentences, I must confess that ordinary criminals do not
complain of their lot, and that they sometimes appear to prefer it to
their former condition. Serfs and soldiers especially, even when at
hard labour, have often said to us, ‘What have we to regret? we worked
just as hard where we were before, and we were beaten much oftener.’
And yet these very men are, in many instances, not less ready to brave
the knout and the most terrible punishments, by breaking their ban--so
powerful in man is the love of liberty and the love of his own hearth.
During my journey in Siberia I had already remarked, and was struck
by the fact, that numberless fields of turnips edged the roads on
both sides, and that in more than one place these turnips seemed to
have been torn up, while the plantations bore the marks of footsteps.
I learnt afterwards that the natives keep up the supply of roots on
purpose; and that they are intended for the use of fugitives, and to
serve them as food during their nocturnal flights. In villages and
hamlets along the high roads the inhabitants take pains to place over
night, on their window-ledges, bread, salt, and jars of milk, supplies
which are destined for the same persons; and the natives do all this
quite as much from self-interest as from charity, for the great trunk
roads of Siberia are marauded by runaway convicts, and no man can
imagine or describe what perils, what sufferings, and what privations
these desperate wretches undergo in order to escape detection. Those
who have been branded generally use vitriol or cantharides to get rid
of the obnoxious letters; but they seldom fail of being apprehended,
and the best fate that can await them is that they should henceforth
lead a savage life in the woods, where they become, or rather are
again, robbers.

If among the ordinary felons in Siberia the temptation to flight is
so strong, among the political exiles and among my fellow-countrymen
that temptation is very seldom yielded to. The fear of the knout, and
of all corporal punishments, is naturally far stronger among educated
persons, or those whose lot is comparatively easy; then, too, the very
imperfect knowledge of the language, the routes, and the manners of the
country, all unite to dissuade the Poles from so desperate an attempt.
The resource which remains for the Russian peasant in his flight does
not apply or offer itself to the Pole; for him it is no object to be
lost in the boundless woods, or to hide in some obscure community for
life. To obtain his ends, the Pole must reach and cross the confines
of another country; and the immensity of the distances to be traversed
before this can be achieved is well calculated to make him lose all
hope. At the same time, attempts to rise in a body and thus effect
their joint deliverance are not at all rare among political exiles.
The exploits of Beniowski are remembered by all, and they appeal to
many spirits; so that we hear sometimes of a conspiracy, of which the
object is to force its way, by dint of arms and numbers, to Persia,
China, or simply across the Steppes. Sometimes we have even had the
wish to make Siberia itself rise in revolt against the rule of the
Tzar. Peter Wysoçki, who first gave the signal of our revolution in
1831, and who, being taken in battle by the Russians, was deported to
Nertchinsk, formed such a plan as this; and he expiated his temerity in
the fortress of Akatouia. Something similar to his was the conspiracy
of the Abbé Sierocinski, so celebrated ever since in Siberian annals. I
arrived at Ekaterinski-Zavod some years after that bloody tragedy had
been played out; but I have been near Omsk, the stage on which it was
acted; I have seen both the eye-witnesses and many of the actors in
it, and I have collected from their lips the following details of the
dismal story, and I can vouch for their perfect truthfulness.

Previous to the opening scene of our revolution, the Abbé Sierocinski
had been superior of the convent of St. Basil, at Owrucz, in Volhynia,
and at the same time director of the schools in that place. He took
an active part in the movements and political agitation of 1831, and
finally fell into the hands of the Russians, when the Emperor Nicholas
despatched him to Siberia to serve as a private in one of the regiments
of Cossacks; and thus for several years did the former superior of a
convent, mounted and in a Cossack dress, pursue the Kirghis of the
Steppes with a lance in his hand and with a sabre at his side. Now
there existed at Omsk a military college, and one day, being in want of
a professor, the authorities bethought themselves of the ex-Basilian,
whose capabilities were well known, and who was therefore, especially
on account of his knowledge of French and German, recalled from his
life on the Steppes. Thus the old head of a convent and the old Cossack
became by order of the government a professor in the military school
of Omsk, although he did not cease to be a private and to belong to
his former regiment. In his new position Sierocinski soon gained all
hearts and obtained a large number of acquaintances and friends. His
physical constitution was delicate and nervous, but he was gifted by
nature with a spirit of rare enterprise and with great courage. He
conceived the idea of a vast Siberian conspiracy, into which should be
drawn all the exiles, all the soldiers in garrison, and many of those
officers in whose minds the ideas and the sufferings of Pestel still
survived, while he wished the natives of the country, the Russians,
and even the Tatars to take a part in it. There is no doubt that the
elements of revolution and revolt are not wanting in Siberia; how and
why it is so would take me too long to explain in this place, but
those who know the country well are fully aware of this feature in
it. Discontent is very general, although the causes and the degrees
of it are sundry and manifold, and differ so widely as to be almost
contradictory. It is only by the presence of the garrisons that the
country is kept safe within the iron-bound circle of the empire. Yet it
was precisely in the garrisons themselves that Sierocinski sought and
found the great number of sympathisers. His plan was to seize, by means
of the conspirators and old deported soldiers, upon the fortresses and
principal strongholds; this they were to do at a given signal, and then
they were to await the progress of events; while in case of check or
defeat they were to retire under arms into the Kirghis Steppes of the
_Khanat_ of Tachken, where there were many Catholics, or into Boukhara,
and from thence press on into the English territories in the East
Indian peninsula. The centre of the conspiracy was at Omsk, where they
had all the artillery of the place at their disposal. The signal for a
general rising was given; but on the very eve of the day on which it
was to take place, three of the conspirators revealed everything to
the commandant of the place, the same Colonel Degrawe whom I mentioned
on my way through Omsk. Sierocinski and his accomplices were seized
that same night, and couriers started off in all directions to give
orders for arresting an endless number of persons. Thus was the plot
discovered at the very moment when it was to have taken effect, and an
enquiry began which lasted for a long time. Two commissions, selected
and sent down the one after the other, were dissolved without coming to
any decision, so obscure and so complicated was the whole affair; and
it was only a third board, composed of persons chosen and despatched
expressly from St. Petersburg, which succeeded in bringing the trial to
an end. By order of the Emperor Nicholas, the Abbé Sierocinski and five
of his principal accomplices, among whom was an officer of the wars of
the empire more than sixty years of age, by name Gorski, and another
Russian, Mélédine, were sentenced to receive each seven thousand lashes
(with the rods) and ‘without mercy;’ in fact, the sentence consisted
exactly of these five words, ‘Seven thousand lashes without mercy’
(_bez postchadi_). The other persons under arrest, about one thousand
in all, were condemned some to three thousand, some to two thousand,
some to one thousand five hundred lashes and to hard labour for life,
while others were simply sent to work in the penal settlements.

The day of execution arrived; it was at Omsk, in the month of March
1837. General Galafeïev, who was celebrated for his cruelty, and who
had been sent down from the capital by reason of this shining quality,
was at the head of the dismal procession. By daybreak two whole
battalions were drawn up in a great open space near the town; one of
these was destined to officiate on the principal culprits, the other
on those condemned to a smaller number of lashes. I do not intend to
detail in all its minutiæ the butchery of that terrible day; I shall
but notice the fate of Sierocinski and his five companions. They were
led upon the ground, their sentence read out, and they began to run
the gauntlet (_skvosstroï_): the blows fell, as the imperial order
directed, _without mercy_, and the cries of the sufferers went up to
heaven. None of them lived to receive the prescribed number of lashes.
All (and they were executed one after the other) after passing through
the ranks twice or thrice fell upon the snow, which was crimson with
their blood, and then expired. The Abbé Sierocinski had been purposely
reserved to the last, in order that he might witness the sufferings
of all his friends. When his turn came, and they had stripped him and
tied his hands to the bayonet, the surgeon of the battalion came up to
him and offered him a flask containing some strengthening drops, but
he refused them, saying, ‘You may drink my blood, but I will not drink
your drops, and I do not want them!’ The signal was given, the fatal
march began, and the old superior of the Basilican convent chaunted in
a loud clear voice, ‘_Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam
tuam_.’ General Galafeïev called to those who struck, ‘Harder! harder!’
(_pok repché_), and for several minutes the priest’s chaunt rose above
the whistling of the rods and the _pok repché_ cries of the commanding
officer.... Sierocinski had only passed once through the ranks, that
is to say, he had only received one thousand blows, when he fell upon
the snow bathed in his own blood, and senseless. In vain they attempted
to place him on his feet. He was then laid on a tumbril prepared
beforehand for the purpose, and fastened to a support in such a way as
to let the blows fall on his back and shoulders, and thus a second time
he passed along. When this second passage was gone through, his groans
and screams were still audible; but they got gradually weaker, though
he did not expire till after the fourth turn; the last three thousand
lashes were only laid upon a corpse.

A common grave soon received those who were either killed that day or
whose deaths followed soon after their punishments; both Russians and
Poles perished, and were buried thus. The friends and relations of
those who lie there were permitted to place the symbol of our faith
over that memorable tomb; and as late as 1846 one might still behold a
great wooden crucifix that stretched its black arms across the steppes,
sharply defined against the sparkling and spotless whiteness of their
snows.



CHAPTER VII.

THE FLIGHT.

 AN ATTEMPTED FLIGHT--MY ROUTE--MY FUNDS--MY DRESS--THE SLEDGE--A
 RUSSIAN THEFT--THE JOURNEY--IRBITE--ON FOOT--A NIGHT’S
 LODGING--DANGER--COLD AND FAMINE--PAOUDA--THE IZBOUCHKA--THE CREST OF
 THE OURALS--LOST IN THE FOREST--SLEEP--ALMS--VÉLIKI-OUSTIONG.


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.

It was in the month of June that I noticed a little boat, which lay on
the banks of the Irtiche, or floated on its waters, and which was very
often forgotten, and not drawn up at night. I thought that I might take
advantage of this skiff, and let the stream carry me to Tobolsk; but
hardly had I, on one dark night, untied the boat, and given due or two
strokes with the oars, than the moon broke through the clouds, flooding
the landscape with a dangerous light; and at the same time I heard
the sound of the inspector’s (_smotritel_) voice, as he walked on the
banks, with one or two of the other officials. It was all over with me
for that time, and I gently crept back to land. In the following month
I espied the same skiff, and in a much more favourable situation--upon
a lake, at some distance from our factory, which, through a canal,
communicated with the Irtiche. But this second attempt miscarried also,
and that by reason of an unsurmountable and natural obstacle; for, at
nightfall, the air at this time of year becomes so suddenly cooled that
dense columns of vapour are caught up, and they are so thick and so
close that one cannot see or distinguish anything at the distance of
two feet--a phenomenon which is not uncommon in summer on the waters
of Siberia. In vain now did I push my boat to every side and in every
direction. The fog prevented my finding the opening of the canal into
the Irtiche, and only as the day began to dawn did I discover the issue
so long and so vainly sought. It was then too late, and I thought
myself lucky in being able to get back to my lodging without let or
hindrance; and from that time I abandoned every thought of confiding
myself to the inclement waters of the Irtiche, but I set myself not the
less persistently to ripen and consolidate the plans for my intended
flight.

The first point to be considered, and upon which I had first to fix
my attention, was the direction I ought to select for my perilous
journey. The trunk road, which was the most natural, and presented
itself before all the others, and which, from the heart of Siberia,
would have taken me into the centre of Russia Proper, was, as I saw at
once, the one least fitted for my purpose. The law there maintains a
constant and active watch, and is assisted very often both by the zeal
and by the rapacity of the natives, who sometimes find it profitable
to take a shot from behind a hedge at some convict breaking through
his ban. Indeed, among the people, especially among the Tatars, there
is a popular saying, ‘He who kills a squirrel only gets one skin,
but he who kills a _varnak_ gets three--his coat, his shirt, and his
skin.’ Many other routes, of course, were to be found, and in very
different directions. I could traverse Eastern Siberia, by Irkutsk and
Nertchinsk, as far as the Sea of Okhotsk, and there seek some vessel,
which would have carried me to the ports of the United States or to
California. I might turn towards the south, crossing the steppes of the
Kirghis, and arriving in Boukhara, whence I could reach the confines of
British India. On the other side, the Oural River, if I had the good
fortune to touch its source, might have carried me on its waters into
the Caspian Sea, and allowed me to take refuge in Daghestan, among
the Circassians. Finally, a fourth route remained to me, by which,
after crossing the Oural chain, and reaching Oufa, in the government
of Orenbourg, I might find the Volga, at a point somewhat lower than
that at which a canal unites it with the Don, and the latter river
would have led me to the Sea of Azov; and then, according to my wish,
I might have repaired either to Turkey in Europe or to Turkey in Asia,
or even into the western parts of Circassia. For reasons which it would
take me too long to set down here, I found that I ought to give up all
and each of these four tracks; and I resolved to seek for my liberty
by way of the north, and across the Oural Mountains, and to press on
over the steppes of Petchora and Archangel. This path was the least
frequented, and for this reason only it was the safest. Moreover, it
had the immense advantage of being the shortest; for, if I once touched
at Archangel, it appeared to me an impossibility that, among the four
or five thousand ships in the port, mostly all foreign ones, not one
should be found willing to take on board a political refugee, flying
from the _katorga_. It was then to these districts of the far north,
and to the shores and borders of the White Sea, that I now directed
my most minute investigations, although I also lost no opportunity of
acquiring information as to any of the other directions, in case chance
or fate should impel me in their way. Our bagnio was cosmopolitan
enough in its character, and soon, from convicts gathered from all
parts of the empire, I acquired a very exact knowledge of the manners
and customs of all the Russias; but my conversations with the merchants
and travellers, who, from north and south, from east and from west,
passed through or frequented Ekaterinski-Zavod, chiefly helped to
complete the education of a scholar who appeared to be careless and
apathetic, but who was really greedy for every bit of information he
could extract.

The exile who combines in his mind different plans of escape is
absorbed in an amazing variety of calculations about very small
matters, and it is only the sum total of his thoughts and designs
which can present any objects of interest to the reader. Slowly and
with difficulty I succeeded in gathering together the articles which I
knew to be indispensable to my journey. Among these, and in the first
rank, figured a passport. Of these documents there are two kinds in use
among the Siberians, for these people have the taste, which is common
among all the Russians, for making long peregrinations in the empire.
There is first a pass, which is good only for distances comparatively
short, and which has only a short time to run; there is also the
passport of great importance, which is a very different matter, being
issued by the higher powers and on stamped paper--it is known as the
_plakatny_. I succeeded in forging both the one and the other, for, by
men who have once learnt to like and to cultivate them, certain arts
are carried on and plied even in the convicts’ barrack; and thus it was
that I obtained from a friend, a clever coiner of false money, and in
return for a few roubles, a capital seal with the arms of his imperial
majesty. Then as to the sheet of stamped paper, it was easy for me
to appropriate one from the mass which I blackened every day in the
office for the public use, and thus I had a _plakatny_ at my service.
Slowly and with difficulty too I procured the dress and the accessories
needful for my disguise, which was to be effected both morally and
physically, for I had to transform myself into a native, a ‘man of
Siberia’ (_sbirski tcheloviék_), as they say in Russia. Ever since my
arrival at Ekaterinski-Zavod, or rather even before that time, and from
the time I left Kiow, I had purposely allowed my beard to grow, and it
had now got to a respectable and perfectly orthodox length. After many
attempts I furthermore became possessed of a wig, a Siberian one, be
it understood--one of those sheepskins with the curls inside, which
are worn in this country to keep out the intense cold; and, thanks
to these means, I trusted to make my personal appearance such as was
most unlikely to be recognised. In the last place, I may mention that,
after deducting the cost of these articles, there remained to me the
sum of 180 roubles (in assignats[5]), that is, about 200 francs--a
very slender sum for so long a journey, and one which, through a sad
accident, was yet to be greatly diminished.

I had not disguised from myself in any way the difficulties of my
undertaking, nor yet the dangers to which at every step I was to be
exposed. I also knew that I could not even reckon on the poignard
which I carried as a last and perfectly reliable means of safety,
for, in spite of much that one hears, it is not always in one’s power
to put an end to one’s life. I might be arrested in my sleep, or in
some one of those times of moral prostration which follow on very
prolonged effort and tension of body or of mind, and when a man, by
loss of nervous power, is prevented from disposing of his existence.
One thought, however, sustained me, and while it added greatly to the
difficulties of my situation, it much lightened my conscience--it was
the vow I had made not to reveal my secret to a single human being
until, standing on a free soil, I could do so with safety to them.
I determined not to ask for help, protection, or advice from any
living soul until I had passed the limits of the Tzar’s dominions,
and rather to give up my own hoped-for salvation than to become the
cause of peril and suffering to one of my fellow-men. During my stay
at Kaminieç I had implicated more than one of my poor compatriots in
my own bitter lot, but then I believed myself to be on a mission for
the general weal: now, the only object I had in view was my personal
safety at the time, and my freedom hereafter; and I resolved that, for
their accomplishment, I would rely on no one but on myself. God has
vouchsafed to me the strength to persevere in this resolution to the
end. It seemed to me to be the only honest and justifiable course;
and it has perhaps been on account of this vow, made from the very
starting point, that He has extended over me His protecting Arm.

By the last days of January my preparations were finished, and the
time seemed peculiarly favourable for my start, because there was soon
to be held at Terbite, at the foot of the Oural range, one of those
great fairs which are peculiar to Eastern Russia, where centres of
trade are few and far between. The immense distances which have to be
crossed, and the difficulties in the way of even the most ordinary
communications between one place and another, make fairs of this sort
a real _colluvies gentium_, and the roads are covered with innumerable
trains of merchandise, and with a great concourse of travellers.
Flattering myself with the hope that I might be lost in such a movement
of people and tribes, I lost no time in profiting by the circumstance,
and on February 8th, 1846, I set out.

I had on three shirts, the coloured one being, after the Russian
fashion, pulled over the trowsers: I had a waistcoat and trowsers of
thick cloth, and over all a little burnous (_armiak_) of sheepskin,
well tallowed, which hung down to my knees, while great boots with tops
strongly tarred completed my costume. A girdle of red, white, and black
worsted was tied round my waist, and over my wig I had one of those red
velvet caps, edged with fur, which are worn on holiday time by Siberian
peasants of any affluence, and by commercial travellers. Besides all
this, I was wrapped in a wide pelisse, of which the collar, turned
up and tied by a red handkerchief round the neck, served less to keep
out the cold than to hide my face. I carried a bag in my hand, and in
it I had put a second pair of boots, a fourth shirt, a pair of blue
trowsers, such as are worn in the country in summer, some bread, and
some dried fish. A large dagger was slipped into the sheath of my right
boot; my money was under my waistcoat in assignats of five or ten
roubles; and, to conclude, in my hands, which were covered with stout
gloves of skin, with the hair inside, I held a strong knotted stick.

Thus equipped I stole away at eventide from the settlement of
Ekaterinski-Zavod by a cross-road. It was freezing very hard, and the
rime which hung in the air sparkled in the moonlight. I soon passed my
Rubicon, the Irtiche, whose frozen shield I crunched under my feet, and
with hasty steps, which the weight of my dress alone checked, I took
the road to Tara, a small market town at about twelve kilometres from
the place where I had been kept. The winter nights, I said to myself,
are very long in Siberia; how many miles shall I be able to make before
daylight appears to make them aware of my flight? and what shall I do
when it dawns?

I had hardly crossed the Irtiche when I heard the sound of a sledge
coming up behind me. I shuddered, but determined to await the nocturnal
traveller, and, as happened more than once during my hazardous
wanderings, that which I dreaded as a danger became the unexpected
means of saving myself. ‘Where are you going?’ asked the peasant who
drove the sledge, and who had drawn up beside me.

‘To Tara. Where do you come from?’

‘From the hamlet of Zalivina. Give me sixty kopeks (tenpence) and I
will take you to Tara, for I am going there myself.’

‘No; that is too dear, but I will give you fifty kopeks if you like to
take me for that.’

‘Well, so be it; look sharp, my friend!’

I seated myself beside him, and we started at a gallop. My companion
was in a hurry to get home; the road covered by snow, which the frost
had hardened, was as smooth as a mirror, and the piercing cold seemed
to give wings to the horses. At the end of half an hour we were at
Tara, where my peasant put me down in one of the streets of the town
and went his way. Now alone, I went up to the first posting-house, and
called in Russian fashion through the window, as loud as I could:

‘Have you any horses?’

‘Where are they to go?’

‘To the fair at Irbite.’

‘Yes, we have some.’

‘A pair?’

‘Yes, a pair.’

‘How much a verste?’

‘Eight kopeks.’

‘I won’t give so much; say six kopeks.’

‘What can we say? Done! Presently.’

In a few minutes the horses were ready and put to a sledge. ‘Where do
you come from?’ they asked me.

‘From Tomsk: I am a clerk of N----’ (I named somebody), my principal
has gone on before me to Irbite; but, you see, I had to stay behind for
some little affairs of my own, and now I am horribly late, and I am
afraid my chief will be angry; if you will drive quickly you shall have
something for yourself.’

The peasant whistled, and the horses went off like an arrow. Suddenly
the sky became overcast, and a heavy snow falling, the peasant not only
lost his way but could not find it again. After having wandered about
in many wrong directions, we were obliged to halt and pass the rest
of the night in the forest. I pretended to be furiously angry, and my
driver, full of excuses, began to ask my pardon. I shall not attempt to
describe the agony of that night, passed as it was sitting in a sledge,
in the middle of a snow storm, and at the distance of at most four
leagues from Ekaterinski-Zavod: at every moment I seemed to hear the
bells of the _kibitkas_ that were in full pursuit of me. At last the
day began to redden in the east. ‘Now, go back to Tara,’ I said to the
peasant; ‘I will take another sledge there, and you, you fool! shall
not have a farthing, and I will hand you over to the police for having
made me lose my time in this way.’ The countryman, much abashed,
turned to go back to Tara, but hardly had we gone a verste when he
stopped, looked all round, and pointing out some traces of a road under
the heap of snow, he cried:

‘There is the road we ought to have taken!’

‘Get on, then,’ I said, ‘and thank God!’

From this moment my man did his best to make up for the lost time;
but a horrible idea crossed my mind, I remembered our hapless Colonel
Wysoçki, who, after having been detained as I was the whole night in a
wood, was given up to the gendarmes by his driver. Perhaps my peasant,
I said to myself, meditates to betray me in like manner, and my hand
mechanically sought my dagger; but it was a vain terror and an unjust
suspicion. He soon stopped at a friend’s house, where I had some tea,
and where I was provided at the same rate with horses to continue my
journey. Thus I went on my way, changing horses at very reasonable
sums, until I arrived late at night at a village called Soldatskaïa,
where I became the victim of a theft as audacious on the part of the
thief as it was painful to me. I happened to have no change to pay the
driver, and along with him I squeezed my way into a pot-house where
there were a number of tipsy people, for it was near the end of the
carnival. I pulled two or three bank notes from under my waistcoat,
and I was going to give them to the landlord to get them changed, when
a sudden move in the crowd, whether purposely or not I cannot say,
shoved me back from the table on which I had laid down the papers, and
they were carried off in a second. In vain I called out, the thief was
not to be discovered, and as I did not dare really to summon the police
to my assistance, I was obliged to resign myself to my fate, although I
had lost some forty roubles in notes, and (what added much more to my
regrets, I might almost say to my terror) two papers had disappeared
with them, which were of inestimable value to me, the one a memorandum
on which I had marked with the greatest minuteness all the towns and
villages through which I had to pass on my way to Archangel, the other
that passport on stamped paper which it had cost me so much trouble to
fabricate....

Thus, at the commencement, and in the first day of my flight, I had
lost a quarter of the small sum which I had saved for my travels, the
note which was to have been the map and guide of my wanderings, and the
_plakatny_, the only document which I could show to disarm the first
suspicions of any curious persons. I was in despair!

One thing above all others was I believe the main cause of the success
of the perilous task of my evasion, compelling me to persevere in
spite of all obstacles and mistakes, and obliging me to take courage
in spite of myself--this was the manifest impossibility of abandoning
my undertaking. Having once fled from Ekaterinski-Zavod, I should
certainly incur the same fate, whether captured at Tara or among
the Oural Mountains, among the steppes of Petchora or in the port of
Archangel, while every step I took brought me nearer to safety and
deliverance. Thus no room was left for hesitation or regret, and, in
spite of the irreparable loss which I had just sustained, I held on
my way, and soon, striking into the high road to Irbite, I found, in
the sudden animation of the landscape, a sight calculated to distract
my eyes, and to inspire my mind with a certain degree of confidence.
All over that vast and snow-covered plain, to the left of which ever
since I passed Tioumen the wooded slopes of the Oural chain began to
be defined, swarmed an innumerable mass of sledges, either going or
returning from the fair. They were full of goods and _yamstchiks_ (or
peasants who undertake to carry merchandise), and were whirled along by
those Siberian horses whose pace is only to be equalled by the skill
of their drivers. The month of February is a harvest time for the
dwellers in these districts, who make, by the hire of their horses and
sledges at the time of the fair at Irbite, the largest of their yearly
gains. They display then all the good humour and the noisy gaiety which
can animate an active population at the end of the dead season of the
year. I mingled my voice with the sharp cries and piercing calls of the
_yamstchiks_; I greeted every passenger, regarding each in the bottom
of my heart as an involuntary auxiliary of my flight, for the more the
number of men, horses, and sledges increased, the more I took courage.
How, I asked myself, could they distinguish in this vast crowd of
merchants, bagmen, clerks and peasants one solitary political criminal
who seeks his liberty by flight? how pursue me through this moving and
ever-changing Babel? It would be about as likely and as useful to try
(as we say in our proverb of the Ukraine) ‘to follow and catch the wind
upon the steppes.’

In order to make the reader understand how rapid was my flight, which
differed in no way from the pace of the other Siberians on the road, it
will suffice to say that, on the third day of my evasion, and in spite
of having spent a night in the forest of Tara, I found myself, late
in the evening, at the gates of Irbite, 4,000 kilometres distant from
Ekaterinski-Zavod. ‘Stop, and show your passport!’ called the sentry;
luckily, he added immediately, ‘Give me twenty kopeks, and through with
you.’ It may be imagined with what alacrity I satisfied the demands
of a law so opportunely modified, and I soon reached an inn, where at
first I was refused admittance, because there was no room. After some
time, however, I was received, on declaring that I only wished to pass
one night on the premises, being sure, I said, of finding out next day
where my master was, with whom I was to lodge for the rest of the time.
I went out soon after, pretending to go to the police station, and,
when I reappeared, said I had left my papers there, and would have
them returned to me next day. The _izba_, or large room in which we all
sat, was as full of _yamstchiks_ as it could hold, and the smell of
tar was enough to stifle one. I talked much of my principal, of _our_
affairs, and did my best to share in a noisy meal of Siberian dishes;
that is to say, of turnip soup, dried fish, oatmeal gruel mixed with
oil, and pickled cabbages. When the repast was over, each man paid his
share of the reckoning to the landlord, and then prepared a bed for
himself as best he could in the _izba_. Some stretched themselves upon
the stove, some on straw, some on the ground, some on benches, and some
under them. I did as I saw the others do, but sleep never came near
my eyes; so many hopes and so many fears chased each other through my
mind, that rest was impossible.

Very early in the morning I rose, and, like all my companions,
performed, in the most orthodox fashion, the three bows which every one
is expected to make to the holy images that never fail to occupy the
corners of a Russian dwelling; then, taking my bag on my back, I went
out under pretence of seeking my principal. In spite of the earliness
of the hour, the square was already very animated. Irbite is a town of
a tolerably pleasing appearance, in spite of its houses being built
entirely of wood. The streets are wide, the squares and market-places
spacious. On every side stood booths constructed after the national
fashion of thin planks, and intended to last only during the fair.
Sledges, drawn up like regiments, contained bales of goods; and those
which had been already emptied were now piled up in heaps, one on the
top of the other. I am sure that there were several thousands of these
vehicles. For my part, I did little more than go across the town, as
many reasons weighed with me, and prevented my stopping there for any
length of time--the chief reason being my fear of meeting some one of
the many acquaintances I had made at Ekaterinski-Zavod. I had no wish
to put my disguise to the proof, unless there was an absolute necessity
for so doing. I therefore bought some loaves of bread and some salt
in a shop, put them into my bag, and left the town by an opposite
gate from the one by which I had entered it, and where the sentry did
not, luckily, think it right to ask me any questions whatever. The
expenses which I had incurred in hiring horses to Irbite, as well as
the theft of which I had been the victim, had seriously diminished my
slender finances; and at this moment I stood possessed of no more than
75 roubles in assignats, and how was I to reach France by means of so
small a sum? It was clear that for the future I must trust to my own
legs, not to say to my own hands also, if I chanced to come in the way
of earning anything in my travels.

The winter of this year, 1846, was one of great severity, and the
snow fell in such quantities that I saw more than one pretty solidly
built house fall in from its weight; indeed, within the memory of
the Siberians, there had not been so hard a winter. On the morning,
however, of the day on which I left Irbite, the air appeared to me to
be rather milder; but then the snow began to fall, and it came down in
such style, so thick and so heavy, that I could not see where I was
going. It was a strange sensation to stand thus alone in the middle
of these wastes, of which the silence is almost always unbroken, and
to be covered with snow flakes, from which I vainly tried to shake
myself free, while walking became very fatiguing in the soft heaps
which got bigger at every moment. I managed, however, not to lose my
way, and every now and then a _yamstchik_ or two, driving past in his
sledge, helped to clear it before me again, till, about mid-day, the
snow began to cease, and my march became less impeded. As a general
rule, I avoided the villages, but when it was necessary to pass one, I
walked straight along the street, as if I belonged to the country, and
did not require to ask my way; and if grave doubts arose in my mind
as to which road to take, it was only at the last house of the hamlet
that I ventured to ask any questions. When I felt hungry, I pulled a
piece of frozen bread out of my bag, and ate it as I walked along, or
sat resting at the foot of a tree, in the most remote part of a wood.
When I was thirsty, I sought to slake my thirst at the holes in the ice
on pools and ponds, which the Siberians constantly make in order to
water their cattle; or, sometimes I had to content myself with letting
snow dissolve in my mouth, although that plan was far from being a
satisfactory one. My first day on foot out of Irbite was very trying,
and the evening found me completely exhausted. My heavy dress had added
greatly to my distress in walking, and yet I knew that I dared not part
with it. When night fell, I sought the heart of the forest, and there
prepared a sleeping-place for myself. I knew how the Ostiaks cover
themselves when asleep in their frozen deserts. They simply scoop out
a deep hole in a big snow wreath, and there find a bed, which, though
certainly hard, is not the less a perfectly warm one. I did in like
fashion, and soon found the repose of which I stood greatly in need.

On waking next morning, I felt extremely uncomfortable, and found that
my feet were frozen. Not quite familiar with the niceties of Ostiak
bed making, I had been imprudent enough, in covering myself with my
pelisse, to keep the furry side next to my body, and the heat thus
developed had completely melted the snow, and exposed my feet to the
low temperature of the dawn. I resolved to profit by this lesson for
the future, and, in the meantime, tried to bring the circulation back
by walking and running, in which I was, fortunately, successful. By
mid-day, to my sorrow, the wind rose very high--a truly Siberian wind,
dry and icy, seeming to blind one as it cuts one’s eyes, and sweeping
the heaps of snow before it, so as to obliterate in a few minutes
every trace of the best beaten road. The natives are accustomed, as
soon as winter sets in, to mark their tracks on each side by pines and
pine branches stuck into the snow at short distances from one another;
but this season the avalanches had been so numerous that, in most
places, they more than hid the signal branches. I presently perceived
that I had completely lost my way. Plunging about in the snow up to my
waist, sometimes up to my neck, I began to think I must perish there
from hunger and from cold; but by evening I came on a road again, and,
mercifully for me, it was the very one I ought to take, and for which I
was in search. It was quite late, when I saw a small detached cottage,
near a village, with a young woman standing on its doorstep. The hope
of finding a resting-place got the better of all my hesitation; I went
up to the woman, and asked her if she would give me a night’s lodging.
She made no difficulty about it, and took me into the _izba_, where
her old mother sat. I made her the usual greeting, and, in reply to
the usual questions ‘where I came from,’ and ‘whether the Lord God was
leading me?’ I replied that I came from the government of Tobolsk, and
that I was on my way to Bohotole, to look for work. The establishment
at Bohotole is an iron foundry belonging to the Russian government,
and situated far north of Verkhouterie, among the Oural Mountains;
it attracts great numbers of workpeople from the provinces of Perm
and of Tobolsk. While the women prepared some food for me, I spread
my clothes and my linen before the fire, and, having dried them, and
appeased my hunger, I stretched myself on a bench with an indescribable
sense of comfort and happiness. I believed that I had neglected no
precautions, for, after repeating to myself my Catholic prayers, I had
made the orthodox triple salutation, or _poklony_, to the holy images;
and yet some suspicions had been awakened in the minds of these women.
I learnt afterwards that the sight of the linen I had tried to dry was
the exciting cause; they thought me too well provided to be a Russian
artisan, for I had no less than four shirts!

Sleep was just stealing upon me, when I heard some whisperings that
disturbed me; and, all of a sudden, in came three peasants, one of whom
said in a low voice:

‘Where is he?’

The younger of the women pointed to where I lay. Presently, I was first
called, and then roughly shaken up by these men, who asked if I had a
passport. I was obliged to make some answer, so, sitting up, I retorted:

‘And what right have you to ask for my passport? Are any of you
_golova_ (an official)?’

‘It is true that we are not; we are only the inhabitants of the place.’

‘And, as inhabitants of the place, what right have you to attack
houses, and to walk in to ask for passports? How am I to know who you
are, and whether you are not likely enough to steal my papers? But,
keep yourselves easy, you will find presently with whom you have to do.’

‘But I tell you we are neighbours, country folks here.’

‘Is that true?’ said I, turning to the mistress of the house; and on
getting a sign from her in the affirmative, I went on, ‘Well then, in
that case, I will answer you. My name is Lavrenti Kouzmine, of the
government of Tobolsk, and I am going to the iron foundries at Bohotole
to look for work; and this is not the first time, by any means, that I
have been this way.’

I then went into more circumstantial details, and concluded by
exhibiting my passport. It was a mere pass, since, alas! my _plakatny_
no longer existed, and it never could have imposed upon any official;
but as it had a seal, the sight of that essential convinced this
portion of the public, who then began to ask me a hundred questions
about the fair at Irbite, and many other things. At last they departed,
having wished me a good night’s rest, and excusing themselves for
having troubled me by saying, ‘You see it was very excusable, because
we thought it was a case of a runaway convict: they sometimes pass this
way.’ The remainder of the night passed tranquilly away; and on the
following morning, I took leave of the two women whose hospitality had
so nearly proved fatal to me.

The incident which I have just related carried with it one sad
conviction, which was, that I could not reckon on a shelter for any
future nights without clearly exposing myself to very serious dangers,
and that, until things should take a new turn, the Ostiak couch must be
my only bed; and so with the Ostiak couch I contented myself, during
the whole of my journey across the Oural Mountains, and until my
arrival at Véliki-Oustiong--that is to say, from the middle of February
to the first days of the month of April 1846. Three or four times only
did I venture to crave hospitality for the night in some lonely hut;
and that was only because I was exhausted by some fifteen or twenty
days passed in the forest, and my strength was so far gone that I was
hardly conscious of what I was, what I said, or what I did. All the
other nights I contented myself with digging an earth for sleeping
in--only I had become more cunning, and I had also acquired a greater
dexterity in preparing my nocturnal refuge. I had noticed that, in
the depths of the forests, the snow hardly reaches to the foot of the
great trees; and that, as it accumulates, it still leaves an empty
space round the trunk, which soon becomes a pretty deep cavity. I let
myself slip down the stem of the tree into the hollow thus formed,
which was not unlike a well. Having arrived at the bottom, I tried with
my stick to throw some of the snow out of the aperture at the top,
and thus made a vault, which covered and sheltered me perfectly. But
very often I could not manage these nightly buildings; the snow would
be too light and dry, or, at another time, the roof thus laboriously
contrived would fall in with a crash. I had then to seat myself close
to the tree; and leaning my back against its trunk, thus slept, or
rather dozed, for the night. When the cold became so great that I felt
my limbs growing numbed, I had to get up, and run hither, and thither.
It was too dark either to follow or to find the road; but exercise,
at all risks, I must have, to revive my animal heat. On more than one
occasion, I have lain down tired, and simply let myself be covered by
the falling snow; this was, perhaps, the warmest cover of any; but I
always found it difficult, in the morning, to shake myself loose of
this white winding-sheet. By degrees, I got accustomed to this way of
sleeping; and sometimes, when night fell, I would find myself turning
into the thickest part of the woods, as to some familiar resting-place;
though at other times, I must confess, this savage life seemed to me
all but unbearable. The absence of any human dwellings, the want of
warm victuals--sometimes even of frozen bread (my only food, for days
together)--would make me feel that, not very far from my side, there
lay in wait for me those two hideous spectres--Cold and Famine--whose
names we are so apt to take in vain at every little trifle which makes
us uncomfortable! In such moments, what I most dreaded were the sudden
attacks of sleep, which would come on me unawares. These I knew full
well to be the forerunners of death, and against them I struggled with
all the little strength that remained to me. The craving for something
warm to eat or drink was very great; and it was often with the utmost
difficulty that I refrained from going into some hut, to beg a little
of the turnip broth which they make so much in Siberia.

After leaving behind me Verkhouterie--the last town (it is a wooden
one) which I was to pass on my way to the eastern slopes of the Ourals,
and where I took good care not to stop, I fell in with six young
Russians--a meeting which was very fortunate for me, as from them I
obtained various pieces of useful information. By their dress, and
indeed by their speech, I saw that they did not belong to this part
of the country, and that they were not even Siberians. When I asked
them, they told me that they came from the government of Archangel,
from the district of Mezen, on the very borders of the Frozen Sea;
and that they were on their way to the province of Tobolsk, to push
their fortunes as veterinary surgeons. These young men had pleasant
faces, very fair complexions, and hair so light as to have a silvery
tinge, like well-dressed flax. Indeed, had they not had clear blue
eyes, they might have passed for Albinos. They told me that the country
from which they came was very poor--miserably poor. In short, nothing
grew there, either wheat, oats, or barley; and the inhabitants lived
on fish, getting bread only from Archangel. The sight of men who had
come so far, and come on foot, gave me fresh courage and hope. I, in
my turn, could give them many details about Siberia (though not about
the districts in which I had dwelt), and I told them where they were
likely to find the greatest number of horses. Nature seems often to
play strange games in distributing men as she does over this globe. To
these miserable dwellers on the most remote shores of the Frozen Sea,
Siberia appears as a land of promise--the Eldorado of their dreams of
happiness; and thither they emigrate in bands, and in whole families,
to look for more lucrative labour and in search of a more clement sky.

I do not know how many days I may have spent in thus climbing the woody
but snow-clad heights of the Oural chain. The uniformity of the way,
and the repetition of the same accidents of travel made me at last lose
all count of time. I only know that at Paouda, far set in the heart of
the mountains, I dared for the second time since I had left Irbite to
sleep in a human dwelling, and that then for the third time since that
date I tasted some warm food. Even this little good fortune I owed to
a happy chance. I passed through the village very late in the evening,
and as I went by a house in which the lights still burnt, I suddenly
heard a voice call, ‘Who goes there?’

‘A traveller.’

‘Have you far to go?’

‘Oh, very very far.’

‘Well, if you like, you may turn in and sleep with us for the night.’

‘The good God reward you! But shall I not trouble you?’

‘How trouble us? No one is gone to bed yet.’

I crossed the hospitable threshold, and found in the house two kind
worthy beings, a husband and his wife. They gave me a modest Siberian
meal, which to me seemed a feast fit for Lucullus; but what I enjoyed
most was the being able to take off my clothes, which I had not been
able to do for so many nights, while I camped under the stars. They
asked me a good many questions, and I was ready to reply to them,
saying that I belonged to the district of Tobolsk, and that I was
on my way to Solikamsk, on the other side of the Ourals, that I had
a relation there, and that the times being hard, he had written to
me that I might find work in the salt works there. These good folks
then began to talk of their own lot, and to complain of it heartily.
It appeared that they were ‘peasants of the works’ (_pozavodskoïe
krestyany_), or serfs, liable from generation to generation to be
impressed for statute labour in the different government factories, of
which there are a great many in the Oural districts. Formerly there
were works at Paouda itself, but since they had been done away with,
the serfs were now obliged to go to labour as far as Bohotole; from
this liability neither women nor persons above the age of fourteen
years are exempt, and it may be supposed that such conditions were
severely felt. On the next day my hosts would not let me depart till I
had breakfasted with them, and they steadily refused to accept of the
money which I pressed upon them. What a warm and hearty farewell did
we take of each other! but my ease of mind vanished when the good man
of the house, just as he parted from me, and was giving me some final
instructions as to my road, added, ‘at any rate, a little beyond Paouda
you will come to the military station; they will ask for your papers
there, and they will not fail to give you all the information you can
require.’

It may be believed that I neglected no efforts not to come in the way
of any such sources of knowledge. I struck aside and went by hill and
by dale, now and then up to my neck in snow, and did not regain the
high road till I had left the tutelary guard station far behind me.
Thus I went on for several days, only buying bread at rare intervals
at the _izbouchka_, which at great distances from one another and from
time to time I met with on my way.

_Izbouchka_ are little houses built at great intervals for the
accommodation of travellers, and are to be found from the Oural
Mountains to Véliki-Oustiong; you find there bread, salt fish,
turnips, radishes, cabbages and _kvass_ (a liquor made from cider),
and sometimes, though rarely, brandy. In some of these inns, that is
to say, in the more spacious ones, there is to be found hay and corn
for the horses. Their owners buy in the provisions, and it is said
make a good profit on these strange hotels, which in general are kept
by one old man, or by a couple as miserable as they are decrepid. One
evening I met a train of _yamstchiks_ who were on their way back from
the fair at Irbite, and were halting to rest their horses; but I did
not remain with them. I knew that I was nearing the summit of the Oural
range, and a superstitious feeling impelled me towards it as to the
culminating point of my fate. At last I reached the top of the pass.
It was a fine night; the moon illuminated with its full splendour a
glorious but fantastic scene, where the gnarled shadows of the trees,
and of gigantic masses of rocks, were filing far upon the immense
expanse of snow. A silence so solemn as to be almost religious in its
unbroken stillness reigned around, except when at times a dry metallic
sound struck upon the ear as the stones cracked and split from the
intensity of the frost; and yet nature, rude and wild as she appeared
to me at this time, and under this dress, was to me, alas! a friend
more pitiful than any of the civilised beings around; _she_, at least,
never asked me for my passport! It was with difficulty that I kept
my mind from dwelling on spirits from another world, from recurring
to the fairy sprites and other tales to which I had been accustomed
during my childhood in the Ukraine, so much were they recalled by the
strange and sinister-looking forms which the moon revealed, while in
her rays their outlines assumed monstrous proportions. Indeed, in the
eyes of any Ukraine child might not I myself have easily passed for no
less a person than the ‘great demon of the night,’ as I stood there in
my strange dress, beard, eyebrows, and moustaches, all crusted with
frosty rime, wandering thus among the shadows of the forest, myself but
another shade?

From any more prolonged contemplation of the landscape cold obliged
me to abstain, and I soon began to descend the western slopes of that
immense barrier which nature has interposed between Siberia and Russia
in Europe. During the course of next day the _yamstchiks_ came up with
me again, and I had an opportunity of seeing with what marvellous skill
they drive their horses along roads which are all but impracticable.
They had thirty sledges, to each of which a solitary horse was
harnessed, and the whole string was driven by seven _yamstchiks_. The
way was narrow and hedged on each side by walls of snow as high as a
man, and in these both men and horses would occasionally disappear.
When one train met another coming in the opposite direction, the
train which was the smaller, or the least heavily laden, would then
plunge into the snowy wall; and I do not exaggerate when I say that
sometimes after a plunge the horses’ ears alone remained visible.
Having completed this peculiar evolution, the drivers of both trains
would then apply themselves to pulling both sledges and horses out of
the wreath. But even these occurrences were as nothing compared to
the accidents caused by the bogs and quagmires which are so frequent
on these routes. The horses, however, are perfectly accustomed to all
obstacles, and they throw themselves into the ravines, and then allow
themselves to be extricated by their drivers. The difficulties of the
passage of the Oural chain are so great that these intrepid men cannot
make more than twenty verstes a day, and as far as Véliki-Oustiong I
found all along the wayside the corpses of horses that had given in
from fatigue. What the _yamstchiks_ themselves seem capable of enduring
in the way of privations and fatigues is something truly incredible.

I reached Solikamsk in the beginning of March. It lies at the foot
of the western declivity of the mountains. Without making any stay
there I pursued my way by the steppe of Petchora, tending towards
Véliki-Oustiong, by way of Tcherdine, Kaï, Lalsk and Nochel. The
country was no longer hilly, but there was now as before the same
immensity of snow, the same thick woods, the same winds and storms
of ice; for me also there were the same weary marches and the same
furtive purchases of bread at the unfrequent _izbouchka_, and the same
earths toilsomely constructed for each night’s repose. One discovery,
however, was an unspeakable boon to me. I had remarked that in these
depopulated regions the foot travellers, who were so few and far
between, were in the habit, when overtaken by night in the woods, of
lighting a large fire, and of keeping it blazing till daybreak. I did
this several times, and the flaming logs in the middle of a frozen
desert not only warmed but cheered me; but this would not do for a
roadside diversion, and I only ventured on it when deep in the forest.

I always steered clear of the towns which lay in my way; but one
day, when, to avoid Tcherdine, I had wandered long in the woods, I
completely lost my way, and had not a notion to which side to direct
my steps. A hurricane of snow made me literally pirouette, and covered
me all over with its flakes, while, as a climax to my misfortunes,
I had no more bread in my bag. I rolled in the snow with convulsive
movements; I could not sleep, but I prayed for death. When day again
dawned, the sky cleared, the weather was fair, my pains had abated,
but my strength was utterly exhausted. I strove to guide my course by
the sun, or by noticing the moss which grew on the north sides of the
trees, and dragged myself on for a while by help of my stick, till
the pangs of hunger again attacked me. Wearied with the strife, and
with a face bathed in tears of weakness, hunger, and despair, I let
myself drop at the root of a tree. By degrees sleep stole upon me, and
it was accompanied by a humming noise in my head, which threw all my
ideas into the wildest confusion. Strange to say, I became totally
insensible, and only the tearing pains inside gave me any sense of
life. How long I lay in this state I know not; I was suddenly roused
from it by a strong man’s voice. I opened my eyes, a stranger stood
before me.

‘What are you doing there?’

‘I have lost my way.’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘From Tcherdine; I am on a pilgrimage to Solovetsk; but the storm made
me lose my way, and I have had nothing to eat for several days.’

‘I am not surprised at it; we belong to this part of the country,
and yet we often lose our way; you should never have set out in such
weather: drink a little of this.’

He put a wooden bottle to my lips; I drank a mouthful of brandy, which
revived me instantly, but so burned the stomach that it made me start
with pain till I executed a perfect tarentelle.

‘Come, be quiet, can’t you!’ cried the stranger, and he offered me some
bread and dried fish, which I devoured with a sort of frenzy; I then
sat down again at the foot of my tree, and my companion seated himself
alongside of me. He was a trapper by profession (_promychlennik_),
and after having secured his prey, he was returning home, with his
gun slung over his shoulder, and with pattens on his feet. When I
got a little calmer, he offered to conduct me to the neighbouring
_izbouchka_. ‘I thank you with all my heart; may the good Lord reward
you for all you have done!’

‘So we are a Christian, are we? Well, step on now, and never give in!’

I got up with great difficulty, for my head was swimming round; but
summoning all my strength I followed my leader, and I steadied myself
from time to time on his arm, till at length we stood once more on the
road from which I had wandered, and there the trapper, having commended
me to God, left me, disappearing into the thickets. I could see the
_izbouchka_ at some distance, and so great was my joy at the sight of
it, that I believe I should have walked up to it, had I known that
gendarmes were waiting at the door to arrest me. I managed to get as
far as the said door, but when I had crossed the threshold, my strength
failed me, I fell on the ground, and rolled under a bench. Then, after
a dead faint of some minutes, I came to myself again, and asked to have
something warm to eat or drink. Some turnip soup was given to me, but
this, although tormented by hunger, I was hardly able to swallow, and
towards midday I fell asleep on a bench, where I slept till about the
same hour on the following day, when my landlord in alarm shook me up.
He was a kind honest man, and his affability towards me was redoubled
when he heard that I was on a pious pilgrimage, as far as the Holy
Isle in the White Sea. I was still quite wet, and my garments had to
be dried at the stove; but sleep, rest and warmth had already cured
me. I was able to eat something, and start again on my travels, sorely
against the wishes of mine host, who begged me to rest one day longer
in his house. I had to give some reasons to account for persisting in
my resolution, and I promised him solemnly that on my return from the
goal of my pilgrimage I would pay him a second visit.

These _izbouchka_ were a constant source of temptation to me during
my arduous journey to Véliki-Oustiong. How often, after many days of
walking, have I passed before one of those hospitable abodes, and had
to struggle with the longing I felt, not for a night’s shelter, as
that was a happiness which I could not aspire, but at least for some
of that warm broth which my stomach, weary of frozen bread, salt fish,
and kvass, implored. At such times I held a sort of tragi-comic dispute
with myself, and my good and my evil genius seemed to contend within me.

One day, having entered one of these huts to buy some bread, I found
there a tall hale old man, with a silvery beard, and a girl of about
eighteen, with a pleasing face, who was rocking a child, and singing
as she rocked in order to put her infant more readily to sleep. The
old man made me pay very dear for the bread, charging six kopeks for
the pound; and I sat down to eat some, adding to it a little salt, and
washing it down with some mouthfuls of _kvass_. As I did so, he looked
at me with complete indifference, and contented himself with asking
me one or two insignificant questions. The young woman, who was his
grand-daughter, regarded me with an emotion which was quite visible;
and hardly had the man absented himself for a moment, than she jumped
upon a stool, and reaching up to a shelf, took down two large cakes of
wheaten flour mixed with butter and cheese, which she furtively pushed
under my pelisse, and then went back to her cradle, humming her song
all the time. I shall never lose the memory of this charitable action,
done as it was with an inimitable grace, and with all the haste and
trepidation of crime.

I refrain from wearying the reader by any further account of that long
journey to Véliki-Oustiong, for the frightful monotony of the hours
was only broken by meetings which I at once welcomed and dreaded, with
_yamtschiks_ and pilgrims. I will only mention one incident, which may
give some idea of the state of my mind and nerves. One day, in the
forest, I saw a man running towards me, with a look of the greatest
terror: ‘Do not go any further,’ he cried, ‘there are two brigands in
pursuit of me at this moment!’ I tried to get him to stop so that we
might present a double resistance to these robbers, but he continued
his flight at a great pace. Left alone, I armed myself with a cudgel,
and thus advanced to meet the enemy in question. Will it be believed,
the sensation I then had was one of pleasure? Here was a danger, but
it had nothing to do with a passport. Here were men who had as much to
fear as I had myself, and to whom I represented law and order; but I
never had the satisfaction of making their acquaintance! And I missed
the brigands, as in the Oural Mountains I had also missed the bears
that play so fine a part in the narratives of the natives, for neither
on the one nor yet on the other side of the chain did I meet any of the
redoubtable animals.

I reached Véliki-Oustiong on some day in the first fortnight in the
month of April 1846, and there I intended to alter the style of
my travelling costume. I had left Irbite on the 13th of February;
therefore, for about two months I had led, in the woods and among the
snow, a life which might truly be called the life of a savage.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] Paper currency.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE PILGRIM AND THE PILGRIMAGE.

 PILGRIMAGES--THE BOHOMOLETS--MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN
 VÉLIKI-OUSTIONG--ON THE DVINA--ARCHANGEL.


Long, however, before reaching Véliki-Oustiong I had decided upon
the part which it now behoved me to play. As I had been a commercial
traveller as far as Irbite, thence through all my wanderings in the
Ourals I had called myself a workman looking for employment in the
foundries at Bohotole, or in the salt works at Solikamsk. But I
had no sooner left the last-named town behind me than I gradually
assumed the manners and the attributes of a pilgrim, on his way to
pay his devotions to the holy images of the convent of Solovetsk,
in the White Sea. Thus, I became a _bohomolets_, according to the
phrase which is thus consecrated in the country, and which literally
means ‘a worshipper of God.’ The worship of holy images and pictures
obtains largely in Russia, where four spots enjoy a peculiar renown,
and attract an infinite number of visitors. These are Kiow, Moscow,
Véliki-Novgorod and the convent of Solovetsk. Many Russians, even
some of the richest merchants, make the tour of all these four places
in succession, a journey which is performed on foot, and occupies
several years. I actually met at Onega two women, of whom one was still
quite young, who had courageously performed the whole of this round,
and were then on their way back to their native districts beyond the
Oural Mountains, and beyond Verhouterie in the government of Irkutsk.
The greater number of the pilgrims content themselves, as a general
rule, with visiting the sanctuary which is nearest to them; and thus
thousands of the faithful from all the northern countries, and from
Siberia itself, annually repair to the convent of Solovetsk, the
journey thither being generally made in winter, because the roads at
all other times of the year are impassable.

These _bohomolets_, both men and women, are everywhere welcomed and
well received, although it will happen that among their ranks an
occasional rogue will be found making year after year a lucrative trade
out of his peripatetic piety. Indeed, the Russian peasant regards the
entrance of a _bohomolets_ into his house as a benison, and not content
with extending to him alms and a cordial hospitality, he often confides
money to a pilgrim, meaning it to be deposited in the sanctuary,
and there expended on his account in burning tapers, accompanied by
vicarious prayers. I have been myself compelled in my character of a
pilgrim to take charge of the pious deposits and tithes of the poor.

I was induced to adopt this disguise as much by the hope of uniting
myself to some one of the pilgrim bands as by the universal respect
paid to their character, and by the small chance that under their
dress I should be exposed to any demands for my passport. While
traversing the steppes of Petchora I had met several such companies on
the way to Véliki-Oustiong, but while claiming fellowship with them
I carefully avoided incorporating myself into their ranks. Too great
an acquaintance might, I feared, betray me to them; but I had the
opportunities of furtively studying their devotional habits. At last,
having reached Véliki-Oustiong, I thought myself sure enough of my
part to be able without risk of detection to attempt a way of life in
common with one of these bands of ‘worshippers of God.’ We were in the
town, and I found myself sufficiently embarrassed as I stood alone in
the great market-place, where, by good luck, a young man in a citizen’s
dress stepped out of a shop, and came up to me as he said, ‘You are a
_bohomolets_ going to the monastery of Solovetsk.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I am going there too; have you got a lodging?’

‘Not yet, I have only just arrived.’

‘Then come along with me. Our numbers are great already, it is true,
but there will be room enough for you. Our hostess is a good woman,
she cooks for us and bakes our bread; I have just been buying flour and
groats,’ and he pointed to the sack which was on his shoulder. I made
haste to follow my guide, whose name was Maxime, and who was a native
of the government of Viatka. We soon reached our dwelling-place, and
there in two _izba_ were crowded together upwards of twenty pilgrims
of both sexes. No one mentioned my passport, and the landlady was so
complaisant as to prepare my bread for me, while I soon established
friendly relations with my companions as well as with the many other
pious travellers who filled the town, to the number of two thousand,
for they all awaited there the breaking up of the ice of the Dvina,
when on rafts and in barges they would make their way to Archangel.
What odd, curious, and instructive faces I might have studied among
my fellows! There might be seen the most sincere asceticism wholly
detached from sense and sin, and specimens of that well-considered
and adjusted piety which trims between the interests of both worlds.
There was every degree between a beatitude which savoured of idiotcy,
and the most astute and hypocritical imposture, so that Leonardo da
Vinci might have found models among the ample collection, as well for
his Apostles as for his Judas. I could not, of course, escape from
the natural consequences of my situation; and there was no help for
it, when, especially through the Passion Week, I had to take part in
the innumerable nasal canticles raised by my brethren in the _izba_,
and furthermore when I was compelled to repair every day to join with
them in matins and in even-song, not to speak of making the sign of
the cross about a thousand times, with _poklony_ by the hundred, or
of carrying lighted candles, and of kissing the hand of the _popes_.
The sight of these priests always gave me an uneasy twinge, for I
feared lest some day I might be requested to repeat the Russian creed,
of which I was absolutely and profoundly ignorant. But, luckily, my
_poklony_, executed with zeal and dexterity, served me in good stead--a
gymnastic exercise which, as exacted by Russian orthodoxy, let me say,
is a sufficiently fatiguing one, as anyone will experience who tries to
touch the ground with his forehead a hundred times running, and that
too without bending his knees. My inward religious feelings suffered
from such mummery, but at least I managed to avoid having to confess
to one of the _popes_, which I did under pretence of having fulfilled
that duty a few days previously at Lalsk; and when once the Holy Week
had passed, this high pressure devotion appeared to subside a little,
though the psalms and stations observed in the churches still occupied
a great deal of our time; and I personally was far from regretting the
long hours thus spent in the sacred edifices, which were resting places
infinitely preferable to our _izba_.

I had ample leisure to inspect Véliki-Oustiong, and, with the exception
of Archangel, it is the Russian town with which I am best acquainted.
Built almost entirely of brick, it has, however, especially on the
banks of the Suchona, some handsome houses; but its greatest ornament
consists of course in its churches, which are painted yellow, and
crowned with zinc roofs coloured green. I think that I counted not
fewer than twenty-two of these; and there are also two convents, one
for monks (_tcherntsé_), dedicated to Saint Michael; the other for
nuns, which is without the walls. I regret to say that the life and
conversation of the latter body, especially of its younger members, did
not appear to me to be highly edifying.

Although the population of Oustiong does not exceed 15,000 souls, the
town has, notwithstanding, some commercial importance--being, in truth,
the natural depôt for all the different products of the countries of
Viatka, Perm, Vologda and of Siberia. These products, which consist,
for the most part, in grain of all sorts, flax, hemp, tallow, salt
meat, tar, wood, and furs, &c., accumulate at Véliki-Oustiong, to be
transported thence, through the Dvina, to Archangel, and to be shipped
from that port in vessels bound for all the quarters of the globe. It
also happens that numbers of sailors and boatmen assemble there, to
await the opening of the Dvina, and then to conduct the merchandise in
barges, of which there are many thousand, and of which the owners are
called _prikastchiki_. Now, these contractors allow the _bohomolets_ to
have a free passage in their boats, provided they victual themselves
for the voyage, and bring with them a sufficient supply of flour,
groats, and dried fish; while any pilgrim who is willing to take an
oar receives fifteen roubles (in paper) from the _prikastchiki_, who
are only too glad of such an offer, as there is often a great want of
hands. I had never yet handled an oar in a large barge; but I undertook
this labour, in the hope of adding a little to my finances. I had
spent precisely fifteen roubles since I left Irbite. Bread in those
regions was cheap, and during the passage of the Ourals, and on my
further march, I had never had any occasion to incur foolish expenses;
but I was, nevertheless, very thankful to have the means of bringing
my viaticum back to its original figure of seventy-five roubles. So,
on the first day on which the Dvina was navigable, I, along with my
fellow-pilgrims, struck a bargain with one of these boat-owners--glad
to escape, at last, from Véliki-Oustiong, where I had spent a whole
month in interminable devotions, and where I had been miserable from
_ennui_ and restlessness. One proposition with regard to my voyage
troubled me a little, I was to remit my passport to the _prikastchiki_,
and he, as was customary in these passages, was to keep it for me,
and return it when we landed. The hurry and bustle of our embarkation
reassured me, however, a little; and, indeed, the master did but give
one glance at my unhappy little pass, when the sight of its seal
seemed to content him; and thus, on the 10th of May, 1846, I found
myself installed in the barge, ready to start and drop down the Dvina
to Archangel.

A Dvina boat is a sufficiently curious piece of construction, and, seen
from any distance, mostly resembles a house, or a floating barn. There
is no art in guiding it. Everything is left to the muscular labours
of the crew, and each craft requires from forty to sixty boatmen. The
number of the oars varies from thirty to forty, and they do not pretend
to be anything but small fir trees. Among the many curious parts of
these boats, which are intended to serve either as magazines for the
wares or shelter for the passengers and crews by night, I will only
mention one great chest, of rough deals, placed on four pile-heads on
the roof, and filled with clay to the middle. This is the kitchen,
and fire is kept up in it during the whole day; while, on two great
beams, fastened transversely to the sides of the case, and over
wooden pins, hang the pots in which the food is prepared. We carried
our baggage on board in the evening, and slept there all the first
night, till, at day-break, the _nosnik_--that is to say, the master of
the vessel--cried, with a loud voice, ‘Be seated, and pray to God!’
Everyone then assembled on the deck, and after preserving for a moment
a devotional attitude, worthy of a Mussulman, each man rose, crossed
himself repeatedly, and made his _poklony_. When the prayers were
finished, every living soul on board, from the master to the poorest
of the _bohomolets_, threw a piece of copper money into the stream, to
render the Dvina propitious to their course along its breast.

The aspect of the river, covered with many boats and rafts, is a very
animated one. After any lengthened halt, and at the moment of again
getting under weigh, one hears again the cry, ‘Be seated, and worship
God!’ The crew goes through the accustomed exercise, while signs of the
cross and the _poklony_ went on vigorously, whenever we hove in sight
of any of the many little chapels which abound on both banks of the
Dvina. During a calm, the barge was allowed to float with the stream,
and then both passengers and crew would rest, sing, or converse. I was
struck with the great lack of ideas and sentiment which was apparent
in the songs of our company, in spite of their generally possessing
a sweet and graceful melody; and these are common characteristics of
Russian popular airs. If the wind rose, or if we neared any dangerous
part of the river, the boatmen would then exert themselves; and they
displayed both agility and strength. I, for my part, strove diligently
to acquit myself of the duties of my task; and I may say, without
flattery, that I soon acquired superior dexterity in handling the
oar, and in steering. Thus I had the satisfaction of being applauded
by the old helmsman, and of hearing the name of Lavrenti (my assumed
cognomen) invoked in all moments of difficulty. In spite of our
diligence, the barge stuck twice in shoal water, and then our united
efforts were required, for ten or twelve hours, before we could make
her float, and get her off again. One frequent amusement of the voyage
was being boarded very often by little skiffs, filled by women and
children, who asked us for alms. They sang one of the sweetest and
most plaintive melodies that I ever heard in my life, of which the
refrain always was the words--‘Little fathers, little mothers, give us
bread!’--‘_Batiouchki, diadiouchki, daïtie khlebtsa!_’ No one on board,
either crew or pilgrims, could refuse the request; and these beggars
would then strike up another song, and wish us a good and a happy
journey.

Our navigation of the Dvina lasted a fortnight. Gradually, as we
approached Archangel, I saw that the nights became shorter--the last
one, indeed, was marked by an interval of only two hours between the
setting of the sun and its rising again; and during that time also,
any one might have read or written without difficulty. When at last
the towers of Archangel began to glitter in the early morning beams,
the whole crew gave a shout of delight, while the boatmen hastened to
throw into the stream the big chest full of earth, which had served as
our kitchen range. The other boats did the same with their respective
kitchens, for this, it appears, is a time-honoured observance. The
rowers, in like manner, break off the ends of their oars, with a
prodigious noise--another strange custom among the navigators of the
Dvina; and when, at last, we reached the landing-place, each man had
his passport restored to him, and received from the _prikastchik_ the
fifteen roubles which he had gained by the labour of his hands.

Thus I was in Archangel! I touched the shores of that bay of the White
Sea, which, in all my weary wanderings in the Ourals, had appeared
to my mind’s eye as the haven of refuge! I now beheld those flags
fluttering on vessels of deliverance, of which a vague and fairy-like
impression had often risen, like a _Fata Morgana_, to cheer me on my
Ostiak couch in the heart of the lonely forest. Ah, how grateful to my
eyes were those pendants, barred with stripes of many hues--to eyes
which for so many months had dwelt only on vast desert expanses of
snow! How ardent and sincere was the thanksgiving which I now recited
among my fellow ‘worshippers of God,’ who were thankful, like myself,
to have reached the end of pilgrimage!

I knew, however, that I must avoid making any over-hasty step, and in
order to act out my part, I repaired with my companions to the station
of Solovetsk (_Solovetski dvorets_), that is to say, to the huge
buildings erected in Archangel itself, by the monks of the convent in
the Holy Isle, for the accommodation of the pilgrims. There, as was
the custom, I left my slender baggage in the hands of the porter, and
I was truly thankful to remark that no inquiries as to passports were
addressed to those who arrived. In spite of the large number of its
_izba_, the house was crammed with inmates, and I could find only a
small corner in the highest part of the barn; and this I had to share
with an elderly devotee of the other sex, whom piety certainly did not
render a more lovely object, while on all the following days, no sooner
did one party of _bohomolets_ leave the establishment on its way to the
Holy Isle, than another arrived from Véliki-Oustiong, and in this way
the caravanserai was constantly as full as it could be. The natural
consequences of such an agglomeration of persons, of such a mixture
of all ages and of both sexes, are more easily to be guessed than
described; and it is much to be wished that, between the paradise of
the Holy Isle and the hell of these _Solovetski dvorets_, there should
be some place of purgatory, for it would conduce greatly to the morals
and to the sanitary well-being of those concerned. I need not say that
the chants and processions of Véliki-Oustiong were resumed here with
a marked increase of fervour; and on the day after our arrival I had
_to assist_ in the chapel (_tserkiew_) of the establishment at many
strange acts of devotion, such as are not to be met with except in the
churches of the orthodox. This chapel was filled with _bohomolets_,
some of whom were having prayers read over their heads, others had the
benefit of Akathisti (Antiphones) in the same way, while others again
crouched, and bore the gospels on their backs. The gospel in this case
is a huge folio tome, about two feet in length, and printed in large
antique type; the boards are two solid planks of wood, and encrusted
upon them are the Twelve Apostles in silver. The execution is very
massive, and the officiating _pope_ has great difficulty in lifting
so heavy a book. The man who wishes to have the gospels read upon him
must stoop, but not kneel, until his head serves as a sort of desk.
It is true, that several _bohomolets_ may put their purses and their
heads together for this service of devotion, but then the grace, like
the weight, is distributed among them; and he who wishes to receive it
in all its efficacy, endeavours to make of his individual person, and
for a quarter of an hour, one of those quaint cariatides of the faith.
Everything is bought and sold in the Russian church, and according to
the size of the offering, whether greater or smaller, the _pope_ on
these occasions either reads out the gospel of the day with sonorous
gravity and unction, or mumbles it over in haste with contemptuous
carelessness; and it requires both the strong convictions and the
strong neck of a Russian peasant to submit to such religious exercises.
But what miracles will not piety perform! One of my companions in our
lodging-house, a peasant of Viatka, had complained of violent pains
in his head, but after having gone through this operation with the
Evangel, and having had his neck swelled by it, till the veins of both
neck and face seemed ready to burst, he assured me, as we left the
chapel, that it was as if some one had lifted off with their hands the
horrible pains from which he had suffered: ‘Praise be to God’ (_Slava
Bokow_).

The occupations of a fervent _bohomolets_ did not, however, prevent
my wandering about the town. Archangel has a population of not much
more than twenty thousand; but its port and commercial business give
it an air of great animation. The town proper is joined by a wooden
bridge over the Dvina with the island of Solonbal--a sort of suburb,
in which has arisen the palace of the Governor. Many churches and some
good houses in brick decorate this city, which is mainly constructed of
wood. One single wide street, which extends through the whole length of
Archangel, is paved: all its other streets and lanes are excessively
dirty and muddy, for the _toundra_, or marshy clay upon which, like
St. Petersburg, this city has been built, crops up in all directions.
In one of the squares rises a colossal statue of Lomonossov. To
this rhetorician and celebrated grammarian is traced the origin of
a national literature in Russia, under the reign of the Tzarina
Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great.

The chief, and indeed, the only object which I had in view in this
town may easily be guessed. Although the season had only begun, about
twenty vessels were already in the bay; but among the different flags
which waved from their masts, I was not able to discover one with the
tri-coloured emblem. The absence of this ensign was in itself of bad
augury to me. The ships were, for the most part, English; there were
also some from Holland, Sweden and Hamburg, but not one French. I very
soon perceived also that on the deck of every vessel walked a Russian
soldier, a vigilant witness, whose eye it was impossible to elude,
for this watch was not taken off even at night; while sentries posted
at short distances from one another formed an unconquerable barricade
along the quays of the harbour, and obliged all who came and all who
went to give an account of themselves. How, then, with these sentries
on the alert, could I make a signal to any captain or seaman! A crowd
of idlers and foot passengers crossed the quays, and added to the
difficulty of any such attempt. How then could I, if any sea-faring man
should pass, accost him in French or in German--I, in my _bohomolet’s_
dress, and surrounded by any number of people! Must I not surely draw
all eyes upon myself, and bring about an immediate arrest! I continued,
nevertheless, to wander up and down the quays, in the hope that some
favourable opportunity would present itself; but, alas! none such
came. And thus I was obliged again to turn my steps to the _dvorets_,
where, by this time, I was expected to join in the pious exercises of
the rest. On the second day, all those who had reached Archangel with
me embarked for the Holy Island; but I, pretending excessive fatigue,
did not accompany them, and again betook myself to the harbour. I
sauntered up and down by the edge of the water which I had hoped was
to have set me free; I even saw some ships that had finished taking
their cargo on board, a sign that they would soon set sail and depart.
My heart beat violently; my breast heaved, and I could hardly repress
the cry, ‘Save me! Do not abandon me thus!’ At last I accosted some
seamen, busy with tie hawsers which still fastened a ship to the
pier. In spite of the extreme danger thus incurred, I ventured a few
words in French; they only raised their heads and stared at me with
amazement. I tried German, but with as little success; till, finally,
they burst into a loud laugh, and I had to slip away as quietly as I
might, for a crowd had already collected round me. On the following
day my efforts had no better result, and I shall not describe either
the torment of those three days, or the different attempts I made to
reach any of the outward bound vessels. In spite of the severity of the
season, I did not hesitate even to bathe in the harbour, hoping thus to
approach some one of the ships; but nothing came of it, and no chance
of escape offered itself to me. Late on the third day I returned to
the _dvorets_, and there turned over in my mind all the circumstances
of my present state, and I finished by arriving at the heart-breaking
conviction that I could no longer reckon upon the port of Archangel.
Already some surprise was excited that, as a _bohomolets_, I had so
strangely delayed my departure for the Holy Isle, and to remain any
longer in the town, to await the arrival of some French trader, would
have been to order my own arrest. Had I not assumed the character of
a pilgrim, I might perhaps have ventured into some _café_ of public
resort, and I might have flattered myself with the hope of making the
acquaintance of some foreign captain; but in my peasant’s dress how
could I present myself in any such place? Ah! that last night passed
in the caravanserai of the pilgrims, how dark, and how sad it was! It
was the thought, it had been the hope, of Archangel which had given me
strength to meet the greatest dangers, and to endure the most terrible
privations. And now, having reached the object of all my efforts, I was
to find that they had been all in vain, and that I must fly from the
city which I had so long persisted in greeting as the place of my final
deliverance.



CHAPTER IX.

THE WHITE SEA.

 THE MONASTERY OF SOLOVETSK--THE PRISONER OF SOLOVETSK--HETERODOXY AND
 ORTHODOXY--THE PROMONTORY--A FURTHER JOURNEY.


I did not go as far as the monastery of Solovetsk, but I have collected
a great number of details about that place of pilgrimage. In the White
Sea, about 280 verstes to the westward of Archangel, there is a group
of islands, and of these the largest bears the name of Solovetsk.
Originally inhabited by the Fins, it was afterwards occupied by some
intrepid trappers (_promylchlenniki_) of the ancient republic of
Novgorod. It became afterwards the asylum of St. Zosimus, who built
a cell there, and founded a little wooden chapel. Other cenobites
succeeded him on that spot. A convent of monks (_tcherntsé_) was
formed, and this foundation soon becoming celebrated for its miracles,
was enriched by the offerings of the faithful, and was finally endowed
with a fortress or stronghold, for the preservation of its treasures.
With the republic of Novgorod, Solovetsk and its monastery passed
under the domination of the Tzars, who strengthened its fortifications.
In the time of the false Demetrius, the partisans of Boris Godounov,
along with their riches, took refuge in the castle of the Holy Isle,
and there made an obstinate resistance ‘to the most intrepid knights
who held with the pretender:’ thus saith tradition. May they, by any
chance, have been _our_ celebrated _Lissovians_--our hardy warriors of
the seventeenth century. At any rate, this defence of the place added
to the glory of the island, which, after Kiow, occupies the first place
in the list of the holy places of the Russian Empire.

The situation of Solovetsk in a frozen region, and in one that is
difficult of access, makes all culture there next to impossible.
Latterly, and chiefly by reason of the labours of the monks, some
vegetables, chiefly cabbages, have been raised on the island; but
flour, wheat, groats, oil, and other articles of food only come thither
from Archangel. The recluses can make _kvass_ for themselves, and
their manufacture has a peculiar celebrity. They also possess a mill,
a few cattle, and even some horses. Close to their cloisters are large
warehouses in which the pilgrims deposit their baggage, receiving a
numbered ticket in exchange; but the buildings destined to shelter the
_bohomolets_ are a much greater affair, and their numbers are very
considerable. There are large furnished rooms or halls with long tables
and benches. There the faithful lodge, sleep, and eat their meals;
the compartments of the men being separated from those for women. I
have never heard the hospitality of the brotherhood spoken of but in
terms of praise. During the repasts, a monk reads to the guests in each
hall, out of the ‘Lives of the Saints,’ or recites some prayers. Every
_bohomolets_ has the right of being lodged and fed gratuitously for
the three first nights. During that time he prays, goes to confession,
lights and hold candles, and gets _akathisti_ (antiphones) or gospels
read over his head. There is a tariff for all these spiritual
exercises, but the terms are very modest, though the visit to the tombs
of St. Zosimus and of St. Savatyï have to be paid for separately. When
the three days have expired, the pilgrim will be expected, if he stays
longer, to provide for his own wants, and to pay for his lodging. A
number of devout persons make a vow to remain on the island for whole
years at a time, and these years they spend in acts of devotion and of
penitence. Such guests are warmly welcomed by the brothers, but on the
condition that they pay their own expenses, or make themselves useful
in the convent by some occupation, and become workmen, gardeners, and
the like.

As soon as the White Sea has become navigable, that is to say, by
the first days of June, the pilgrims crowd into little boats, called
_karbasses_, which, from Archangel, carry them to the Holy Isle. The
price of the voyage is very small, but owing to the discomforts, and
indeed to the dangers of a long crossing on a sea generally very rough,
many _bohomolets_ go on foot from Archangel, and skirt the shore till
they reach a promontory opposite Solovetsk, from which it is separated
by an arm of the sea not one verst in width, and only then do they
commit themselves to the _karbasses_. No one can land on the island,
except during the four months of June, July, August, and September,
for by the beginning of October all navigation of the White Sea is
prevented by the violence of its tempests, and still more by the ice
which enters it from the Polar Sea. So from October to June there are
no visitors at the convent.

It is a strange thing, and one perhaps not without significance, that
alongside of the very house of God, the Tzars have built one for
themselves--a mysterious prison, of which the _bohomolets_ speak with
the greatest terror, because no one knows what is the meaning or the
use of it. Who may be the unhappy beings who are inclosed within these
dungeon walls! No common criminals certainly, for _they_ are sent to
Siberia. And yet the prison of Solovetsk is certainly occupied, for
sentries and keepers are always on duty, and at their posts. I have
been told that some years ago an old man was seen there. He had a white
beard, and had become blind from weeping. I do not pretend to give any
guarantee for the truth of this tale, which has, however, been narrated
by many; still less do I venture to vouch for the secret which has
been whispered into my ear on more than one occasion; but they say that
the blind prisoner of Solovetsk is a brother of Nicholas--that he is
the Grand Duke Constantine himself...!

But to return to my own history; on the day which followed the night
in which I determined to abandon any further attempts at evasion from
Archangel, I rose at daybreak, received my baggage from the porter of
the _dvorets_, and declared to him my intention of pressing on to the
monastery of Solovetsk. After having bought some bread and some salt,
I crossed the Dvina, and struck away in the direction of the western
promontory which faces the Holy Isle. The day was hot and fine, the
country flat, but wild and deserted. By evening I reached a little
hamlet, and there I decided to take a Russian bath, a measure which
had become indispensable after my long sojourn among the saints. The
Russians, even the lowest of the people, frequently use these baths on
Saturdays, or on the eve of their festivals. The bath house is a simple
wooden building, where you find a huge stove of about two yards square,
formed of bricks or of unquarried stone, put together without any
cement. There is no chimney, and the smoke goes out at the holes in the
roof. As soon as these stoves are really heated, water is poured over
them, and the steam which flies from them, filling the whole place,
turns it into a bath room.

After leaving the stove, I felt a strange longing to drink some milk,
and on going to get some in a hut pointed out by my host, I found two
women, to whom I made my wants known, after having made the three
signs of the cross, which are expected of one. They gave me very scant
measure for the piece of money which I offered, and served me with
a bad grace, for which I was not at first able to account. While I
took some mouthfuls of the milk we began to converse, and at last I
found the solution of the enigma. They belonged to the sect of the
‘_staroviertsi_,’ or old believers, and by the way in which I made
the sign of the cross they recognised in me an orthodoxy that was to
be deplored. They did not conceal from me what was their regret that
a man of such piety, a _bohomolets_, should be thus wandering in the
ways of certain perdition. They then showed me how truly to make sure
of my salvation, and tired at last of differing with them, I ended in
adopting their method. These good women were so happy, that they gave
to their neophyte three fresh measures of milk, and refused payment
for it. As they took leave of me, they offered fervent prayers to
God that I might be preserved in the paths of conversion! But these
prayers, alas! were not to be granted, for as soon as I returned to
my landlord’s dwelling, I was again obliged, to cross myself in the
orthodox fashion.

I continued my journey, walking for several days in a marshy country,
or through woods of stunted fir trees, where I was often obliged to
spend the night. I became more and more aware of the polar nature of
the climate. The sun hardly ever left us; and even during the short
interval between his setting and his rising again, his level rays threw
over the landscape a clearness of light which would have allowed one to
execute the finest needlework. Night was only to be distinguished from
day by the greater stillness which reigned over the face of nature.
It is true, that the geographical ideas which had been acquired by me
when I sat on a form in school had prepared me years before for this
phenomenon, yet I felt as if in a dream on thus finding myself in
regions where the sun never sets. The country, I found, became always
poorer and more desolate, until, at last, I reached the coast; and
after that, I continued to walk along the cliffs, where, for several
days, the weather was extremely fine, and the sun so warm that I was
obliged to take off my pelisse. But, before long, a heavy gale of
wind rose; and the ocean, rolling in mountainous waves, and covered
with snowy foam, seemed eager to justify its name of White Sea, and
presented a spectacle at once mournful and admirably grand. The tempest
lasted for several days. I hardly ever met a human being; but the sight
of a serpent, which had been newly killed, showed me that in this
country and in this latitude reptiles were not wanting. On reaching a
small village on the sea-shore, I found in a _possada_--that is to say,
in a colony--a multitude of _bohomolets_, and, among others, my former
companions from Véliki-Oustiong, who had set out, long before me, from
Archangel, in _karbasses_ bound for the Holy Island, but who had been
driven by the storm to land and seek for shelter at this spot. One of
the _karbasses_ had been swamped, and every soul on board lost in the
waves; and now these poor people awaited the laying of the tempest;
but I left them, assuring them that I should reach the monastery much
sooner and safer on foot than they would in their wretched little
boats. Towards evening, the sea went down, and I had soon reached the
promontory which faces the island of Solovetsk. Leaning on my staff,
I stood for some moments contemplating the shores, and thinking of
our old Lissoviens, who may, perhaps, have encamped on this very
spot, while pushing their adventurous course to the extreme north.
Then, turning to the left, and without waiting for a passage to the
monastery, I struck into the road which would take me to Onega.

And, in truth, now that my attempts at Archangel had failed, this
was the only route open to me; for a return to Archangel and
Véliki-Oustiong, with a journey thence through the very heart of Russia
Proper, was not to be thought of; and, again, there was nothing more
natural than that a _bohomolets_, having accomplished his pilgrimage to
Solovetsk, should turn to Onega, and to the government of Olonets, so
as to make the pious round of Novgorod and of Kiow, and there _salute
the holy bones_--for such is the sanctified phraseology in use (_dla
pokloniénïa swiatym mostcham_). I do not say that I yet saw what I
ought to do on reaching Onega; but after the mistake about Archangel,
I was not inclined to make any great plans, or to think of the morrow.
I therefore resolutely pursued my way, skirting the western edge of
the promontory, and walking, for several days, along a path which was
bounded, on the one side, by the sea--on the other, by a low range
of hillocks, densely covered with wood. Before me, I saw nothing but
sands, heaths, and marshes; and one incident will, I think, suffice
to give an idea of this desolate country. One day, having arrived at
a _possada_, I could get no bread. The inhabitants had been without
any for a week, because the bad weather had stopped the boats that
came from Archangel; but, as an equivalent, I found some of the fresh
herrings of the White Sea, which were of a good size and excellent
flavour.

At Onega, I was not tempted to make any further experiments among the
foreign ships that I saw at anchor in the port. In order to have made
any attempts of the kind, with the slightest chance of success, it
would have been necessary for me to pass several days in the town,
where there was no crowd of pilgrims among whom I could hide, as at
Véliki-Oustiong and at Archangel, so as to conceal myself from the
eyes of the Police. Moreover, I was still under the painful impression
left by the discovery of my last bad reckoning, and I had decidedly
more confidence in _terra firma_, which, as yet, had never deceived my
hopes. Two land routes were open to me from Onega, and it was now time
to choose between them. The one to the right would have led me, by the
marshes of Laponia and the river Torneo, to the Swedish frontier; the
other, to the left, trending across the government of Olonets, would
take me, by Vytiégra, to the Gulf of Finland, and to the Baltic. Of
these lines, the first was the most fatiguing--the second the most
dangerous. Had I not already crossed the Ourals and the steppe of
Petchora, I should certainly have taken an extreme northern direction
to Laponia; but I now dreaded the privations, and the miseries with
which I was too well acquainted. Wasted and disheartened, I had begun
to fear hardships more than danger, and I decided in favour of Vytiégra.

Without, therefore, making too long a halt in Onega, I pushed towards
the south, by skirting the banks of the river which also bears the
name of Onega. Every now and then I met solitary pilgrims on their
way to the monastery of Solovetsk, to whom naturally I could impart
the latest intelligence about the island. I remember one old man in
particular--small, withered, and white as a dove, but very fresh and
hearty withal, who said to me, ‘Can you doubt where I come from? I am
from Kargopol...!’ He pronounced the name with such pride, with such
a sense of the greatness of his native town, that I really might have
fancied that I heard the famous _civis Romanus_. Now Kargopol, which I
soon reached, may truly be said to be one of the saddest little hamlets
of a very sad country. Yet, in spite of the sombre and monotonous
aspect of these districts, where marshes alternate with boundless
woods, in spite of the enormous distances I had to traverse on foot, in
spite of the discomforts incident to the condition of a fugitive who
has always to fear gendarmes, inns, or any expenditure which exceeds
the bare necessaries of life, this journey from Onega to Vytiégra was
very far from being equal in suffering to that which I had made over
the Ourals and the plain of Petchora. My character of a pilgrim gave me
a certain assurance that I need no longer to the same extent avoid the
dwellings of men. Besides, the season was milder; and when at nightfall
I had to turn into some wood to sleep, I could find branches and green
leaves enough to fashion a pretty soft bed. What most surprises me is,
that, in all these nights passed in the solitude of the forests, I was
never once disturbed by wild beasts. Sometimes, indeed, I was startled
by the distant howling of the wolves, but none of these animals ever
presented themselves to my eyes.

It must not, however, be supposed that, during this expedition, I was
not exposed to much tribulation, in spite of the really very exact
knowledge which I possessed of the manners and customs of the country.
Sometimes an adventure would be almost comic: as when, one day, not far
from this celebrated Kargopol, I asked for food at a hut, and received
for answer that they had nothing but _tolokno_ to offer me.

‘Well, let us have the _tolokno_,’ I said, rather pleased than
otherwise to make the acquaintance of a national dish, which I had
often heard of, but never seen. My confusion, however, became great
when the mistress of the house set down before me a jug of water, a
spoon, and a small earthen jar half full of a dry and blackish flour.
How was that to be eaten? How could I fail to betray that I was a
stranger by my crying ignorance of a dish so common in Russia? I began
to talk, as if for my life, about any nonsense that would divert their
attention; but my hostess was not to be diverted, and she asked me why
I did not eat, since I was so hungry?

‘But perhaps you would like it better mixed with kvass (cider)?’

‘Oh yes, with cider,’ I replied, as much at a loss as before.

She brought some cider, and, luckily, poured it herself into the pot,
stirring it with the spoon. The brown mass then swelled until it filled
the jar, and made a paste, which I now knew how to eat. It was made
of oats baked in an oven, which are then carefully sifted and pounded
in meal, and, when mixed with water or cider it forms a substance
so fairly palatable that I can recommend it especially to our brave
highlanders of the Carpathians.

The district of Olonets is traversed in all directions by canals,
formed to unite the different lakes and rivers of Onega, Ladoga,
Vytiégra, Svir, &c.; and these form the principal means of
communication between one place and another. For the preservation and
inspection of these works, stations have been set down at different
points, and these are constantly occupied by soldiers, the greater
number of them being Poles, who have groaned under arms in the imperial
service for the last sixteen years, that is to say, ever since 1831.
From Archangel to Vytiégra I fell in with several of my unhappy
countrymen, thus incorporated into military bodies, and generally
found that, in spite of their long residence in the country, they
spoke Russian very imperfectly. I often talked with them, pretending
to be a native of Siberia, and thus drew from them an account of their
sorrows. I remember, in particular, one sinister phrase which made me
shudder. Hearing once the complaints made by a Pole of the hardships
and fatigues of his life as a Russian soldier, I said to him what only
a true Russian would have said:

‘But, after all, you are not so very much beaten?’

‘What! we are not beaten,’ was the retort, accompanied by an almost
savage laugh; ‘you don’t think we are beaten? as if anybody got the
Tzar’s bread to eat gratis!’

I frequently saw another sad sight in this country, namely, gangs
(_partyé_) of Jewish children that were being driven to Archangel.
It should be known that, whereas the Russian government in Poland
only recruits among adult Christians, it takes boys of from ten to
fifteen from the Jewish population, in order that, forgetting more
perfectly their traditional religion and manners, they may become fit
for military life, for which it seems that adult Israelites are not so
well adapted. A great number of these young recruits are intended for
the navy, and sent to the different ports of the White Sea, and, to me,
the sight of these poor children, with their heads shaved, and wrapped
in their little pelisses, was most pitiful; for the soldiers in charge
of the gang drove them before them like a flock of sheep, and I was
assured by the natives that many of them died by the way.

It was also in this department of Olonets that I saw another symptom
of the moral state of Russia, which was in itself not less curious. I
had gone into a cottage to ask my way; it was on the road from Kargopol
to Vytiégra. I found in the hut an old man with a long white beard,
and of respectable appearance, who, as soon as he began to talk to me,
expressed such a hatred of the Tzar, the government, and the priests,
that I had no difficulty in recognising in him a _starovier_, or old
believer. Finding me to be a man well disposed to share his religious
views, he ran on at great length, and finally shed tears over the
persecution of the true faith. In order to prove to me that the manner
of making the sign of the cross adopted ever since the reformation of
Nicon (that is, the ordinary Russian fashion) was wholly heretical, he
looked all round the outside of his house, locked the door, and, having
taken an oath of secrecy from me, he drew from a hiding-place a little
figure in copper, evidently a rough piece of old Byzantine workmanship,
which certainly represented our Lord as giving the benediction with the
two fore fingers of the right hand extended, as in the manner of the
_staroviertsi_. ‘They force us,’ he continued, ‘to go to the _tserkiev_
of the heretics, where the _popes_ oblige us to make the sign of the
cross in their own way; but when we come back from the _tserkiev_, we
pray to the true God, and we ask Him to forgive the great sin.’ He
afterwards drew from the same repository an old paper book, setting
forth ‘The History of the Patriarch Joseph, as betrayed and sold by his
Brethren.’ The good man proceeded to instruct me in these novelties,
and shed some tears of emotion at the virtue of Joseph when tempted by
the wife of Potiphar.

Scarcely had I reached Vytiégra than I was accosted on the quays by a
peasant, who asked me where I was going.

‘I am a _bohomolets_; I replied. ‘I am returning from the monastery of
Solovetsk, and I am on my way to “_adore the sacred bones_” at Novgorod
and at Kiow.’

‘Then, I am your man,’ he said. ‘I will take you to St. Petersburg. My
boat is small, but I have only my horse to take with me, and you can
help me to row ... it is not heavy.’

‘I know that sort of work very well, and I know that it is not light;
how much will you give me?’

We wrangled for a long time over the price, the sly villain having
every mind to get the use of my arms, and not to pay for it; but at
last we agreed that he should give me dressed victuals for the whole
time of our voyage, and, so pleased was he with the bargain he had
made, that he took me straight to a pothouse to drink a glass with him.

The project of going to St. Petersburg, into the very capital of
Nicholas, was sufficiently strange, and, most certainly, it was not
one which I had contemplated when I made sundry and manifold plans of
evasion at Ekaterinski-Zavod; but, since leaving Archangel, I had been
wandering pretty much on chance, with no other object than always to
get near some sea or frontier, no matter which, and always to avoid
remaining more than a few hours in any place where they were likely to
ask me for my papers. Now the boat in question was to leave that very
day; and there was something, even in the very strangeness of the
enterprise, which seemed reassuring. Any capital appeared to me less
dangerous than a small provincial town, and the event showed that I was
not wrong in this calculation.

By evening the boat was slipped from her moorings, and the navigation
began, which, by Vytiégra, the lake of Onega, the river Svir, the
lake of Ladoga, and the Néva, was to conduct me to the very walls of
St. Petersburg. We rowed day and night, or floated past innumerable
canoes, boats and ships, with which the lakes and rivers were literally
covered; but, above all, past rafts of wood, also intended to supply
the wants of the metropolis, and which, in some places, completely,
obstructed the passage. We made a party of three--myself, the master,
and his son, a stout young man, who, whenever we neared the banks,
would get the horse out and fasten him to the boat, so as to help
to draw it along. In spite of the smallness of the boat, its owner
could not prevail on himself to refuse an occasional passenger, whom
he would take up or put down at spots agreed upon; for how could he
be expected to resist turning a penny from time to time? But these
freights caused me the greatest distress, for the passengers could not
be said to be members of any Temperance league, and I had to watch over
the tipsiest ones, and once had even to jump into the water to pull
out a poor wretch who had rolled overboard. As I do not wish to make
myself appear better than I am, I must state here that I had a strong
personal interest in the safety of these troublesome guests; for, had
any disaster really occurred, we should have been obliged to stop, and
report ourselves at the nearest police station, when the negotiation
thereupon ensuing would, to a certainty, have been opened by a request
for our papers; thus my charity was hardly of a very evangelical sort.

As we approached by degrees the end of our voyage, I became more
absorbed in thought, and, above all, more anxious to learn something
of the usages of St. Petersburg. Happily, we picked up at one of the
stations several women, who, after paying visits to their relations,
were returning to the capital, where they seemed to have lived for
many years as servants and housemaids. My condition as a _bohomolets_
obliged me to preach to them a degree of morality in conduct, which
seemed only to excite their risibility. However, I did not preach
entirely in vain, especially when I took under my protection an old
woman, of whom these chambermaids had made a butt in a way that was
really disgusting. She was an old peasant of Korélia, on her way to St.
Petersburg, which she had never seen before, to visit a daughter, who
plied her trade as a laundress in the city. She was immensely grateful
to me for my protection, called me her ‘_batiouchka_’ (little father),
and soon offered me an assistance which can be called nothing less than
providential.

After encountering a violent storm, during which our women screamed
horribly, and after leaving behind us Nova-Ladoga and Schlusselbourg,
where Alexis Orlov strangled the unhappy Peter III., by the orders of
Catherine the Great, we reached the quays of the capital, at about
eight o’clock in the morning, and drew towards the shore opposite the
Perspective Nevski. The servant girls jumped gaily from the boat,
giving me a rendezvous _to preach to them_, and I was preparing to
step on shore, feeling, I must confess, much at a loss what to do with
myself, when the poor Korélian woman came up to me, and said, ‘Just
stay with me; I have sent to tell my daughter, and she will soon be
down to fetch me, and will show you where you can get a cheap lodging.’
It may be imagined with what eagerness I embraced her proposition; and
oh, ineffable joy! while we waited a long time in the boat, no one
came to ask for our papers. At last the laundress appeared; she kissed
her mother affectionately, and took up her trunk, which she and I then
carried between us, on a stick across our shoulders. Thus we set off,
preceded by the good old soul herself, who carried on her head the
earthen jar which had contained her food. And in this strange trim I
entered the city of the Tzar!

We had to go through an endless number of streets, bridges, and lanes
before we reached the place where the laundress lived; it was in a
lodging-house of one story in height (_dom postoïaly_), where the
poorest of the working-classes dwell, and where they came at night to
sleep on a flock-bed (if they can get it), or if not, to lie, as the
Russian phrase is, ‘on the floor, with their fists for a pillow.’ The
swelled faces and the red noses of some who frequented this miserable
abode, showed that many shapes of sin and distress harboured there.
There were, however, regular lodgers, who let out to passengers rooms
that they had furnished on this speculation, and my laundress was
one of these. Unfortunately, her room was already occupied; but she
recommended me to a neighbour, and a bargain was soon made at the rate
of eight kopeks a-day. In order to avoid the critical moment, I asked
my landlady immediately to show me the way to the Prefecture of Police,
where passports were given and examined.

‘Who are you?’ asked my hostess.

‘I am a _bohomolets_, from beyond Vologda; I am returning from
Solovetsk, and going to Véliki-Novgorod, to worship the bones of the
saints....’

‘You do well; God be your help! Show me your passport.’

I handed to her my shabby little pass, repressing any show of anxiety;
but she evidently could not read, and only looked at the stamp, then
said to me: ‘How long do you think of remaining here?’

‘From three to five days at the most; I must just rest a little.’

‘Then I will tell you what it is, it is perfectly useless for you to go
to the Police?’

‘Just as you please; I don’t know the ways of this place. But why is it
no use to go to the Police?’

‘Well, you see, I should have to go with you, and that is too much
trouble for me.’

‘Why must you go?’

‘Because, you see, the Police have lately become so plaguily exacting.
Formerly, it used to suffice if the new-comer himself went to the
Prefecture; but now nothing will serve them but to see his landlord
along with him. Then there is always such a crowd of people at the
office, that one has to wait ever so long before one’s turn comes
round. If one has a lodger for a month or a year, then it is worth
one’s pains to go through all this trouble and fatigue; but if he is
only to stay a night or two, one would never gain a living, for the
time would be spent in coming and going. One could not do a hand’s-turn
in one’s own house at that rate, and people must live, you know; and it
is but little bread that one gets from the Police. And that is why we
prefer not to make any declaration, when the lodger only remains for a
few days; we find it the best plan, and if at the Prefecture they do
not hear all they might like to hear, I cannot say I think there is any
harm done.’

I made no objection, it may be supposed; but installing myself in
my room I remained there all the rest of the day, in spite of the
insinuating discourse of my landlady, who proposed to me that I should
go and see the illuminations, for that day was a high day in the
capital. It was July 9, 1846, and they were celebrating the nuptials,
or the betrothal (I do not quite know which), of a daughter of the
Emperor Nicholas, the Grand-Duchess Olga, with the Prince of Wurtemberg!

The next day, however, I did go out, and I promenaded the town, of
which the wide handsome streets seemed to me to be singularly deserted.
I was meditating on the quickest way of leaving the place, and had
determined, if need be, to swim to the shores of the Baltic, although
any more convenient method, if it should arise, was not to be despised.
I knew that a packet sailed from St. Petersburg to Havre, but what
were the days of its sailing, where did it lie, and was its captain
French or Russian? Grave questions, which I did not dare to put to any
one for fear of compromising myself. I walked up and down the Néva,
and read the inscriptions on the different red and yellow bills which
were posted up on blank planks on each of the different steamers;
but I could only read by stealth, for a peasant, ‘a Russian man’
(_rouski tcheloviék_) like me, must not make a display of learning!
So I sauntered slowly and perused the inscriptions. One would be ‘the
vessel of his Majesty the Emperor,’ another ‘of His Highness the Prince
Imperial,’ ‘of the Grand Duke Michael,’ ‘of Her Majesty the Empress,
and the ladies of her court,’ &c. Evidently all of too high a class
for me. I managed at last to discover less titled vessels; but then
their destinations were not to my liking, and would not have suited me
in any way. After having thus examined the whole length of the left
bank of the Néva, I crossed the bridge in front of the statue of Peter
the Great, and now pursued the stream along the right hand to its
mouth. I stopped for a moment at the foot of the two gigantic sphinxes
which are placed opposite the museum, and the sight of these strange
Egyptian guests in the City of Ice made me lose myself for a moment in
thought. Suddenly my eyes fell on an advertisement in large letters,
which, stuck up near the mast of a steamboat, announced that that
vessel was to sail for Riga on the following morning...!

I trembled, and I had difficulty in suppressing the emotion I felt;
but still, I thought, how was I to reach the steamer, how enter into
parley with the captain of it? I saw a man, probably the pilot, walking
on deck; his red shirt pulled on over his drawers was quite after the
Russian fashion, but I did not dare to address him, and I contented
myself with devouring him with my eyes. In the meantime the sun was
sinking, and it was going on to seven o’clock in the evening, when
suddenly the man in the red shirt looked up and said:--

‘Do you by any chance want to go to Riga? If so, take your passage by
us.’

‘Certainly, I want to go to Riga; but how is a poor man like me to go
in the steamboat? That costs a great deal, it is not made for the like
of us.’

‘Why not; come along. A _moujik_ like you won’t be asked to pay a great
deal.’

‘How much?’

He named a sum, which I do not remember, but which astonished me at the
time as being really very moderate.

‘Well, will that suit you? What are you hesitating about now?’

‘I only came here to-day, and the Police must _viser_ my passport.’

‘Then, let me tell you, you will have a three days’ job of it with your
Police, and our steamer sails to-morrow morning.’

‘What can I do then?’

‘Go without having it _visé_, to be sure.’

‘Bah! suppose I get into trouble?’

‘Idiot! Here is a _moujik_ setting up to teach me! Have you got your
passport with you? Let us see it.’

I drew from my pocket the pass which I kept carefully wrapped in a silk
handkerchief, after the Russian plan; but the man did not even give
himself the trouble of looking at it.

‘Come to-morrow, at seven o’clock in the morning, and if you don’t find
me here, wait for me; and now be off as quick as you can.’

I returned joyously to my lodgings, and on the following morning I was
punctual to my appointment. Steam was already got up; my man perceived
me, and said simply, ‘Pay your money.’ He then left me, and returned
with a yellow ticket, of which I naturally pretended to ignore the
signification. This extracted a second notice, as follows, ‘Hold your
tongue, _moujik_, and let us manage.’ The bell rang three times, the
barrier was opened, the passengers pressed and hurried in, while a rude
shove from my friend sent me in along with the others. Some moments
after the paddles went round, we were in motion; and I was as one that
dreamed.



CHAPTER X.

THE RETURN TO PARIS.

 THE MOUJIK’S PASSAGE--LITHUANIA--THE PRUSSIAN
 FRONTIER--KÖNIGSBERG--ARREST AND CAPTIVITY--BAIL--FLIGHT--ARRIVAL IN
 PARIS--THE END.


A passage in the steamer from St. Petersburg to Riga does not furnish
a subject replete with many features of travel, not even when the
traveller is a Siberian exile, flying from the _katorga_. Yet I had
one little adventure, for ocean certainly was hostile to me. Thanks,
I suppose, to the stupefaction caused by sea-sickness, I suddenly
found myself in the first-class cabin--an intrusion which horrified
and disgusted everyone. An elderly Russian lady in particular never
ceased crying in French, ‘Oh, this peasant will give us the plague!
He corrupts the little air we have to breathe!’ Some servants came,
who brought me to my senses, and took me to my own quarters, where,
squatting in a corner in the fore part of the ship, I kept to myself,
and did not again see any of the passengers of distinction, unless
their walk happened to bring them occasionally in my direction.
Two Germans, seeing me making my breakfast on a bit of bread and an
onion (which I did to keep up my part as a _moujik_, not less than
also, alas! from motives of economy), said out loud, in their amiable
language, ‘One can see that that is a Russian hog.’ Oddly enough, the
only persons among the travellers who showed any interest in me, and
who sometimes condescended to talk to me (without having a suspicion
of my nationality), were two young men, both of them Poles. I often
followed them with my eyes as they paced up and down the deck; how
gladly would I have pressed their hands!

I shall pass rapidly over the rest of my journey from Riga, across
Courland and Lithuania, as far as the Prussian frontier, and shall only
say a few words about the new profession I assumed on quitting St.
Petersburg. The character of a _bohomolets_ could not any longer serve
me, now that I was going in a contrary direction from Novgorod, and I
was also about to cross countries which, like Courland or Samogitia,
were either of Catholic or Protestant beliefs. I therefore proposed to
pass for a _stchetinnik_, for such is the name for the Russian peasants
so often met in those districts as well as in Lithuania and in the
Ukraine, who, going from one village to another, buy hog’s bristles on
behalf of the merchants of Riga. This trade suited me admirably, for
under pretence of inquiring whether my article was to be had or not, it
allowed me to knock at many doors, and to ask my way. I went on foot,
sleeping most frequently in the woods or in the cornfields, and the
fine weather (it was July) was very favourable to me. I had likewise
exchanged my winter trowsers for the summer suit of blue cotton which
I had brought from Siberia; I renewed my linen and my boots, and I
exchanged my pelisse with a tapster for a great-coat and a little cap,
which, with a view to traversing Prussia, I carried with me in my bag,
while as to my little bournouse of sheep-skin (_armiak_), that, like a
true Russian peasant (_rouski tcheloviék_), I always wore, in spite of
the warmth of summer.

My passage through Lithuania, across our _hallowed_ Samogitia, was
not void of emotion, or of sufficiently diverting scenes. How often
was I not tempted to reveal my nationality to some one or other of
my own country people, and to ask their advice or assistance! But I
resisted every temptation, and I never belied my character as a Russian
_stchetinnik_. One day, at Polonga, I wanted to buy a cheese in the
market from a Samogitian woman; we could not agree about the price,
and my respectable countrywoman, strong in lungs as any woman of _la
Halle_, delivered herself of a sentiment about ‘dogs of Muscovites,’
which was certainly not of a highly Christian description. Had I even
been ignorant of the meaning of her words, their sense was sufficiently
explained by gestures, patent even to a _moujik_, and I was obliged
forsooth to pretend to uphold the honour of Muscovy against the
outrages of a Polish woman...!

It was between Polonga and Kurszany that I determined to pass into
Prussia. I had infinite trouble before I could procure, without
betraying myself any information as to the way or the extent to which
the Russians watched their frontier, my best source of knowledge being
a soldier belonging to the customs. Seeing him take a bath in the
little bay of Polonga, I followed his example, hoping thus to begin
a conversation. As soon as he said that he was a native of Pultava,
I declared myself his countryman. There is always one simple way
of getting a Russian soldier to talk, which is to start him about
his grievances, and the hardships of his lot. Once on this theme my
companion informed me of all the precautionary measures which had to
be taken, by day and by night, by the customs on account of smugglers
and rebels (_bountovstchiki_), for so fugitives are called, with
details as to the strength and the weakness of the watch thus kept....
I must give one expression used by the soldier, than which nothing
could have been more characteristic. I had naïvely asked him why the
Prussians did not help to keep the frontier and hunt down the _rebels_
and smugglers? ‘That,’ he answered, ‘is just the pity of it all! These
cursed Prussians will not take any trouble at the frontier, and so _all
the burden falls on our poor Tzar_...!’

The conclusion drawn by me from this valuable conversation was
precisely contrary to what I had at first supposed, and I saw that
it would be best that I should try to cross the boundary line in
the day time; so, at two o’clock in the afternoon of that same day,
having armed myself with my poignard, and commended my soul to God,
I slipped into the corn. Then spying from the top of the rampart the
moment during which both sentries on the station turned their backs on
each other, I leapt the first of the three ditches which marked the
frontier. No noise was made; I clambered through the brushwood, but as
I reached the second ditch I was perceived. Shots were fired from guns
on both sides, when, hardly conscious of what I was about, I slipped
into the third ditch, then climbed up and leapt again. I lost sight of
the soldiers, and was in a little wood. I was in Prussia!

Breathless and exhausted, I lay for many long hours bidden in the
thicket without daring to stir; knowing the violence and eagerness of
the Russians, I feared lest they should even pursue me into forbidden
ground; but happily all was still, and a soft rain which began to fall
tempered the suffocating heat of the day. It was time to think of a
fresh disguise. The _moujik’s_ orthodox beard was not suitable in
Prussia, where it would only have attracted attention; so at Polonga
I had taken the precaution to buy a small mirror and a razor, which I
got at a Jew’s stall, while, as to soap, a piece of what I had brought
from Siberia remained still in my bag. I hung the mirror up on a bush,
and, profiting by the rain and, above all, by the dew on the leaves for
moistening the soap, proceeded in this way, though still lying and on
my elbow, to perform the civilising operation of shaving myself. It was
a slow and a painful one, particularly on account of my uncomfortable
position; but I effected it at last, not, however, without sundry cuts
made in my cheeks. About the middle of the night I got up and went on
my way again, dressed in the great coat and the little cap, with my
trowsers falling over my boots. I knew very well that I was by no means
out of danger, for a convention between Russia and Prussia, a cartel
as it was called, then obliged the two powers to deliver over their
mutual fugitives; and more than one, alas! of my compatriots had been
thus brought back to the Russian frontier, after having succeeded, in
spite of many and great dangers, in leaving it behind them. Still I had
confidence in my star, the great matter for me now being to avoid inns,
and to keep clear of gendarmes, a task which, thanks to the summer
season, was not very difficult. As to the direction of my journey, I
had no longer any hesitation about it. I must gain the Grand Duchy of
Posen, and there, among my fellow-countrymen subject to the Prussian
rule, but whose safety I could in no way compromise, I hoped to find
all the help which the rapid diminution of my finances demanded. I was
then ignorant of the massacres which had recently desolated Galicia,
and I did not even know that in this very Duchy of Posen a vast
conspiracy had been discovered; for it was not in the solitudes of the
Oural chain, nor yet among the lowest of the Russian people, that I
could have learnt these heavy and sad tidings.

I reached Memel, Tilsit and Königsberg successively without any
obstacles. I walked by day, and slept under the stars; I was nowhere
annoyed about my passport, and to the unfrequent questions of merchants
and travellers I replied that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner,
returning from Russia. At last on July 27th, having reached Königsberg,
I saw in the harbour a vessel that was to sail on the following day
for Elbing. Tired of constant walking, I wished to profit by a means
of transport which could be had for a moderate price, and which would
have taken me nearly to the Grand Duchy of Posen, and to my friends. I
determined therefore to remain in Königsberg till the following day.
While waiting in this way I sauntered about the town, and as evening
fell I sat down on a heap of stones near a dismantled house, meaning at
night to wander away and sleep in the cornfields, and to return next
morning before the vessel sailed. Alas! I had not reckoned on my bodily
fatigue any more than on the exhaustion of my strength, and a certain
carelessness had been engendered by the last period of comparative
security. Upon this heap of stones I fell asleep, and slept deeply.
When I awoke, roughly shaken by the arm by some man, it was a dark
night. A stranger stood before me, a night-watcher of the town, as
they are called. He asked me who I was, and whence I came? Drunk with
sleep, I muttered some incoherent words, and when a sense of my danger
finally recalled me to myself, it was in vain that, in my infamous
German, I offered any explanations as to who I was, and how I came to
be there; all my answers seemed suspicious. My complete ignorance of
the place and the darkness of the night prevented me from beginning to
struggle with him, or attempting to fly; I did feel for my dagger, but
luckily I could not find it. The constable took hold of my arm, called
his comrades, and carried me off by force to the nearest office. I was
arrested...!

The feeling which came over me when once more I found myself in a
prison was one of shame, far more than of sadness or of despair. To
have escaped from the _katorga_, to have crossed the Oural Mountains,
to have slept for months in the snow in ostiak _earths_, to have
endured so many sufferings and privations, to have leapt the Russian
boundary line among the musket balls of soldiers, and now to be taken
up by neither more nor less than a Prussian night constable! It really
was too ridiculous, and I blushed for myself.

The next morning, about ten o’clock, I was taken to the Police office,
and then commenced all the sad and abject necessities of simulation and
dissimulation, which press on a man who has to elude the cognisance of
the law. I pretended that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner, who was
on his way back from Russia, and who had lost his passport. I gave my
addresses in both countries, but I could perceive that my declarations
did not inspire any confidence. What hurt me most was to perceive in
this first examination, and still more in some that followed it, that
I was taken for a malefactor, who had some interest in concealing a
crime. I demanded to be sent back to France, where I said I was ready
to answer before public justice for all my actions, and to submit to
the consequences of all and everything that could be discovered about
me.

I was now remanded to the Blue Tower (Blaûer Thûrm), where for
company I found a burger detained for fraudulent bankruptcy and other
peccadilloes. The Blue Tower certainly was not horrible to a man who
knew the insides of Russian prisons, not to speak of the _katorga_;
but the uncertainty and the irritation caused by this sad interlude
recalled some of the worst days of my existence during the last years.
At last, after a month’s detention, I was again called before the
police; it was signified to me that all the addresses which I had given
had been found to be incorrect, and that I now lay under the gravest
suspicions. Tired of making false pretences, and above all of passing
for a criminal trying to hide his identity, I begged to have a private
interview with one of the high functionaries who examined me, and for
the presence at it of M. Fleury, a Frenchman, naturalised at Königsberg
for the last thirty years. He was _interpréte-juré_, and had always
assisted at the enquiries. When left alone with these two gentlemen
I told them frankly who I was, and I left my fate in their hands. I
cannot describe the astonishment, the stupor, and, I must also add, the
consternation of my two examiners on learning that before them stood
a Pole, a political criminal escaped from the _katorga_, and returned
from Siberia! The official at first could not say a word; at last he
cried, ‘But, miserable man! we must give you up; the convention is
decisive! Oh, my God! why, why did you come here?’

‘I wished to spare you both embarrassment and remorse, so why did you
not send me on to France as I asked you?’

They made me give all the details of my flight; then the Prussian
official left the room. M. Fleury stepped up to me and said, ‘We cannot
avoid giving you up to the Russians; quite recently several of your
fellows have been sent back over the frontiers. There is only one
likelihood of salvation for you, try to see the Count Eûlenberg, or at
least to write to him. He is President of the government (Regierûngs
Präsident), and almost everything depends on him. He is a good-hearted
man--frank, generous, and beloved by all. Write to him, for Heaven’s
sake! Oh, what a pity! what a pity!’

On my return to prison I did write to Count Eûlenberg and also to our
Abbé Kajsiewicz, in Paris, to obtain an attestation of my identity,
because I perceived that they questioned among themselves whether I
was not an emissary who had taken part in the late affairs in Posen.
Since my revelation they treated me better in my prison, but I was
not the less the object of a very strict watch. After ten days I got
an answer from Count Eûlenberg, which was polite but vague, although
the advice at the close of it, ‘to have patience,’ seemed to me to be
some encouragement. The principal point of all the investigations was,
had I or had I not shared in the business in Posen? On that head I
felt perfectly at my ease; but my anguish of mind, nevertheless, was
very great, and very often I had to say to myself that perhaps my most
certain hope of being saved lay in my own dagger.

One day a gentleman presented himself at my prison; he gave his name as
M. Kamke, a merchant of Königsberg, and he begged to know if I would
accept of his bail. Astonished as well as touched at this unexpected
offer, I asked for an explanation of it, and then learnt that the
report of a Pole who had escaped from Siberia being arrested in the
town had spread, and caused a general and lively emotion. The honest
townsfolk of Königsberg, who had more than once been irritated at the
working of the cartel with Russia, were grieved at the idea of seeing
a man given up who had succeeded in eloping from Siberia, and who had
braved so many dangers. Several steps had been taken in my behalf, and
they hoped to find means to liberate me under bail given for me! Ah,
how much good these words did! The acceptance of securities for me
met with some opposition; but when summoned anew, on September 1st,
I found with the Police this excellent M. Kamke, who coming up to me
embraced me, and told me I was free. It really was so, and the official
in charge of the inquest repeated the assurance to me. He asked if I
wished to remain some time longer in Königsberg, and I replied in the
affirmative, for I wished to thank my benefactors, the many persons who
had interested themselves in my fate, particularly Count Eûlenberg. It
also seemed to me to be good policy not to appear to be too anxious to
leave Prussia. Alas! how suspicious I had become!

M. Kamke took me home in triumph, and for a week, I found in his family
an affectionate care, of which the remembrance can never be effaced.
Suddenly, a week having barely elapsed since I had been allowed my
liberty, I was again invited to attend at the police. I found there two
functionaries whom I had met before. With a sad but kind manner, they
informed me that orders had come from Berlin that I must be given up to
Russia; they added that they had now nothing in their power but to give
me time to fly from this danger at my own peril, and that they hoped
God would protect my steps. I was profoundly touched by their generous
proceedings, and I promised to do my utmost to save them any further
trouble. I immediately informed M. Kamke and my protectors of this
new incident, and my flight was speedily arranged. I took leave of my
brave and true friends, and on the following day, September 9th, I was
already on my way to Dantzig. I was furnished with letters to different
persons in the German towns which I had to pass through, and everywhere
the greatest zeal was shown to make my journey easy. I must be
permitted to mention especially the good offices of the celebrated and
generous bookseller of Leipsig, Robert Blûm, whom Prince Windischgrætz
thought right to have shot at Vienna two years later. Thanks to Help
which never failed me, I had speedily traversed the whole of Germany,
and on September 22nd, 1846, I found myself again in Paris, in the city
which I had left four years before.

Something more than a year had scarcely elapsed after my return to
Paris, when the revolution of February broke out, and my country
believed in a better future. But, alas! we soon saw our mistake. Once
more I had hastened to my own land, and had just time to assist in
Galicia at a fresh shipwreck of our hopes. It was during the leisure
which expectations thus deceived had left to me, and while my memory
retained the impression of what had recently passed, that I wrote down
the greater part of these ‘Recollections.’ If I have not mentioned my
poor brothers in misfortune, implicated in the affair at Kaminieç, it
has certainly not been because I was then, or am now, indifferent to
their lot; but because I have been able to learn very little of their
fate, or of the nature of the sentences which were passed upon them.
Some have already succumbed under their sorrows; others still groan in
Siberia, in the Caucasus, or in the penal companies of Orenbourg.

May God have mercy upon the living, and upon the dead!



POLAND A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION,

AND

THE AGITATION IN WARSAW.

MAY 1861.



POLAND

A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION.


The world is full of victimised races, to whose ill-fortune it becomes
almost reconciled, since the marvellous discovery has been made that,
at some time or another, these people may have deserved their fate; as
if the strong, for their part, did not also commit faults; and as if,
too, Justice went evermore hand in hand with Fortune. But whence, then,
those crises of anarchy which are apparent, not only in a solitary
instance, but in the most general relations? Whence those convulsions
which make us present, as it were, at a confused disorganisation of all
political order, in one headlong annihilation of all combinations, and
of all foregone conclusions? These take their rise, most frequently,
in some original defect lying at the very roots of the situation, in
some previous violations which, although they leave the people unarmed,
do not the less affect the governments themselves--which compel the
first to a system of indefatigable revolt, and the second to a system
of repression, which is always fatally increasing in weight, till, at
last, there ensues one of those struggles in which contend all the
rights, principles, and accumulated wrongs--all the causes long thought
to be dormant, but which, now reawakened, make their appeal to that
public opinion which has started up as a new power. The whole history
of Poland is before us, to prove how much violence it costs, how many
perpetually recurring struggles it requires, to make the suppression
of a whole race a public right, before the fact of its suppression can
be forced into the vague and terrible list of ‘things that have been
accomplished.’

It is now nearly a century since three Powers, united by the saddest
and most dangerous of solidarities, laboured to this end. Frederick II.
of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia rejoiced in the work as in
an easy victory; but it carried remorse into the soul of Maria-Theresa
of Austria, who called it ‘a blot upon her reign,’ to which she could
not subscribe without casting a terrified glance into the future.
Thrice was the partition renewed--in 1772, in 1793, and in 1795. It
began by leaving us a shadow of independence, with the shadow of a king
at Warsaw; and it finished by making everything disappear, even to the
very name of Poland. At each dismemberment they believed that they had
achieved success; each time, on the contrary, the injustice of the
whole proceeding became more evident, till it was almost acknowledged
to be so by the dividers themselves--each time the wound became more
envenomed, and the struggle more serious between an always precarious
domination, and the heroism of a race remodelled by misfortune. At
the capital moment of the last dismemberment, in 1792, Poland did not
yield without a struggle; she proclaimed her political aspirations in
the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791, and, led by Kosciusko, she
reappeared upon the field of battle. The Polish hero was conquered at
Macejowice, and the work, begun in 1772, seemed very nearly completed.
Up to this time, however, it had only been an affair between Russia,
Austria, and Prussia; and Europe had remained a stranger to this
dismemberment of a nation.

At the end of the storms of the French Revolution, and of the Empire,
in which the Poles had taken part with all their warlike humour, and
during which, by the timid, ephemeral, and incomplete creation of a
Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, they had for an instant believed that their
country was reborn, the Congress of Vienna, after allowing hope to
shine before the eyes of Poland, let her fall again under the triple
yoke, and consecrated her dismemberment as an accomplished fact.
This time, at least, success seemed sure--the partition had become
a public right, and it formed a part of the constitution of Europe;
yet, in reality, the question was very far from being set at rest.
The treaties of 1815 only organised new strife, under new conditions;
and a new weapon was placed in the hands of the Poles, by this species
of homage paid to a nationality that no one ventured quite to kill,
its titles being recognised, and stipulations being made in favour of
its guarantees; while, at the same time, they dared not refuse its
fragments to those who claimed them by right of prior occupation. The
question, then, was so little settled, that at the first agitation it
did not fail to come up again. In 1830, Poland made an immense effort
for its own resurrection, an effort which for a moment sufficed to
hold in check the power of Russia, and filled Europe with anxiety
and emotion. Alone, and abandoned to her own resources, Poland must
evidently succumb; she must sink under the weight of arms, still more
under the weight of oppression. Then, surely, the last words had been
said, the last resistance conquered, and all was really at an end. On
the contrary, nothing was finished; and this is the curious point, the
great moral, so to speak, of the events which for the last two months
agitate Warsaw and all Polish countries. One hundred years after the
first dismemberment, forty-five years after the treaties of 1815,
thirty years after the revolution quelled at Warsaw by the arms of
Russia, Poland rears her head, more agitated than ever, wounded but
not tamed, and showing herself in two lights--the one, as regards her
relations with the state of Europe; the other, as regards that internal
labour, by which she has obstinately sought to remake for herself
a moral life, and a new destiny, in spite of the darkest, and most
painful trials.

What, then, really is the character of this situation, so suddenly
revealed in Northern Europe by the strange drama of Warsaw, at the very
moment when Italy has constituted herself anew, and when Hungary claims
her old tradition of independence--when both in the West and in the
East everything is in movement--when all questions of nationality, of
public rights, and of universal balance, are making themselves heard at
once? What is most strange in these events is, that all is spontaneous
and unforeseen, though an eternal reason gives them being. This is the
act of life in a people, which, finding itself one day united by one
and the sane feeling, spreads itself peaceably through the town, and
then demands, what even treaties have not denied to it, respect for
its nationality, and its own religion, the guarantee of its existence
in regular institutions, the preservation of its own language, the
right of interesting itself in its own affairs, of occupying itself
in agriculture, in the education of its own children; the right, it a
word, to live and to breathe. Nothing assuredly can be more dramatic
than the meeting which during the last two months has taken place in
Warsaw. It is no longer one between two sovereigns, but between two
nations, which for the first time for thirty years find themselves
publicly face to face, which have suddenly brought their disagreement
into the broad daylight of European conflict, and which are now
interrogating each other in this mysterious pause; two peoples, of
which the one has no arms but its rights and its prayers, and of which
the other has no danger but in the very excess of its own powers.

This, then, really is the situation which has disclosed itself in the
heart of Poland since the 25th of February, the day upon which this
new, touching, and heroic adventure began for a population which, to
a certain extent, thus returns to public life, and which goes out to
pray for its country and its dead. At first, Russia appears to have
been visibly surprised at this unexpected manifestation on the part of
Poland, in which she believed, perhaps, that no such vitality existed,
and she was divided between the inquietude caused by the movement,
and by the sense that concessions must be made. She has not the gift
of always making the happiest resolutions; she yields when it would
be natural to resist, and resists when it would be just to yield. She
begins by giving up some of those officials who are most compromised,
and she ends in dissolving those popular corporations of which she not
only herself sanctioned the existence, but of which she had availed
herself for a month, in order to maintain order. This, by a series of
enigmatical and contradictory acts, in which, doubtless, there is as
much embarrassment as calculation, she sets all hopes and all fears
fermenting together. Popular manifestations follow one after the other.
The question assumes greater proportions, the movement becomes graved
and more complicated, and in a short time the whole affair has changed
its aspect. The pressure imposed becomes heavier than ever, when
pitted against a moral agitation which has been throughout innocent of
any violence, so that it requires but a few days and an evolution of
Russian policy to bring the situation to one of those issues, which
Prince Repnin characterised in his day with inexorable bluntness, when
he said, ‘Unless we deny all sentiments of humanity, it is true that we
cannot help recognising the right which the Poles have to complain. You
would have full right to drive out the Russians, if you had the power;
not having the power, you must submit.’

Such is the question truly stated by the victorious side, and certainly
such is the question so often supposed to have been definitely settled,
but which has never been resolved. After the bloody repression of the
8th of April, as after all those that went before, the problem of the
destinies of Poland is not the less on foot. It springs out of these
events, and is shaped by their character and their aims, in the midst
of those conditions of universal transition in which the world of
to-day finds itself placed.

What makes these new events so important, is that they form part of
a European situation, at the same time that they are the outward and
visible signs of a profound and inward work, of which Russian Poland
is the centre (most active and most prominent at present), but which
has also revealed, in the Grand Duchy of Posen, in Galicia, in short,
everywhere, that, in spite of treaties and congresses, Polish feeling,
the last and indestructible tie of a riven country, still lives.
This question of Poland has its roots deep in the past, and I am not
ignorant that it is so. Whether politically or diplomatically, it goes
back, like so many more, to the transactions of 1815, and when the
attempt is made to draw closer the knot of European affairs, whence
come the crises of which this question has been the unhappy and the
perennial source? Is it not because these treaties have manifestly
been an immense and avowed violation of an imprescriptable right,
or rather the fatal and complaisant consecration of all previous
violations? One of the most essential causes of the tribulation and
disorder in the politics of the time--a cause which now appears in
all its distinctness--is the ever-growing contradiction between the
dispositions of the solemn act of Vienna and the real state to which
the different parts of Poland are reduced; so that, if there have been,
if there shall again be, revolutionists, we must settle this in our
minds, that it is not the Poles who are such. An example has been given
them in this matter, and they have been left with this sad conviction,
that, according to the rights of 1815, they have the right on their
side. It is, indeed, a curious thing that the people of Poland have
been the ‘last to step down into the arena of to-day at that name
of “nationality” which serves as a watchword to all other revolting
populations.’ Yet Poland was the first and the only country in whose
favour such a word was hinted at by the Congress of Vienna, when it
was inscribed in treaties, as if to render a marked homage to heroic
misfortune, and, while tempering by guarantees the way in which Poland
was abandoned, to maintain the mockery of an ideal ‘nationality,’ in
spite of territorial division.

Still more curious was the sort of universal disavowal made of the
partition of Poland, at the moment in which it was announced as a
new public right. M. de Talleyrand, the representative of the French
king, called it ‘the prelude to European convulsions;’ and of all
the questions that were to come before the Congress, he considered
the Polish one to be ‘the first, the greatest, the most eminently
European, and, beyond comparison, before all the others in importance.’
The Emperor Alexander of Russia, professing himself the renovator of
Poland, was actuated either by ambition or by the vanity of appearing
as a liberal prince, and, doubtless, also by sentiments of generosity;
but this renovation offered itself to his mind under the shape of a
kingdom which should be a feudatory of the Russian crown, while it
still preserved the integrity of Poland. Poland was a subject of
remorse to Europe, and she inspired respect, without having strength
enough to make herself truly and really respected. Hence the strange
combinations adopted by the Congress of Vienna, which (while it
delivered over the provinces of Poland to Austria, to Russia, and
to Prussia) multiplied at the same time protecting guarantees, and
laboured to maintain a national link between the different parts, by
assuring to them a certain autonomy, as if the future could be secured
by abandoning the present.

From one point of view, nothing can be stranger than the organised
_whole_, of which the scattered elements are to be found in the final
act of Vienna, and in the separate proceedings between Russia, Prussia,
and Austria, under the sanction of Europe. In Galicia, Cracow, escaping
the general shipwreck, is constituted ‘for all time coming’ (_à
perpétuité_) a free, neutral and independent town. The transformation
of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw into the kingdom of Poland, under the
Russian crown, leaves the name of the country still diplomatically
existing, and it leaves it also as the nucleus of reconstruction, the
centre of attraction. The Prussian division gets the name of Grand
Duchy of Posen, that it may preserve a distinct character in the
whole monarchy of Frederick II.; and the frontier on the Prussian
side is defined, as well as on the Russian border. Finally (and here
is the origin of the great debate in the eyes of diplomatic Europe),
the three powers engage themselves, by their act at Vienna, to give
to the Poles, their respective subjects, ‘representation and such
national institutions, arranged according to their modes of political
existence, as each of the governments shall judge to be useful;’ while,
in order better to define the sense and meaning of these guaranteed
institutions, the separate treaties add that these are intended to
secure to the Poles ‘the preservation of their nationality.’

Nor is this all. In default of political unity and of real
independence, Poland is at least to keep the unity of her interests.
Full liberty of trading, of transit, and of navigation, is established
in all and between all the divisions of ‘_ancient Poland_;’ and it must
be noted that care was taken constantly to recall the old frontiers
of 1772 as the natural frame for all combinations. The quality of ‘a
mixed subject’ is recognised in those who have possessions in all the
three provinces, and who, escaping all classification, remain, in
spite of everything, _Poles_, as their civil individuality cannot be
divided under three heads. Such, indeed, is the spirit which permeates
this work (singular and incoherent as I do not deny that it is), that
Austrians, Prussians and Russians, are qualified as _strangers_ or
_foreigners_ in the article which treats of arrangements to be made
for the regulation of commercial interests on Polish grounds; and by
this title _they_ are excluded from such benefits as only the Poles
are entitled to enjoy. I shall not proceed further. Considering the
transactions of 1815 as a whole, and putting them together, what do
we find? We find a free town, the last remaining image of former
independence. We find the name of one common country consecrated
by treaty, and resting upon the kingdom newly called into being.
We see our right to a nationality made superior to all territorial
demarcations. We read, in the first place, of the autonomy of the
different provinces that have been dealt out to new masters, and that
the map of old Poland is to be adopted and acted upon in material
life; and we have a sort of _Zollverein_ of commerce and navigation,
serving as the sketch for a confederacy. One would say that it looks
as if Europe, not daring to be wholly just, had wished, at each step,
to soften away by equity the violation of the independent existence
of a nation; that, practically, she sought to reunite the national
tie, which arbitrary right had recently broken; and that she was less
occupied in resolving the question of the destinies of Poland, or
putting an end to it by one act of sovereign power, than in leaving it
in suspense, and handing it over to the future.

All that thus appears in some inert articles of the treaty, receives
a sort of luminous and decisive confirmation from the interpretations
of the times, from the commentaries of the sovereigns themselves,
as well as from the first deeds done under the fresh impression of
these events. No one knows what passed through the mind of the Emperor
Alexander--through that mind at once so playful and so imperious, so
full of liberal desires and of mysterious unrest, of generous instincts
and of Byzantine duplicity; but he, at any rate, entered upon his part
by not recoiling from such a beginning as would ensure his popularity.
‘In truth,’ he said to Lord Castlereagh, ‘though at this moment the
object is not to re-establish Poland in its integrity, there is
nothing to prevent that being done some day, if Europe should desire
it. To-day, such a thing would be premature. That country needs to be
prepared for so great a change; and there is no better way of doing it
than to erect into a kingdom one part of its territory, and in this to
place such institutions as will make the principles of civilisation
take root and fructify; they will then spread through the whole mass.’
And, in truth, Alexander was the first who set to work, till he gave
a charter to his new kingdom, the constitution of the 13th of May,
1815; and of this he himself expressed the sense, in a proclamation
made to the Poles: ‘A constitution suited to your wants and to your
characters; the use of your language preserved in public transactions;
offices and employments bestowed solely on Poles; liberty in commerce
and in navigation; facilities of communication with such parts of
ancient Poland as are subject to other powers; a national army; all
means guaranteed to perfect your laws, with the free circulation of
knowledge in your country--_these_ are the advantages which you will
enjoy under our rule, and under that of our successors; and _these_,
also, you will transmit as a patriotic inheritance to your children and
your children’s children....’

The reader will remark here, that this is strictly the meaning of
the Treaty of 1815; and three years later, in 1818, Alexander, when
opening the first Polish Diet at Warsaw, still held the same language.
‘Your restoration is defined,’ he said, ‘by the most solemn treaties,
and sanctioned by a constitutional charter; and the inviolability of
these exterior engagements and of this fundamental law henceforward
assures to Poland an honourable rank among the nations of Europe.’ The
Emperor, moreover, seems to have so little questioned the guarantees
of Europe, that he boasted of having won them for Poland, as one wins
a victory, by a brilliant charge. ‘I have made this kingdom,’ he
goes on to say--‘I have established it on the most solid basis; for
_I have obliged_ the Powers of Europe to guarantee its existence by
treaty.’ At one moment, the successful autocrat had thoughts of going
a step further, and of aggrandising the new kingdom by annexing to it
the old Polish provinces incorporated with Russia, viz. Lithuania,
Volhynia, and the Ukraine; for he had reserved the right of doing so,
in his treaty with Austria, in these very words: ‘His Imperial Majesty
reserves to himself the right of giving to this state, which enjoys a
distinct administration, such _interior extension_ as he shall think
proper;’ and this it was which, for a moment, gained over the heart of
old Kosciusko to the policy of Alexander.

The King of Prussia, if he left a brilliant part, and the formation
of great projects to the Tzar, did not act differently from him. He
held the same language to the Poles of Posen. ‘You, likewise,’ he said
to them, ‘have a country, and I esteem you because you have known how
to defend her. You will be my subjects; but you will not, for that
reason, be obliged to deny your own nationality. Your religion is to be
respected, and your personal rights and properties are to pass under
the guardianship of laws which, for the future, will be enacted by
yourselves. Your language in all public affairs will be employed along
with the German tongue. You will fill up all the offices of the Grand
Duchy of Posen; and my Lieutenant, born among you, will reside with
you.’

The formula of the oath imposed upon officials was peculiarly
significant. It was conceived in these terms: ‘I acknowledge his
Majesty the King of Prussia as the only legitimate sovereign of this
country; and _I acknowledge that part of Poland which, in consequence
of the Treaty of Vienna, has fallen to the lot of the royal House of
Prussia, to be my country_, the which I am ready to defend against all
persons whatsoever, and under all circumstances, at the price of my
own blood.’ Such an interpretation long continued to be in use, since,
in 1841, King Frederic William IV. engaged ‘to respect in the Poles
that love which every heroic nation cherishes, for its language, its
customs, and its historic past.’

As to the Emperor of Austria, he, in 1815, did nothing. With his cold
temper, the Emperor Francis laughed a little at the restlessness, and
the liberal proclivities of Alexander of Russia. He was, however,
uneasy about them, and ended by saying, ‘I am not false enough
for that,’ which, of course, did not change the _meaning_ of the
arrangements of 1815. In recalling all these facts, it must not be
supposed that I entertain the eccentric idea of making the last of the
rights of Poland rest in the work of the Congress of Vienna; but still
these treaties, such as they were, brought about a certain order of
things. If it was not independence which they secured, at least they
gave us a number of guarantees--the preservation of nationality even in
partition, the autonomy of our institutions, and of our interests. Our
name, our religion, and our language were all, under the sanction of
Europe, saved from total shipwreck and loss.

But has experience shown us that this is the plan which has been
followed now for nearly half a century? The truth is that, in accepting
the situation created by the Treaty of Vienna (an order of events
which had its conditions, its obligations, and its limits), Russia,
Prussia, and Austria have shaped their practice after the spirit which
presided at the _first_ partition--that is, after the idea of an
assimilation so complete as to be equivalent to conquest. From these
treaties of 1815, they have, to say the truth, reaped the benefit of
having got a European sanction for the dismemberment of Poland; but
they have troubled themselves very little about the guarantees which
were designed to serve as a sad and impotent compensation for the
partition; and each of these three powers has carried on its work after
the fashion which has best suited itself, its politics, and its nature.

Not that the change was made suddenly, or openly visible. It has been
developed by degrees, especially in the kingdom of Poland. Veiled at
first, during the lifetime of Alexander, by constitutional forms, it
was hastened, and no longer concealed, under the Emperor Nicholas,
whose policy may be described in one word, the _denationalisation_
of Poland. To accomplish this was the dream, the intense, unbounded,
ardent passion of a prince who was perhaps a great Russian, driven
by continental revolutions to play an exceptional part, but who left
dangerous traces upon European policy, and bequeathed a weight of
formidable difficulties to his successor. Yet it must not be said that
the Revolution of 1831 placed Poland at the mercy of this Tzar, or that
it released him from all his obligations, and gave him all the rights
of a conqueror; for, in the first place, that revolution was nothing
more than a reprisal--a desperate attempt at self-defence; and, what is
more, against any such policy there rise at once all the stipulations
of the Treaty of Vienna, and even all the words of the Emperor
Alexander--‘Your restoration is defined by solemn treaties.... I have
obliged Europe to guarantee your existence by treaties....’ The Emperor
Nicholas was, possibly, the fittest judge to determine what extent of
liberalism he could put into the institutions of the kingdom of Poland;
but he was not the only judge of what was, so to say, the European
essence of these institutions--of that which concerned their spirit,
according to treaty--of the preservation of the nationality of Poland.
Diplomacy had placed that matter out of his power, by putting it beyond
his reach. Now, this very nationality, placed under the guarantees
of all Europe, became, unfortunately, a particular foe of Nicholas;
and he persecuted it with all the inflexible vigour of his character,
in our religion and our language, in the autonomy of our interests
and institutions, in the independence of our hearths, in public
instruction, in our manners, and in our very dress. This originated the
system which, in 1831, substituted a new _statut organique_ for the
Constitution of 1815, and which, we must say, has been followed far too
long, and followed, also, in all the bitterness of a spirit irritated
by the resistance which it has met with.

The organic statute of 1831 made no secret of it; it was an absolute
and definitive incorporation of the Kingdom into the Russian Empire.
Thenceforward the ceremony of the coronation of the king of Poland
at Warsaw was also abolished. The separate army disappeared, and
military recruiting for Russia spread over the kingdom. The magistracy
ceased to be unremovable, and Russian functionaries replaced Poles in
the administration; while the constitutional chambers gave place to
provincial assemblies, which have, moreover, never even been convoked.
Thus a policy was disclosed, of which the only aim seems to have been
to dissolve all the ties of national life in the kingdom, as well as in
the ancient provinces. The high schools, the university, the library,
the museum, and the mint of Warsaw vanished, or were transferred to
St. Petersburg. Education was reduced to technical studies; Latin was
banished at last; and the children in every parish, to whatever class
of society they might belong, were obliged to attend the government
schools, and to learn Russian, under pain of corporal punishment on
the children, and of a fine in the case of the parents. One day,
5,000 families of the lesser nobility of Poland were ordered to be
transported to the crown lands, or to the Caucasian border; and in
the order of execution it was added, that, ‘if the Polish gentry have
no mind to be transplanted, you are authorised to oblige them, and
to use force;’ while another day the Council of Administration at
Warsaw adjudicated quietly on the transport of the _sons of noble
Poles_ to St. Petersburg, at the price of 120 roubles (paper money).
I do not speak here of other orphan children carried off to Minsk,
or of the multitudes of Poles of all ages removed to Siberia. Where
persons are not safe, religion is also infringed. Sometimes it is
attacked through the police, sometimes it suffers by the expropriation
of Catholic Churches, by persecution, by the forced conversion of the
United Greek to the Orthodox Church. The national costume is the next
subject of interference; there is a law against wearing the national
colours, against using blue, crimson, or white, though green and red
are not wholly forbidden to the women, and we are permitted to put on
white shirts. The Russian costume of a brown hue being much the most
economical wear, the government undertakes to open clothing shops in
all towns and villages! The reward of one rouble is offered to those
who display the greatest alacrity in donning the Russian dress, and
those who oppose themselves are flogged. In short, a vast attempt is
made to efface everything that has the stamp of our country, or that
can recall her existence. This hapless nationality in the midst of the
empire must be made to disappear, and it must be made subordinate to
the intentions and the interests of Russia.

The design of bringing about a forced assimilation, and of making the
Polish give way to the Russian element, is often shown in the most
futile administrative details, in the simplest questions of trade, and
other material interests. Having once entered on this system, Russia
is condemned to fear everything, and to watch every event. Not very
long ago, Prussia drew up a set of complicated rules with regard to
the importation of cattle into its territories, and established such a
quarantine as might preserve its herds from those epizootic disorders
which ravaged the southern parts of Russia. Who suffered from these
difficulties? Of course, the kingdom of Poland (a country essentially
agricultural, but possessing in its cattle one element of wealth) could
not but suffer. It was then timidly requested that, in order to have
the restrictions, made for the sake of Prussia, removed, and in order
to leave the trade between Germany and Poland free, such precautionary
measures as had heretofore been in force at the Prussian frontier
of the kingdom should also be put in practice on the marches of the
Russian provinces in which the contagion obtained. But nothing of the
sort was done; and for this reason, that the sanitary _cordon_ thus
demanded must have been upon the old Polish boundary, and it would,
oddly enough, have described the line of those frontiers which existed
in 1792, and which the treaties of 1815 had laid down as the frame
within which the commercial life of the different provinces of Poland
was to exist. Russia was represented at Warsaw by a terrible man, a
Director of the Interior, M. Muchanof, who could not bear to see Poland
imaged even under the shape of a law of transit.

Another fact ought to be noticed. During the last years, a great
question, from which the Russian Empire has much to fear, has been in
agitation, I mean the emancipation of the peasantry; a problem of which
the Emperor Alexander II. has attempted the solution. My business is
not with the discussion of the subject in itself, but only to remark,
that there is a great difference in regard to it between Russia and
the kingdom of Poland. In the kingdom all the principles of the French
civil code remain in full vigour. There is equality of persons in the
eye of the law; but the constitution of property is a different thing.
Thus, our peasants still pay, it is true, a feudal fine, or _corvée_,
on the fields which they cultivate; but this fine is not a sign of
personal servitude. The labouring man has his civil individuality.
Thus, in the different countries his condition differs essentially;
and yet when the question arose the other day, Polish proprietors were
forbidden to do otherwise than follow the programme traced by the
Russian government solely with a view to Russia.

My object in referring to this, is to point out in what a confusion of
interests Polish autonomy now perishes by force; and yet that autonomy
was placed under the sanction of the whole of Europe. In truth,
must not Russian policy have passed all limits, if quite recently a
permission to teach Polish in schools for _one hour_ in the day (as
if it was English or Turkish) came to be considered as a sort of
reparation, almost as a liberal measure?

I do not say that a similar policy, under like conditions, or with
similar measures, has been followed in Prussian Poland. There, at
least, so much of liberalism prevails that the right of complaining is
left. Our griefs are not lost in the silence of a boundless oppression.
Polish deputies have to this day a place in the parliament of Berlin,
where, inch by inch, they defend the privileges of their country. But
are the two systems, after all, so very unlike each other? The latter
is less violent in one way, but its object is at bottom the same; for
Prussia, like Russia, labours to denationalise Poland. M. de Flotwell,
a man who governed the Grand Duchy (Posen) for many years, explained
his views when he said, that she did so, by insensibly stifling Polish
manners, inclinations, and tendencies, and by introducing the German
element in their place. The work of infiltering the German element is
carried on in a thousand ways; by bureaucracy, by education, by the
compulsory substitution of the German for the Polish tongue; by the
transfer of land, with the connivance of the state, which sometimes
buys up Polish estates, and sells them to Germans at a loss. There is
not a single Polish notary in Posen. Justice is administered in German,
and he who appears before the public tribunals is often examined,
accused, nay even defended, in a language which he does not understand.
It is the same with public instruction: it has hitherto been found
impossible to establish a Polish high school (Lyceum), and where a
working-man’s college has been opened, the classes are taught and the
course is in German. Even in private institutions it is forbidden to
teach the history of Poland, and for this conclusive reason, ‘that this
history not being taught in the public schools, ought not any more
to be taught in private ones!’ The Prussian government, it must be
said, makes no secret of its intentions; for it has promulgated in the
parliament of Berlin, that ‘the province of Posen is neither more nor
less than a simple province of Prussia.’

We now come to Austria. As to that power, need I recall with what
sinister dexterity she one day succeeded in putting hatred into the
hearts of the peasants of Galicia, and in driving them upon the Polish
nobility? And is it not a strange irony of fortune which has made
Austria the guardian of the tombs of two heroes of Poland? The one is
the grave of Sobieski, who sleeps in a church now abandoned and in
ruins at Cracow; the other is that of Kosciusko. When Kosciusko died,
the students of Cracow obtained leave to erect a humble monument to his
memory on a height, at a little distance from the town. The Austrians
came, they did not certainly do away with the tomb, but they covered it
round with the works of a citadel, and placed by it an Austrian sentry!
Finally, there came a day--a day which has not been forgotten, when the
three powers were found united in the definite suppression of Cracow,
that town, ‘free, independent, and neutral to all perpetuity,’ and all
this with the sanction of Europe, which could do nothing but enter one
protest more.

What result is evident from this assemblage of facts, from this
eloquent demonstration of the lack of efficacy in European guarantees?
This--that in reality the stipulations of Vienna have been set aside
by the very powers in whose behalf they were made, by those who have,
except these treaties, no other titles for the possession of Poland.

But the stipulations have disappeared under a series of violations,
which have been systematically carried out, but which, while they
enervate or nullify the guarantees that protected our nationality, also
nullify the title of these governments, and give back their rights to
nationalities, whose energy has been increased by their conflicts, or
by the necessity of self-defence.

Further, it may be thought that these treaties created insoluble
difficulties, attempted to make things live together which were utterly
irreconcilable, viz., the contradictory rights and interests of the
conquerors and the conquered. It may be so; but this only goes to
prove that the Treaties of 1815 sowed the seeds of war and of disorder
by the Vistula as by the Po; and the disturbances of half a century
have grown up out of them, by the Po as by the Vistula.

Here we see what is most truly characteristic in these Polish matters.
Here is no natural and peaceful developement of an order of things
half constituted by the ruling power of public right. It is a history
full of dramatic mysteries, of ardent protests, of which one-half
only is known to the world, the other half being lost in dungeons, in
subterranean vaults, in mines, in Siberia, in the Ourals. Above all,
since 1831, it is the history of a dark and ceaseless conflict between
a power which, in order to remain mistress, is obliged at every turn to
exceed its rights, and a people which struggles, conspires and rebels,
and to whom the permanent contact of a hard and foreign rule with a
suffering nationality is a continual punishment--a people which passes
its time in believing in hope even against hope, whom oppression raises
more than it tames, and which even when conquered has the ingenuity to
feed on its own sufferings, and to relish them with a dark and bitter
delight.

Let any man represent to himself what that country is like, where to
have read such and such a book by a Polish poet has sent thousands
of young people to Siberia--a country where in the universities and
schools the students, even the children, secretly practised beating
each other with rods, in order to accustom themselves to tortures, and
to be ready to bear every trial without flinching! This familiarity
with pain, this sort of defiance to a hidden warfare, is one of the
traits of the contemporary genius of Poland; and it is the theme of
a song commonly sung in Poland to a slow and plaintive melody; an
ironical and bloody lesson for the use of Polish mothers! ‘Our Saviour,
when still a child at Nazareth, played with the cross, the future
instrument of his death; and thou, alas! oh, Polish mother, oughtest
to amuse thy child with the instruments of his future play. Early,
then, tie his hands with chains, fasten them to the infamous tumbril,
that he may not grow pale at the executioner’s axe, that he may not
blush at the sight of the noose; for he will never go, as did the
knights of old, to plant the cross triumphant at Jerusalem; nor yet,
like the soldiers of later times, to till the fields of liberty, and
to water them with his blood. He who will provoke your child will be a
secret spy; he who will contend with him will be a perjured judge. His
field of battle will be a dungeon underground; his sentence will be
pronounced in some implacable cave. When conquered, no monument awaits
him but the empty gallows tree; and for glory he shall have the stifled
sobs of women, and the midnight whispers of his brother men!’

Thus has Poland existed for nearly thirty years, struggling and
conspiring, trying both to interest Europe in her misfortunes, and to
accomplish within herself the great work of internal revolution--having
to bear the back blow of every event, and of all those catastrophes
which have crossed her efforts. In reality, perhaps Poland has suffered
by three occurrences within the last fifteen years (occurrences which
have had a conspicuous part in her fate) more than by any persecutions
carried on against her. These events were believed to have proved
fatal to her, but they have nevertheless been but as a new trial, a
mysterious and a bitter prelude to a more serious manifestation of
her powerful vitality. The first of these events was the massacre
in Galicia in 1846--the most terrible and bloody deception of all
Polish patriots! The revolution of 1831, when it died out before the
arms of Russia, had at least left this lesson, that for the future,
any and every attempt at national enfranchisement must form part of
such an internal transformation as should unite all classes, and
interest the masses throughout the country in one common work for the
emancipation of the peasantry, and for making them definitely holders
of property. As to the means of doing this, the two parties, namely,
the constitutional or aristocratic, and the democratic, differed. At
bottom they had the same end in view, and the project was cherished
more especially by the democratic propaganda, of which emigrants formed
the central body. But all of a sudden, Austria, taking a part in the
movement, turned the current of emancipative ideas against Poland, and
by unloosing against the nobility the fury of the Galician peasantry,
had taught the other dominant governments in Posen, and in the kingdom
(Warsaw), how to establish their own reign most securely, by inflaming
the minds of men, and by setting class against class. Thus ended the
labours of the democratic conspiracy of the year 1846; and the work
had to be recommenced, for this bloody act, brought about with most
sinister shrewdness, had at least for the time being disconcerted every
attempt in Poland, since action had lost its fulcrum in the masses who
had been thus fatally led astray.

The French Revolution of February, 1848, was another of those events
which, by deceiving Poland, have helped to weigh her down. It was
the hour at which a great explosion was expected, for, in a French
revolution, how could we do otherwise than see a movement affecting
the world? How could we help thinking that all nations would free
themselves from old claims, and that Europe would be transformed by
democracy? But what, on the contrary, was the result? Everybody knows
that this ill-starred revolution availed none of the nationalities.
Neither could it have been of help to any, since it obliged France to
concentrate her own forces, in order to save herself from dissolution.
But the Polish cause had the misfortune of being united with those
European commotions which were so much to be dreaded; and, what was
worse, that cause served as the banner of the agitators of May 15th,
1848, who menaced everybody, and everything. This was its crime. Having
become importunate and teasing, like some unpleasant recollection, its
popularity was immediately lost; and, what was still more curious,
it was Nicholas who became popular--that Emperor suddenly being
transformed into the high priest of order and civilisation.

Then came the war in the East, and, at the prospect of inevitable
complications in Europe, as at the sight of that strange
combination--viz. a liberal alliance between France and England against
Russia--the hopes of the Poles once more awoke. Had the Emperor
Nicholas lived, his obstinacy might have occasioned such European
complications as might have again given a place to Poland; but his
death facilitated peace. The name of Poland cannot be spoken; and,
inasmuch as the Revolution of February, 1848, deceived the democratic
party among us, so did the war in the Crimea dissipate the illusions of
these moderate politicians of the diplomatic party who reckoned upon
Europe.

It is, then, after this series of mistakes and of hopes deceived, that
Poland has retreated more and more into herself, and that she sits
mutely waiting, having seen how conspiracies, European revolutions, and
regular interventions, have all alike failed her. Poland feels that she
has become unpopular; that, as a Pole expressed it, ‘she is a bore,’
and she avoids being spoken of. No doubt, she could not help feeling
with secret bitterness, that liberal Europe takes interest in Italian
nationality, in Hungarian nationality, in Moldo-Wallachian nationality,
and forgets a little that there was a Polish nationality. But Poland is
silent, and she endures this punishment of silence and indifference,
which is more difficult to accept than war, more hard to bear than any
persecutions; for it has to be borne by a people which has spent its
life in seeking for a country, and which has filled the history of
to-day with its heroism, its protests, and its distress. No one can
imagine what an amount of suffering is inflicted on Polish hearts by
the moral isolation in which we are left, and that, too, in the middle
of the agitation occasioned by the revival of other nationalities. ‘I
see what it is,’ said a Polish peasant; ‘they will end in giving the
Tsigans a king, but no one will ever think of giving one to us.’ Poland
had at one time so completely disappeared, that she was supposed to be
dead; she was thought to be either resigned to her fate or conquered by
suffering; and Europe was ready to go to sleep, as over an accomplished
fact, thinking that now there was one question less in the world.

But Europe was wrong. These long years of silence and of loneliness,
far from being the dark and unnoted end of the nation, were, on the
contrary, but as the beginning of a new state, which late events
have disclosed; of a new order of things formed by degrees, having
its elements, its character, its personifications, and which, at a
given moment, has turned out to be the unexpected manifestation of an
energetic nationality, rallying to the cry of Dombrowski’s legion, ‘No,
Poland is not dead!’

It was the era of conspiracies and of democratic propagandism which, up
to 1846, furnished heroic men of strange intrepidity, such as Konarski,
Zaleski, and Dombrowski; and, of this period of strife, the campaigns
of 1846, in Galicia and Posen, were the bloody and mournful close. Ever
since that time, and especially throughout the last years, we have had
a work of practical renovation, which has used all means, which has
been inoffensive in appearance, but not the less persistent because it
was unobserved, and which has been accomplished, owing, in part, to
that very silence of which I have already spoken. They who laboured
felt deeply what danger lay in making their operations heard. ‘Speak
of us as little as may be,’ wrote one of the leading men in Poland;
‘speak, if you will, of our miseries, of our agonised state, but do not
speak of our vitality, or of those signs of life which you remark in
us, for that would be to kill us.’ To this work, Prince Léon Sapieka
greatly contributed in Galicia, as did Dr. Marcinkowski in Posen, up to
the time of his death; while, in the kingdom, none gave themselves to
it more than did Count Andrew Zamoyski.

Of what is that movement composed, which, thus suddenly disclosed, has
again brought Polish nationality face to face with Russian power?

Doubtless, it has its source in many elements. All have a share in it;
for there meet religious zeal heightened by persecution, the labours of
mind, and the efforts made to raise the morals of the people. There is
industrial enterprise, and there also are agricultural improvements;
but what is most characteristic in the movement is chiefly this,
that it has been born in some sort spontaneously from the soil, and
upon the soil itself, independent of the action of emigration, or
of the propagandism of parties. It has been the work of those who
were unwilling either to conspire or to give in, and who, among the
ruins of their native country, and after her violent struggles were
ended, have sought to bring together elements for a new solution of
the Polish question. It certainly was impossible for these patriots
to throw themselves into politics. They would have been instantly
arrested, if they had done so. Their only thought then was, how best,
morally and physically, to remodel the country, and how most to steer
clear of politics in doing so. They began by establishing Temperance
societies; and even this ground required wary walking, because they
ran against the Russian authorities, who protect drunkenness, in order
to protect the inland revenues, and who issued circulars against these
societies, declaring them to be contrary to law. One Governor-General
of Lithuania, M. Nazimof, showed his erudition by citing the marriage
in Cana of Galilee, as a proof that the Gospel was not averse to the
use of spirituous liquors.

Another institution has played a great part in the present movement:
I mean the Agricultural Society of Warsaw. It had a very humble
beginning. About 1842 an association had been formed for the
publication of a small newspaper, called ‘Annals of Agriculture,’ from
which all political questions and allusions had been strictly banished,
which did not relate either to the situation of Poland, to its
government, its foreign relations, or indeed to things that concerned
it. But this was the germ from which grew, during the first part of
the reign of Alexander II., in those first moments of liberality and
good will, a more serious institution, the Agricultural Society itself,
founded with the exclusive object of making physical improvements,
having correspondents in all the provinces, and being authorised to
hold two sittings yearly at Warsaw. However limited this institution
may have originally been in its object, still it formed a bond of
union, and it has ended by drawing together 4,000 landowners of the
kingdom.

So slowly did the work proceed--creating on one day an Agricultural
Society, on another day starting the navigation of the
Vistula--sometimes forming banks, at another establishing a Temperance
League--recalling the country to a sense of its own interests,
and drawing men together by making them co-operate in the same
undertakings. Now, let us observe what were the effects of a labour so
patient, so modest, so often crossed, and yet so efficacious. Instead
of conspiracies, we learnt the habit of acting in legal ways, and we
acquired a sense of the power which there is in regular, persistent,
and pacific action. Such questions as the emancipation of the peasants,
and others which have divided the public mind, and kept up divisions
even among emigrants--such questions, mischievous while only a strife
of theories, have now found their natural solution in practice; for
the Agricultural Society has taken the initiative in this matter, and
proposed a system by which the peasant is made an owner, and by which,
through an ingenious combination of credit given, an indemnity is
secured to the actual possessor; and this indemnity the peasant pays up
in successive and limited annuities, without having to give more than
he had formerly done. This may be called the Polish solution of the
difficulty, as opposed to the Russian one. Finally, and what is most
important, this secret regeneration of the country has done what we
have just seen. No longer are parties embittered against each other,
after a common defeat, nor do they dispute over a distant victory; but
we have a compact mass--a nation welded together by one thought--where
there is no distinction of classes, and of which the union has been
cemented by the bloodshed of the 27th of February, 1861--the day
on which Russia made the first attempt to put it all down. Those
intelligent Russian bullets did more than they were aware of; for they
helped to cement the alliance by striking, as they did, victims of
every rank, of every condition, of all religions, almost of every age.

One man, as I have said, personifies in himself all that is most
serious and practical in this movement, and he has left upon it the
stamp of his own character. This is Count Andrew Zamoyski, whom the
people speaking his language simply call ‘Monsieur André.’ He is not
the only one; but he has been, from the very first, one of the most
active promoters of all that could awaken the land. By birth he is
connected with one of the oldest Polish families--with the family of
that grand-constable, John Zamoyski, of the sixteenth century, who
laboured to constitute a body of lesser nobles, in the face of our
aristocratic oligarchy, and who was one of the greatest of Polish
captains. The family is one which has long been eclipsed, and which
only reappears at certain epochs. There was another Zamoyski, who was
Chancellor in 1772, but who laid down his office because he would not
set his seal to the first division; and of this Zamoyski, Count Andrew
is the grandson, as he is also the brother of the general who, at one
time, was to have headed a Polish legion, at the time of the Crimean
war. Count Andrew naturally found himself mixed up with the revolution
of 1831. He was first Minister of the Interior at Warsaw, and then was
sent on a mission to Vienna, to M. de Metternich, who, it was said,
was, at the time of the last battle, inclined for an intervention. When
that revolution was, at last, quelled by the Russians, he would not
leave the country. He remained in obscurity, cherishing no deceptive
hopes, but soon seeking how best to raise her, after her great defeat.
No very great career offered itself to him; but he turned to material
interests and pursuits, and he brought to the work an activity not
the less singular, because it was narrowed by conditions which were
strait and uncertain. He established breeding-stables (studs), helped
to introduce steam-navigation on the Vistula, which was a tie with
Galicia, and laboured to organise the ‘_Crédit foncier_.’ He it was
who started the little paper, ‘Annals of Agriculture,’ who afterwards
became the principal promoter of the Agricultural Society, and who, up
to the present time, has continued to be its President.

Count Zamoyski is characterised in all that he has done by his
practical sense, by the clearness of his views, and by a moderation
in action, which is joined to great natural dignity. The situation of
Count Andrew is, moreover, a sufficiently singular one; for, by his
moderation, he excites the suspicions of the more hot-headed among
the Poles, who expect nothing except from revolutions, and, by his
activity, he makes himself suspected by the Russians. The curious and
difficult problem, how to live between these two, is the one which he
has to solve. He has to be master over himself, and he cannot suffer
himself to be led away by useless rashness; while he must not, on the
other hand, sink the dignity and the name of a Pole. His secrets are
hid in his actions. He never revealed them to anyone; and, to speak
truly, is it perfectly certain that he had any secrets? He simply put
in practice the old word ‘laboremus;’ and though constantly obliged to
have dealings with the Government, he never yielded his ground; and
he kept up an obstinate struggle against the venality of the Russian
officials, to which he would not submit upon any terms. More than
once he has had to go through some very thorny trials; but he has
always acquitted himself well. On the day of the foundation of the
Agricultural Society, a dinner took place, at which, of course, the
Director of the Interior, M. Muchanof, was present. At last, the toast
in use at all Polish dinners, ‘Let us love each other,’ was given by
him. All eyes were immediately turned upon Count Zamoyski, who, calmly
and simply, and with scarcely a perceptible smile, replied, ‘Yes: but
at home!’ There was nothing more to be said. The spirit of this policy,
if policy it can be called, is to do all that it is possible to do,
to go as far as may be, and to measure one’s steps according to the
necessities of the day. It breathes no agitation; but it is to be an
activity according to the laws, taking advantage of everything, making
use of everything, and communicating life unawares to the country--this
is precisely what has appeared in the late events, and this remains the
character of the new crisis.

Are men aware of what it is that gives to this movement the weight of
a true national manifestation? It is that it has nothing in it which
is either artificial or evanescent. It is the work of the few, and
also the work of all. Like all deep movements, it is at once simple
and complex, it is sincere as is the passion of a whole nation; and
far from resolving itself into a mere series of efforts for physical
order, which have suddenly issued in a political question, it has a
moral side, which agrees wonderfully with what I have said of its
characteristics of practical and lawful action. One thing in these
occurrences at Warsaw, interspersed, as they are, with scenes of
bloodshed, is very striking, and that is, the passive attitude of a
people, which appears unarmed and offers no resistance--which persists,
and, though dispersed, constantly reassembles--which offers itself
as a defenceless victim, and which refuses the arms which are left
within its reach. And under such an attitude, there must be something
more than mere obedience to a watchword or to an order. No conspirator
could have been clever enough to have imagined it. It is the sign of a
thorough revolution in the minds and in the souls of men, a revolution
to which the mind of one poet was no stranger--I mean Krasinski,
whose works have appealed to all Polish imaginations, and which will
be imprinted on all hearts, even of the lowest orders of the people.
He is that _anonymous_ poet from whom we formerly had a few poems,
all full of deep meaning, all marked by gloomy and ardent mysticism.
Sigismund Krasinski is dead now; but he had endured the bitterest
trials of spirit, both as a patriot and as a son. He was born in
1812, and was held at the font of baptism by Napoleon, for his father
was that Vincent Krasinski (a descendant of one of the chiefs of the
Confederation of Bar) who, at the end of the empire, replaced Prince
Poniatowski in the command of the Polish army, and who subsequently
played a part in the Chambers of the kingdom of Poland, after the
Restoration. Unhappily, General Krasinski irritated public feeling by
the vote he gave in the Senate, in regard to the conspiracy of 1828;
and his son Sigismund received, in the public square, such a marked and
cutting insult from his school-fellows, that he was obliged to leave
the country. He travelled, and went to Rome. When the revolution of the
29th of November, 1830, broke out, he set out immediately for Poland;
but, at Berlin, he had to stop. His father had been taken, at Warsaw,
by the insurgents, and had only saved himself by promising devotion to
the national cause; and now he had fled to St. Petersburg. Sigismund
despaired; he never could bring himself to remain in his own land,
and the rest of his life, spent among strangers, was devoted entirely
to the composition of his poems, which he published without ever
acknowledging their authorship. Through him, Polish patriotism found a
fresh voice.

When Mickiewicz addressed the revolutionary and warrior youth of
Poland, he said, ‘Strong through union, wise through self-denial,
forwards! my young friends!’ Krasinski said, in a song now as popular
as once were Mickiewicz’s words, ‘No man can build with mud, and
highest wisdom still is highest virtue.’ These are the watchwords of
two different epochs.

The ruling inspiration of the whole of the poetry of Krasinski is
the abjuration of all hatred and of all vengeance--that force alone
will not enable us to contend successfully against force, but that
the weapons of our warfare must be superior powers of soul--that,
in order to conquer one’s enemy, it is not enough that we have the
right on our side, unless that right rests upon strong and pure moral
sentiments; that the most powerful levers are love, and the virtues
of self-sacrifice and of heroic patience. One of the heroes of his
‘Infernal Comedy’ is Pancrace, the type of that brutal strength which
yields and quails in helplessness before a superior power. The same
inspiration reigns in his Greek poem ‘Iridion,’ where the Christian
hero is a passive martyr, with a horror of vengeance, who triumphs
over Rome, and confounds the patriotism of Iridion, a man who had
no thoughts beyond revenge, and who makes shipwreck in spite of the
justice of his complaints and of his cause. This is also the thought
embodied in ‘Aurora,’ in the ‘Psalms of the Future.’ In all these songs
the Polish soul thrills with mystic ardour, glows with enthusiasm,
and with inexhaustible youth. ‘Lord!’ says Krasinski, in one Psalm,
‘what we crave is not hope, since she descends upon us like rain upon
flowers. It is not the death of our foes, since that death is written
in the clouds of to-morrow. It is not arms, since they are placed in
our hands by Thee. It is not help, for Thou hast opened a free path
before us; but we implore, put a pure spirit in our inmost hearts. O
Holy Spirit! who dost teach us that our great strength doth lie in
sacrifice, grant that we by love may lead the nations to the ends we
seek!’ But in a fragment of his ‘Aurora,’ Krasinski has still better
described this part of heroic expiation:--‘Is it then required that we
should be murderers with murderers, and criminals with criminals? Must
we lie, hate, slay likewise, and blaspheme? The world cries: At this
price you may have power and liberty; without it, nothing! but nay, my
soul! nay; not with such arms as these. The weight of sacrifice alone
can in its turn crush down the weight which crushes us. In the world’s
story, sacrifice is lionlike and unconquered still; but crime is as the
chaff which the wind in passing sweeps away.

‘No! my country; yours is rather the patience which doth show, how
stone by stone the building can be reared: yours rather the will
inflexible, which, abiding humbly, prepares for future victory. Rather
yours is calmness amid the storms, and harmony amid discordant cries:
rather yours, eternal loveliness amid abhorrent shapes: rather yours
to heap on cowards and Pharisees that mournful silence which doth
overwhelm. Be yours the strength which lifteth up the weak; and yours
the hope of those who cease to hope. For thy strife against this
world’s hell, be thine the peace and strength of love, against which
hell itself cannot prevail...!

‘The nations are all sought by God: all in Thy Grace, O Jesus, are
concerned! to each from high a calling Thou hast given; in each a
sense profound from Thee doth live, and weaves the woof of all their
destinies; but some among the nations Thou hast chosen to defend the
cause of Heavenly Beauty, and to give to the world an example, while
they bear, through the long day, a heavy cross, and walk the world’s
paths red with blood. These by their sublime strife shall at last, O
Lord, give to man a feeling higher and more divine, a holier charity,
and a larger brotherhood, in exchange for that sharp sword which men
have plunged into their breast. Such is this Polish land of thine, O
Jesu Christ! Our love of man has caused our death, and men have seen
the corpse of Poland carried to the tomb; but when the third day
comes, the light shall shine, and shine through all the ages yet to
be. Think you, that he who loves, in dying, disappears for evermore?
Yes, to our fleshly eyes; but the whole world, through the soul’s
eyes, beholds him still. He who in love expires, leaves in his hour
of martyrdom his soul to all his brethren. He abides in the sanctuary
of human hearts, and every day, every hour, he lives, though buried;
grows, though in the tomb!’

This thought of the power of sacrifice, and of passive heroism, has
filtered through our youth, and permeated even the masses; and this
it is which is visible in the Poland of to-day, for the inspiration
of the poet has become the feeling of the people. One other cause,
and it is a strange and curious one, has also helped, during the
last few years, to spread and to popularise these ideas, by suddenly
throwing a new element into Polish society. When the Emperor Alexander
II. ascended the throne, he signalised his accession by an amnesty,
which, however incomplete, opened the gates of their fatherland to a
multitude of exiles. Some came from the West, the others (and these the
most numerous) came from Siberia. Those who had lived in France, or
in England, naturally returned to their country embittered by thirty
years of sufferings, accustomed to a Western atmosphere, nourished with
all sorts of revolutionary ideas; in short, half strangers in their
mind and manners. But with that tribe of exiles, called in Poland
‘Siberians,’ it was not so. They returned hardened and strengthened by
habits of secret and solitary suffering. Calm and resigned, they were
mystics to a certain extent, but their mysticism was of that grave and
gentle kind, which has nothing fierce or hateful in its nature. It is
a remarkable thing that, among these exiles returned from Siberia,
the country has for the last years found its best men, the most apt
for journalism, for professorships, for the administration of private
and national establishments, such as the Agricultural Society. There
are writers of talent who could not, it is true, sign their works
with their names; but their names were not, therefore, the less well
known. One brought back from Siberia a translation of ‘Faust,’ and is
one of our most eminent critics; another has translated Shakespeare.
A newspaper in Warsaw published a series of sketches of Caucasus, and
of Asia, which were the work of ‘Siberians,’ and in which there was an
indefinable mixture of freshness and resignation.

These men spread over the country, and had a singular effect upon
it. Thence the serious and religious tinge of striking originality,
in all the popular demonstrations which have since happened, and
in all those manifestations which are so thoroughly free from the
revolutionary phraseology of the West. Theirs is, on the contrary,
a nervous and sober speech, and except in its religious accent it
has nothing exaggerated in it. The influence of the Siberians is
peculiarly visible in that strange address by the artizans of Warsaw:
‘Death is alike for all. Without sparing our persons, it is necessary
that we should go to the slaughter, and show to the world what it is
we wish. This is why we have walked in processions, and sung of the
constitution, and we will do so again whenever it shall be necessary;
if there are to be victims, it will be seen that that is according to
the will of God, if more is required we are ready to draw lots for the
one who is to be sacrificed--ready even to give our throats to the
knife, or to expire under the knout, as did those three victims whom
the waters threw up near Zakroczym, and which wrapped in straw were
flung from the castle into the Vistula. Only if then there is no pity
for our country, it will be ill!...’ Should one not say that this is
the same obstinate idea of sacrifice, which has passed through the
imagination of Krasinski, and through the action of the ‘Siberians,’
into the popular mind?

And now that all these elements are reunited, now that this union of
practical efforts extends over all interests, and this lawful impulse
has been communicated by Count Andrew Zamoyski, and instinctively
accepted by a whole population, now that a moral and religious sense
has been propagated in all minds, at once inflaming and satisfying
them, and a national sentiment has spontaneously reappeared in all
hearts, the movement is one, which, though imperceptible at first, and
existing silently for many years, has been facilitated by the change of
reign at a given moment, and it has ended in that brief but eloquent
dialogue which took place recently between the Lieutenant-Governor,
Prince Gortchakof, and the crowd assembled in one of the squares of
Warsaw. ‘What do you want?’ ‘We want our country!’

Evidently nothing has been accidental or unforeseen except the hour
at which the explosion took place. For the space of one year already
successive manifestations had revealed a sort of secret understanding
in the populace. First there was a funeral service celebrated all over
the country and at fixed epochs, in memory of the most eminent Polish
poets, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Slowacki. Then came the interview
which reunited at Warsaw the three Sovereigns of the north, and which
piqued the popular sense. It was in truth an odd idea which assembled
at Warsaw, for a conference in which it was suspected that designs
hurtful to Italy were to be discussed, the three masters of Poland.
Their reception from the populace was more than cold; and what is
most curious is that, impressed by this disagreeable circumstance,
they tried to ascribe to each other the blame of the annoyance
which they had received. The Russian papers avowed that it was the
Emperor of Austria who had earned this cold reception for the Emperor
Alexander, while the press of Vienna proved no less clearly that this
demonstration had been aimed at the Emperor of Russia.

Some months later a more serious manifestation followed. It was a
commemorative service for the dead killed at that battle of Grochow,
in which in 1831 the Polish army contended during three days with the
Russian troops; and on that day it was (February 25th) that a new
Poland appeared, personified by a populace which walked with tapers
in its hands, reciting as with one voice this religious and national
hymn: ‘Holy Lord God! God Almighty, God Immortal, have mercy upon us!
From plague and pestilence, from fire and sword, O Lord, deliver us!
Be pleased to give us back our native land! Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of
Poland, pray for us!’ Then the crisis declared itself, and agitation
spread, as the concessions of Russia alternated with scenes of blood;
and thus it continued till April 8th, the day in which violent measures
for repressing the movement finally prevailed. It is not what followed
these events that I now have to describe. Everything in them bore the
mark of those influences which I have pointed out. This movement, as
has been seen, began with a religious service, and when it came to
a crisis, what was the step taken by those who had some power over
the people, and who felt the importance of the moment? A popular
delegation, authorised by the Lieutenant-Governor, took the command of
the town; a voluntary constabulary was organised for the prevention
of all disorders, and the Agricultural Society itself interfered as
a moderator, and a guardian of the peace. The addresses presented to
the Emperor contained nothing but what was according to law, since
they hardly even exacted all that had been assured to Poland by the
treaty of 1815. And what was the attitude of the populace itself? It
showed its _life_, if the expression may be permitted, by abstaining
from all conflicts. It assembled to give vent to its wishes and to its
complaints, but it presented itself unarmed and passive; even after
it was dispersed by force, women, children, and old men crowded round
a Madonna with weeping and with prayers. Strange insight into the
nature of a movement, of which the tactics have been to resist, but
not to take up arms! What constitutes its originality is the alliance
already mentioned of practical sense with a feeling which is moral,
religious, and even mystic--an alliance of which the secret is in the
conscience of a people, and which accords marvellously well with all
the instincts of the Polish nation, and indeed of the Slavonic race
in general, which appeals to political minds because its tendencies
are towards moderation and good sense, and at the same time offers the
charm of a certain poetic mysticism to the young and to the mass of
the lower orders. It is, then, the originality of this movement which
also constitutes its strength, for it reveals sources of vitality ever
new, in a race which has found in misfortune nothing but a generous
incentive.

It is this same originality which in like manner has placed Russia in a
position of singular difficulty, when opposed to a popular awakening of
this sort; for this is no simple internal strife, but by considerations
of humanity and of right it forms part of a crisis peculiar to the
times, and of an order of things of European interest and extent.

It is said that after the first bloody scenes at Warsaw in this month
of February, the Emperor Alexander II. being told that some of the
people had fallen victims, asked immediately what loss their army
had sustained, and what quantity of arms had been taken from the
insurgents? He was told in reply that there was no loss in the army,
and that it had not been possible to seize the arms of a populace
who had none, and would not have any. The Emperor, it is said, was
greatly surprised; and this astonishment at the beginning explains the
vacillations of Russia, and the hesitation which is to be observed in
her conduct. She seemed at first to fluctuate between all sorts of
policies.

She gave up some of her officials, who were the most pointed at by
public animadversion, and, if I may use the expression, only seemed
to repress the movement by mistake. She made some concessions; she
drew the programme of a new organisation; she promised a variety of
reforms; she accepted the popular delegation as an auxiliary--accepted
even the help of the Agricultural Society itself. But presently both
delegation and Society were dissolved. Agitation was allowed to
increase by her indecision, till the scenes of April 8th mark the
fresh starting-point of a repressive policy. _Physically_, no doubt,
Russia can repress and disperse the manifestations of Warsaw, and she
can prevent the population wearing mourning for its dead; but when
that is accomplished, I ask whether, _morally_, the question will
be one whit less living or less important--whether it will be less
_oppressive_--for the politics of Russia?

Truly, Russia finds herself to-day in a strange and a serious dilemma.
She must make her choice. She may begin over again in Poland her
policy of the last thirty years; and she may even push that system to
extremity. It may be the interest of Prussia and of Austria to keep the
Tzar to this plan; because they are always uneasy at the reappearance
in the Kingdom of a centre of attraction for the parts of Poland which
they possess. This is their interest (and it is odd enough that it
should be so, because the strength of Prussia lies only in ideas of
nationality and of liberalism); but is this the true interest of Russia
at this juncture of the world’s affairs? Russia has only to revert to
her own counsels and to her own traditions to find in them incentives
to a more equitable policy. The Emperor Alexander II. has only to
open his mind to those ideas which are most intimately connected
with the constitution of the kingdom of Poland, and with the epoch at
which the Emperor Alexander I. founded it, saying to the Poles, ‘You
will preserve your language; you will have your laws, your army. Your
restoration is defined by the most solemn treaties.’

If the world of to-day appeared such as it did thirty years ago, it
might be possible that any physical victory should have the sad power
of deadening in an unhappy nation its undying feelings, of at least
discouraging it, and of adjourning to another day the solution of a
question so often agitated. But to-day, against the continuance of
an oppressive policy, are ranged the general sense of Europe, the
principles of right, the interests of Russia in her other combinations
and alliances, the irremediable decadence of the treaties of 1815,
forgotten by the governments themselves even before they were abrogated
by the peoples which returned, as it were, to life; and, finally,
this movement on the part of united Poland--a movement which can
but be accelerated, or kept up, by the new Diets in Galicia, by the
incessant way in which the deputies of Posen remind the parliament of
their country, and by the attitude of moral resistance assumed by the
population of Warsaw. Be it what it may, there is certainly something
moving, and morally important, in this determination of a people to
_live_, and to preserve in itself the inviolable inheritance of its
patriotic faith.

In the legends of the Saints it is related that, one day, in the age of
martyrdom, some Christians had been assembled upon the ice of a frozen
river, and that they were there abandoned, alone and naked, to all the
severities of the air, having also no food to eat. Offers were made
to them from the shore of clothes, and of delicious viands, if they
would abjure their religion. Some of them yielded to the temptation,
and, when they touched the banks, perished. The others, immovable under
trial, invoked the Divine mercy, and were miraculously saved; for there
fell from heaven upon them both food and clothing. In this behold a
touching picture of a nation which suffers, but which will not allow
itself to be tempted, and which sends up to heaven such a cry of faith
as shall melt the rigour of its adverse fortune.



A YEAR OF AGITATION IN POLAND.

(April 1861-2.)


For some years past we have witnessed one of the most affecting and
instructive sights--the breaking up, if we may say so, of an order
of events, where the confused and dispersed elements join again, as
from some mysterious and invincible unity in themselves. That which
once appeared impossible becomes a startling reality, and perspectives
suddenly open themselves such as our generation would hardly have
allowed itself even to think of.

We have seen public right itself, or that which, at least, bears its
name, giving way, and leaving a passage for those national and popular
causes which agitate the world, and which are the harbingers of a new
way of thinking. It is vain now to attempt to divide those national
causes which appeal so strongly to public opinion--vain now to grant
everything to one and deny everything to another--to limit justice
to opportunity or to fitness of time or place. Policy may have its
seasons, its measures, and its predilections, but at bottom _right_
must exist everywhere, or it exists nowhere; and, from its one source,
it must apply to all those peoples who aspire to the purest and the
most legitimate of conquests--the conquest of themselves--as also to
all those movements which, arising at one and the same time, form parts
of a general situation, intimately and profoundly characterised by one
universal work of transformation.

We must guard against mistakes. What we behold is no vulgar crisis,
which may end in an ordinary peace: it is a warfare between two orders
of things, between two principles; and it was proclaimed the other day,
in a French Assembly, to be the new right--_the right of peoples_--and,
when opposed to this, old political combinations are reduced to act
laboriously and uneasily on the defensive. It is the question which
agitates the modern world: the problem which, in the East as in the
West, in the North as in the South, shows itself under a thousand
different and startling shapes.

Certainly one of the most curious of these episodes--one of the most
moving of these contemporary spectacles--is that dramatic _tête-à-tête_
which, for the space of a year, has been carried on in Northern Europe
between those two very unequal powers, Russia and Poland; where the one
is embarrassed by its strength and its political traditions, and where
the other makes an impregnable buckler of its rights, and of its very
weakness. Nothing has been wanting to the play. Unforeseen events,
passionate originality in demonstrations, tragic scenes--all have been
supplied, together with those mysterious fatalities which so often
make a perfect drama out of the affairs of men. This drama is laid in
the heart of a country: it has its colours and its catastrophes; and
across its stage there passes, like some chorus of old, a whole nation,
which sends up to heaven its supplications and complaint. For a whole
year has the spectacle been seen of a moral movement, perfectly new in
its character, confronting a policy which is astonished to find itself
so weak that, while possessed of so many means of physical power, it
resorts to all expedients of apparent concession and of inefficacious
repression, and uses both measures alike without conviction. After
a year all seems again to have settled into silence. Outward
manifestations certainly have ceased, but still the demonstration has
been made. That which had been supposed to be dead was found to be
still full of life. That assimilation of Polish provinces, which Russia
believed to be accomplished, was found to be not even begun; and Europe
suddenly saw that Polish question arise which brings in its train such
prodigious difficulties, and in which are involved at once the fate of
a nation, the policy of a great empire, and the balance of power in
the West. By some vague instinct, Europe felt that she had not yet got
rid of that problem which is, doubtless, so strangely complicated by
the multiplicity of rules and of _régimes_ spread over Poland; which
changes its shapes according to the chances of dismemberments and of
treaties; which is not the same in Posen as in Cracovia, at Warsaw
as at Wilna, in the Kingdom, in Lithuania, or in the Ukraine; but to
which one national sentiment, identical and vital in all the parts,
has communicated an indissoluble unity. This character truly belongs
to a question at once so energetic, so simple, and so complex, which
sums up in itself the strifes of to-day, which is too often believed to
have been stifled under the weight of impossibilities, and which comes
to light again at a time when any palpitations of oppressed patriotism
was least to be expected. I wish to set forth this question in its most
recent explosion, in its elements, and in its progress, as well as in
its relation to all that is in motion or in preparation in Europe, and
even in the very heart of Russia.

An event which dates back to no very remote period is the source of
many results which belong to the present day. I mean the Crimean war,
which doubtless did nothing directly or ostensibly for Poland, but was
very near (nearer than perhaps is supposed) doing a great deal for
her. At the time when that great strife ended, the name of Poland, as
we are now aware, ought to have been heard in the Congress of Paris,
along with that of Italy. France and England were agreed, and the day
was fixed, but the dexterity of the Russian plenipotentiaries, and of
Count Orlof in particular, eluded this inconvenient call. They made it
the interest of the West to be silent, and they promised far more than
ever was asked of them, on condition that Europe would leave the Tzar
at liberty to make none but spontaneous concessions to the Poles. This
is no longer a secret; for Lord Clarendon said one day in Parliament,
in reply to Lord Lyndhurst (that old champion of liberal causes), ‘We
had serious reasons for believing that the Emperor of Russia was, with
regard to Poland, generous and kind. We were obliged to admit that the
Emperor was not only disposed to publish a general amnesty, but even to
give back to the Poles some of their national institutions; and while
they received guarantees for the exercise of their religion, public
education in Poland was also to be established on a more liberal and
national footing. We also believed that we were warranted to hope that
Russia was about to renounce for ever the severe system which she had
hitherto pursued; and, moved by these convictions, we ceased for the
future any discussion of the question.’ Count Orlof gave promises,
the Congress of Paris kept silence, and scarcely one month had passed
before the Emperor Alexander II., while promulgating an amnesty which
was nothing more than a cruel deception (according to Lord Clarendon’s
own expression), addressed, at the same time, two allocutions to the
Polish nobility at Warsaw, wherein he harshly said, ‘I expect that the
order established by my father is to be maintained: so, gentlemen,
above all, we will, if you please, have no dreams--no dreams! The
happiness of the Polish people depends on its entire fusion with the
people of my empire; what my father did, was well done, and I will
maintain it: my reign shall be the continuation of his. In preserving
to Poland her rights, and her interests, such as my father granted her,
I have the unalterable wish to do good, and to favour the prosperity of
the country. It rests with you to make this last possible for me, and
you alone will be responsible if my intentions fail, on account of your
chimerical resistance.’ When one of the Marshals of the nobility seemed
about to reply, the Emperor turned and said, ‘Have you understood me?
It is pleasanter for me to reward than to punish; but know this, once
for all, gentlemen, that when it is necessary I shall know how to keep
down, and to punish, and it will be seen that I punish severely.’ This
happened in the month of May 1856, immediately after the Congress of
Paris.

It is not without reason that I recall to-day a vain attempt at
negotiation broken off by an illusory promise. It determines the
events which have since arisen, in the same way that the debate at
the Congress of Paris has governed events in Italy; it also in some
sort puts on the recent crisis in Poland a mark of European sympathy,
and proves an intelligent wish, while it shows further how Russia had
conducted herself up to the time that this crisis arrived. ‘What my
father did, he did well!’ an expression which was perhaps highly filial
on the part of the Emperor Alexander II., but which was certainly
an imprudent and impolitic dictum. What was really that _order_
established by Nicholas which he promised to maintain?

I do not refer now to the guarantees by which the treaties of Vienna
had striven to surround a nationality which they abandoned; I do not
speak of the constitution of 1815, the work of the Emperor Alexander
I., but of the _statut_ granted by the Emperor Nicholas himself in
1832--a _statut_ which was as a punishment, the penalty of a defeat
sustained by Poland; and what had become of that? It was M. Tymowski,
a Russian Minister of State, who last year, at the commencement of
the affair, told us what _had_ become of it. In a private report he
stated that this _statut_ had never been either abrogated, or put into
execution. Of all the new authorities which it created, councils for
towns, councils for palatinates and provincial assemblies, ‘with the
right of deliberating on questions of general interest in the kingdom,’
not one has ever existed. There ought also to have been a Council of
State, but that probably was held to be either too revolutionary a
measure, or too visible a sign of autonomy. So in 1841 this Council
of State was quietly replaced by two new departments of the directing
Senate of St. Petersburg, which were called the ninth and tenth
departments, and were transplanted to Warsaw. ‘In a word,’ added M.
Tymowski, ‘it may be said that since 1831 the kingdom of Poland has
been given up entirely to bureaucracy, and that without any regard
to the _statut_ of 1831, it has also remained under the exclusive
influence of officials, without the participation of any of its
inhabitants, who are in this manner rendered incapable of sharing in
the Government.’

It would, indeed, be useless to tell how bureaucracy and officials
have for the last thirty years swayed the Government of Poland: and
I shall content myself with reminding my readers and the public,
that one day the Emperor Nicholas did ‘with his own hand and with a
quiet mind’ (adds his minister) order the _transplantation_ to the
Caucasus of forty-five thousand families, all ‘formerly Polish gentry,
but bearing henceforward the name of freemen and burghers,’ as it is
phrased in this strange Government language. We have often heard that
a painful yoke is laid by their rulers on the people of Lombardy, of
the pontifical States, or of the old kingdom of the two Sicilies: nor
is this said without reason; but we must also remember that there is
a country where, in the daylight of this present century, it has been
possible to _transplant_ forty-five thousand families guilty of no
other crime than of being suspected of patriotism, and of ‘exciting the
suspicion of the Government.’

From this specimen we may understand how unintentionally cruel and
how mournfully deceptive were those words of Alexander II.--‘All that
my father did, he did well’--words which were also, at least, an
unfortunate answer to that expression of European sympathy which had
been checked at the threshold of this Congress of Paris in 1856. It
has been the mistake of all Russian policy for the last thirty years,
to believe that an absence of all law means _order_, and to suppose
that the omnipotence of force is at once illimitable and undefined. No
doubt for the moment such policy succeeds. It can command silence, it
can veil difficulties, and adjourn the discussion of them to another
day. But it brings affairs at last into that impossible situation,
of which illegality is the essence, and where we find a new nation,
independent of all organisation and of all hierarchies, rising in
spite of a monstrous system of repression--a nation which, as M.
Tymowski expresses it, ‘is undistrainable and yet ingenious in making
arms for itself out of everything, even out of its own contempt of
death.’ Poland, though beyond the bounds of the law, has a profound
sense of law, and this M. Tymowski again acknowledges. Having no
public representation she has arranged one for herself, for she had
that Agricultural Society, which at a given day proved itself to be a
sort of national representation. No regular outlet was provided for
the utterance of her wishes, instincts, or wants, but she has thrown
herself into a passionate worship of her traditions, her popular
festivals, and religious rites. Indeed, the time has come in which
she has occupied herself for a year in reviewing her anniversaries
and her recollections. She could not, certainly, dream of engaging in
an armed strife, but she retired into herself; she appealed to moral
power, and opened her soul to the strangest of all sentiments--that
of voluntary sacrifice--till a whole nation adopted that terrible
argument in Descartes’ fashion, ‘we die, _ergo_, we live;’ and is it
not a new and a surprising piece of reasoning, if we understand it
aright? By all this Russia is placed in an extraordinary dilemma;
this unexpected resurrection brings all her errors before her. She is
obliged to punish a sedition which is not illegal, to make war upon
peaceful manifestations, on religious services and hymns, on mourning
apparel and inoffensive emblems; she has nothing to oppose to them but
force, and feels therefore all the powerlessness of force itself. The
same causes have impressed this movement: for though European events
may have hastened it, though the accession of Alexander II. and the
internal disorders of Russia may have favoured it, it is not less the
result of a past of thirty years, not less the effect of a policy of
which the whole fatality has not yet perhaps been exhausted.

The movement is extremely characteristic in this respect--that it is
born in the heart of the country, and that it is independent alike of
complicity with her emigrant children, or of any impulse from without.
Immediately after the Congress of Paris, the Emperor Alexander held
this language to the Polish nobility--‘No dreams, gentlemen! no
dreams!’ and from that moment did the national sentiment of Poland
begin gradually to expand, till it broke out in February 1861. Several
symptoms indicated the unexpected awakening that was to follow. When
the sovereigns met at Warsaw, in 1860, the Emperor Alexander, before
returning to St. Petersburg, wished to show himself to the five German
princes who accompanied him in all the brilliancy of Polish popularity.
He was to be in Wilna. Now in Lithuania, the first manifestation for
the enfranchisement of the serfs had taken place, and the Emperor had
returned thanks for it to the Lithuanian nobility. These circumstances
all seemed auspicious, and the Governor of Lithuania was ordered to
get up a ball. It was, as far as its externals went, simply a ball;
but no one knows what an official ball is to the Poles, where the
splendour of the fête covers so many hurts, so many thousands of
secret wounds. In his ‘Aieux,’ Mickiewicz has introduced an official
ball into that circle of Hell in which he paints all the sufferings of
the Poles. General Nazimof made the most heroic exertions, and spared
no persuasions among the Lithuanian nobility; but nevertheless he
completely failed. The ladies declined the invitations; the gentry said
that, though willing to pay the expenses of this Russian festivity,
they should not appear at it; and there was nothing left for the
Emperor but to refuse to go to the ball upon which General Nazimof had
lavished so much useless zeal; and he hardly made any stay in Wilna.

At Warsaw, where the three crowned heads held a meeting which seemed to
personify all the disasters of the land, things looked even worse. It
must be said that, to choose Warsaw as a place of meeting between these
three masters of Poland--the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria,
and the King of Prussia--and to choose it, too, just when all Europe
was ringing with the enfranchisement of Italy, was to throw a challenge
to our unhappy nation; nor was it long before popular feeling took up
a challenge which was the second it had received from Alexander--his
first having been that address to the nobility of Warsaw which he made
after the Congress of Paris.

After this, demonstrations increased.

One religious service followed the other, in memory of the
patriot-poets, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Slovaçki; and on November
29th, 1860, that song was heard, for the first time, which for a
year has been the impassioned watchword of the multitude, which has
echoes in cathedrals, and which has gone up from the humblest country
churches--that ‘_Boze_ cos Polske’--‘Give us our country! Oh, Lord!
give us our liberty!’ In a short time, the whole face of affairs had
changed, and an electric thrill ran through the country. Perhaps it
ought to be called a revolution; it certainly was a moral revolution,
and it revealed that which had hardly as yet been suspected--the
existence of a nation, unimpaired by suffering and by trial. To be
a revolution, it had a strange beginning. There was no violence,
no bloody intentions, no insurrections; but there were psalms, and
prayers, and manifestations, at once enthusiastic and regulated; and
there was an outburst, as energetic as it was unexpected, of that
irresistible force which is called the soul of a nation.

Everything converges to that month of February 1861; and then it
was that this Polish insurrection really assumed the character of a
passionate drama, full of startling originality. The 25th was the
anniversary of that formidable battle of Grochow, in which the Poles,
in 1831, disputed for the mastery with Russia during three whole days.
Since the 21st, the Agricultural Society, founded by Count Andrew
Zamoyski, and so rapidly popularised throughout the country, had held a
session to deliberate on the definitive accession of the peasantry to
property. From other quarters, the Polish students--who had come from
Kiev, from Moscow, and from Dorpat, as to a secret rendezvous--might
be heard agitating, and demanding a national university. To ask for
a more liberal education, to effect the union of all classes by the
abolition of the last vestiges of serfdom, and to commemorate mournful
and patriotic anniversaries--these were the subjects which preoccupied
all minds. No doubt other thoughts mingled with them. The idea of
presenting an address to the Emperor asking for a constitution began
to be ventilated; and, oddly enough, it was warmly advocated by a man
who was soon to play a part in these events--the Marquis Wiélopolski.
He became excessively excited, and went to Count Zamoyski to beg him to
take the initiative in this manifestation; but Count Andrew refused.
He was the firm and vigilant guide of his society, and he would not
consent to alter its nature. Moreover, it was repugnant to him to
place, as the Marquis proposed to do, the claims of his country under
the auspices of the treaties of 1815.

What was Russia about all this time? Quite disconcerted, and more
astonished than enlightened by what she saw happening under her eyes,
she waited, and day by day the movement seemed to slip away from
her. At that time she was represented in Warsaw by Prince Michael
Gortchakof, the Lieutenant of the Tzar--a man who was a good soldier,
and who had shown a great deal of vigour in the defence of Sebastopol.
He had lived fear many years at Warsaw, when head of the Staff to
Prince Paskievitch; he knew Poland, and he liked living in it. To his
soldierly nature extreme measures of repression were repugnant, and
it troubled him to have recourse to them. But unfortunately, in the
heart of the administration of which he was the ostensible chief,
one man was, under shelter of the Prince’s name, omnipotent--M.
Muchanof, Minister of the Interior, of public instruction, and of
religion. He was a Russian of the old school of Nicholas the Tzar--a
vulgar instrument of that inflexible system which had no other object
but the denationalisation of Poland. The dismissal of Count Skarbek,
the Minister of Finance, had been effected by him, because the Count
was an enlightened man, an author of celebrity, who had entertained
the revolutionary notion of asking (as for a right) for a college at
Warsaw. M. Muchanof was at war, in short, with everything that looked
like an awakening or an act of individual life in the country--with
Temperance Leagues, with the Agricultural Society, and with a taste for
a more liberal style of education. The only exception he could make was
in favour of the School of Arts. ‘Let them paint, by all means,’ he
would say, ‘and then they will not think.’

Between the gradually excited population of Poland and Russia, when
thus represented and thus divided in her councils, a dialogue was to be
commenced, which, stretching over a year, was to be furnished with such
bloody interludes that the very Russian generals themselves seemed to
grow weary, and to feel a secret aversion to the parts given them to
act.

Nothing, at such a conjuncture, was wanted but one spark. The morning
of February 25th dawned dark and misty. They were to go that day
to pray for the slain of the battle of Grochow, and, from an early
hour, the populace, impelled by one spontaneous passion, thronged the
streets. An immense procession was soon formed; they marched without
disorder, and with torches in their hands. Before them went a banner,
with the white eagle. As they walked they sang the hymn, ‘Swiety
Boze’--‘Holy Lord God Almighty, have pity upon us; be pleased to give
us back our own country. Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, pray for
us.’ Up to this time, the Government had done nothing to stop the
manifestation (it had not even been prevented), when suddenly Colonel
Trepow, the head of the Police, appeared, and threw two squadrons of
the armed police upon this dense crowd. The multitude fell on their
knees, and continued their psalm, while being cut down by the troops.
More than forty persons were wounded. At this moment the Agricultural
Society happened to be sitting, and a violent emotion was produced
there by the intelligence that an inoffensive mob had been massacred.
Count Zamoyski, the President, mastering his own emotion, endeavoured
to preserve calmness, and, putting an end to the sitting, he repaired
to Prince Gortchakof, who seemed surprised, and certainly showed
conciliatory intentions. The Russian officers were indignant at the
tasks assigned to them, and one of them, General Liprandi, went so far
as to say that, as long as he commanded the infantry, he would not
permit them to be marched upon unarmed men. The truth is, that one more
such victory as that of February 25th would have made everything look
very doubtful for Russia. The work of thirty years vanished, before the
apparition of a people ready to die undefended. The whole town was in
inexpressible anxiety, and on the following day mourning was worn for
the victims of the previous day.

But it must not be supposed that any signs of weakness entered into
the popular emotion. On the contrary, a curious excitement filled all
hearts; and, by the 27th, arrangements were made for a new funeral
service, in honour of some patriots hung by the Russians, and of
Count Zawisza in particular. In the Church of the Carmelites and
its vicinity more than 30,000 persons assembled; and, when mass was
said, this immense procession unrolled and marched to the palace of
the Agricultural Society, which, for the last two days, had been
besought to sign an address to the Emperor. This Count Zamoyski always
resisted; and he certainly showed more intelligent heroism, above all,
more patriotic foresight, by this resistance, than by yielding to any
premature haste. He did not wish to compromise an institution which
might again do effectual service to the national cause, and which was
the only representative body of his nation. So, on the approach of the
crowd, Count Andrew took the plan of closing a session which had been
so strangely agitated. But just round this point the whole affair
centred, while, outside, squadrons of Cossacks drove the multitude
before them at the point of their swords, and pursued them into the
very churches. Hardly had the members of the Agricultural Society left
their palace than a murderous fire was opened upon them; also a strange
execution, for which the order had been given by General Zabolotsky,
and in which there probably was no preconcerted design, since, in the
Russian opposition of that day, every measure seemed disunited, and the
work of chance. But the result of this attack was not the less fatal;
ten persons were killed, and more than sixty were wounded.

A curious scene then took place. The exasperated crowd seized upon
one of the corpses--one which was still warm--and they carried it to
the house of Count Andrew Zamoyski. A feeling of reproach probably
entered into this popular act. It meant, ‘Why do you abandon us at the
moment in which we are slain?’ But this was a popular error. If Count
Zamoyski, in his capacity of a public character, and when invested
with a title which was almost official, had refused to compromise an
institution which, in his eyes, represented the only lawful power in
the country, not the less did there live in him a patriotism which
could be both firm and manly. He received the body thus brought to
him, and, in a voice of great emotion, he replied to the crowd, ‘I
thank you for the mark of esteem which you have given me. Bring in the
corpse of this martyr, and I shall know how to honour it.’ He had a
_chapelle ardente_ arranged in his house, and there, for two days, the
body lay in state. By the incidents of his past life, by his name, by
his active devotion to all his country’s interests, by the attitude he
preserved towards the Russians, so proud and so noble, and yet ever so
moderate, Count Andrew proved himself to be the true chief, the wise
and energetic guide of a movement, which found in his character its
highest personification.

In this, the second day of bloodshed, which side had conquered? Russia
certainly had not, for never, perhaps, did any power suffer such
complete eclipse, while boasting of such apparent strength.

After the events of the 27th, Prince Gortchakof called his officers
and chief functionaries together. The Archbishop soon appeared,
complaining of the violation of the churches; and there came also
several dignitaries of the town, who had held a meeting at the house
of one of the principal bankers, M. Kronenberg. There was likewise
Count Zamoyski himself, with two other delegates of the Agricultural
Society, MM. Ostrowski and Poloçki, all holding discourses, of which
the tenor was mournful and proud. Prince Gortchakof did not disguise
from himself either the gravity of the situation, or the odium of the
part assigned to the army. What is more, he absolutely denied having
given the pitiless orders which had just been executed, and he let
fall a curious expression as he did so. ‘Do you,’ he said, ‘take me
for an Austrian? I have given one order, and one only, and that is,
that even on the production of an order signed by my own hand, the
citadel is not to be given up to you.’ What was most essential at
this moment was to appease wrath, to calm men’s minds, and to efface
the late bloodshed. Prince Gortchakof showed himself ready for the
most important transactions. He was ready to dismiss the head of the
police, Colonel Trepow; ready for an enquiry into the conduct of
General Zabolotsky; to withdraw the military to their barracks till the
victims of the 27th had been buried; and also to create a Commission
of Public Safety, under the auspices of Count Zamoyski, with the
concurrence of a Russian much esteemed and honoured in Warsaw, Marquis
Paulueri. He accepted the offer of the students to act as the police
of the town; and by that evening an address to the Emperor was in
general circulation. Thousands of signatures were rapidly affixed to
this document, which was the energetic expression of the griefs and
of the wishes of the Polish nation. ‘Our nation,’ it declared, ‘which
used to be governed by liberal institutions, has, for the last sixty
years, endured the cruellest sufferings. Without any organ for sending
up to your throne the expression of our pains and of our need, we are
forcibly constrained to have no other utterances than the cries of
those martyrs which are daily offered as a holocaust. A country, once
the centre of civilisation to its neighbours of the West, cannot, also,
develope itself, either morally or physically, while its Church, its
legislature, its public education, and its whole social organisation,
do not bear the stamp of its national genius and of its historical
traditions.’ The signatures of the Archbishop and of the Grand Rabbi
headed this address; and those Poles who were in Government offices, as
well as the Marshals of the nobility, tendered their resignations, in
order to join in the manifestation.

To tell the truth, the whole face of affairs had altered in a very
short space of time. Two days had sufficed to show a nationality, fresh
born and full of energy, pitted against a government which seemed
struck with paralysis. Poland, that phantom which had not been allowed
to appear at the Congress of Paris, and which the Emperor Alexander,
during the interview of the sovereigns at Warsaw, had banished as an
inopportune vision, was now suddenly alive, and become palpable to
all. Henceforward, all distinctions of classes were to be effaced by
one profound feeling of solidarity; and the very bullets of February
27th had cemented this union by striking, as they did, persons of all
classes, of all religions, of all ages, and of every sex.

With what weapons did this reviving nation arm itself? Poland had
no arms: she would not have any; or rather she had them but of one
kind. She had a passive heroism which amounted to enthusiasm. She
had a fanaticism of self-sacrifice, as might be seen in that address
to the workpeople of Warsaw. The mark by which her sons recognised
each other was mourning array; and from the first days of the month
of March 1861, a proclamation throughout the whole country declared
black to be the national colour. ‘In all the parts of ancient Poland,’
ran the notification, ‘mourning will be put on, and worn for an
indefinite time.... For nearly a century our emblem has been the Crown
of Thorns! That coronal adorned the coffins of our brethren, and you
have all understood its meaning. It signifies patience under suffering,
self-sacrifice, pardon, and deliverance. We invite every Pole, whatever
be his creed, to spread these words in countries even the most remote.’

A population like this, when for a moment its own mistress, had a
pride in avoiding riot and excess; and it even respected the Russian
soldiers in Warsaw. It was the students who on March 2nd kept the peace
during the funerals of those who had fallen victims on February 27th;
and at these obsequies, where patriotism acted for the police, more
than 100,000 persons were present. On the other side, it was quite the
contrary: everything among the Russian authorities was in confusion,
and they appeared to be the discomfited spectators of a movement
which they could not check, and which was wholly incomprehensible
to them. Prince Gortchakof himself was visibly affected by this
extraordinary situation, and he was divided between astonishment and
the strange recurrence of a soldier’s instinct who feels himself to be
powerless, because he seeks an adversary but cannot find him. Nothing
can better pourtray both the character of this Polish movement and
the embarrassment of the Russian power, than a conversation which
took place between Prince Gortchakof and Count Zamoyski, on the 3rd
of March, the day after the interment of the victims of the 27th of
February. The Prince Lieutenant began by thanking the President of the
Agricultural Society, with really good grace, for the order which,
during the ceremony of the previous day, had been maintained in the
town.

‘The whole town obeys you,’ he said. Then suddenly becoming animated,
and having changed his train of thought, he continued, ‘This cannot go
on; and besides, I have now got troops, and I am not afraid of you.’

‘We are ready to receive your bullets,’ replied Count Andrew.

‘No, no, we will fight!’

‘We shall not fight; but you may murder us if you please.’

‘If you want arms, I will give you some!’

‘We will not use them.’

There, in truth, lay the secret of this movement, which was intangible
from its moral nature, and which was terrible because it was vague.
The address from Warsaw reached St. Petersburg; the Emperor Alexander
read it out loud before several members of his family.

‘But these Poles ask for nothing,’ remarked one.

‘That is just what is so serious about it,’ replied the Emperor; and
his retort was that of a sensible man.

If this perilous situation was not to continue, only one course could
be pursued by Russia. She must arrange a termination, and reply to
this passive revolution in Poland by sincere, efficient, and ready
concessions. Russia did not do this, and she lost a month in delay.
As to her sincerity, it was doubtful, to say the least of it. What
was most obvious was her embarrassment; and by the confusion in which
she moved, her policy allowed this embarrassment to be only too well
perceived. At Warsaw, while Prince Gortchakof made some concessions,
Count Zamoyski was challenged, but did not reply. A marvellous unity of
wills kept order in the town, and the authorities waited for a solution
of the difficulty to be sent from St. Petersburg. M. Muchanof, still
master of the Ministry of the Interior, was inspired by the melancholy
policy which Austria had followed in Galicia, and he did send out a
clandestine circular, urging the peasants to rise upon their landlords.
The Jews discovered this circular, and so much indignation was excited
by it, that Prince Gortchakof was soon obliged to dismiss M. Muchanof
from his office, and he left Warsaw amidst the yells and hisses of the
populace. The affair, considered in all its bearings, is a strange mark
of the persistent contradictions which distinguished Russian measures,
and distinguished them at a time when to be sincere would have been to
be judicious.

Even in St. Petersburg no one knew what to do. Time was gained, and
then it was lost; and when the Emperor Alexander did, on the last
day of March, resolve to send to Warsaw a plan for new reforms, the
movement had by that time become too consistent; the minds of men
were too strongly excited, and too much made up, to be contented with
such timid and equivocal concessions as ill befitted the gravity of
the case. For of what did the offered reforms consist? It is true,
that they suppressed those two departments of the Senate which sat
at Warsaw, and which were the signs of the complete assimilation of
Poland with Russia. They promised the election of provincial councils,
of district councils; they offered a new organisation of public
instruction, with a creation of a Faculty of Rights, and with more
respect for the Polish language. Finally, they summoned the Marquis
Wiélopolski to the direction of public education; the Marquis being
a Pole. This was always something, although it did not even entirely
come up to the _statut_ of Nicholas. And what at bottom was wanting,
was a guarantee for the sincere adoption of a really liberal policy,
which should be carried out by men truly devoted to their country, and
animated by a national spirit. Unfortunately, to the suspicions of the
Poles (suspicions which were only too well founded) Russia replied by
a system of permanent contradictions, one which for the last year has
shown itself to be never nearer to reaction than when there was a talk
about concessions. Concessions so offered were for the edification of
Europe, which looked on. The facts remain the same, or rather they
become worse, and in appearing to yield to this all-powerful movement
of public opinion, it was the object of the Russian Government to stain
it, and to represent the movement as the work of a few incorrigibly
factious persons. But they seemed to wish to treat with this reviving
nationality, and on the 1st of April the plan of reform arrived
from St. Petersburg was published; six days later, however, they
dissolved, without any warning, that Agricultural Society in which
the country beheld its image, which had never interfered except to
make peace, which Prince Gortchakof had himself thanked, and which was
now done away with, on the strange pretext ‘that, under the present
circumstances, and in consequence of the position which it had latterly
assumed, it had ceased to answer its original purpose.’ Of all those
bodies of constables and delegates which had existed, and by means of
which for a whole month peace had been maintained in the town, not one
was allowed to remain. All, with a sort of impatience, were swept away,
while proclamations were multiplied and troops were hastily advanced to
Warsaw.

What was the result?

Public opinion resented as a provocation the dissolution of the
Agricultural Society, and the minds of the people rose with
indignation, not against the _reforms_, which might, perhaps, have
been accepted, but against that double-faced policy in which they
could see nothing but menaces; and peace thenceforward became more
and more impossible between Russia and a people which, as M. Tymowski
said in his secret report, was ‘full of life and of obstinacy, and
deeply penetrated by a sense of law. Everything,’ he added, ‘depended
on the good faith observed with them.’ On the 7th of April, 1861, an
immense crowd went to the cemetery to pray for the slain of February.
Later in the evening they marched to the square at the castle, which
was occupied by troops, and there with loud cries demanded the repeal
of the order by which the Agricultural Society had been dissolved.
But this crowd was so far from threatening any violence, that the
military did not continue to keep the ground, and they dispersed at
last, promising to reassemble on the following evening. Accordingly,
in the evening of the 8th, a still larger assemblage repeated the
manifestation of the preceding day, in front of the castle. The Prince
Lieutenant himself came down and mixed with the crowd in order to
appease it. He asked them what they wanted; and the response was
unanimous, being contained in these significant words, ‘We want our
country.’

For the rest, nothing in this excited concourse of men, women, and
children betrayed any aggressive thoughts, or any intentions of strife.
They were warned that they must disperse; but with dark passion they
replied, ‘You may kill us, but we will not move;’ and before the troops
drawn up in order of battle, they remained impassive, till suddenly
a post-chaise happened to pass, and the postilion played on his horn
the air of Dombrowski’s legions: ‘No, never shall Poland perish!’
Immediately an enthusiastic cry burst from every breast, and as the
populace fell on their knees, a movement was perceptible through
the whole crowd. Did the troops believe that they were about to be
attacked, or did they obey a command? Were they decided by the plain
and conclusive reason, that a resolution to fire had been adopted the
evening before, because a stop must be put to this state of affairs?

However it may have been, an instantaneous fire was opened. While some
squadrons of cavalry received orders to charge, fifteen volleys from
the infantry made many bloody openings in the mass of defenceless
beings, who now found themselves hemmed in on every side. While being
cut down, the crowd continued to kneel, and to pray. The women and the
children were grouped together on their knees round an image of the
Virgin, at the extreme end of the square, and there the people remained
till late into the night; so late that the troops had been previously
drawn off the ground. It is certain that more than fifty persons had
perished, and that the number of the wounded was immense; but darkness
has always been allowed to hang over the numbers who fell on that
night. An eye witness wrote with emotion: ‘Never shall I be able to
make you understand this unparalleled contempt of death, which is so
enthusiastic that it animates men, women, and children. Old soldiers,
accustomed to being under fire, assure me that never, when so close,
have the most solid troops preserved a heroism as calm and invincible
as this crowd has displayed when furiously charged by cavalry and under
fire.’

It was, indeed, a strange insurrection. The authorities in Warsaw had
no difficulty in quelling it; but it rendered every future transaction
more difficult, for it had placed between Russia and Poland a barrier
of invincible suspicion. It was a misfortune for Russia, that, while
gaining these melancholy victories, she added nothing to the security
of her rule, and she certainly added nothing to her strength. Her
difficulties were, however, greatly increased by them, and she remained
weighed down by the weight of her own policy. It is true, indeed, that
even after the 8th of April she maintained the reforms which she had
already promulgated; but the logic of her situation was, that she was
at war with the most intangible thing in the world, with the soul of a
nation. Russia could not lay her finger upon any conspiracy, but not
the less did everything seem to threaten her, and she was constantly
obliged to invent new plans for putting down she hardly knew what. At
night no one was to go out without a lantern, and it was forbidden to
be seen walking in certain localities. Against wearing mourning the
rules were peculiarly stringent. Indeed, at one moment it was necessary
to have permission from the police to wear black. Yet the genius of the
police was at fault, and it was baffled by the provoking obstinacy in
favour of universal mourning, and of the black dresses which the Polish
ladies had adopted.

To do the Russian authorities justice, they did not feel their
consciences at ease in the matter of this war. Even when using
repressive measures they seemed to be agitated by a secret disquiet--a
feeling which declared itself in a very striking manner during the
last days of Prince Gortchakof, whom death overtook in the middle of
this conflict, only two months after the scene of the 8th of April. It
would seem almost as though the tragedies of Poland had something fatal
in them to the Russian officials. Already, they tell us, that Prince
Paskievitch, when on his death-bed, had been troubled by a sinister
apparition; for everywhere before him rose a shade, that of the mother
of Count Zawisza, who had lain at his feet to implore pardon for
her son, and who had implored it in vain. The last moments of Prince
Gortchakof were disturbed in the same way. In Warsaw it was said, that
ever after the bloody scenes of February and of April he had been vexed
by sudden hallucinations, as well as by fits of gloomy irritation. A
few days before his death, he went to the railway-station to meet his
wife, Princess Gortchakof, who was to arrive from a journey. He saw
one of the principal bankers of Warsaw, and, running up to him, he
began: ‘Oh, you there! so you play the patriot, do you? But I know how
to crush you! I shall soon make an end of your d----d students! I will
make dust of you!’ During the last days of his life, he fancied that he
constantly saw women in black, who followed him, or walked beside him.
‘Oh, the women in black! oh, the women in black! send them away,’ he
would cry. If such were the sufferings of the Prince, there were to be
others who, as we shall see, came to a yet more terrible end. The same
secret trouble was betrayed by the words of General Souchozanett, the
immediate successor of Prince Gortchakof, when, before leaving Warsaw,
he said: ‘You may accuse me of being an unsuccessful blunderer; but
you cannot say that I am a cruel man, for I have never fired upon a
single creature.’ There was a strange fatality about this system, for
it weighed upon those who carried it out, as well as upon those who
were its victims; and such as it was, after the 8th of April, it stood
complete, before the eyes of an angry and seething populace.

Throughout these events, one man made a great effort to procure a
reconciliation. His figure is not the least original, or the least
characteristic of those who meet in this drama, and I have already
named him, for he is the Marquis Wiélopolski. Ever since the 1st of
April, 1861, he had taken a preponderant place in the Councils of the
Government, and, no doubt, his part is not yet played out. During
February, as I have already said, the Marquis Wiélopolski resided in
Warsaw; and he suggested that an address should be sent to the Emperor,
wherein a constitution was to be demanded, but which should open with
an act of submission, and with a testimony of their contrition; for it
was to disallow, in some measure, the Revolution of 1830. Not having
been able to make good this idea, he refused to sign the address that
was sent to St. Petersburg, and held himself aloof from the movement.
Very shortly after, the Emperor called him to the Direction of Public
Education, and from that time he took a decisive part in all the
measures that followed. Before long, and by the dismissal of the other
directors, which was consequent upon the 8th of April, the Marquis
Wiélopolski found himself alone in the Council, and associated with all
its most rigorous proceedings. He is, perhaps, one of the most curious
types of our times, for he is a proud, contemptuous, eloquent man, a
scion of the family of the Gonzagas; and for this reason, perhaps, he
exhibits, at times, traces of the old Italian policy. He is a great
landed proprietor, and, by his different estates, is connected with
all the provinces of Poland; and he is devoted to Russia, not by
servility or interest, but by a passion of revenge which he nourishes
against the West; and his system is the result of calculation, and
of a line of policy which is powerful, although strange. In 1846,
after the massacres in Galicia, the Marquis Wiélopolski wrote that
‘Letter to Prince Metternich, by a Polish Gentleman,’ which rang with
such fiery eloquence, and which being, as it were, a new revelation,
echoed throughout Europe. The author there advised Poland to embrace
a resolution of heroic despair--to renounce, for the future, all help
from the Western Powers, all deceitful and calculating sympathy, all
cheap eloquence, all those guarantees which men have decorated with
the pompous title of ‘rights of peoples,’ and then boldly to give
herself to Russia. ‘Go to the Tzar, and say to him: We come to you, as
to the most generous of our foes; hitherto, we have belonged to you,
as slaves, by right of conquest, and from terror; to-day, we come to
you as free men, who have the courage to acknowledge that they have
been conquered.... We do not stipulate with you about conditions--to
yourself we leave it to judge when you may relax towards us the
severity of your law. We make no reserve; but in our hearts, in letters
of fire, you will read our silent prayer, this single petition, “Do not
leave unpunished the crimes which strangers have committed; and in the
blood of our brethren which has been shed, hear the Slave blood, which
cries for vengeance” ...’

In words like these, one can recognise a theorist, who is inflamed
with panslavism, and whose revenge anticipates the day, when by this
fusion, this sacrifice of the idea of national independence, this moral
suicide, the Polish race may revive in the Empire, and again, through
their intelligence, find an ascendency in the Council.

What the Marquis Wiélopolski had thought in 1846 he still thought in
1861; and he therefore kept himself apart from all attempts to warm
up the thought of nationality, as also from all the practical labours
which were to bring about a patient and invisible reorganisation of his
country; and he never would become a member of the Agricultural Society.

The Marquis now entered on his official career distinguished by all
the inflexible vigour of a character which was lofty and proud enough
to brave unpopularity among his countrymen; and, while he consented to
serve Russia, he did not the less preserve a haughty attitude towards
her. In the month of February, while agitating for the adoption of his
proposed address, he got a message from Prince Gortchakof, warning
him to take care of what he was about; he proudly replied, ‘Tell the
Prince that my boxes are filled, and that I am quite ready to start for
Siberia.’ To his compatriots he would say, ‘You are not at the height
necessary for understanding me.’ To the Russians he certainly appeared
an enigma; for they could not comprehend this Polish gentleman, who,
while a nobody in the ranks of the administration, suddenly became
a minister, who refused all interposition, and who treated directly
with the Emperor. What could such a man mean? What was the clue to his
thoughts? But it can be believed how, between Poles and Russians, he
occupied a solitary and difficult post; for the first had the greatest
antipathy to his ideas, and the second looked upon him as a phenomenon
rather more extraordinary than consolatory.

That it was possible to organise a lawful régime, the Marquis firmly
believed. For the present he had no doubt of it, and he directed all
his efforts to this end. But there is nothing that Russians understand
so little as proceeding according to law; and, upon the death of
Prince Gortchakof, this prepossession of the Marquis proved the origin
of those quarrels with the new Lieutenant-General Souchozanett, in
which the Polish gentleman was apt to have the better of the Russian,
although he also was soon to be carried away by the current of a still
more violent reaction.

This reaction was the system which Russia adopted, and which she
followed, without ever perceiving that, instead of calming and
mastering the movement, every instance of repression so added to
its energy and depth, that when, three months later, the wishes of
the government seemed to incline to a more conciliatory method, the
movement was then found to have gained head greatly.

Above all, it was found to have spread, and to have reached the
provinces which formed the ancient Poland of 1772. Scenes similar to
those of Warsaw were enacted at Wilna; and, by the application of a
uniform plan of repression, Russia, by her own acts, set a seal upon
that unity of the old Polish fatherland which it was her object to
abolish.

One of her official proclamations spoke of Lithuania, as of a province
which had always belonged to the Empire, and which had only been
for a short time subjugated by Poland. Some French papers even lent
themselves to help Russia at this juncture, and they undertook to
represent to Lithuania, to the country of Mickiewicz, of Kosciusko, and
of the Czartorynski, that it was not in any way Polish, and ought to
have nothing in common with Poland. And this it was which provoked one
of the most curious scenes of the whole strange drama--a protestation
on the part of Lithuania, under the form of a pilgrimage to Horoldo.

Horoldo is a little village beyond the river Bug, and there, more
than four centuries ago, the union of Lithuania with Poland was
accomplished. Of this union the 10th of October was the anniversary. As
early as the month of September, circulars were sent into all the parts
of the ancient Polish realm, and delegates of the people were chosen in
every place, even in Western Prussia. Everything was done that could
be done to stop these strange travellers. Those who came from beyond
the Bug were prevented from crossing the river, and those who came from
Cracow were in the same way brought up at the passage of the Vistula.
But the concourse of people was, notwithstanding these precautions,
really immense; and the roads were lined with men on horseback, with
foot passengers, with carriages of all sorts, heavy carts, tarantasses
from Podolia, and phaetons from Léopol. On the eve of October 10,
the houses, the villages, and the country seats round Horoldo, were
filled with unknown guests, who were met everywhere with the readiest
hospitalities. ‘Enter, and welcome,’ was said to all, while no one even
asked their names.

On the following day, at six o’clock in the morning, an immense
procession was formed, and when it reached the little village of
Kopylowa (half a mile from Horoldo), the crowd fell into their ranks,
and marched along in columns, singing as they went; for, though
strangers to each other’s names and faces, these men were all bound
together by the one feeling which they had in common. Now arose a
momentary doubt. Were they to go on, and so risk meeting with a bloody
reception? A cry rose, ‘We came to pray at Horoldo, let us go to
Horoldo!’ and the procession continued its march, headed by an advanced
guard of more than 200 priests and monks. But as they drew near to
Horoldo, it became apparent that a large military force was drawn up
in a half circle round the town. A feeling of inexpressible anxiety
then prevailed. No one knew what was going to happen, but not the less
they pressed steadily forward, because everything that could be called
_arms_ had already been thrown away. The violence of a commander might
at once have turned the scene into a massacre; but, happily, General
Chrustef, the Military Governor of Lublin, who was entrusted with the
defence of Horoldo, was a humane and pacific man. At the head of his
staff he advanced to meet the procession. He bowed deferentially to
the clergy, and said, ‘I have received strict and formal orders not
to allow any manifestations to take place, and the choice of means
has not been left to me, if any manifestation is attempted. Do not,
therefore, oblige me to use forcible measures; for you would surely not
wish to lay on your own consciences the responsibility of bloodshed.’
A Canon then stepped out of the ranks, and said that the multitude had
come from far, and that they could not be expected to retire without
at least having heard mass. The General thought for a moment. His
own anxiety was visible, and a terrible silence prevailed. At last,
Chrustef addressed the priest: ‘If you will pray, do it now, and
here, in the fields before the town; my orders do not go so far as to
forbid this.’ Preparations began immediately, and a rustic altar was
soon reared upon a rising ground. When all was ready, forty banners,
representing all the provinces of ancient Poland, were unfurled, and
above them all floated a great flag, with the united arms of Lithuania
and of Poland.

The scene was a splendid one, and it was lit by a glorious sunshine.
When mass had been said, a Basilican priest (of the United Greek
Church) rose, and thus addressed the crowd: ‘Behold to-day, assembled
for the first time, the mutilated members of our beloved Poland! In our
national history there is no better festival, and no memory more pure,
than that which we have met to celebrate to-day. Look at that forest;
count its trees; and for each tree that you count you may find upon the
Polish soil the grave of a hero, of a martyr who has given himself for
our liberty. Here, as everywhere in Poland, all are ready to sacrifice
their lives; but the hour is not yet arrived. Let us pray, and, as we
pray, not one of us will be found wanting when the summons comes. Let
us not wish any evil to our enemies. See them to-day, how silent and
motionless they stand! They look at us, and they now comprehend what
we are, and what we may become. With one gesture they might crush us,
they might knock us over, bleeding on the soil; but they are silent.
They know that behind us there is a whole people, and that a nation
cannot be slain.’ Then, turning to the fluttering standard, the priest
said, as he concluded, ‘Stainless bird, white eagle! that wast wont to
distribute crowns to others, and art so crownless to-day, float above
thy brothers, and cry to the four quarters of the globe that thou art
living still! Call together thy children, thine emigrants, and thy
defenders of old, and point, still point the way! Thou must suffer,
thou must suffer much; but one day thou shalt rise, rise higher than in
the past, and spread thy wings over a people which, at last, is free.’
After planting a wooden cross on the spot where mass had been said, the
crowd dispersed, and they carried away with them the solemn memory of a
scene which was passing strange.

But the real question had not ceased to live in Warsaw, the centre
of Polish agitation; it had existed there before the manifestation
of Horoldo, and from thence it had influenced that episode in the
great movement, of which the spirit seemed to be as contagious as a
passion. And here I must notice the diverse phases of Russian policy,
and the fatality which seemed to attend upon its decisions. Let this
be remarked, that in the last days of March, Russia showed herself
ready for concessions, and promulgated some reforms. Then and there a
reaction occurs which reaches its height on April 8th, and the reforms
of March go for nothing, or, at least, are, like everything else for
the time being, in abeyance. By the month of August, and after a period
of repression and severity, which was also distinguished by a marked
antagonism between Marquis Wiélopolski and General Souchozanett (the
successor of Prince Gortchakof), the sky appears again to clear. To the
kingdom of Poland, a new lieutenant is given, General Count Lambert,
who starts for Warsaw on a conciliatory mission. He is to carry out
new institutions, to call together ‘enlightened and well-intentioned
men,’ and to ‘find out the real wants of the country.’ What was to
be the result of these tactics, adopted again under an aggravated
condition of affairs? Unfortunately in this as in every such attempt
made in Poland by the Russian government, there was something unsound.
Count Lambert, as far as his own qualifications went, doubtless did
unite in himself all the conditions which were most favourable for a
mission of peace. He was a gentleman of courteous and affable manners,
of French origin, and by religion a Roman Catholic; his temper was
candid and moderate, and he enjoyed the peculiar flavour of the Tzar;
but at the same time he had men placed under him, who were understood
to represent the old Russian party; and these men were there to watch
him, and keep him to the point if the occasion should require it.
These were General Gerstenzweig, the Military Governor of Warsaw,
Minister of the Interior, Krijanowski, the head of the staff, and the
senator Platonof, a member of the Council of Administration. In spite
of everything, Count Lambert, on his arrival at Warsaw, was received
with favour, and looked upon as a plenipotentiary of peace; his first
acts being indeed marked by a conciliatory spirit. With the heads of
the national party and with the bishops the Count held conferences,
and even received a confidential memorandum from M. Wyszinski, a Canon
of note in Warsaw, whose paper pointed out the conditions under which
peace might be possible; namely, conditions which meant a constitution
for the kingdom, and an organisation founded upon the national autonomy
of Lithuania and Ruthenia. Finally, Count Lambert bestirred himself
to put into practice the new institutions which had been talked
of, namely, elections in districts and provinces, and a reformed
organisation of the Council of State.

It was important for the country and for the national party to know
what steps it ought to take when these elections were impending; and
when affairs under the new lieutenant had assumed a new aspect, several
meetings took place. To reject everything and to hold their own hands,
was as yet the opinion offered by those who formed the _advanced_
party, and whose votes were for action. The _moderate_ party, however,
had more practical sense, and seeing the necessity of not rejecting
any legal means, they combatted this idea of not participating in any
way in the forthcoming elections. The moderate party carried the day,
but one combination was devised as a rallying point for opinions of
every shade. Two petitions were to be signed at the same time--the
first, addressed to the Council of State, was to demand the complete
emancipation of the Jews; the other, addressed to Count Lambert, was
to claim a national representation, as being the only institution
proper for seeking out and making known the wants of the country, as
it was expressed in the imperial rescript. These two petitions, it was
intended, should be signed by all the electors when they gave their
votes; and thus at the end of September they came to the ballot. In
spite of some attempts made by the most hot-headed partisans, great
unanimity prevailed; the peasants in particular showed a vast amount
of zeal, and the two petitions thus agreed upon were signed by the
electors throughout all the districts of the country. One circumstance
of this transaction is a curious one, and that is the secrecy with
which the signatures were affixed. So well indeed was the secret kept,
that of one of the addresses the text has never transpired. In all the
elections the moderate party had a great advantage, and thus a new
character was given to the movement, for, instead of mere agitation,
it assumed the nature of a legal claim, and it was settled that all
manifestations were to terminate in a religious fête, in honour of
Kosciusko, on October 15th, while the addresses were to be sent up by a
deputation on the 18th.

On the 17th, however, the city was suddenly declared to be in a state
of siege. What had happened?

No fear of possible troubles and tumult on the 15th had driven the
authorities to this step, but they had become aware of that new plan of
action which I have just described as adopted by the national party.

Some of the bishops, taking the initiative, had sent a paper to Count
Lambert, which he had refused to receive, while in another way the
business about petitions signed at the elections had got wind, and had
occasioned the greatest uneasiness, above all, in St. Petersburg.

This was, moreover, the very moment at which the disturbances among the
students had broken out in Russia. Such a complication of symptoms in
the political world terrified the government, and a state of siege was
proclaimed; certainly, less with the view of interrupting the Kosciusko
fête than of stifling the petitions which were to be presented four
days later. Once more the face of affairs was altered; from having
been a matter of politics and of legal claims, it went back to the old
dramatic aspect, and the scenes of October 15th were a new tragedy. The
era of reaction had recommenced, and this reaction swept everything
before it.

Of the many heavy days which had succeeded each other, the morning of
October 15th was perhaps the saddest that ever dawned. From an early
hour the populace had crowded into the churches, to take part in the
funeral services which invoked and hallowed the memory of Kosciusko.
The troops, employed in the military occupation of the town, offered
no hindrance to the faithful at the doors of the sacred edifices; and
it was not till the churches were filled, that the army had orders to
surround them. From some of the buildings escape would have been easy,
and these were the last to be encircled. The cathedral of St. John and
the church of the Bernardines had the honour of being really besieged;
while at the same time hordes of Cossacks, spread all over Warsaw,
committed every sort of excess, and spared neither the women nor the
strangers within the gates. An Englishman (Mr. George Mitchell) was a
sufferer and an eye-witness of this day’s work, and he wrote, ‘troops
of infuriated Cossacks and Circassians swept the streets, and they cut
down men and women without any distinction whatever. They entered into
the dwellings, they maltreated the inhabitants, and they sacked the
houses.’

When the order was given to surround the churches, it had most
certainly not been anticipated that the crowd would embrace the strange
resolution of refusing to quit them as long as the troops were on the
ground, and that it would be necessary to drive them out. Thus, one
rash and ill-considered resolution led, a little later, to the most
disastrous consequences. During the whole day things continued on this
wise; the crowd was in the churches, breathless, excited, hungry, but
unalterable; and still the soldiers camped before the doors. At eight
o’clock in the evening, a General appeared, and he offered pardon to
the crowd, if they would surrender at the mercy of the Lieutenant of
the Kingdom. The reply was, that the people knew what mercy meant, and
that as long as the troops were not withdrawn they should not stir.
Tapers were now lit round the catafalque which had been reared the
night before for the late archbishop, and hymns were chanted from time
to time.

At two o’clock in the morning a new envoy came to parley with the
multitude, who answered as before, that they did not ask for pardon.
Two long mortal hours now passed away, when at seven o’clock, that is
to say, after a siege of seventeen hours, the soldiers were ordered
to force their way into the churches and to drive out the occupants.
More than two thousand persons were seized, and carried to the citadel.
But this was not all; and here again appears that fatality which I
have said attended upon the Russian officials. Count Lambert, it would
appear, had in no way anticipated or intended either this invasion
of the churches or these wholesale arrests. Both had been executed
in obedience to the commands of General Gerstenzweig, the Chief of
the state of siege, and thence arose an altercation between the two
generals, which was tragical enough in its close. Count Lambert
vehemently reproached Gerstenzweig for all the horrors of the day, and
Gerstenzweig retorted with equal violence. What next? It seems a fact
no longer to be doubted, that General Gerstenzweig then took a pistol,
and blew out his brains, while Count Lambert quitted Warsaw without any
warning.

The results of the scene which was played out on the 15th of October
were soon felt. The administrator of the diocese ordered all the
churches in Warsaw to be closed, and the leaders of the other religious
bodies soon followed his example; for the same thing was done by the
grand rabbi, and by the head of the Protestant Church. For the last
year, every school in Poland had been locked, and the theatres were in
a like case; and it was now the turn of the churches to be shut.

Thus and then did Russia inaugurate a new period of reaction, which has
not yet come to an end (April 1862).

Of a drama which has lasted for a whole year, we behold the sad
and eventful epilogue. And yet all that happened on the 15th of
October, bad as it was, was simply a revision of all that had gone
before--of all the punishments which, since February 1861, had been
indiscriminately applied by martial law to all classes, all religions,
and all professions. Let us see, whom do we find, among this crowd of
men, punished, deported, or confined in prisons?

There is M. Szlenker, the Provost of the Merchants of Warsaw, himself
the richest and the most honourable merchant of the kingdom.

There is M. Hiszpanski, the head of the Shoemakers’ Guild (the grandson
of that Kilinski who was so loved and influential in Warsaw), a member
of the delegation formed in 1861, and elected, in September of that
same year, a member of the Municipal Council.

Poles who, by reason of the amnesty, had returned from Siberia have
since been sent back, ‘by way of precaution’--so run the terms of their
sentence; and of this number is M. Ehrenberg, the celebrated poet, and
M. Krajewski, one of our most eminent critics, the most moderate and
sensible of writers, the author of the translation of ‘Faust.’

An immense number of students and artizans have been sent to the
Caucasus and to Orenbourg. The Grand-Rabbi Meiselz, and the Rabbis
Kramstuk and Jastrow have been expelled; and Otho, the Evangelical
pastor, has been sentenced to deportation. The Chapter of Warsaw alone
has lost ten of its members, among whom the most conspicuous were M.
Stecki and the Canon Wyszinski, from whom General Lambert once asked
for memoranda. Last and worst, have we not seen M. Bialobozeski, the
very Administrator of the diocese of Warsaw, an old man of eighty years
of age, condemned to death because, after the 15th of October, he
ordered all the churches to be shut. By way of favour, his sentence was
commuted to imprisonment in a fortress, where he languished, and where
his character was aspersed by the publication of a retractation. If we
can ever suppose it to have been made by the victim himself, it only
renders his sentence of death more inexplicable than it had been before.

On seeing such a multitude of punishments, it is not unnatural for the
reader to inquire, what are the crimes and the offences of which they
are the reward? In the government publications, and in the sentences
of the sufferers, he who runs may read, that they were awarded for
prayers, hymns, processions, for doubtful gestures made when perusing
official handbills, and for wearing national emblems and black clothes.
Only (and this is perfectly true) they were so inflicted because under
songs, prayers, and mournful apparel, there lay the soul of a people,
of a whole nation, which has been saddened by excess of tyranny, which
has been terribly tried, but which, even now, is not disheartened.

At this period of agitation in Europe, when new problems complicate her
political life, the true importance of the events of the last year must
be seen to lie in their suddenness, and in the fact that Poland is not
discouraged. Judge of the last twelve months as we may, we cannot but
allow that they have shown us a people which, though often stricken,
is again on foot (though _how_ this is so we cannot tell); that this
nation has found within itself the secret of an indestructible life;
and that, so far from being dead, she lives with a new and more
abundant vitality.

The drama which has been enacted before us, coloured, though it may
be, by the tender and excited imagination of her sons, and, at times,
seeming more like a legend than a page of history, cannot be mistaken
for the convulsions of a nationality that is dying, and which, in
expiring, utters one last and piercing cry. It is the expression of
a force which, during thirty years, has been purified, tempered,
and trained afresh, and which now appears to prove itself at once
passionate and calm.

What are the signs by which any true nationality is to be recognised?
Must a nationality have genius, intelligence, and true imagination?
Then Poland, during the last hundred years, has had a legion of
poets, all singularly gifted and inspired, and she still possesses
a flourishing and varied literature; for her language has remained,
although she has not had the freedom of her schools. Is the love of
the past and its traditions required? Then that feeling has been both
evident and rampant for the last year. Must there be originality of
life and manners? Polish manners have preserved all the savour of
their nationality, and, most assuredly, have not been influenced by
Russia. Is it by unity among all classes, and by social peace, that
a nationality approves its integrity and its strength? The present
movement has demonstrated precisely that there is a unity, a fusion
of all classes, and that this fusion is sealed by the abolition of
the last traces of serfdom, by the definitive acquisition of property
by the peasants--a measure which the landlords themselves favoured in
a practical and liberal manner; for if, in this agitation, we have
seen only its moving and dramatic externals, we must not forget that
under all this passion lies a spirit of political sagacity, which is
patent, and which has been enlightened by all the faults, and by all
the history of the past. Lastly, is religion one of the signs of a
truly deeply-living nationality? In this Polish awakening, religion
has been prominent, showing itself in the hymns of a people which
assembles and takes refuge in churches. I have no doubt but that, by
some great democrats, Poland is suspected on account of her religious
fidelity. Men of this stamp do not see that there is something in
suffering which opens the sources of religious feeling, till they
rise to passionate mysticism. Moreover, in a country like Poland, the
Church is the only organised power--the only body which has its own
laws and independence. Catholicism is truly one of the shapes of Polish
nationality; only, into her Catholicism a great sense of toleration is
now admitted; and we have seen priests, bishops, rabbis and Protestant
pastors, all joined in the same manifestations, and suffering under
the same measures of repression. Thus, Polish Catholicism realises
the phenomenon, unhappily so rare, of a profound and intimate alliance
between religion and all the instincts of liberty and nationality.
Thus, also, this union renders Polish agitation something very
different from any of those ephemeral fevers of revolution which give
way before sharp measures of suppression.

For the same reason, the Polish problem remains a threatening one to
Russia; for it engages Russia in a conflict as ungrateful as it is
impotent. It compromises her in the eyes of Europe; it occupies her
politicians, and it lies a weight upon her own internal developement. I
do not know what is to happen; no one, indeed, can tell. She may again
be stern, or again she may relent in her rule; but the problem is the
same, and, without any compensation to set it off, it becomes more and
more serious in the empire of Tzars. Doubtless, when, a hundred years
ago, Russia, realising the dream of Peter the Great, marched upon
Poland, rent it, and carried off its spoils, she then violated all the
principles of justice; but she had a reason for it. She wished to draw
towards the West, and, through her western possessions, to enter among
European affairs. But everything has changed since then. Does Russia
now require Poland to give her a place in the world, and among European
powers? Russia now approaches the western world, less by her presence
at Warsaw, than by that multiplicity of communications, that mixture
of interests and ideas, and by those iron lines which, bringing all
countries together, have made distances disappear. And what happens now?

This: that in order to maintain a supremacy, which is always
precarious, and always contested (because lawful wishes have not been
responded to), Russia is obliged to compromise her whole policy. At
every turn, in each combination or alliance, she is tied and bound,
because evermore between her and those who might be her allies, there
rises the phantom of Poland. But not only is her external policy
hampered and entangled, but her internal rule is affected by the
necessity for incessant tyranny. The great Lord Chatham once said, ‘If
the English government subjects America to a despotic rule, so surely
will England herself be obliged to submit to it.’ And herein exactly
lies the bond which connects Polish agitation with those liberal
aspirations which at the present time appear in Russia. It is no longer
a secret that throughout all classes of Russian society sentiments of
sympathy with Poland are being rapidly propagated, and that Russians
begin to foresee, without disturbing themselves, that a separation of
the two countries is really possible. A newspaper, which is published
secretly in St. Petersburg, the _Welicorus_, expressed this very
distinctly not long ago. ‘In order to maintain our rule in Poland, we
are obliged to keep there a supplementary force of 200,000 men, and
annually to disburse 40,000,000 of our money over and above those
revenues which we draw from Poland. Now, our finances will never be
better as long as we squander our resources in this way.... We must let
Poland go, in order to save ourselves from destruction.... We can no
longer conquer Poland, as in the time of Paskievitch, because there are
now no internal discords in Poland; and in spite of the efforts of our
government to sow division between the two classes, her patriots have
consented to deprive themselves of a part of their own estates, and
have settled them on the peasants.... For us Russians, it is a question
whether we are to wait till we are ignominiously expelled from Poland,
which, self-emancipated, will be our enemy, or whether we will be wise
enough voluntarily to renounce a ruinous ascendency, and thus make the
Poles faithful friends of Russia.’ Such is in very truth the question
now in agitation; and Europe looks on attentively.

And as regards Europe herself, we must say, that this question of the
relations of Russia with Poland, after the terrible drama of last
year, is by no means an indifferent matter. The western world is at
present passing through one of those crises, during which everything
is experienced, where everything is renewed, and everything alters
in appearance. That which forty years ago was called the order of
Europe no longer exists; nor have the peoples alone violated it. The
governments themselves have so far lent a hand to the work, that,
piece by piece, the fabric has fallen away.

The public order of 1815 is on the eve of disappearing, and what
may be the new order which shall be brought forth by the labours of
to-day assuredly no one can tell; but simply because we live at a time
in which everything is recast, and re-elaborated, it is our first
and best interest to watch the elements of this vast and universal
movement, and carefully to consider every serious manifestation of
the conscience of the nations. We must notice what dies and what
lives. Russia, it has been said, ‘has a certain fear of the opinions
of Europe.’ This opinion, most surely, has nothing in it hostile to
Russia. On the contrary, Europe cannot but feel an interest in such
labours as the emancipation of the serfs, of which the initiative
was taken by the Emperor Alexander II., as also in that liberal work
which is at present, day by day, evidently pursued in the heart of
the Russian nation; but not the less, at the same time, is the eye
of Europe upon that black spot at Warsaw. She sees and weighs both
faults and misfortunes, and she says to herself, that, if faults have
consequences, which follow them inevitably, there is not the less a
fixed limit to a people’s misfortunes, and to a nation’s pangs.


PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON.



Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation and some inconsistencies in spellings of
proper nouns have been fixed.

Page 6: “whereas our cotemporary” changed to “whereas our contemporary”

Page 114: “the Basilian convent” changed to “the Basilican convent”



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