and I was still sitting verv quietly in thP ante>-room with the incPndiariPs. First one and then anotlwr of them was sent for.
thP policP ran backwards and forwards, chains clanked. and tlw sold iPrs wPre so hore>d that tlwy rattl ed their rifle>s and did armsdrill. About orw o'clock Tsynsky arl"ived, sooty and grimy, and lmrriPd stra ight through to his study without stopping. Half an hour pa ss!'d and my poli ce>man was sent for: he> came> hack looking palP and out of countenancP, with his face twitching convuls i n•lv. Tsvnsky poked his head out of the door after him and said:
'Tiw whole commission has been waiting for you all the Pwning, l\lonsieur HPrzen ; this blockhead brought you her£'
wlwn you wPre wnnted at Prince Goli tsyn's. I am very sorry you haw had to wait lwre so long. but it is not my fault. Wha t is one to do \vi th surh subord inates? I bPliPw hr has been fifty years in the sPrvice nnd lw is still an id iot. Come. lw off home now.' he addP(L changing to a much ruder tonP as he addre>ssed the pol icPman.
Tiw l i ttle man rPp(•atPd all the way:
'0 Lord. what n ralnmin· 1 a man hns no thought, no notion what \viii ha ppPII to him. l iP will he the dPath of me now. He wouldn't ra rl' a hit if vou had not bN•n expPCtPd tlwrP. hu t sinrP
vou \\'PrP of roursP it is a disgrace to him. 0 Lord. how unluck y ! '
I forgave him m y wine. pnrtiwlarly wlwn h e told mP thnt hP
llild not !wen nParly so frightPnPd when lw had hePn almost
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drowned ncar Lisbon as he was now. This last circumstance was so unexpected that I was overcome with senseless laughter.
'Good lord, how very strange! Hov...-ever did you get to Lisbon?'
The old man had been a ship's officer for twenty-five years or so. One cannot but agree with the minister who assured Captain Kopeykin1 that: 'It has never happened yet among us in Russia that a man \vho has deserved well of his country should be left a reward of some sort.' Fate had saved him a t Lisbon only to be abused by Tsynsky like a boy, after forty years' service.
He was scarcely to blame, either.
The commission of inquiry formed by the Governor-General did not please the Tsar; he appointed a new one presided over by Prince Sergey Mikhaylovich Golitsyn. The members of this commission were Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, the other Prince Golitsyn, Shubinsky, a colonel of gendarmes, and Oransky, an ex-auditor.
In the instructions from the oberpolitsmc!-sicr nothing was said about the commission's having been changed ; it was very natural that the policeman from Lisbon took me to Tsynsky . . . .
There \vas great alarm at the police station, too; there had bePn thrPe fires in one eHning-and the commission had sent twice to inquire what had become of me, and whether I had not escaped. Anything that Tsynsky hnd left unsnid in his abuse the police station superintendent mnde up now to the man from Lisbon; which, indeed, wns only to be expcctPd, since the superintendent \YilS himsdf pnrtly to blame, not having inquired where I was to lw sent. In a corner of the office someone was lying on somP chairs, gronning; I lookPd: it was a young man of hnndsome nppPnrnncc, Il<'atly dressed, who was spitting blood and sighing. The police doctor advised his being taken to the hospital as early as possiblP in the morning.
'Vhen the non-commissioned offic<'r took me to my room, I
<'Xtracted from him thP story of th<' wounded man. He was an exofficer of thP Guards, who had an intrigue with some '"!laidservant nne! had been with her when a wing of the house caught fire. This was the time of the greatest fright over arson; indeed, not a dny passed without my hef!ring the bell ring the alarm three or four times : from m:• windo·w I saw the glare of two or thrf'e fires <'Very nip;ht. Th<' police and the residents sought for the incendinries with great persistence. To avoid compromising the girl the officer climbed over the fence as soon ns the alarm I See Gogol's Dead Souls. ( Tr.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
1 42
was sounded, and hid in the stable of the next house, waiting for an opportunity to get away. A little girl who was in the yard saw him and told the first policeman who galloped up tha t the incendiary had hidden in the stable; they rushed in with a crowd of people and dragged the officer out in triumph. He was so thoroughly knocked about that he died next morning.
The people who had been captured began to be sorted out; a bout half were released, the others detained on suspicion. The politsmc;-stcr, Bryanchaninov, used to come over every morning and cross-examine them for three or four hours. Sometimes the victims were thrashed or beaten; then their wailing, screams, entreaties and howls, and the moaning of women reached me, together with the harsh voice of the politsmcystcr and the monotonous reading of the clerk. It was awful, intolerable. At night I dreamed of those sounds and woke in a frenzy at the thought that the victims were lying on straw only a few paces from me, in chains, with lacerated >Votmds on their backs, and in a ll probability quite innocent.
To know what the Russian prisons, the Russian lawcourts and the Russian police are like, one must be a peasant, a house-serf, an artisan or a town workman. Political prisoners, who for the most part belong to the upper class, are kept in close custody and punished savagely, but their fate bears no comparison with the fate of the poor. \\'ith them the police do not stand on ceremony.
To \Yhom can the peasant or the workman go afterwards to complainJ Where can he find justice?
So terrible is the confusion, the brutality, the arbitrariness and the corruption of Russian justice and of the Russian police tha t a man of the humbler class who falls into the hands of the law is more afraid of the process of law itself than of any legal punishment. He looks forward with impatience to the time when he will be sent to Siberi a ; his martyrdom ends with the beginning of his punishment. And now let us remember that three-quarters of the people taken up by the police on suspicion are released by the courts, and that they have passed through the same tortures as the guilty.
Peter III abolish(•cl torture and the Secret Chamber.
Catherine II abolished torture.
AlPxancler I abolistwd it agairz.
Answers given 'under intimidation' are not recognised by law.
Th e official who tortun•s an accused man renders himself liable to trial and severe punishment.
And yet all over Russia, from the Bering Straits to Taurogen,
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men are tortured ; where it is dangerous to torture by flogging, they are tortured by insufferable heat, thirst, and salted food. In Moscow the police put an accused prisoner with bare feet on a metal floor at a temperature of ten degrees of frost; he sickened, and died in a hospital which was under the supervision of Prince Meshchersky, who told the story with indignation. The government knows all this, the governors conceal it, the Senate connives at it, the ministers say nothing; the Tsar, and the synod, the landowners and the police all agree with Selifan:2 'Why riot thrash a peasant? A peasant sometimes needs a thrashing!'