'Pour your tobacco out on the table,' said the officer who was desole.
In my tobacco pouch I had a penknife and a pencil wrapped up in paper; from the very beginning I had been thinking about them and, as I talked to the officer, I played with the tobacco pouch, until I got the pPnkife into my hand. I hPld it through the material of the pouch, and boldly shook the tobacco out on the table. The gendarme poured it in again. The penknife and pencil wert' savPd ; so there was a lesson for the gendarme with the aiguillette for his proud disdain of the ordinary police.
This incident put me in the best of humours and I began gaily scrutinising my new domain.
Some of the monks' cells, built three hundred years before and sunk into the earth, had been turned into secular cells for political prisoners.
In my room there was a bedstead without a mattress, and a little table, with a jug of water on it, and a chair beside it. A thin tallow candle was burning in a big copper candlestick. The damp and cold pierced to one's bones; the officer ordered the stove to bf' lit, and then they all went away. A soldier promised to bring some hay; meanwhile, putting my greatcoat under my head, I lay down on the bare bedstead and lit my pipe.
A minute later I noticrd that the ceiling was covered with
'Prussian' beetlrs. They had seen no candle for a long time and were running from all directions to where the light fell, bustling about, jostling each other, falling on to the table, and then racing headlong, backwards and forwards, along the edge of it.
I dislikrd black beetles, as I did every sort of uninvited guest; my neighbours seemed to me horribly nasty, but there was nothing to be done: I could not begin by complaining about the black beetles and my nC'rves had to submit. Two or three days later, however, all the 'Prussians' had moved beyond the partition to the soldier's room, where it was warmer; only occasionally a stray beetle would sometimes run in, prick up his whiskers and scurry back to get warm.
Though I continually asked the gendarme, he still kept the stove closed. I began to feel unwell and giddy; I tried to get up
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and knock for the soldier; I did actually get up, but with this all that I remember comes to an end . . . .
When I came to myself I was lying on the floor with a splitting head ache. A tall grey-haired gendarme was standing with his arms folded, staring at me blankly, as in the well known bronze statuettes a dog stares at a tortoise.
'You have been finely suffocated, your honour,' he said, seeing that I had recovered consciousness. 'I've brought you horseradish with salt and kvas; I have already made you sniff it, now you must drink it up.'
I drank it, he lifted me up and laid me on the bed. I felt very ill ; there \vere double \vindo,,.,·s and no pane in them that opened; the soldier went to the office to ask permission for me to go into the yard ; the officer on duty told him to say that neither the colonel nor the adjutant was there, and that he could not take the responsibility. I had to remain in the room full of charcoal fumes.
I got used even to the Krutitsky Barracks, conjugating the Italian verbs and reading some wretched little books. At first my confinement was rather strict: at nine o'clock in the evening, at the last note of the bugle, a soldier came into my room, put out the candle and locked the door. From nine o'clock in the evening until eight next morning I had to remain in darkness. I have never been a great sleeper, and in prison, where I had no exercise, four hours' sleep was quite enough for me; and not to have a candle was a real punishment. Moreover, every quarter of an hour from each end of the corridor the sentries uttered a loud, prolonged shout, to show that they were awake.
A few weeks latt•r Colonel Semenov (brother of the celebrated actress, afterwards Princess Gagarin) allowed them to leave me a candle, forbade anything to be hung over the window, which was below the levd of the courtyard, so that the sentry could see everything that was being done in the cell, and gave orders that the sentries should not shout in the corridor.
Then the commandant gave us permission to have ink and to walk in the courtyard. Paper was given in a fixed amount on condition that none of the leaves should be torn. I was allowed once in twenty-four hours to walk, accompanied by a soldier and the officer on duty, in the yard, ,..-hich was enclosed by a fence and surrounded by a cordon of sentries.
Life passed quietly and monotonously; the military punctuality gave it a mechanical regularity like the ccesura in verse. I n the morning, with the assistance o f the gendarme, I prepared
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coffee on the stove; about ten o'clock the officer on duty appea!"ed in gauntlets with enormous cuffs, in a helmet and a greatcoat, clanking his sabre and bringing in \Vith him several cubic feet of frost. At one the gendarme brought a dirty napkin and a bowl of soup, 'vhich he always heid by the edge, so that his two thumbs were perceptibly cleaner than his fingers. vVe were tolerably well fed, but it must not bP forgotten that we \vere charged two paper roubles a day for our keep, which in the course of nine months' imprisonment ran up to a considerable sum for persons of no means. The father of one prisoner said quite simply that he had no money: he received the cool reply that it would be stopped out of his salary. If he had not been receiving a salary, it is extremely probable that he \vould have been put in prison.
I ought to add that a rouble and a half was sent to Colonel Semi.;nov at the barracks for our board from the commandant's office. There was almost a row about this; but the adjutants, who got the berwfit of it, presented the gendarmes' division with boxes for first performances and benefit nights, and with that the matter ended.
After sunset there followed a complete stillness, which was not disturbed at all by the footsteps of the soldier crunching over the snow just outside the window, nor by the far-away calls of the sentries. As a rule I read until one o'clock and then put out my candle. Sleep carried me into freedom; sometimes it seemed as though I woke up feeling-ough, what horrible dreams I have had-prison and gendarmes-and I would rejoice that it was all a dream; and then there would suddenly be the clank of a sabre in the corridor, or the officer on duty would open the door, accompaniHI by a soldier with a lantern, or the sentry would shout in a voice that did not sound human, '\\'ho goes there?' or a bugle under my very window would rend the morning air with its shrill reveille . . . .
In moments of dullness, when I was disinclined to read, I would talk with the p;endarmes who guarded me, particularly with the old fellow who had looked after me when I was overcome by the charcoal fumes. The colonel used. as a sign of favour, to free his old soldiers from regular discipline, and detach them for the easy duty of guarding a prisoner; a corporal, who was a spy and a rogue, was set o,·er them. Five or six gPmlarmes mnde up the whole staff.
The old man, of \vhom I am speaking, was a simple, goodhearted creature, devotedly grateful for any kind action, of which he had probably not had many in his life. He had been in the campaign of 1 8 1 2 and his clwst was con•rPd \vith medals; he