Bab Bab 3 · THE DEAD-HOUSE

Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Looking

through the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeing

something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high

earthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day

sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first,

that whole years will pass during which one will see by the same

crevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the same

sentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the

prison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, two

hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by an

irregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into the

earth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one side

of the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watched

perpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convicts

go out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life of

free people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world,

fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, there

was no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were all

precisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this corner

that I undertake to describe.

On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On each

side of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, made

of trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts’

barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes.

At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as a

kitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building,

which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of the

enclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisoners

are drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and must

answer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several times

in the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious and

clever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildings

there remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisoners

who are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk about

when they are not at work. There they go turning over their favourite

thoughts, shielded from all observation.

When I met them during those walks of theirs, I took pleasure in

observing their sad, deeply-marked countenances, and in guessing their

thoughts. The favourite occupation of one of the convicts, during the

moments of liberty left to him from his hard labour, was to count the

palisades. There were fifteen hundred of them. He had counted them all,

and knew them nearly by heart. Every one of them represented to him a

day of confinement; but, counting them daily in this manner, he knew

exactly the number of days that he had still to pass in the prison. He

was sincerely happy when he had finished one side of the hexagon; yet he

had to wait for his liberation many long years. But one learns patience

in a prison.

One day I saw a prisoner, who had undergone his punishment, take leave

of his comrades. He had had twenty years’ hard labour. More than one

convict remembered seeing him arrive, quite young, careless, thinking

neither of his crime nor of his punishment. He was now an old man with

gray hairs, with a sad and morose countenance. He walked in silence

through our six barracks. When he entered each of them he prayed before

the holy image, made a deep bow to his former companions, and begged

them not to keep a bad recollection of him.

I also remember one evening, a prisoner, who had been formerly a

well-to-do Siberian peasant, so called. Six years before he had had news

of his wife’s remarrying, which had caused him great pain. That very

evening she had come to the prison, and had asked for him in order to

make him a present! They talked together for two minutes, wept together,

and then separated never to meet again. I saw the expression of this

prisoner’s countenance when he re-entered the barracks. There, indeed,

one learns to support everything.

When darkness set in we had to re-enter the barrack, where we were shut

up for all the night. It was always painful for me to leave the

court-yard for the barrack. Think of a long, low, stifling room,

scarcely lighted by tallow candles, and full of heavy and disgusting

odours. I cannot now understand how I lived there for ten entire years.

My camp bedstead was made of three boards. This was the only place in

the room that belonged to me. In one single room we herded together,

more than thirty men. It was, above all, no wonder that we were shut up

early. Four hours at least passed before every one was asleep, and,

until then, there was a tumult and uproar of laughter, oaths, rattling

of chains, a poisonous vapour of thick smoke; a confusion of shaved

heads, stigmatised foreheads, and ragged clothes disgustingly filthy.

Yes, man is a pliable animal--he must be so defined--a being who gets

accustomed to everything! That would be, perhaps, the best definition

that could be given of him. There were altogether two hundred and fifty

of us in the same prison. This number was almost invariably the same.

Whenever some of them had undergone their punishment, other criminals

arrived, and a few of them died. Among them there were all sorts of

people. I believe that each region of Russia had furnished its

representatives. There were foreigners there, and even mountaineers from

the Caucasus.

All these people were divided into different classes, according to the

importance of the crime; and consequently the duration of the punishment

for the crime, whatever it might be, was there represented. The

population of the prison was composed for the most part of men condemned

to hard labour of the civil class--“strongly condemned,” as the

prisoners used to say. They were criminals deprived of all civil rights,

men rejected by society, vomited forth by it, and whose faces were

marked by the iron to testify eternally to their disgrace. They were

incarcerated for different periods of time, varying from eight to ten

years. At the expiration of their punishment they were sent to the

Siberian districts in the character of colonists.

As to the criminals of the military section, they were not deprived of

their civil rights--as is generally the case in Russian disciplinary

companies--but were punished for a relatively short period. As soon as

they had undergone their punishment they had to return to the place

whence they had come, and became soldiers in the battalions of the

Siberian Line.[1]

Many of them came back to us afterwards, for serious crimes, this time

not for a small number of years, but for twenty at least. They then

formed part of the section called “for perpetuity.” Nevertheless, the

perpetuals were not deprived of their right. There was another section

sufficiently numerous, composed of the worst malefactors, nearly all

veterans in crime, and which was called the special section. There were

sent convicts from all the Russias. They looked upon one another with

reason as imprisoned for ever, for the term of their confinement had not

been indicated. The law required them to receive double and treble

tasks. They remained in prison until work of the most painful character

had to be undertaken in Siberia.

“You are only here for a fixed time,” they said to the other convicts;

“we, on the contrary, are here for all our life.”

I have heard that this section has since been abolished. At the same

time, civil convicts are kept apart, in order that the military convicts

may be organised by themselves into a homogeneous “disciplinary

company.” The administration, too, has naturally been changed;

consequently what I describe are the customs and practices of another

time, and of things which have since been abolished. Yes, it was a long

time ago; it seems to me that it is all a dream. I remember entering the

convict prison one December evening, as night was falling. The convicts

were returning from work. The roll-call was about to be made. An under

officer with large moustaches opened to me the gate of this strange

house, where I was to remain so many years, to endure so many emotions,

and of which I could not form even an approximate idea, if I had not

gone through them. Thus, for example, could I ever have imagined the

poignant and terrible suffering of never being alone even for one minute

during ten years? Working under escort in the barracks together with two

hundred “companions;” never alone, never!

However, I was obliged to get accustomed to it. Among them there were

murderers by imprudence, and murderers by profession, simple thieves,

masters in the art of finding money in the pockets of the passers-by, or

of wiping off no matter what from the table. It would have been

difficult, however, to say why and how certain prisoners found

themselves among the convicts. Each of them had his history, confused

and heavy, painful as the morning after a debauch.

The convicts, as a rule, spoke very little of their past life, which

they did not like to think of. They endeavoured, even, to dismiss it

from their memory.

Amongst my companions of the chain I have known murderers who were so

gay and so free from care, that one might have made a bet that their

conscience never made them the least reproach. But there were also men

of sombre countenance who remained almost always silent. It was very

rarely any one told his history. This sort of thing was not the fashion.

Let us say at once that it was not received. Sometimes, however, from

time to time, for the sake of change, a prisoner used to tell his life

to another prisoner, who would listen coldly to the narrative. No one,

to tell the truth, could have said anything to astonish his neighbour.

“We are not ignoramuses,” they would sometimes say with singular pride.

I remember one day a ruffian who had got drunk--it was sometimes

possible for the convicts to get drink--relating how he had killed and

cut up a child of five. He had first tempted the child with a plaything,

and then taking it to a loft, had cut it up to pieces. The entire

barrack, which, generally speaking, laughed at his jokes, uttered one

unanimous cry. The ruffian was obliged to be silent. But if the convicts

had interrupted him, it was not by any means because his recital had

caused their indignation, but because it was not allowed to speak of

such things.

I must here observe that the convicts possessed a certain degree of

instruction. Half of them, if not more, knew how to read and write.

Where in Russia, in no matter what population, could two hundred and

fifty men be found able to read and write? Later on I have heard people

say, and conclude on the strength of these abuses, that education

demoralises the people. This is a mistake. Education has nothing

whatever to do with moral deterioration. It must be admitted,

nevertheless, that it develops a resolute spirit among the people. But

this is far from being a defect.

Each section had a different costume. The uniform of one was a cloth

vest, half brown and half gray, and trousers with one leg brown, the

other gray. One day while we were at work, a little girl who sold scones

of white bread came towards the convicts. She looked at them for a time

and then burst into a laugh. “Oh, how ugly they are!” she cried; “they

have not even enough gray cloth or brown cloth to make their clothes.”

Every convict wore a vest made of gray cloth, except the sleeves, which

were brown. Their heads, too, were shaved in different styles. The

crown was bared sometimes longitudinally, sometimes latitudinally, from

the nape of the neck to the forehead, or from one ear to another.

This strange family had a general likeness so pronounced that it could

be recognised at a glance.

Even the most striking personalities, those who dominated involuntarily

the other convicts, could not help taking the general tone of the house.

Of the convicts--with the exception of a few who enjoyed childish

gaiety, and who by that alone drew upon themselves general contempt--all

the convicts were morose, envious, frightfully vain, presumptuous,

susceptible, and excessively ceremonious. To be astonished at nothing

was in their eyes the first and indispensable quality. Accordingly,

their first aim was to bear themselves with dignity. But often the most

composed demeanour gave way with the rapidity of lightning. With the

basest humility some, however, possessed genuine strength; these were

naturally all sincere. But strangely enough, they were for the most part

excessively and morbidly vain. Vanity was always their salient quality.

The majority of the prisoners were depraved and perverted, so that

calumnies and scandal rained amongst them like hail. Our life was a

constant hell, a perpetual damnation; but no one would have dared to

raise a voice against the internal regulations of the prison, or against

established usages. Accordingly, willingly or unwillingly, they had to

be submitted to. Certain indomitable characters yielded with difficulty,

but they yielded all the same. Prisoners who when at liberty had gone

beyond all measure, who, urged by their over-excited vanity, had

committed frightful crimes unconsciously, as if in a delirium, and had

been the terror of entire towns, were put down in a very short time by

the system of our prison. The “new man,” when he began to reconnoitre,

soon found that he could astonish no one, and insensibly he submitted,

took the general tone, and assumed a sort of personal dignity which

almost every convict maintained, just as if the denomination of convict

had been a title of honour. Not the least sign of shame or of

repentance, but a kind of external submission which seemed to have been

reasoned out as the line of conduct to be pursued. “We are lost men,”

they said to themselves. “We were unable to live in liberty; we must now

go to Green Street.”[2]

“You would not obey your father and mother; you will now obey thongs of

leather.” “The man who would not sow must now break stones.”

These things were said, and repeated in the way of morality, as

sentences and proverbs, but without any one taking them seriously. They

were but words in the air. There was not one man among them who admitted

his iniquity. Let a stranger not a convict endeavour to reproach him

with his crime, and the insults directed against him would be endless.

And how refined are convicts in the matter of insults! They insult

delicately, like artists; insult with the most delicate science. They

endeavour not so much to offend by the expression as by the meaning, the

spirit of an envenomed phrase. Their incessant quarrels developed

greatly this special art.

As they only worked under the threat of an immense stick, they were idle

and depraved. Those who were not already corrupt when they arrived at

the convict establishment, became perverted very soon. Brought together

in spite of themselves, they were perfect strangers to one another. “The

devil has worn out three pairs of sandals before he got us together,”

they would say. Intrigues, calumnies, scandal of all kinds, envy, and

hatred reigned above everything else. In this life of sloth, no ordinary

spiteful tongue could make head against these murderers, with insults

constantly in their mouths.

As I said before, there were found among them men of open character,

resolute, intrepid, accustomed to self-command. These were held

involuntarily in esteem. Although they were very jealous of their

reputation, they endeavoured to annoy no one, and never insulted one

another without a motive. Their conduct was on all points full of

dignity. They were rational, and almost always obedient, not by

principle, or from any respect for duty, but as if in virtue of a mutual

convention between themselves and the administration--a convention of

which the advantages were plain enough.

The officials, moreover, behaved prudently towards them. I remember that

one prisoner of the resolute and intrepid class, known to possess the

instincts of a wild beast, was summoned one day to be whipped. It was

during the summer, no work was being done. The Adjutant, the direct and

immediate chief of the convict prison, was in the orderly-room, by the

side of the principal entrance, ready to assist at the punishment. This

Major was a fatal being for the prisoners, whom he had brought to such a

state that they trembled before him. Severe to the point of insanity,

“he threw himself upon them,” to use their expression. But it was above

all that his look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, was feared. It was

impossible to conceal anything from him. He saw, so to say, without

looking. On entering the prison, he knew at once what was being done.

Accordingly, the convicts, one and all, called him the man with the

eight eyes. His system was bad, for it had the effect of irritating men

who were already irascible. But for the Commandant, a well-bred and

reasonable man, who moderated the savage onslaughts of the Major, the

latter would have caused sad misfortunes by his bad administration. I do

not understand how he managed to retire from the service safe and sound.

It is true that he left after being called before a court-martial.

The prisoner turned pale when he was called; generally speaking, he lay

down courageously, and without uttering a word, to receive the terrible

rods, after which he got up and shook himself. He bore the misfortune

calmly, philosophically, it is true, though he was never punished

carelessly, nor without all sorts of precautions. But this time he

considered himself innocent. He turned pale, and as he walked quietly

towards the escort of soldiers he managed to conceal in his sleeve a

shoemaker’s awl. The prisoners were severely forbidden to carry sharp

instruments about them. Examinations were frequently, minutely, and

unexpectedly made, and all infractions of the rule were severely

punished. But as it is difficult to take away from the criminal what he

is determined to conceal, and as, moreover, sharp instruments are

necessarily used in the prison, they were never destroyed. If the

official succeeded in taking them away from the convicts, the latter

procured new ones very soon.

On the occasion in question, all the convicts had now thrown themselves

against the palisade, with palpitating hearts, to look through the

crevices. It was known that this time Petroff would not allow himself to

be flogged, that the end of the Major had come. But at the critical

moment the latter got into his carriage, and went away, leaving the

direction of the punishment to a subaltern. “God has saved him!” said

the convicts. As for Petroff, he underwent his punishment quietly. Once

the Major had gone, his anger fell. The prisoner is submissive and

obedient to a certain point, but there is a limit which must not be

crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of

disobedience and rage. Often a man who has supported for many years the

most cruel punishment, will revolt for a trifle, for nothing at all. He

might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him.

I have already said that during many years I never remarked the least

sign of repentance, not even the slightest uneasiness with regard to the

crime committed; and that most of the convicts considered neither honour

nor conscience, holding that they had a right to act as they thought

fit. Certainly vanity, evil examples, deceitfulness, and false shame

were responsible for much. On the other hand, who can claim to have

sounded the depths of these hearts, given over to perdition, and to have

found them closed to all light? It would seem all the same that during

so many years I ought to have been able to notice some indication, even

the most fugitive, of some regret, some moral suffering. I positively

saw nothing of the kind. With ready-made opinions one cannot judge of

crime. Its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It

is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any

system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement

only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might

commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but

to develop with these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden

enjoyment, and frightful recalcitrations. On the other hand I am

convinced that the celebrated cellular system gives results which are

specious and deceitful. It deprives a criminal of his force, of his

energy, enervates his soul by weakening and frightening it, and at last

exhibits a dried up mummy as a model of repentance and amendment.

The criminal who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers

himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover,

undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his

own eyes. In spite of different opinions, every one will acknowledge

that there are crimes which everywhere, always, under no matter what

legislation, are beyond discussion crimes, and should be regarded as

such as long as man is man. It is only at the convict prison that I have

heard related, with a childish, unrestrained laugh, the strangest, most

atrocious offences. I shall never forget a certain parricide, formerly a

nobleman and a public functionary. He had given great grief to his

father--a true prodigal son. The old man endeavoured in vain to restrain

him by remonstrance on the fatal slope down which he was sliding. As he

was loaded with debts, and his father was suspected of having, besides

an estate, a sum of ready money, he killed him in order to enter more

quickly into his inheritance. This crime was not discovered until a

month afterwards. During all this time the murderer, who meanwhile had

informed the police of his father’s disappearance, continued his

debauches. At last, during his absence, the police discovered the old

man’s corpse in a drain. The gray head was severed from the trunk, but

replaced in its original position. The body was entirely dressed.

Beneath, as if by derision, the assassin had placed a cushion.

The young man confessed nothing. He was degraded, deprived of his

nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years’ hard labour. As

long as I knew him I always found him to be careless of his position. He

was the most light-minded, inconsiderate man that I ever met, although

he was far from being a fool. I never observed in him any great tendency

to cruelty. The other convicts despised him, not on account of his

crime, of which there was never any question, but because he was without

dignity. He sometimes spoke of his father. One day for instance,

boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, he said: “My

father, for example, until his death was never ill.”

Animal insensibility carried to such a point is most remarkable--it is,

indeed, phenomenal. There must have been in this case an organic defect

in the man, some physical and moral monstrosity unknown hitherto to

science, and not simply crime. I naturally did not believe in so

atrocious a crime; but people of the same town as himself, who knew all

the details of his history, related it to me. The facts were so clear

that it would have been madness not to accept them. The prisoners once

heard him cry out during his sleep: “Hold him! hold him! Cut his head

off, his head, his head!”

Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud, or were delirious in their sleep.

Insults, words of slang, knives, hatchets, seemed constantly present in

their dreams. “We are crushed!” they would say; “we are without

entrails; that is why we shriek in the night.”

Hard labour in our fortress was not an occupation, but an obligation.

The prisoners accomplished their task, they worked the number of hours

fixed by the law, and then returned to the prison. They hated their

liberty. If the convict did not do some work on his own account

voluntarily, it would be impossible for him to support his confinement.

How could these persons, all strongly constituted, who had lived

sumptuously, and desired so to live again, who had been brought

together against their will, after society had cast them up--how could

they live in a normal and natural manner? Man cannot exist without work,

without legal, natural property. Depart from these conditions, and he

becomes perverted and changed into a wild beast. Accordingly, every

convict, through natural requirements and by the instinct of

self-preservation, had a trade--an occupation of some kind.

The long days of summer were taken up almost entirely by our hard

labour. The night was so short that we had only just time to sleep. It

was not the same in winter. According to the regulations, the prisoners

had to be shut up in the barracks at nightfall. What was to be done

during these long, sad evenings but work? Consequently each barrack,

though locked and bolted, assumed the appearance of a large workshop.

The work was not, it is true, strictly forbidden, but it was forbidden

to have tools, without which work is evidently impossible. But we

laboured in secret, and the administration seemed to shut its eyes. Many

prisoners arrived without knowing how to make use of their ten fingers;

but they learnt a trade from some of their companions, and became

excellent workmen.

We had among us cobblers, bootmakers, tailors, masons, locksmiths, and

gilders. A Jew named Esau Boumstein was at the same time a jeweller and

a usurer. Every one worked, and thus gained a few pence--for many orders

came from the town. Money is a tangible resonant liberty, inestimable

for a man entirely deprived of true liberty. If he feels some money in

his pocket, he consoles himself a little, even though he cannot spend

it--but one can always and everywhere spend money, the more so as

forbidden fruit is doubly sweet. One can often buy spirits in the

convict prison. Although pipes are severely forbidden, every one smokes.

Money and tobacco save the convicts from the scurvy, as work saves them

from crime--for without work they would mutually have destroyed one

another like spiders shut up in a close bottle. Work and money were all

the same forbidden. Often during the night severe examinations were

made, during which everything that was not legally authorised was

confiscated. However successfully the little hoards had been concealed,

they were sometimes discovered. That was one of the reasons why they

were not kept very long. They were exchanged as soon as possible for

drink, which explains how it happened that spirits penetrated into the

convict prison. The delinquent was not only deprived of his hoard, but

was also cruelly flogged.

A short time after each examination the convicts procured again the

objects which had been confiscated, and everything went on as before.

The administration knew it; and although the condition of the convicts

was a good deal like that of the inhabitants of Vesuvius, they never

murmured at the punishment inflicted for these peccadilloes. Those who

had no manual skill did business somehow or other. The modes of buying

and selling were original enough. Things changed hands which no one

expected a convict would ever have thought of selling or buying, or even

of regarding as of any value whatever. The least rag had its value, and

might be turned to account. In consequence, however, of the poverty of

the convicts, money acquired in their eyes a superior value to that

really belonging to it.

Long and painful tasks, sometimes of a very complicated kind, brought

back a few kopecks. Several of the prisoners lent by the week, and did

good business that way. The prisoner who was ruined and insolvent

carried to the usurer the few things belonging to him and pledged them

for some halfpence, which were lent to him at a fabulous rate of

interest. If he did not redeem them at the fixed time the usurer sold

them pitilessly by auction, and without the least delay.

Usury flourished so well in our convict prison that money was lent even

on things belonging to the Government: linen, boots, etc.--things that

were wanted at every moment. When the lender accepted such pledges the

affair took an unexpected turn. The proprietor went, immediately after

he had received his money, and told the under officer--chief

superintendent of the convict prison--that objects belonging to the

State were being concealed, on which everything was taken away from the

usurer without even the formality of a report to the superior

administration. But never was there any quarrel--and that is very

curious indeed--between the usurer and the owner. The first gave up in

silence, with a morose air, the things demanded from him, as if he had

been waiting for the request. Sometimes, perhaps, he confessed to

himself that, in the place of the borrower, he would not have acted

differently. Accordingly, if he was insulted after this restitution, it

was less from hatred than simply as a matter of conscience.

The convicts robbed one another without shame. Each prisoner had his

little box fitted with a padlock, in which he kept the things entrusted

to him by the administration. Although these boxes were authorised, that

did not prevent them from being broken into. The reader can easily

imagine what clever thieves were found among us. A prisoner who was

sincerely devoted to me--I say it without boasting--stole my Bible from

me, the only book allowed in the convict prison. He told me of it the

same day, not from repentance, but because he pitied me when he saw me

looking for it everywhere. We had among our companions of the chain

several convicts called “innkeepers,” who sold spirits, and became

comparatively rich by doing so. I shall speak of this further on, for

the liquor traffic deserves special study.

A great number of prisoners had been deported for smuggling, which

explains how it was that drink was brought secretly into the convict

prison, under so severe a surveillance as ours was. In passing it may be

remarked that smuggling is an offence apart. Would it be believed that

money, the solid profit from the affair, possesses often only secondary

importance for the smuggler? It is all the same an authentic fact. He

works by vocation. In his style he is a poet. He risks all he possesses,

exposes himself to terrible dangers, intrigues, invents, gets out of a

scrape, and brings everything to a happy end by a sort of inspiration.

This passion is as violent as that of play.

I knew a prisoner of colossal stature who was the mildest, the most

peaceable, and most manageable man it was possible to see. We often

asked one another how he had been deported. He had such a calm, sociable

character, that during the whole time that he passed at the convict

prison, he never quarrelled with any one. Born in Western Russia, where

he lived on the frontier, he had been sent to hard labour for smuggling.

Naturally, then, he could not resist his desire to smuggle spirits into

the prison. How many times was he not punished for it, and heaven knows

how much he feared the rods. This dangerous trade brought him in but

slender profits. It was the speculator who got rich at his expense. Each

time he was punished he wept like an old woman, and swore by all that

was holy that he would never be caught at such things again. He kept his

vow for an entire month, but he ended by yielding once more to his

passion. Thanks to these amateurs of smuggling, spirits were always to

be had in the convict prison.

Another source of income which, without enriching the prisoners, was

constantly and beneficently turned to account, was alms-giving. The

upper classes of our Russian society do not know to what an extent

merchants, shopkeepers, and our people generally, commiserate the

“unfortunate!”[3] Alms were always forthcoming, and consisted generally

of little white loaves, sometimes of money, but very rarely. Without

alms, the existence of the convicts, and above all that of the accused,

who are badly fed, would be too painful. These alms are shared equally

between all the prisoners. If the gifts are not sufficient, the little

loaves are divided into halves, and sometimes into six pieces, so that

each convict may have his share. I remember the first alms, a small

piece of money, that I received. A short time after my arrival, one

morning, as I was coming back from work with a soldier escort, I met a

mother and her daughter, a child of ten, as beautiful as an angel. I had

already seen them once before.

The mother was the widow of a poor soldier, who, while still young, had

been sentenced by a court-martial, and had died in the infirmary of the

convict prison while I was there. They wept hot tears when they came to

bid him good-bye. On seeing me the little girl blushed, and murmured a

few words into her mother’s ear, who stopped, and took from a basket a

kopeck which she gave to the little girl. The little girl ran after me.

“Here, poor man,” she said, “take this in the name of Christ.” I took

the money which she slipped into my hand. The little girl returned

joyfully to her mother. I preserved that kopeck a considerable time.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Goriantchikoff became himself a soldier in Siberia, when he had

finished his term of imprisonment.

[2] An allusion to the two rows of soldiers, armed with green rods,

between which convicts condemned to corporal punishment had and still

have to pass. But this punishment now exists only for convicts deprived

of all their civil rights. This subject will be returned to further on.

[3] Men condemned to hard labour, and exiles generally, are so called by

the Russian peasantry.