CHAPTER III

Under the Belfry—A Travelled Policeman—The Incendiaries.

A MAN soon gets used to prison, if he has any interior life at all. One quickly gets accustomed to the silence and complete freedom of one’s cage—there are no cares and no distractions.

They refused me books at first, and the police-magistrate declared that it was against the rules for me to get books from home. I then proposed to buy some. “I suppose you mean some serious book—a grammar of some kind, I dare say? Well, I should not object to that; for other books, higher authority must be obtained.” Though the suggestion that I should study grammar to relieve boredom was exceedingly comic, yet I caught at it eagerly and asked him to buy me an Italian grammar and dictionary. I had two ten-roublenotes on me, and I gave him one. He sent at once to buy the books, and despatched by the same messenger a letter to the Chief Commissioner, in which, taking my stand on the article I had read, I asked him to explain the cause of my arrest or to release me.

The magistrate, in whose presence I wrote the letter, urged me not to send it. “It’s no good, I swear it’s no good your bothering His Excellency. They don’t like people who give them trouble. It can’t result in anything, and it may hurt you.”

A policeman turned up in the evening with a reply: His Excellency sent me a verbal message, to the effect that I should learn in good time why I was arrested. The messenger then produced a greasy Italian grammar from his pocket, and added with a smile, “By good luck it happens that there is a vocabulary here; so you need not buy one.” The question of change out of my note was not alluded to. I was inclined to write again to His Excellency; but to play the part of a little Hampden seemed to me rather too absurd in my present quarters.

I had been in prison ten days, when a short policeman with a swarthy, pock-marked face came to my room at ten in the evening, bringing an order that I was to dress and present myself before the Commission of Enquiry.

While I was dressing, a serio-comic incident occurred. My dinner was sent me every day from home; our servant delivered it to the corporal on duty, and he sent a private upstairs with it. A bottle of wine from outside was allowed daily, and a friend had taken advantage of this permission to send me a bottle of excellent hock. The private and I contrived to uncork the bottle with a couple of nails; the bouquet of the wine was perceptible at a distance, and I looked forward to the pleasure of drinking it for some days to come.

There is nothing like prison life for revealing the childishness in a grown man and the consolation he finds in trifles, from a bottle of wine to a trick played on a turnkey.

Well, the pock-marked policeman found out my bottle, and, turning to me, asked if he might have a taste. Though I was vexed, I said I should be very glad. I had no glass. The wretch took a cup, filled it to the very brim, and emptied it into himself without drawing breath. No one but a Russian or a Pole can pour down strong drink in this fashion: I have never in any part of Europe seen a glass or cup of spirits disposed of with equal rapidity. To add to my sorrow at the loss of this cupful, my friend wiped his lips with a blue tobacco-stained handkerchief, and said as he thanked me, “Something like Madeira,thatis!” I hated the sight of him and felt a cruel joy that his parents had not vaccinated him and nature had not spared him the small-pox.

This judge of wine went with me to the Chief Commissioner’s house on the Tver Boulevard, where he took me to a side room and left me alone. Half an hour later, a fat man with a lazy, good-natured expression came in, carrying papers in a wallet; he threw the wallet on a chair and sent the policeman who was standing at the door off on some errand.

“I suppose,” he said to me, “you are mixed up in the affair of Ogaryóv and the other young men who were lately arrested.” I admitted it.

“I’ve heard about it casually,” he went on; “a queer business! I can’t understand it at all.”

“Well, I’ve been in prison a fortnight because of it, and not only do I not understand it, but I know nothing about it.”

“That’s right!” said the man, looking at me attentively. “Continue to know nothing about it! Excuse me, if I give you a piece of advice. You are young, and your blood is still hot, and you want to be talking; but it’s a mistake. Just you remember that you know nothing about it. Nothing else can save you.”

I looked at him in surprise; but his expression did not suggest anything base. He guessed my thoughts and said with a smile:

“I was a student at Moscow University myself twelve years ago.”

A clerk of some kind now came in. The fat man, who was evidently his superior, gave him some directions and then left the room, after pressing a finger to his lips with a friendly nod to me. I never met him again and don’t know now who he was; but experience proved to me that his advice was well meant.

My next visitor was a police-officer, not Colonel Miller this time. He summoned me to a large, rather fine room where five men were sitting at a table, all wearing military uniform except one who was old and decrepit. They were smoking cigars and carrying on a lively conversation, lying back in their chairs with their jackets unbuttoned. The Chief Commissioner, Tsinski, was in the chair.

When I came in, he turned to a figure sitting modestly in a corner of the room and said, “May I trouble Your Reverence?” Then I made out that the figure in the cornerwas an old priest with a white beard and a mottled face. The old man was drowsy and wanted to go home; he was thinking of something else and yawning with his hand before his face. In a slow and rather sing-song voice he began to admonish me: he said it was sinful to conceal the truth from persons appointed by the Tsar, and useless, because the ear of God hears the unspoken word; he did not fail to quote the inevitable texts—that all power is from God, and that we must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Finally, he bade me kiss the Holy Gospel and the True Cross in confirmation of a vow (which however I did not take and he did not ask) to reveal the whole truth frankly and openly.

When he had done, he began hastily to wrap up the Gospel and the Cross; and the President, barely rising in his seat, told him he might go. Then he turned to me and translated the priest’s address into the language of this world. “One thing I shall add to what the priest has said—it is impossible for you to conceal the truth even if you wish to.” He pointed to piles of papers, letters, and portraits, scattered on purpose over the table: “Frank confession alone can improve your position; it depends on yourself, whether you go free or are sent to the Caucasus.”

Questions were then submitted in writing, some of them amusingly simple—“Do you know of the existence of any secret society? Do you belong to any society, learned or otherwise? Who are its members? Where do they meet?”

To all this it was perfectly simple to answer “No” and nothing else.

“I see you know nothing,” said the President, readingover the answers; “I warned you beforehand that you will complicate your situation.”

And that was the end of the first examination.

Eight years later a lady, who had once been beautiful, and her beautiful daughter, were living in a different part of this very house where the Commission sat; she was the sister of a later Chief Commissioner.

I used to visit there and always had to pass through the room where Tsinski and Company used to sit on us. There was a portrait of the Emperor Paul on the wall, and I used to stop in front of it every time I passed, either as a prisoner or as a visitor. Near it was a little drawing-room where all breathed of beauty and femininity; and it seemed somehow out of place beside frowning Justice and criminal trials. I felt uneasy there, and sorry that so fair a bud had found such an uncongenial spot to open in as the dismal brick walls of a police-office. Our talk, and that of a small number of friends who met there, sounded ironical and strange to the ear within those walls, so familiar with examinations, informations, and reports of domiciliary visits—within those walls which parted us from the mutter of policemen, the sighs of prisoners, the jingling spurs of officers, and the clanking swords of Cossacks.

Within a week or a fortnight the pock-marked policeman came again and went with me again to Tsinski’s house. Inside the door some men in chains were sitting or lying, surrounded by soldiers with rifles; and in thefront room there were others, of various ranks in society, not chained but strictly guarded. My policeman told me that these were incendiaries. As Tsinski himself had gone to the scene of the fires, we had to wait for his return. We arrived at nine in the evening; and at one in the morning no one had asked for me, and I was still sitting very peacefully in the front hall with the incendiaries. One or other of them was summoned from time to time; the police ran backward and forward, the chains clinked, and the soldiers, for want of occupation, rattled their rifles and went through the manual exercise. Tsinski arrived about one, black with smoke and grime, and hurried on to his study without stopping. Half an hour later my policeman was summoned; when he came back, he looked pale and upset and his face twitched convulsively. Tsinski followed him, put his head in at the door, and said: “Why, the members of the Commission were waiting for you, M. Herzen, the whole evening. This fool brought you here at the hour when you were summoned to Prince Golitsyn’s house instead. I am very sorry you have had to wait so long, but I am not to blame. What can one do, with such subordinates? I suppose he has been fifty years in the service, and is as great a blockhead as ever. Well,” he added, turning to the policeman and addressing him in a much less polite style, “be off now and go back.”

All the way home the man kept repeating: “Lord! what bad luck! A man never knows what’s going to happen to him. He will do for me now. He wouldn’t matter so much; but the Prince will be angry, and the Commissioner will catch it for your not being there. Oh, what a misfortune!”

I forgave him the hock, especially when he declared that, though he was once nearly drowned at Lisbon, hewas less scared then than now. This adventure surprised me so much that I roared with laughter. “How utterly absurd! What on earth took you to Lisbon?” I asked. It turned out that he had served in the Fleet twenty-five years before. The statesman in Gógol’s novel, who declares that every servant of the State in Russia meets with his reward sooner or later,[69]certainly spoke the truth. For death spared my friend at Lisbon, in order that he might be scolded like a naughty boy by Tsinski, after forty years’ service.

69.Gógol,Dead Souls, Part I, chap. 10.

Besides, he was hardly at all to blame in the matter. The Tsar was dissatisfied with the original Commission of Enquiry, and had appointed another, with Prince Serghéi Golitsyn as chairman; the other members were Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, another Prince Golitsyn, Shubenski, a colonel of police, and Oranski, formerly paymaster-general. As my Lisbon friend had received no notice that the new Commission would sit at a different place, it was very natural that he should take me to Tsinski’s house.

When we got back, we found great excitement there too: three fires had broken out during the evening, and the Commissioners had sent twice to ask what had become of me and whether I had run away. If Tsinski had not abused my escort sufficiently, the police-magistrate fully made up for any deficiencies; and this was natural, because he himself was partly to blame for not asking where exactly I was to be sent.

In a corner of the office there was a man lying on two chairs and groaning, who attracted my attention. He was young, handsome, and well-dressed. The police-surgeon advised that he should be sent to the hospital early next morning, as he was spitting blood and in great suffering. I got the details of this affair from the corporal who took me to my room. The man was a retired officer of the Guards, who was carrying on a love affair with a maid-servant and was with her when a fire broke out in the house. The panic caused by incendiarism was then at its height; and, in fact, never a day passed without my hearing the tocsin ring repeatedly, while at night I could always see the glow of several fires from my window. As soon as the excitement began, the officer, wishing to save the girl’s reputation, climbed over a fence and hid himself in an outbuilding of the next house, intending to come out when the coast was clear. But a little girl had seen him in the court-yard, and told the first policeman who came on the scene that an incendiary was hiding in the shed. The police made for the place, accompanied by a mob, dragged the officer out in triumph, and dealt with him so vigorously that he died next morning.

The police now began to sift the men arrested for arson. Half of them were let go, but the rest were detained on suspicion. A magistrate came every morning and spent three or four hours in examining the charges. Some were flogged during this process; and then their yells and cries and entreaties, the shrieks of women, the harsh voice of the magistrate, and the drone of the clerk’s reading—all this came to my ears. It was horrible beyond endurance. I dreamed of these sounds at night, and woke up in horror at the thought of these poor wretches, lying onstraw a few feet away, in chains, with flayed and bleeding backs, and, in all probability, quite innocent.

In order to know what Russian prisons and Russian police and justice really are, one must be a peasant, a servant or workman or shopkeeper. The political prisoners, who are mostly of noble birth, are strictly guarded and vindictively punished; but they suffer infinitely less than the unfortunate “men with beards.” With them the police stand on no ceremony. In what quarter can a peasant or workman seek redress? Where will he find justice?

The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins. Well, then, let it be remembered that three-fourths of those arrested on suspicion by the police are acquitted by the court, and that all these have gone through the same ordeal as the guilty.

Peter the Third abolished the torture-chamber, and the Russian star-chamber.

Catherine the Second abolished torture.

Alexander the First abolished it over again.

Evidence given under torture is legally inadmissible, and any magistrate applying torture is himself liable to prosecution and severe punishment.

That is so: and all over Russia, from Behring Straits to the Crimea, men suffer torture. Where flogging is unsafe, other means are used—intolerable heat, thirst, salt food; in Moscow the police made a prisoner stand barefootedon an iron floor, at a time of intense frost; the man died in a hospital, of which Prince Meshcherski was president, and he told the story afterwards with horror. All this is known to the authorities; but they all agree with Selifan[70]in Gógol’s novel—“Why not flog the peasants? The peasants need a flogging from time to time.”

70.Gógol,Dead Souls, Part I, chap. 3. Selifan, a coachman, is a peasant himself.

The board appointed to investigate the fires sat, or, in other words, flogged, for six months continuously, but they were no wiser at the end of the flogging. The Tsar grew angry: he ordered that the business should be completed in three days. And so it was: guilty persons were discovered and sentenced to flogging, branding, and penal servitude. All the hall-porters in Moscow were brought together to witness the infliction of the punishment. It was winter by then, and I had been moved to the Krutitski Barracks; but a captain of police, a kind-hearted old man, who was present at the scene, told me the details I here record. The man who was brought out first for flogging addressed the spectators in a loud voice: he swore that he was innocent, and that he did not know what evidence he had given under torture; then he pulled off his shirt and turned his back to the people, asking them to look at it.

A groan of horror ran through the crowd: his whole back was raw and bleeding, and that livid surface was now to be flogged over again. The protesting cries and sullen looks of the crowd made the police hurry on with the business: the executioners dealt out the legal numberof lashes, the branding and fettering took place, and the affair seemed at an end. But the scene had made an impression and was the subject of conversation all through the city. The Governor reported this to the Tsar, and the Tsar appointed a new board, which was to give special attention to the case of the man who had addressed the crowd.

Some months later I read in the newspapers that the Tsar, wishing to compensate two men who had been flogged for crimes of which they were innocent, ordered that they should receive 200roublesfor each lash, and also a special passport, to prove that though branded they were not guilty. These two were the man who had addressed the crowd, and one of his companions.

The cause of these incendiary fires which alarmed Moscow in 1834 and were repeated ten years later in different parts of the country, still remains a mystery. That it was not all accidental is certain: fire as a means of revenge—“The red cock,” as it is called—is characteristic of the nation. One is constantly hearing of a gentleman’s house or corn-kiln or granary being set on fire by his enemies. But what was the motive for the fires at Moscow in 1834, nobody knows, and the members of the Board of Enquiry least of all.

The twenty-second of August was the Coronation Day; and some practical jokers dropped papers in different parts of the city, informing the inhabitants they need not trouble about illuminating, because there would be plenty of light otherwise provided.

The authorities of the city were in great alarm. Fromearly morning my police-station was full of troops, and a squadron of dragoons was stationed in the court-yard. In the evening bodies of cavalry and infantry patrolled the streets; cannon were ready in the arsenal. Police-officers, with constables and Cossacks, galloped to and fro; the Governor himself rode through the city with hisaides-de-camp. It was strange and disquieting to see peaceful Moscow turned into a military camp. I watched the court-yard from my lofty window till late at night. Dismounted dragoons were sitting in groups near their horses, while others remained in the saddle; their officers walked about, looking with some contempt at their comrades of the police; staff-officers, with anxious faces and yellow collars on their jackets, rode up, did nothing, and rode away again.

There were no fires.

Immediately afterwards the Tsar himself came to Moscow. He was dissatisfied with the investigation of our affair, which was just beginning, dissatisfied because we had not been handed over to the secret police, dissatisfied because the incendiaries had not been discovered—in short, he was dissatisfied with everything and everybody.

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