Chapter XLV: The Cabinet of a Chef-De-Police (1)

Whatever opinion may be formed of the character of the celebrated conspiracy of Georges and Pichegru, the mode of its discovery, and the secret rules by which its plans were detected, are among the great triumphs of police skill. From the hour when the conspirators first met together in London, to that last fatal moment when they expired in the Temple, the agents of Fouche never ceased to track them.

Their individual tastes and ambitions were studied; their habits carefully investigated; every thing that could give a clew to their turn of thought or mind well weighed; so that the Consular Government was not only in possession of all their names and rank, but knew thoroughly the exact amount of complicity attaching to each, and could distinguish between the reckless violence of Georges and the more tempered, but higher ambition of Moreau. It was a long while doubtful whether the great general would be implicated in the scheme. His habitual reserve--a habit less of caution than of constitutional delicacy--had led him to few intimacies, and nothing like even one close friendship; he moved little in society; he corresponded with none, save on the duties of the service. Fouche's well-known boast of, "Give me two words of a man's writing and I'll hang him," were then scarcely applicable here.

To attack such a man unsuccessfully, to arraign him on a weak indictment, would have been ruin; and yet Bonaparte's jealousy of his great rival pushed him even to this peril, rather than risk the growing popularity of his name with the army.

Fouche, and, it is said also, Talleyrand, did all they could to dissuade the First Consul from this attempt, but he was fixed and immutable in his resolve, and the Police Minister at once addressed himself to his task with all his accustomed cleverness.

High play was one of the great vices of the day. It was a time of wild and varied excitement, and men sought, even in their dissipations, the whirlwind passions that stirred them in active life. Moreau, however, was no gambler; it was said that he never could succeed in learning a game. He, whose mind could comprehend the most complicated question of strategy, was obliged to confess himself conquered by ecarte! So much for the vaunted intellectuality of the play-table! Neither was he addicted to wine. All his habits were temperate, even to the extent of unsociality.

A man who spoke little, and wrote less, who indulged in no dissipations, nor seemed to have taste for any, was a difficult subject to treat; and so Fouche found, as, day after day, his spies reported to him the utter failure of all their schemes to entrap him. Lajolais, the friend of Pichegru, and the man who betrayed him, was the chief instrument the Police Minister used to obtain secret information. Being well born, and possessed of singularly pleasing manners, he had the _entree_ of the best society of Paris, where his gay, easy humor made him a great favorite. Lajolais, however, could never penetrate into the quiet domesticity of Moreau's life, nor make any greater inroad on his intimacy than a courteous salutation as they passed each other in the garden of the Luxembourg. At the humble restaurant where he dined each day for two francs, the "General," as he was distinctively called, never spoke to any one. Unobtrusive and quiet, he occupied a little table in a recess of the window, and arose the moment he finished his humble meal. After this he was to be seen in the garden of the Luxembourg, with a cigar and a book, or sometimes, without either, seated pensively under a tree for hours together.

If he had been conscious of the "espionage" established all over his actions, he could scarcely have adopted a more guarded or more tantalizing policy. To the verbal communications of Pichegru and Armand Polignac, he returned vague replies; their letters he never answered at all, and Lajolais had to confess that, after two months of close pursuit, the game was as far from him as ever!

"You have come to repeat the old song to me, Monsieur Lajolais," said Fouche, one evening, as his wily subordinate entered the room; "you have nothing to tell me, eh?"

"Very little, Monsieur le Ministre, but still something. I have at last found out where Moreau spends all his evenings. I told you that about half-past nine o'clock every night all lights were extinguished in his quarters, and, from the unbroken stillness, it was conjectured that he had retired to bed. Now, it seems that, about an hour later, he is accustomed to leave his house, and crossing the Place de l'Odeon, to enter the little street called the 'Allee de Caire,' where, in a small house next but one to the corner, resides a certain officer, 'en retraite'--a Colonel Mahon, of the Cuirassiers."

"A Royalist?"

"This is suspected, but not known. His politics, however, are not in question here; the attraction is of a different order."

"Ha! I perceive; he has a wife or a daughter."

"Better still, a mistress. You may have heard of the famous Caroline de Stassart, that married a Dutchman named D'Aerschot."

"Madame Laure, as they called her," said Fouche, laughing.

"The same. She has lived as Mahon's wife for some years, and was as such introduced into society; in fact, there is no reason, seeing what society is in these days, that she should not participate in all its pleasures."

"No matter for that," broke in Fouche; "Bonaparte will not have it so. He wishes that matters should go back to the old footing, and wisely remarks, that it is only in savage life that people or vices go without clothing."

"Be it so, monsieur. In the present case no such step is necessary. I know her maid, and from her I have heard that her mistress is heartily tired of her protector. It was originally a sudden fancy, taken when she knew nothing of life--had neither seen any thing, nor been herself seen. By the most wasteful habits she has dissipated all, or nearly all, her own large fortune, and involved Mahon heavily in debt; and they are thus reduced to a life of obscurity and poverty--the very things the least endurable to her notions."

"Well, does she care for Moreau?" asked Fouche, quickly; for all stories to his ear only resolved themselves into some question of utility or gain.

"No, but he does for her. About a year back she did take a liking to him. He was returning from his great German campaign, covered with honors and rich in fame; but as her imagination is captivated by splendor, while her heart remains perfectly cold and intact, Moreau's simple, unpretending habits quickly effaced the memory of his hard-won glory, and now she is quite indifferent to him."

"And who is her idol now, for, of course, she has one?" asked Fouche.

"You would scarcely guess," said Lajolais.

"Parbleu! I hope it is not myself," said Fouche, laughing.

"No, Monsieur le Ministre, her admiration is not so well placed. The man who has captivated her present fancy is neither good-looking nor well-mannered; he is short and abrupt of speech, careless in dress, utterly indifferent to women's society, and almost rude to them."

"You have drawn the very picture of a man to be adored by them," said Fouche, with a dry laugh.

"I suppose so," said the other with a sigh; "or General Ney would not have made this conquest."

"Ah! it is Ney, then. And he, what of him?"

"It is hard to say. As long as she lived in a grand house of the Rue St. Georges, where he could dine four days a week, and, in his dirty boots and unbrushed frock, mix with all the fashion and elegance of the capital; while he could stretch full length on a Persian ottoman, and brush the cinders from his cigar against a statuette by Canova, or a gold embroidered hanging; while in the midst of the most voluptuous decorations he alone could be dirty and uncared for, I really believe that he did care for her, at least, so far as ministering to his own enjoyments; but in a miserable lodging of the 'Allee de Caire,' without equipage, lackeys, liveried footmen--"

"To be sure," interrupted Fouche, "one might as well pretend to be fascinated by the beauty of a landscape the day after it has been desolated by an earthquake. Ney is right! Well, now, Monsieur Lajolais, where does all this bring us to?"

"Very near to the end of our journey, Monsieur le Ministre. Madame, or mademoiselle, is most anxious to regain her former position; she longs for all the luxurious splendor she used to live in. Let us but show her this rich reward, and she will be our own!"

"In _my_ trade, Monsieur Lajolais, generalities are worth nothing. Give me details; let me know how you would proceed."

"Easily enough, sir; Mahon must first of all be disposed of, and perhaps the best way will be to have him arrested for debt. This will not be difficult, for his bills are every where. Once in the Temple, she will never think more of him. It must then be her task to obtain the most complete influence over Moreau. She must affect the deepest interest in the Royalist cause: I'll furnish her with all the watch-words of the party, and Moreau, who never trusts a man, will open all his confidence to a woman."

"Very good, go on!" cried Fouche, gathering fresh interest as the plot began to reveal itself before him.

"He hates writing; she will be his secretary, embodying all his thoughts and suggestions; and now and then, for _her own guidance_, obtaining little scraps in _his_ hand. If he be too cautious here, I will advise her to remove to Geneva, for change of air; he likes Switzerland, and will follow her immediately."

"This will do; at least it looks practicable," said Fouche, thoughtfully; "is she equal to the part you would assign her?"

"Ay, sir, and to a higher one, too! She has considerable ability, and great ambition; her present narrow fortune has irritated and disgusted her; the moment is most favorable for us."

"If she should play us false," said Fouche, half aloud.

"From all I can learn, there is no risk of this; there is a headlong determination in her, when once she has conceived a plan, from which nothing turns her; overlooking all but her object, she will brave any thing, do any thing to attain it."

"Bonaparte was right in what he said of Necker's daughter," said Fouche, musingly, "and there is no doubt it adds wonderfully to a woman's _head_, that she has no _heart_. And now, the price, Master Lajolais; remember that our treasury received some deadly wounds lately--what is to be the price?"

"It may be a smart one; she is not likely to be a cheap purchase."

"In the event of success--I mean of such proof as may enable us to arrest Moreau, and commit him to prison--" He stopped as he got thus far, and paused for some seconds--"Bethink you, then, Lajolais," said he, "what a grand step this would be, and how terrible the consequences if undertaken on rash or insufficient grounds. Moreau's popularity with the army is only second to one man's! His unambitious character has made him many friends; he has few, very few enemies."

"But you need not push matters to the last--an implied, but not a proven guilt would be enough; and you can pardon him!"

"Ay, Lajolais, but who would pardon _us_?" cried Fouche, carried beyond all the bounds of his prudence, by the thought of a danger so imminent. "Well, well, let us come back; the price--will that do?" And taking up a pen he scratched some figures on a piece of paper.

Lajolais smiled dubiously, and added a unit to the left of the sum.

"What! a hundred and fifty thousand francs!" cried Fouche.

"And a cheap bargain, too," said the other; "for, after all, it is only the price of a ticket in the Lottery, of which the great prize is General Ney!"

"You say truly," said the Minister; "be it so."

"Write your name there, then," said Lajolais, "beneath those figures; that will be warranty sufficient for my negotiation, and leave the rest to me."

"Nature evidently meant you for a _Chef-de-Police_, Master Lajolais."

"Or a cardinal! Monsieur le Ministre," said the other, as he folded up the paper, a little insignificant slip, scrawled over with a few figures, and an almost illegible word; and yet pregnant with infamy to one, banishment to another, ruin and insanity to a third.

This sad record need not be carried further. It is far from a pleasant task to tell of baseness unredeemed by one trait of virtue--of treachery, unrepented even by regret. History records Moreau's unhappy destiny--the pages of private memoir tell of Ney's disastrous connection; our own humble reminiscences speak of poor Mahon's fate, the least known of all, but the most sorrowful victim of a woman's treachery!

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

THE FLOATING ISLAND.

A LEGEND OF LOCH DOCHART.

One night in midsummer, a long, long time ago--so long ago that I may not venture to assign the date--the moon shone down, as it might have done last night, over the wild, lone shore of Loch Dochart. Upon a little promontory on its southern margin stood a girl, meanly clad, wasted, and wayworn. In her arms she bore a little babe, wrapped up in the folds of a plaid; and as she bent her thin, pallid face over that of the child, her rich, long, yellow hair fell in a shower around her, unconfined either by _snood_ or _curch_. One might have taken her for Magdalene, in her withered beauty, her penitence, and her grief; but other than Magdalene, in her passionate despair. She looked around her, and a shudder shook her feeble frame. Was it the chill of the night mist?--it might be; for as her eye wandered away toward the hills beyond, northward, the mists were creeping along their sides, and she saw the moonlight gleaming on a lowly cot, amid a fir grove. 'Twas the home of her parents, the home of her happy childhood, her innocent youth. She looked again at the little one in her bosom; it slept, but a spasm of pain wrung its pale, pinched, sharp features. It appeared to be feeble and pining, for sleepless nights and days of grief and tears had turned the milk of the mother to gall and poison, and the little innocent drank in death--death, the fruit of sin in all climes and ages. Gently she laid the little one by the margent of the water, amid the green rushes; and the breeze of night sweeping by murmured plaintively to them, and caused them to sigh, and rock to and fro around the infant. Then the poor mother withdrew a space from the babe, and sat her down upon a white stone, and covered her face with her long, thin, bloodless hands. She said in her heart, as Hagar said, "Let me not see the death of the child." And she wept sore, for the poor girl loved the babe, as a mother, like her, only can love her babe, with a wild, passionate, absorbing love, for it is her all, her pearl of great price, which she has bought with name and fame, with home and friends, with health and happiness, with earth, and, it may be, with heaven. And she thought bitterly over that happy home, where, a few months since, in the gloaming of the autumn's eve, she sat on the heathery braes, and tripped along the brink of the warbling burn, or milked the kine in the byre, or sang to her spinning-wheel beside her mother, near the ingle. Next came the recollection of one who sat beside her in the braes, and strayed with her down the burn; who won her heart with his false words, and drew her from the holy shelter of her father's roof, to leave her in her desolation among the southern strangers. And now, with the faithfulness--though not with the purity or trustfulness--of the dove, she was returning over the waste of the world's dark waters to that ark which had sheltered her early years--from which no father had sent her forth. The ark is in sight; but the poor bird is weary from her flight, and she would even now willingly fold her wings and sink down amid the waters, for she is full of shame, and fear, and sorrow. Ah! will her father "put forth his hand and take her in, and pull her in unto him into the ark," with the glory of her whiteness defiled, her plumage ruffled and drooping? Ah! will her mother draw her again to nestle within her bosom, when she sees the dark stain upon her breast, once so pure and spotless? The poor girl wept as she thought these things--at first wild and bitterly, but at length her sorrow became gentler, and her soul more calm, for her heavy heart was relieved by the tears that seemed to have gushed straight up from it, as the dark clouds are lightened when the rain pours from them. And so she sobbed and mused in the cold, dreary night, till her thoughts wandered and her vision grew dim, and she sank down in slumber--a slumber like that of childhood, sweet and deep. And she dreamed that angels, pure and white, stood around: and, oh! strange and charming, they looked not on her as the unfallen ones of the world--the pure and the sinless in their own sight--looked upon her through the weary days of her humiliation--scornfully, loathingly, pitilessly; but their sweet eyes were bent upon her full of ruth, and gentleness, and love; and tears like dew-pearls fell from those mild and lustrous orbs upon her brow and bosom, as those beautiful beings hung over her, and those tears calmed her poor wild brain, and each, where it fell upon her bosom, washed away a stain. Then the angels took the little one from her breast, and spread their wings as if for flight; but she put forth her arms to regain her child, and one of the bright beings repressed her gently, and said,

"It may not be--the babe goes with us."

Then said she to the angel, "Suffer me also to go with my child, that I may be with it and tend it ever."

But the angel said, in a voice of sweet and solemn earnestness, "Not yet--not yet. Thou mayest not come with us now, but in a little while shalt thou rejoin us, and this our little sister."

And the dreamer thought that they rose slowly on the moonlit air, as the light clouds float before a gentle breeze at evening; then the child stretched forth its arms toward her with a plaintive cry, and she awoke and sprang forward to where her child lay. The waters of the lake rippled over the feet of the mother, but the babe lay beyond in the rushes at the point of the promontory where she had laid it. The bewildered mother essayed to spring across the stream that now flowed between her and the island, but in vain; her strength failed her, and as she sank to the earth she beheld the island floating slowly away upon the waveless bosom of the lake, while eldritch laughter rang from out the rushes, mingled with sweet tiny voices soothing with a fairy lullaby the cries of the babe that came fainter and fainter on the ears of the bereaved mother, as the little hands of the elfin crew impelled the floating island over the surface of Loch Dochart.

Some herdsmen going forth in the early morning found a girl apparently lifeless lying on the edge of the lake. She was recognized and brought to her early home. When she opened her eyes her parents stood before her. No word of anger passed from the lips of her father, though his eye was clouded and his head was bowed down with sorrow and humiliation. Her mother took the girl's head and laid it on her bosom--as she had done when she was a little guileless child--and wept, and kissed her, and prayed over her. Then after a time she came to know those around her and where she was, and she started up and looked restlessly around, and cried out with a loud and wild cry, "My child! Where is my child!"

Near the spot where she had been discovered was found a portion of a baby's garment. The people feared the child had been drowned, and searched the loch along its shores. Nothing, however, was found which could justify their suspicions; but, to the astonishment of the searchers, they discovered in the midst of the lake a small island, about fifty feet in length, and more than half that in width, covered with rushes and water-plants. No one had ever seen it before, and when they returned with others to show the wonder, they found that it had sensibly changed its position. The home-returned wanderer whispered into her mother's ear all her sin and all her sorrow. Then she pined away day by day. And when the moon was again full in the heavens, she stole forth in the gloaming. She was missed in the morning, and searched for during many days, but no trace could be found of her. At length some fishermen passing by the floating island, scared a large kite from the rushes, and discovered the decaying body of the hapless girl. How she had reached the island none could say--whether it drifted sufficiently near the land to enable her to wade to it in her search for her babe, and then floated out again from the shore; or whether beings of whom peasants fear to speak had brought her there. The latter conjecture was, of course, the one more generally adopted by the people, and there are those who say that at midnight, when the moon shines down at the full upon Loch Dochart, he who has sharp ears may hear the cry of a baby mingling with elfish laughter and sweet low songs from amidst the plants and rushes of the floating island.

SIBERIA, AS A LAND OF POLITICAL EXILE.

From the reign of Peter the Great to the present moment, exile to Siberia as a punishment for political offenses, has been of constant recurrence, and most of the romance of Russian history is connected with the frozen steppes of that country. To enumerate all the illustrious names that have swelled the list of exiles up to the reign of Alexander, would be to write the history of the innumerable conspiracies which at various periods have shaken the throne of Russia, of the cruel caprices of a race of absolute and unscrupulous despots, and of the various individual passions which, under governments such as that of Russia, can always find means of making the public authorities the avengers of private hatreds. From the reign of Alexander up to the present time, sentence of exile to Siberia for political offenses has perhaps been more frequently pronounced than before; and as within this period the victims have mostly suffered for opinions, not for criminal deeds, and in many instances for opinions which, judged from the point of view of absolute right, must be pronounced to be noble and generous, though, in opposition to the reigning system in the country, the fate of these exiles has elicited the sympathy of Europe in a far higher degree than was ever called forth by the fall of court favorites, whose change of fortune was generally caused by an inordinate and selfish ambition. That to the latter, life in Siberia was but a succession of hardships, privations, and humiliations, history affirms; but what may be the fate of the exiles in the present day, there are no more authentic means of ascertaining than the narratives of the few west Europeans who have visited Siberia, and the inferences which may be drawn from the general system of convict colonization followed in the country, and from the spirit which pervades society there.

A regular system of convict colonization was commenced in 1754, during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, who was too tender-hearted to sign the death-warrant even of the most atrocious criminal, though she tolerated and countenanced the most barbarous cruelties; but it was carried on without any attention to the necessities of the various localities, and was found not to work as favorably as might be desired. The existing irregularities having been brought to light, by the census taken in Siberia in 1819, new regulations were issued in 1822; and these were further improved upon in 1840, and brought into harmony with the improved penal code of the country. Notwithstanding the energetic endeavors of Peter the Great to force European civilization upon his people, he took little pains with regard to the necessary preliminary process of humanizing the penal laws of the country, and the most barbarous and degrading punishments continued, during his and several subsequent reigns, to be inflicted on persons of all ranks and both sexes. Torture in its most cruel forms was frequently applied, and the bodies of the criminals mutilated in the most inhuman manner, their noses and ears being cut off, and their tongues torn out by the root. Under the reign of Catharine II., mitigations were, however, introduced: torture was abolished, and the nobles, as also the burghers of the two first guilds, were exempted from corporeal punishment. The cruel and capricious Paul I., however, again gave to the world the sad and degrading spectacle of individuals of high social position and refined education wincing under the lash of the executioner; and to this day the knout and the cat-o'-nine-tails are reckoned among the instruments of correction in Russia. The punishments, as regulated by law at present, consist, according to the nature of the offense committed, in money fines, restitution, church penitence, loss of office, forfeiture of privileges and of honor, and in corporeal punishments of various kinds and degrees--regarding which it is, however, expressly stipulated that the sentence must not contain a recommendation "to flog without mercy," as was formerly the case--and in banishment to Siberia, which, in case of heinous offenses, is further sharpened by forced labor in the mines and manufactories. Capital punishment is reintroduced, but for crimes of high treason only, and is even in such cases but very rarely applied. From the execution of the Cossack rebel Pugatscher, which took place in Moscow, in 1775, fifty years elapsed before sentence of death was again pronounced in Russia, when five of the leaders of the insurrection of 1826, which had nearly deprived the Emperor Nicholas of the throne to which he had just succeeded, were sentenced to lose their lives at the hands of the hangman. The knout, in addition to hard labor for life in the mines of Siberia, is the general substitute for capital punishment; and up to 1822, all criminals under this last sentence were branded on the forehead, though the practice of slitting up the ears and nostrils, which continued in force until the reign of Alexander, was discontinued. In cases when the criminals are condemned to banishment for life, the sentence may be rendered still more rigorous by condemnation to _civil death_, in which cases alone the families of the convicts are not allowed to follow them into exile, and they are neither allowed to receive nor to write letters.

Kasan, in which city there is a bureau of dispatch for exiles, is the starting point of the detachments of convicts and exiles which periodically leave Russia for Siberia--their halting-places being indicated along the line of route by large four-winged wooden buildings, with yellow walls and red roofs, and surrounded by a stout palisade, erected at every post-station opposite the crown post-house. According to the improved regulations of 1840, the convicts condemned to forced labor are not allowed to travel in company with the criminals of lesser degree destined for immediate colonization, as was previously the case, but are sent in separate detachments, care being also taken that several days shall elapse between the departures of the successive detachments, so as to preclude all possibility of contact on the road. As far as can be judged from the very imperfect records which are available, the number of convicts transported to Siberia up to the year 1818 averaged 2500 yearly; but among these it may be presumed were not numbered the political exiles. In the year 1819, 3141 persons were transported; in 1820, the number swelled to 4051; and from that period until 1823, the annual number was from 4000 to 5000. In 1823 a ukase was issued, ordering that all vagrants who had until then been subjected to forced labor in the fortresses should in future be sent to Siberia as colonists. This of course greatly augmented the number transported; and during the period of six years which elapsed from the date of this ukase to 1829, 64,035 persons, or 10,067 individuals annually, were sent to people these uncultivated wilds. Among these, persons convicted of vagrancy only were, however, in a great majority, the number of criminal offenders condemned to hard labor, amounting only to one-seventh of the whole number. The number of women in proportion to that of the men was one to ten. The convicts travel on foot, all being, on starting, supplied with clothing at the public expense. The men walk in pairs; but, except in cases of extreme criminality, are rarely burdened with fetters during the journey. When passing through towns, however, irons are generally attached to their ankles, and every attempt at escape is punished with corporeal chastisement, without any reference to the cause of exile or the former social position of the individual. To each detachment are generally attached some wagons or sledges for the women, the aged, and the infirm; and these usually lead the van, the younger men following, and the whole party, commonly numbering from fifty to sixty individuals, being escorted from station to station by a detachment of the Cossacks stationed in the villages. That a journey of several thousand wersts on foot, and through such a country as Siberia, must cause much suffering, can not be doubted; but the stations are not at very great distances from each other, and travelers agree in asserting that the ostrogs--that is, fortified places--in which the convicts rest from their fatigues, afford as comfortable accommodation as any post-house throughout Siberia; besides which the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which they pass, either from that perverse sympathy which so frequently leads the unthinking masses to look upon a doomed felon as upon a victim of oppression, or from a knowledge of how many sufferers for mere opinion may be mixed up with the really guilty individuals in the troop, contribute in every way in their power to mitigate the hardships of their position. The officer commanding the escort is intrusted with the sum stipulated by law for the daily subsistence of each convict, and this must never, under any pretense, pass into the hands of the latter. Many tales are told of the barbarous treatment to which the exiles are subjected during their passage to their various places of destination; but this, it would seem, must be attributed to the general brutality of the men forming the escort, and not to any desire in the government to render in an indirect way the punishment of the condemned more severe than expressed in the terms of the sentence; though in these cases, as in all others, it is of course the despotic character of the government in Russia which prevents the complaints of the oppressed from being heard, and thus perpetuates all abuses.

The convicts who have committed heinous offenses, such as murder, burglary, highway robbery, or who have been judged guilty of high treason, and are banished for life and condemned to forced labor, are chiefly under the superintendence of the governor of Irkutsk, who determines whether they are to be employed in the mines and salt-works, or in the distilleries, or other manufactories of the crown. For each of these convicts government allows thirty-six paper rubles yearly; but the price of the necessaries of life being in Siberia so very low that the half of this suffices for the support of the convict, the other half goes to form a fund which, in case, after the lapse of four or six years, he gives proofs of reform, is given to him to begin life with in some part of the wide-spread steppes which admits of cultivation, and where a certain portion of land and materials for building a house are assigned to him. The house must, however, be erected by his own labor, and the money laid by for him be applied to the purchasing of the necessary utensils and implements for commencing house-keeping and agricultural pursuits. From this moment the convicts become _glebae adscripti_ in the strictest sense of the term, as they are, under no pretense whatsoever, allowed to quit the lands assigned to them, or to change their condition; thenceforward also they pay the capitation tax and other imposts in like manner as the other crown peasants of Siberia, and enjoy in return the same rights, such as they are. The children of these convicts, born during the parents' period of punishment, are bound to the soil; but their names are not enrolled among those of the exiles, and the law orders that they shall be treated in the same manner as the overseers of the works.

The second class of convicts is subdivided into five classes, namely, 1. Exiles sentenced to labor in the manufactories; 2. Those sentenced to form part of the labor companies engaged on the public works; 3. Those allowed to work at their respective trades; 4. Those hired out as domestic servants; and 5. Those destined to become colonists. The last-mentioned of these are at once established on the waste lands allotted to them, each person obtaining an area of not less than thirty acres, and being besides furnished with materials for building a house, with a cow, some sheep, agricultural implements, and seed corn. During the first three years these settlers are exempted from all imposts; during the next seven years they pay half the usual amount of taxes, and in addition to this, fifteen silver copeks annually toward an economical fund erected for their benefit. After the lapse of these ten years they take their rank among the other crown peasants, and are subjected to the same burdens. Except when especially pardoned, these colonists are not either allowed to change their condition, or arbitrarily to quit the lands allotted to them. Colonization, according to this system, being found excessively expensive, and at the same time very precarious, on account of the frequent desertion of the colonists, who, living without families, were bound by no ties, was given up in 1822, but has since been resumed. In order to promote the speedy amalgamation of the convict population with the free population, the government bestows on every free woman who marries one of these colonists a donation of fifty silver rubles; while the free man who takes to wife a female convict receives a donation of fifteen rubles. Persons enjoying the privilege of collecting gold from the sands of the government of Tomsk, and who employ convicts for the washings, are bound to pay, in addition to the daily wages, one ruble and fifteen copeks in silver toward the economical fund. The convicts employed as domestic servants are fed by their employers, and receive in wages one silver ruble and a half per month. After eight years of such compulsory service, these exiles may also become colonists, and be enrolled among the peasants of the crown. Convict colonists may, should the authorities deem it expedient, be allowed to work at trades in the towns, but they must not become members of corporations or guilds, and must never be considered as being withdrawn from their condition of colonists.

The convicts condemned to forced labor, and employed in the manufactories, are the most leniently dealt with of this class, their position being, indeed, such as to render the sentence a reward rather than a punishment. In the manufactories of Telma more than eight hundred convicts are employed, who receive in wages, according to the work executed by them, from six to fifty rubles per month, besides bread flour; and their wives, who dwell in the village, earn from two and a half to five rubles per month by spinning and weaving hemp. The convicts employed in manufactories, and receiving wages, are, however, generally such as have previously been under stricter discipline, and are in a state of transition toward the position of liberated colonists. In several towns of Siberia there are establishments for them during the first stage of their punishment. In these establishments, called _Remeslenui Dom_, or the House of Trades, the convicts are employed as joiners, turners, saddlers, wheelwrights, smiths, &c., and are housed, clothed, and fed at the public expense, but do not receive wages, their wives and children finding employment in other ways. All orders must be addressed to the officers intrusted with the superintendence of the establishments; but persons having work executed there are at liberty to enter the workshops, and to communicate directly with the different craftsmen, who are not chained, but are guarded by military. In winter, the hours of labor are eight, in summer, twelve. The proceeds of the labor of the convicts go to pay the expenses of the establishment, and the surplus is applied to charitable purposes, such as the building and maintenance of hospitals. The convict laborers in the mines of the Ural, as well as those of Nertchynsk, dwell together in large barrack-like buildings, the worst criminals among them being alone chained; but owing to the unhealthy nature of the mines, particularly those of Nertchynsk, their existence is a very miserable one. The usual term of compulsory labor in the mines is twenty years, at the expiration of which the convicts are generally established as colonists in the vicinity of the mines, and continue to labor in them, but as free laborers, receiving wages. In case there be at any time a scarcity of mining laborers, the authorities are at liberty to apply to this purpose exiles who have not been especially sentenced to this punishment; but in such cases the exiles are paid for their labor, and are not confined to the mines for more than one year, which counts, besides, for two years of exile. Upon the whole, great latitude is allowed the central and local authorities in Siberia with regard to the employment and allocation of the convicts and exiles, it being merely laid down as a general rule that agricultural settlements shall always be made in the least populous districts of the localities capable of cultivation. It seems also to be the plan, as far as possible, to put each man to the work which he is most competent to execute; and the exiles belonging to the laboring classes are therefore, in preference, established as agricultural colonists, while those belonging to the higher classes, who are unaccustomed to manual labor, are generally located in the towns, where it is easier for them to find some means of subsistence, which may relieve the government from the burden of their support. Even independently of the political exiles, the number of the latter is great, for exile is the punishment which usually follows the detection of those peculations and abuses of power of which the Russian officials are so frequently guilty. On their first arrival, it seems, the exiles of this class are made to do penance in the churches, under the guardianship of the police, but after a time they are allowed to go about unguarded; and it is said that, when exiled for life, the Russians even of high birth bear the change of fortune with extraordinary equanimity, assimilating in a very short time, and without any apparent struggle, to the Cossacks and peasants among whom they are thrown. When, as is frequently the case, they marry Siberian women, their children in no way differ from the people among whom they live. In the city of Tobolsk, in particular, there are a great many exiles belonging to the class of unfaithful _employes_, the sentence being considered less rigorous the nearer the place of exile to the frontiers of Russia Proper. Political exiles are, on the contrary, sent further north and east, where the nature of the surrounding country is such as to make an attempt at flight impossible, or at least very difficult. The hardships to which these exiles are subjected seem, in by far the greater number of cases, to be exclusively such as are necessarily connected with their being torn away from all they hold dear, and transplanted from the luxurious life of European society (for these exiles mostly belong to the higher classes) to the uncultivated wilds and rigorous climate of a country but very partially redeemed from a state of nature; but the tenderest sympathies of the natives of all races seem, by all accounts, to be readily bestowed upon the exiles, who, whatever be the nature of the offense of which they have been guilty, are never named by a harsher term than that of "unfortunates." In many cases the lot of the political exiles is also mitigated by the kindness of the local authorities, who allow them the use of books and other indulgences, and even receive them as friends in their houses, when this can be done without risk of giving offense at St. Petersburg.

As in Russia nothing with which the government is concerned can be commented on by the press without especial permission, it is difficult to ascertain correctly how far the system followed in Siberia works beneficially as regards the moral reformation of the criminals, and their relations to society in general. The accounts of travelers are very conflicting--some extolling the extreme leniency with which even the worst offenders are treated, as the _ne plus ultra_ of social policy, and dwelling with delight on its happy results; while others consider it disastrous in its consequences, and relate instances of the most atrocious crimes committed by the convicts, and of whole tracts of country in which life and property have been rendered insecure by their presence. The statistics of Siberia, however, prove the country to be improving; and all travelers agree as to the freedom from molestation which they have experienced while traversing its immeasurable steppes; and it is therefore but fair to conclude, that though the attempt at moral reformation may be unsuccessful in many instances, in general convict colonization has here borne good fruits. That great severity in the chastisement of new transgressions has been found necessary, is on the other side proved by the penal laws bearing exclusively on Siberia. According to these laws, drunkenness, fighting, idleness, theft of articles of small value, unallowed absence from the place of detention, are considered venial offenses, and are punished with from ten to forty lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails; while desertion among the colonists is punished, the first time with simple flogging, the second and third time with the cat-o'-nine-tails. If the offense be persisted in after this, sentence is to be pronounced by the local tribunals, and often consists in temporary removement to some distant and thinly-populated district, or incorporation in one of the penal labor companies. Convicts condemned to hard labor who attempt to escape are punished with the knout, and are branded on the forehead, in case this mark of ignominy have not previously been inflicted on them. Repeated thefts, robberies, and other like offenses are punished in the same way as desertion; but in these cases the value of the object stolen is not so much taken into consideration as the motives by which the criminals are actuated, and the number of times the offense has been repeated. A fourth repetition by an exile of a crime previously punished renders him liable to forty lashes with the knout, and to being placed in the category of the convicts condemned to forced labor. Murder, highway robbery, and incendiarism are, if the offender be a simple exile, punished with from thirty-five to fifty lashes with the knout, in addition to branding on the forehead, and forced labor in irons for a period of not less than three years--the term beyond this being left to the judgment of the local tribunals. The convict condemned to forced labor who renders himself guilty of similar crimes receives fifty-five lashes of the knout, is branded on the forehead, and is chained to the wall of a prison for five years, after which period he is allowed to move about, but must continue to wear fetters during his life. Criminals of this class are never to be employed beyond the prison walls, and are not even in illness to be taken into the open air beyond the prison-yard, or to be relieved from their chains, except by especial permission of the superior authorities, which can only be granted in consequence of a medical certificate.

The river Irtysh is the Styx of the Siberian Hades: from the moment they cross the ferry in the neighborhood of the city of Tobolsk, the Russian _employes_ appointed to offices in Siberia are placed in the enjoyment of the higher grade of rank which they so much covet; and from the moment they cross this same ferry commences the extinction of the political life of the exiles. Here they exchange the name by which, until then, they have been known in the world, for one bestowed upon them by the authorities, and any change of the latter is punished with five years' compulsory labor over and above the original sentence. At Tobolsk sits the board which decides the final destination of each culprit or each martyr. It consists of a president and assessors, having under them a chancellerie divided into two sections, and has offices of dispatch in several of the towns of Siberia. Before their arrival at Tobolsk the convicts are, however, liable to be detained by the authorities of Kasan or Perm, for the public works, in their respective governments.

It is as the land of political exile that Siberia is generally known, and that it has gained so unenviable a reputation among the liberty-loving nations of Europe, whose imagination pictures it to them as a vast unredeemable desert, whose icy atmosphere chills the breath of life, and petrifies the soul. Yet the truly benevolent should rejoice in circumstances which have led a government that punishes a dissentient word as severely as the direst crime, to select exile as the extreme penalty of the law. Siberia is, it is true, the great prison-house of Russia; but it is a prison-house through which the blessed light of the sun shines, through which the free air of plain and mountain plays, and in which the prisoner, though he may not labor in a self-elected field, may still devote his faculties to the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and continue the great task of moral and intellectual progress. How different his lot from that of the Austrian prisoner of state, doomed to drag on long years of a miserable existence in the dungeons of Spielberg, or some other fortress, severed from all intercourse with the world beyond his prison-walls, deprived even of the light of day, and left in solitude and forced idleness to brood over his dark and despairing thoughts.

APPLICATION OF ELECTRO-MAGNETIC POWER TO RAILWAY TRANSIT.

One of the most wonderful characteristics of scientific discovery is the singular way in which every advance connects itself with past phases of progress. Each new victory over the stubborn properties of matter not only gives man increase of power on its own account, but also reacts on older conquests, and makes them more productive. Thirty years ago, Davy and Arago observed that iron-filings became magnetic when lying near a wire that was carrying a current of galvanic electricity. Since then powerful temporary magnets have been made for various purposes by surrounding bars of soft iron by coils of copper-wire, and transmitting electric currents through these. In fact, it has been ascertained that iron always becomes a magnet when electricity is passed round it. The alarm-bells of the electric telegraphs are set ringing by a simple application of this principle. A conducting wire is made to run for hundreds of miles, and then coils itself round an iron bar. Electric currents are sent at will through the hundreds of miles of wire, and the inert iron becomes an active magnet. Observe the clerk in the Telegraph Office at London. When he jerks the handle that is before him, he turns on a stream of electricity that runs to Liverpool or Edinburgh, as the case may be. In either of those places a piece of iron that is twisted round with the extremity of the wire becomes a magnet for an instant, and attracts to itself a steel armature that is connected with a train of wheel-work. The motion of the armature, as it is drawn up to the magnet, sets free a spring that was before kept quiet; and this gives token of its freedom by making an alarm-bell to ring. The clerk in London awakens the attention of the clerk in Edinburgh by turning a piece of soft iron placed near to the latter into a magnet for a few seconds. He is able to do this because currents of electricity induce magnetism in iron. This, and this alone, is the secret principle to which he is indebted for the wonderful power that enables him to annihilate space when he instantaneously attracts the attention of an ear hundreds of miles away.

It has recently been announced that this electro-magnetic induction has been made a means for the instantaneous registration of astronomical observations. We have already to draw attention to another practical application of the principle. M. Nikles has just invented an arrangement of apparatus that enables him to make the wheels of locomotives bite the rails with any degree of force without increasing the weight that has to be carried to the extent of a single grain. Our readers are aware that in wet weather the driving-wheels of locomotives often slip round upon the rail without acquiring the power of moving the weight that is attached behind them. Whenever they are asked to ascend inclined planes with a weight that is beyond the adhesive powers of their wheels this result invariably follows; and the only practical escape from the difficulty hitherto has been the adoption of one of two expedients--either to increase their own intrinsic weight, so that the earth's attraction might bind the wheels down more firmly, or to let the railway be level and the load to be dragged proportionally light. In either of these cases a waste of power is experienced. Power is either expended in moving a superfluous load, or the same amount of power drags less weight even upon a level rail than it otherwise could upon an ascending one, that would have required less outlay in its construction. It therefore becomes a great desideratum to find some means of making the locomotive wheels bite more tenaciously without increasing the load they have to carry. The important problem of how to do this it is that M. Nikles has solved.