Chapter III

OF MY IMPRISONMENT AT KIOW, AND MY DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA.

THE FORTRESS AT KIOW--PRINCE BIBIKOV--EXAMINATION--A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY--A BIBLE--FELLOW-PRISONERS--THE MANIAC--PREPARATIONS FOR ‘DEPORTATION’--THE SENTENCE.

Carried in the arms of several soldiers, I was first deposited in the business room of the Commandant of the place. Here I was searched, registered, and inscribed on the books; while they plied me with questions, to which I know not what answers I made, for I had no knowledge either of what I was doing or of what I was saying. They set me upright at last, and I walked, supported by soldiers, through an endless number of rooms and corridors. A door was opened, I entered the cell, and I fell exhausted on a mattress. Two jailers and an aide-de-camp entered along with them, and the latter asked me if I wanted anything. I requested to have my fetters changed, or to have the foot-rings opened and made wider. He replied that he had no power to do so, but that he would report the request. I was then left alone, and at the end of a very few minutes I fell asleep. I slept twenty-five hours without turning, and was only awakened at the end of that time by my keepers, whom this prolonged slumber had alarmed. Soon after, the colonel in command was ushered in. He was covered with orders, and addressing me in Polish, he asked how I was, and what might be the cause of my indisposition. I thanked him, but I said nothing of the accidents of my journey; for where was the use of making any complaints? He promised that some broth should be sent to me, and took leave of me with these words, ‘Try to regain your strength, you are much weakened; and here, in our prisons, one has need of health to bear one’s many sufferings.

I was indeed very weak, but I was no longer tormented by that terrible pain in my head, of which I was more afraid than of anything else. There remained the pains in my chest, elbows and knees, which were the consequences of the accident, and from which I was yet to suffer for several months to come. I looked round my cell; it was six feet by five, pretty high in the roof, in very bad repair, very dirty, and lit by a small window placed close to the ceiling, and grated with iron bars both within and without. Over my head I could read several names cut with some difficulty on the wall; among others that of Rabczynski, whom I was to meet hereafter in Siberia. The only furniture was a little table, a wooden chair, and a great stove in earthenware. Some broth and some bread were brought to me, but the difficulty of eating in handcuffs was so great and irritated me so much that I finished my meal before my appetite was appeased. Suddenly, the sight of the bread that remained suggested to me a providential idea. It certainly was not the first time that I had thought of Konarski, whose sufferings were fresh in every memory. I knew that hunger had been one of the engines of torture tried upon him, and I had no security that I might not have to pass through a similar ordeal. So I determined to lay up a fund against this extremity, and I hid the bread in a hole behind the stove, high up in the wall; and this I did on the following days with the bread that was supplied to me. I was quite pleased with the store of biscuit thus prepared against the time of famine.

Somewhat revived by the food and by sleep, I now became sensible of an annoyance which I could not at first account for. Presently I discovered that I was literally covered with vermin, the mattress, and the room were filthy with them, and the handcuffs prevented my even attempting to destroy them. I looked round and caught two eyes fixed upon me; it was the sentry on guard in the corridor, who had orders to watch all my movements through the aperture cut in my door; in vain, however, did I call to him, he paid me not the slightest attention; but happily for me on the following day the Commandant of the fortress caused me to be moved into the opposite cell, and had my room purified. He gave orders at the same time to have me shaved; an officer assisted at the operation, and when I requested that they would leave my whiskers, I received an answer which, all things considered, was rather out of place: ‘No, no; we will leave you nothing but your moustaches, and that will be quite in the Polish fashion; the ancient Poles wore nothing but a moustache.’ I soon returned to my cell, now a little cleaner than it had been; but what most moved my gratitude towards the Commandant was that he had my handcuffs taken off; and with the recovered liberty of my hands I recovered, strange to say, all the freedom and former energy of my mind. I kept constantly stretching out my arms, hardly daring to believe in my happiness, and I felt like a child escaped from its swaddling bands.

A week, or nearly a week, now elapsed without bringing any notable change in my position. My food was wholesome and plentiful, the room was cleansed every day, but the want of air and of exercise had completely enervated me. My chains prevented my walking, or even standing. I remained almost always lying on my paillasse, rising in general only in the morning to kneel and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. The nights were long and without any light, and their quiet was only broken by the sound of the hammers, when they fitted or unfitted the fetters of some of the prisoners. Although it was forbidden to the sentries and keepers to speak to me, I soon managed to learn that all my accused friends from Kaminieç were in the same prison with myself, though lodged in different corridors.

One day, about noon, a great noise was heard at the entrance of my cell, the door opened, and a man appeared before me in the undress of a general officer, surrounded by generals and aides-de-camp, all in full uniform, who stood back respectfully in the corridor. The man had a tall figure, grey hair cut like a brush, an oval face without any moustaches, and very piercing eyes: his left sleeve was fastened up to one of the breast buttons of his coat, and the loss of an arm which this indicated convinced me that I now beheld no less a person than the Governor-General of Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, Prince Bibikov.[3] He took off his cap, pushed the door close, without however shutting it, sat down on the chair, and made me a sign to reseat myself on the mattress from which I had risen. During the conversation which followed he seemed very much annoyed at the bad air of the cell, and turned mechanically to the high window several times, as if to breathe freely. He addressed me in French.

‘You probably guess who I am?’

‘I believe that I have the honour of speaking to the Governor-General, Prince Bibikov.’

‘Your name is Piotrowski; you are a native of the Ukraine; you took part in the revolt of 1831, you emigrated to France. You afterwards returned to Kaminieç under the name of Catharo.’

‘Yes, your Excellency.’

‘You pretend that your return had no other object than that of revisiting your native land; but when after 1831 the Emperor granted an amnesty, why did you not avail yourself of it?’

‘I do not wish to say anything that might be displeasing to your Excellency, but at the same time the manner in which this amnesty was drawn up was not of the nature to encourage us. Furthermore, the amnesty only applied to subjects of the kingdom, the inhabitants of the detached and outlying provinces were deprived of it; and to conclude, before asking pardon, one must feel that one has been guilty.’

‘Who gave you that English passport?’

‘I found it in the street.’

‘You spent more than a month in Hungary; you see that I am well informed about you. Why did you go there?’

‘To make my traces more difficult to follow, and to shorten the journey.’

‘Oh! but you had some other reasons; you are a member of the Democratic Society.’

‘I once formed a part of it, but I have withdrawn from it a long time ago.’

‘You are an emissary of that society?’

‘No.’

‘Then in coming here you had no political mission?’

‘Certainly, I had none.’

‘Such assertions are not likely to improve your situation; I do not hide from you that it is a very unpleasant one; and only a sincere and complete confession can diminish your troubles, and above all make you worthy of the indulgence of the Emperor. You knew Konarski?’[4]

‘No.’

‘But you have heard of him?’

‘Certainly, above all of the tortures inflicted upon him.’

‘Your case is similar to that of Konarski, and only the sincerity of your confession can lessen its consequences. I do not wish to judge of your sentiments, I only wish to know whom you have known at Kaminieç, and in the provinces; I do not ask you to tell me what were your mutual plans, tell me only with whom were you acquainted.’

‘Why, your Excellency, I knew almost everybody in Kaminieç, and in its neighbourhood.’

‘That is not the question, and you know that it is not; the point is, who were your intimates?’

‘I had none; it is true I was able to reveal my nationality to a few, and to ask their help and counsel; but your Excellency must fully understand why I ought not to name them.’

After some moments of silence, Prince Bibikov replied, ‘I do not understand why the Poles and the Russians should hate and hurt each other for ever; we are all Slaves, brought together by origin, language, and manners, we ought to be united, and to march on together; and he who thinks otherwise does not understand the true interests of the two nations.’

‘I am quite of your Excellency’s way of thinking, and we indeed have no feeling of ill-will towards the Russian nation; but we aspire to be free, and as regards the government....’

‘I have no time to discuss this with you. I repeat it, your situation is a most critical one, but you can improve it sensibly by making a sincere avowal; I do not promise you complete or immediate liberty, for I never promise that which I am not sure of being able to perform, but I can intercede with the Emperor that he would give you permission to serve for the future in the army of the Caucasus. The Poles, like all the Slaves, are brave and courageous; you are still young, you are not wanting in intellect, you would very soon become an officer, and then your career would depend only on yourself.’

He pronounced these words in a loud and firm voice; then rising, he added, with a certain gentleness: ‘For the rest, I do not ask for your secrets; tell me only the names of the persons by whom you were known. I have no wish to know what you said to them--their names are all that is required; and I do not even exact from you that you should give them in immediately. You are weak, and under impressions still too recent and too lively. When you wish to speak to me, send to say so by the orderly of the day; in the meantime, let me have a note from you, and put your biography on paper.’ He made me a slight bow, and, as he went out, stopped at the door, and said, ‘Have his chains taken off.’

Some minutes afterwards, the Commandant of the place came with a farrier to see me delivered from my chains; and this was the first and last benefit which I derived from the visit of the Governor-General; but it was a very great advantage, and I was truly grateful to him for it, for since my departure from Kaminieç I had not been able to take my boots off once. My legs were much bruised, yet I walked up and down my room the whole of that day; and I had almost a pleasure in the pain which the exercise gave me, for it proved that my feet were free.

Some weeks passed; and one evening, at a pretty late hour of the night, I saw a thing which had never yet entered my cell--it was a light. An aide-de-camp, followed by four soldiers, bid me rise, and follow him. Is the moment of execution arrived? I thought, as I threw round my cell a glance which had in it something of a farewell. Supported under my arms by the soldiers, I traversed the great court of the prison. The snow creaked under our feet, the night was very dark; but the keen and pure air, to which I was not accustomed, while it cut my breath, did me an indescribable amount of good; and while I believed that I was on the way to meet my fate, I felt, if I may so express it, a bitter-sweet delight in inhaling the fresh gusts of wind. I was led into a large room, which was feebly illuminated, and where officers of different ranks were seated at a large round table covered with green cloth; they smoked their cigars, talked in a loud voice, and laughed between times. This was the Commission of Inquiry.

Among these gentlemen it was with real joy that I recognised the face of Major Poloutkovskoï, and yet he it was who had arrested me! The person who presided, and who seemed to be chairman of the commission, was dressed in a plain black coat. He was a member of the third division of the Imperial Cabinet (the secret Police) and a Privy Councillor--in short, it was Pissarev, the _alter ego_ of Prince Bibikov, a man of whom the remembrance is too terrible to be soon effaced in the detached provinces. He made a sign to me to approach, allowed me to be seated near him, and began his questions in French, and in a very affable tone. Although with more of detail, they were identical with those which had been put to me by Prince Bibikov. I made the same answers--and such was the character of the many examinations which I underwent before the Commission of Inquiry.

As I was of noble birth, I found, one day, at one of the sittings of the Commission, the Marshal of the nobility of the province. His presence was demanded by the laws; but he seemed to suffer from his office, and evidently only went through a painful formality, while he addressed me in Polish and put a few questions as to my family and connections. On the whole, these gentlemen seldom failed to treat me with consideration, in spite of the silence and the negatives with which I met their demands. One day, the president even said to me, ‘You must find the time in prison pass very slowly; my library is at your disposal, if you wish to have some books. Do you prefer travels or novels?’

‘Will you have the kindness to let me have a Bible?’

‘A Bible!’ he replied, looking at me with an odd expression; ‘upon my word, I have not got such a thing; but I can procure one for you.’ And he did send me a Bible, after which time I no longer felt that I was alone.

Those of my fellow-countrymen to whom the very names of Prince Bibikov and of M. Pissarev recall the sorrows of so many families, the blood and tears of so many noble victims, and of three provinces all outraged and oppressed under the pressure of the most haughty and rapacious of tyrannies, will no doubt be astonished--it may be, shocked--at what I have just related. Yet such undoubtedly was the conduct of these two men towards myself. I ought also here to declare that no attempt was ever made to inflict on me any of the tortures to which so many Poles have been subjected in Russian prisons--more than one of my fellow-accused being, alas! among the number. It is true that I was several times threatened with such measures, but the threat was never put into execution.

The inquest dragged out its length however, and I soon received the blessed permission to walk in the corridors every day for one hour--care being taken to clear them at that time of every living soul, except the two sentries. The corridor was narrow, dark, and damp; but at least I could satisfy the imperious necessity for exercise which I had felt, and I could also talk in secret from time to time with the sentries. If these soldiers chanced to be Poles--which they very often were, being even men who had served with us in our army of 1831--they always showed me more compassion, while they maintained also a far greater show of reserve. The Russian soldiers acted I think more from curiosity; but what surprised me most was the frequency with which I was asked whether I had never met, in foreign countries, with the Grand Duke Constantine, whom they firmly believed to be living in France or in England, and who should one day return to deliver them from Nicholas. I found however that I must renounce the real pleasure which I felt in talking to my sentries. One day the jailer surprised one of them in conversation with me. He was led off to receive sixty blows with the rods, and the cries of the unhappy man under punishment presently reached my ears.

I ought to say something in this place of my neighbours, viz. of those who inhabited the cells opposite my prison. Those who were implicated in my affair were lodged in another part of the fortress, and I never had any communication with them. Once only I caught a glimpse of the judge, Zawadzki, and I hardly recognised him again, for the man formerly so strong and very corpulent was reduced to a perfect skeleton. My neighbours in the corridor were not political criminals. One of them, a soldier named Toumanov, awaited in irons the execution of his sentence of four thousand blows with the rods, which had been passed on him for some insubordination to his superiors. He had no fear, counted on the ‘toughness of his hide,’ as he expressed it, cursed the Tzar, his officers, and his fate, and sang a great deal, especially an air of which the words began, ‘March to the sacking of Poland!’ When the moment of his execution arrived, his jailers made many brutal jests at his expense. ‘Now then, Toumanov, the devil will get your soul to-day; you will never live through the thing.’ The unhappy wretch replied, with coarser oaths, ‘I tell you I mean to live through it, and we will have a glass together yet before I am off to Siberia! I shall be better there than serving the Tzar.’ I heard afterwards from these same jailers that after two of the four thousand blows he fell senseless on the snow, which was red with his blood, and was carried back to prison. If he survived he was liable to receive, at some future day, the other half of his sentence!

The next of my neighbours was a peasant of the district of Poitava, short in stature, but of immense strength. He had deserted from the army, taken to the woods and a wild life among them, where he had killed several men. He also, when led away to punishment (for his sentence was the knout and penal servitude for life), replied to the hideous comments of his keepers, that he was not afraid. The third prisoner, like the two first, was also in chains, a young handsome soldier, who, while on a march with his battalion, had stopped at a village and loitered behind for a whole week, being ‘bewitched by a woman.’ The poor boy had then come of his own accord to give himself up, and he now expected his trial. His character seemed to be both good and gentle, and he was in the habit of singing an air of which the melody, though slightly monotonous, was so sweet and plaintive that I could not listen to him without emotion--such sweet tones could hardly have come from a vicious heart. When he left our prison I never was able to hear what became of him, but I regretted him and that plaintive strain which had so often charmed my ears. His cell was soon occupied again--by a subaltern convicted of having set fire to a magazine of forage which was under his care, the motive being the wish to conceal a certain deficit which had occurred. He had now gone mad, but in general his mania was of the inoffensive and quiet kind. He talked constantly, prepared for death, and exhorted his absent mistress to place over his remains a black cross, of which he described the shape and ornaments with the greatest exactness. Another day he complained that a gnat had stung him--that all the blood had been sucked out of his body, and that only water had been left. A _pope_ was sent for, who recited a great number of prayers by way of exorcising him; but at last one day the prisoner would not permit him to leave the cell. A psalter in one hand and a crucifix in the other, the madman repeated, without ceasing, ‘Little father (_batiouchka_), _I_ will break your head for you if you do not immediately give me the holy communion.’ The pope manœuvred cleverly so as to reach the door, assuring him that he was going to fetch the pyx; he then saved himself by making a rush, abandoning his crucifix and his psalter. On the following day the governor of the citadel had the maniac’s cell opened, though he took care himself to remain in the corridor. The prisoner, standing at the threshold, made him a sign to enter. ‘Come, your Excellency, I have a secret to whisper in your ear;’ but his Excellency was more prudent than the _pope_. Some soldiers soon advanced; they garotted and bound the poor fool, and they carried him off to the hospital.

In his place arrived a Circassian--a free lance of the Caucasus, who, having been taken prisoner and employed in the works of the fortress, had tried to make good his escape along with two countrymen of his own, his fellow-sufferers. Pursued by the troops, they defended themselves for a long time with their spades, which were their only weapons. One succeeded in escaping, one was killed by a thrust with a bayonet, the third fell into the hands of the soldiers and became my opposite neighbour. He was called ‘a mountain prince,’ and, with hands and feet in fetters, he was almost always to be seen seated on his couch, gloomy and silent, and with a proud look on his face. I never failed to make him a respectful bow when, in walking up and down the corridor, I passed the loophole in his cell.

In the meantime, weeks grew to months, and as the months succeeded each other, the cold of winter had given place to the heats of July. The stifling air of my prison reduced me to a state of extreme nervous irritability, which broke out over every trifle, and at night I could not sleep. I had forgotten to notice one permanent suffering in my captivity, of which the intensity can never be appreciated, except by those who may have made a personal trial of it: I mean the order given to the sentry to watch all my actions through the window in my door. No one can imagine what an indescribable torture it is to a man to see and to know that a watch is kept upon every movement. That strange eye, impassable and implacable, which meets yours at every moment--that eye which follows you everywhere and at all times--becomes to you a sort of infernal providence; and I abandon the task of making any one understand what it is that the prisoner feels who from the instant that he wakes in the morning sees from his bed those two eyes pointed towards him like two stilettos. Will it be believed, from the earliest dawn I longed for the night, even after a night which had been already very long and rayless; for then at least I was protected from those two eyes. Sometimes, impatient and distracted, I would go up to the loophole and oppose my feverish glare to those two persecuting eyes; and then I laughed like a savage, when I obliged the man to turn away for a moment.

It was in this state of extreme irritation that I received one day a visit from an aide-de-camp, accompanied by another official, by the jailer, and by some soldiers. He desired me to rise, and to undress.

‘But I am already undressed!’

‘No; but you must be stripped.’

‘Why?’

‘I have orders to take a complete description of you, and to note down any marks you may have about your person.’

‘But that is something barbarous and savage! the description of my features ought to suffice!’

‘My orders are precise, and I beg of you to undress.’

So there was no help for it.

If I had been better acquainted with the usages and customs in Russian proceedings of the sort, this notification ought to have enlightened me as to the nature of the punishment to which I was going to be condemned, as well as upon the fact that my sentence was imminent, such examinations being a preliminary to deportation. However, I was so far from having any idea of this, that when some days later I was again summoned before the Commission of Inquiry, I anticipated nothing more than one of those interminable examinations which had already become so familiar to me; but the unaccustomed solemnity of those who were present soon gave me a presentiment that something extraordinary was coming, and before long my sentence was read out. This sentence, which was long and minutely drawn up, finished with ‘the pain of death,’ commuted, however, by Prince Bibikov, for that of penal servitude in Siberia for the term of my natural life. I was, in addition, degraded from the ranks of the nobility, and I was to make the journey in fetters. After having heard this document, I was ordered to write at the bottom of the paper the following words: ‘Rufin Piotrowski heard this sentence on the 29th of July, O. S. 1844.’

I was immediately conducted to the dwelling of the commandant, where I was to take my old travelling clothes, and have my feet put in irons. To my horror, they presented me with the same rusty bars which had caused my torment all the way to Kiow. In vain I besought and implored the commandant to give me another set of chains, he would not consent to do so; and all that I could obtain from him was an order given to the gendarmes who were to be my convoy, that the tight foot-rings were to be enlarged at one of the nearest stations. I was not permitted either to revisit my cell or my companions in the corridor; I was marched down into the courtyard, where a _kibitka_ with three horses was in waiting, and I took my seat there between two gendarmes whose muskets were loaded. The doors of the fortress closed behind the _kibitka_, and before me opened the way to Siberia.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Prince Bibikov had his arm carried away at the battle of Borodino: all over Poland the answer is current, which he once made to a Polish lady, who on her knees implored a pardon for her son: ‘The hand which signs pardons, madam, I left at Borodino.’

[4] A celebrated emissary, executed at Wilna, in 1841, after a long and cruel detention.