CHAPTER V

THE JOURNEY TO RUSSIA—IN THE CATTLE-TRUCK—THE FRANKFORT AND BERLIN PRISONS—THE FRONTIER-STATION—THROUGH WARSAW TO PETERSBURG

When evening came I was sent off in a closed carriage, accompanied by two policemen in plain clothes, who had been enjoined to use all possible vigilance. The carriage was stopped at a branch of the railway line some distance from the station, and here my companions and I were put into an ordinary cattle-truck. As this truck was brought into the station, where it was attached to a passenger train, I observed an unusual commotion on the platform, and my guards, who noticed it too, whispered together excitedly. From chance words that I caught I gathered that an arrest was being made, and wondered if it could have anything to do with me. Years afterwards I learned that it was indeed two of my comrades who were seized on the platform at Freiburg, they having hoped to travel by my train and be at hand to assist me if I could attempt an escape. But this was another fiasco. My two friends were kept some days in prison in Freiburg, and then sent back to Switzerland.

Towards morning we arrived at Frankfurt-am-Main, where for some reason or other I was again put in prison. The governor of this gaol made a great show of kindness and consideration towards me, but had his own reasons for such tactics, as will subsequently appear. When I asked if I might write a post card to my friends in Switzerland, he assured me most obligingly that it should be forwarded 43at once, and furnished me with writing materials. (Later I found that he had handed over the card to my guards, who sent it to the Russian authorities; but, of course, it only contained a few words of greeting.)

The cell to which he conducted me was very comfortable, and looked out on a lively street; but he posted two policemen in the room to keep watch over me. He then provided me with an excellent luncheon—or at least it seemed very good to me, as during the last day or two excitement had kept me from eating. Seeing that the journey threatened to be tedious, I wanted to get some books, and the obliging governor offered to buy them for me at a second-hand shop, where they would be cheap. I remember choosing a few German and French classics, which he procured for me at what I thought a reasonable price. Finally, he invited me to go for a walk in the yard with him.

As soon as we were alone he began giving me a very prolix account of all his experiences, and then suddenly asked me point-blank if I were not really the famous Degàiev.[21]

I could not help laughing heartily: the assiduous friendliness of this worthy, who, as a matter of fact, was always looking out for his own advancement, appeared now in 44quite a new light. Apart from the fact that (as I heard afterwards from the policemen in my cell) he drew a considerable profit, not only from my food, but even on the books he got me, he also had his eye on the reward he would receive if he could induce me to confess to being Degàiev. The Russian Government had put a price of 10,000 roubles on that man’s head, and his name was in every European newspaper.

I stayed in this prison until nightfall, when I was fetched away by three policemen in plain clothes. Every time that my guards were changed I was searched, but nothing was found. Before starting on our journey, the Frankfort police put chains on me, not heavy or thick, and quite inconspicuous, as they were attached under my clothes; but they hindered any quick movement, and of course made running impossible. I protested vehemently against this indignity; but they declared they had received special instructions, and had no choice in the matter, so I had to submit. Even this was not their final precaution. When we passed on to the railway platform, one man, a giant in stature, took me by the arm in a friendly way; another went a few steps in front, and the third came a little behind, so that we must have appeared to the uninitiated like a trio of boon companions. We installed ourselves in a carriage among the ordinary travellers, and it probably never dawned on any of them that they were sitting cheek by jowl with a fettered prisoner. I could not help thinking of the proverb used by our Russian peasants to describe German ingenuity:—“The Germans are too clever for anything; they’ve even invented apes!” I must say that my guardians behaved very civilly to me, although with formal strictness. So far as their orders permitted, they showed me many little kindnesses. In the Begleitschein with which I was given into their custody I was entered as “the so-called Bulìgin,” and by this name I went until I was handed over to the Russians.

45There was no thinking of escape on this journey. My escort never let me out of their sight for a second, never stirred from my side, and watched my slightest movements. They did not enter into conversation with me, nor had I any inclination to gossip with them. I felt heavy at heart, enervated, and exhausted. My mind seemed dormant, nothing attracted my attention during the whole journey; I seemed to hear and see nothing that went on around me, but to lie wrapped in a dreary apathy. “What must be must be,” I said to myself, if a thought of the future arose. Reaction had set in after the painful excitement of the last days in Freiburg.

The following day we arrived in Berlin, where I was at once taken to prison. Which prison it was I do not know, but I remember what a gloomy impression it produced upon me. The dark cell, (into which no direct light could penetrate owing to the high wall opposite the window,) and the sour-faced warders, who never seemed to look one straight in the eyes, forced on me the thought that people who were compelled to inhabit this place for long were much to be pitied. I have made acquaintance with many prisons, both in Russia and Western Europe, but never felt so thoroughly despondent as in this Berlin gaol. Everything seemed intended to make one feel: “You are in Berlin, the capital of military Prussia, where inflexible rule and iron discipline are the watchwords applying to the smallest detail.”

The policemen who had brought me from Frankfort never left me alone even in my prison cell, keeping watch over me by turns. And I must say that I was glad of this. Their company was not exactly enlivening, but the presence of another human being mitigated the dreariness of the prison atmosphere. Fortunately I was not detained here long, and I was truly thankful when evening came, and I was once more on my travels, attended by the same escort. Next morning we were in Russia.

46The frontier station where I was to be delivered over to the Russian authorities is called Granitza, a place where three empires meet—Germany, Austria, and Russia. As I was to be taken straight on to Petersburg, this was a very roundabout way to have come, and I suppose it must have been chosen from fear of a rescue being attempted at the frontier. This is the more likely, as shortly before the Polish Socialist, Stanislas Mendelssohn, had—aided by his friends—escaped from the Prussian police at another frontier station (Alexandrovo, I think), just as his surrender to the Russians was to be effected. He got safe through to Switzerland.

I remember my sensations well. It was a lovely May morning, and the sunshine gave me renewed strength. I had scarcely descended from the train with my German guards, when I was surrounded by a crowd of Russian gendarmes.

“Good morning, Deutsch! good morning, sir! Here you are at last! We have been expecting you for ever so long!” were their greetings. I saw round me the fresh, smiling faces of young Russian peasant lads, surmounting the hated dark blue uniform. Their free, familiar bearing made me smile back at them as if old friends were welcoming me.

“How do you know me?” I asked them, as we went towards the gendarmes’ quarters.

“Oh, of course we know you; we’ve heard such a lot about you!” cried several. “Will you come and have some tea at once, or brush the dust off first?” they asked, and vied with each other in doing the agreeable and making me at home. It was a curious contrast to the manners of my German guards. The Russians were frank and simple; there was something of even friendly confidence in their behaviour. To the German police I was a dangerous criminal, who went about under false names. They had their orders, and followed them rigidly, not troubling themselves with anything beyond that, hoping 47thereby to gain a reward (as I gathered from their whispered talk when they supposed me asleep). To the Russian gendarmes,[22] who never have anything to do with common criminals, I was a “political offender,” a “State prisoner” (as we call it), whose name they had heard so often that they looked on me quite as an old acquaintance. I had not been in Russia for four years, and the first persons I met from whom I heard my mother tongue were gendarmes. The reader will be able to understand my mingled feelings. Any uninitiated person glancing into the room where I sat before the steaming samovar, refreshing myself with tea, and gossiping with the gendarmes standing round, might have thought we were a party of old friends enjoying a cosy chat.

“Well, what’s it like in foreign parts?—not so nice as here, eh?” asked the lads; and I related how in “foreign parts” it was ever so much nicer than at home, in many ways. But that they would not allow to be possible, and we disputed about it, till at last everyone present, ten or twelve men, were all talking at once. When this topic was exhausted I asked what was the news at home, what was happening? They then described excitedly how all Russia had just been celebrating the majority of the heir-apparent, the present Tsar.

The German police having fulfilled their commission and handed me over with bag and baggage, had departed, probably somewhat disappointed, for no reward had been given them—in Granitza, at least. After some hours an officer of the gendarmerie appeared, and commanded some of the men to be ready to escort me, as I was to go on by the next train. I saw that he gave over to one of them the money that had been taken from me by the German police. Unobserved, I immediately drew out the Russian money I had concealed about me, and then handed it to the officer, for I feared it might be discovered if I were carefully searched. He was greatly 48surprised, and asked if I had never been searched in Germany. He then ordered me to be searched again, which was done with every care; but all the same, the rest of my German money and the scissors were not found.

Three gendarmes accompanied me on the journey to Petersburg. In Warsaw, where we arrived during the night, a colonel of gendarmerie was awaiting me. Like most of his kind, he was very polite and ready to converse.

“You were concerned in the Tchigirìn case?” he began; and when I assented, he continued confidentially, “Ah, that was a long while ago. Wasn’t it at the time of the Polish rising? Well, then, you will have the benefit of the coronation amnesty; they won’t have much against you.”

At the time of the Polish insurrection, in 1863, I was only eight years old. This is an illustration of how much many of the officers of gendarmerie know about the political trials which are supposed to be their own special business. This friendly sympathy did not prevent him, of course, from giving my escort the strictest orders about my treatment, as I could hear when seated in the carriage. “Be sure you don’t fall asleep!” he whispered. The gendarmes, however, did not allow this to trouble their minds much, but continued to treat me in a very easy-going fashion, and did not manifest any fear of my running away.

When we arrived in Petersburg a captain of gendarmerie met us, and took me at once in a closed carriage to the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL, ST. PETERSBURG