In the morning a guard entered my cell and brought me black bread and hot water.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “how long do you think I shall be kept here?”

The guard looked at me in surprise.

“And how are _we_ to know?” he answered, and went out.

A few days later I was called to the examination. It was necessary to cross the prison yard to get to the office.

“Comrade!” I heard several voices issuing from somewhere. I raised my head and saw hands with white handkerchiefs, which fluttered in the wind, thrust out between the window bars. They greeted me.

“Good-morning!” I shouted cheerfully. But the heavy arm of the guard was on my shoulder.

“You must not speak to them, otherwise I will put you in the _kartzer_.”[7]

But it was too late: I already knew that I was not alone there.

The gendarme colonel met me very cordially. His broad face was smiling, and his little gray eyes looked at me insinuatingly.

“Be seated.” He pointed to a chair near his table. “What is your Christian name? Surname? What is your age?”

I told him.

“Well, how do you like to be in prison?” he asked me in a free manner.

“Oh, it’s terrible!” I said.

“Well, you see, you are too young yet to be in prison, and I shall be glad to release you. It all depends on you, though.”

“How?” I asked, surprised.

“You have only to tell—” here the colonel took from the table drawer the unfortunate pieces of type which were found in my pocket, “who gave you _this_, then I will immediately release you.”

“I cannot tell,” I said.

“It would be very imprudent on your part not to tell. You will fare badly, and regret it.”

“But if I should name the person who gave me these letters you will arrest him. How can I do such a thing?”

“Oh, he is already in prison, anyway, and we know who he is.”

“Then why do you ask me to name him?”

“That is only a little formality which the law requires for your release. Sign this paper, and I will let you free.”

He shoved a paper over to me. I looked at the paper upon which my release depended, and doubt rose in my mind. Is it really so? Does he not fool me? And suddenly I remembered a little book I had read in Odessa, entitled: “Comrades, decline to give evidence!” In this booklet, published by the Socialist-Revolutionists’ Party, it was explained that the gendarmes took advantage of the inexperience of young political prisoners and obtained from them incriminating evidence by false promises of release, etc.

“I decline to give evidence,” I said.

The colonel took from the table drawer a little book and handed it to me.

“Have you read this book?” he asked.

It turned out to be the very same booklet.

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

I was silent.

“Don’t be afraid,” the colonel went on. “I ask this as a private person, not as the gendarme colonel. I am simply curious to know who could have given you this booklet.”

The colonel’s tone was so simple and so sincere, and in general he was not as I had pictured to myself a gendarme colonel ought to be. I hesitated. The colonel, evidently guessing my thoughts, put his plump hand on mine and said:

“We are not such bad people.”

“Then why do you keep this old man B——?” I asked. “If you are a nice man, you must release him, because you know that he is not guilty of anything.”

“That does not depend upon me,” the colonel answered.

“Then I don’t believe you,” I cried. “You merely want to get a confession from me, so that you might arrest several more innocent people.”

“The worse for you,” the colonel said, changing his tone sharply. He got up, opened the door, and summoned the guard.

“The examination is over. Take the prisoner to the secret division.”

I was led out by another passage, and soon found myself in a low, circular cell. A heavy smell of dampness filled the air, as in a grave. The tiny window was on a level with the ground. Only the lower part of the prison wall could be seen from it; not a bit of sky or anything which might cheer the prisoner’s eye.

But I did not think of comforts then. A feeling of gladness that I had not fallen into the gendarme’s trap filled me. The thought that they had not discovered the house where I kept the type was a great relief to me. And the knowledge that I was not alone in prison, that all around me were comrades who were also fighting for liberty and justice, raised my spirits still more.

“If they only should let the old man out,” I thought.

I paced my half-dark cell, not knowing how to give vent to my feelings.

“It is impossible they should keep me long here,” I thought to myself.

I was then not quite seventeen. Life was just beginning to unfold before me. It was still shrouded in mystery. Everything in the world seemed so beautiful and attractive. Suddenly the stone walls of the prison had shut out everything from my view.

For many days I could not believe that I was there to stay. From morning till night I dreamed how my door would open and the guard would say: “You are free!”

Three times a day he came to my cell bringing me food, and every time I heard his footsteps near the door my heart filled with hope that he would utter those magic words: “You are free!” But days, weeks, months passed, and the guard, instead of freedom, brought me bread and _kasha_.

My dreams faded, and the thought that they had forgotten me in this grave occurred to me more and more frequently.

“Why am I not called to the examination?” I asked the governor, who sometimes came to the evening roll-call.

“That is not our affair,” was his invariable reply. “Write a petition.”

The darkness and dampness of my cell began to have their effect upon me. I began to suffer with insomnia. The twenty-minutes’ daily walk in the prison-yard became a torture to me. The sun shone so brightly without the prison walls, and here I was shut up, deprived of its rays, deprived of my freedom, without which I felt I could not live.