"They cannot and will not keep me here eternally," he said. "They will set me free some day. Perhaps, and this is the most likely, the form of Gov. ernment will change (ours are continuing their work), and therefore one should preserve one's life in order to come out healthy, and be able to take up the work again."

He considered for a long time as to the kind of life best suited for his purpose, and this is what he decided upon: he went to bed at nine o'clock, and compelled himself to stay there whether asleep or not until five in the morning. Then he got up, washed and dressed, did some physical exercise, and then, as he called it, went out to business. In imagination he walked about St. Petersburg from the Nevsky to the Nadejdenskaya, trying to picture to himself all he might meet on the way: shop signs, houses, policemen, carriages, and pedestrians. In the Nadejdenskaya he entered the house of a friend and co-worker of his, and there, together with other comrades who had assembled, they discussed their forthcoming schemes. Arguments and controversies took place. Mejenetsky spoke both for himself and for others. Sometimes he spoke so loud that the warder admonished him through the slide, but Mejenetsky paid no attention to him, and continued his imaginary St. Petersburg day. Having passed two hours at his friend's he returned home and dined, first in fancy, then in reality, eating the meal which was brought to him, and always ate in moderation. Then he remained at home, and studied either history or mathematics, and sometimes, on Sundays, literature. His historical studies consisted in first selecting a particular epoch and nation, and recalling to mind the facts and chronology. For his mathematical lessons he solved in his mind calculations and geometrical problems (this was his favorite occupation). On Sundays, he recalled

Poushkin, Gogol, Shakespeare, and composed a little himself.

Before bed he made another little excursion in his imagination, having with his comrades, men and women, merry, humorous, and sometimes serious conversations, which had either actually taken place, or else were invented by him for the occasion. And so it went on until night. Before going to bed he made in reality 2000 steps, for the sake of exercise, in his cage; then lay down on his bed and fell asleep.

On the next day it was the same. Sometimes he travelled to the south, to incite the population, or commenced a rebellion, and, together with the people, dispersed the landowners, distributing their land among the peasants. All this, however, he imagined not all at once but consecutively with all the details. In his imagination the revolutionary party triumphed everywhere, the power of the Government weakened, and it was compelled to call a Legislative Assembly. The Imperial Family and all the oppressors of the people disappeared, and a republic was instituted, and he, Mejenetsky, chosen president. Sometimes he reached this too quickly, and then he commenced again from the beginning, and attained his object by other methods.

Thus he lived one, two, three years, sometimes deviating from this strict order of life, but for the most part returning to it. Controlling his mind he freed himself from involuntary hallucinations, and only rarely was he beset with attacks of insomnia and visions of dreadful faces, and then he contemplated the air regulator and considered how he would attach the rope. prepare the noose, and hang himself. But he overcame these attacks, and they did not last long.

Thus he passed almost seven years. When the term of his solitary confinement came to a close and he was being removed to penal labor he was quite

well, fresh, and in complete possession of his mental faculties.

XI.

He was being conveyed alone as an especially important criminal, and was not allowed to communicate with others. Only in the prison of Krasnoyarsk did he have an opportunity of intercourse with some other political prisoners on their way to penal labor. There were six of them: two women and four men. They were all young people of the new school with which Mejenetsky was not acquainted. They were revolutionists of the generation after him, his successors, and therefore of special interest to him. Mejenetsky expected to find them following in his steps, and consequently bound to appreciate highly all that had been done by their predecessors, especially by him-Mejenetsky. He was prepared to treat them affectionately and patronizingly. But to his astonishment and annoyance these young people not only failed to regard him as their forerunner and teacher, but treated him as it were with condescension, passing over and excusing his views as obsolete. According to them-these new revolutionists-all that Mejenetsky and his friends had done, all their attempts to raise the peasants, and above all, their system of terrorizing and the assassinations of the Governor Krapotkin, of Mezentsef, and of Alexander II. himself-all this was a series of mistakes. All this led only to that reaction which triumphed during the reign of Alexander III., and caused the country to relapse almost to its condition during serfdom. The people's salvation, according to the new teachers, was in quite another direction.

For nearly two days and nights the disputations between Mejenetsky and his new acquaintances continued. One, the leader of the rest, Roman, as they called him, using his Christian name, specially irritated Mejenetsky by his determined self-assurance in the rightness of his views, and by his condescending and even sarcastic condemnation of all the past activity of Mejenetsky and his comrades.

The people, according to Roman, were a coarse crowd, and with the populace in their present state of development, nothing could be done. All attempts to raise the Russian peasant population were like endeavoring to set fire to a stone or to ice. The people should be educated-taught solidarity-and this could only be attained by the growth of vast industries, and their natural outcome a Socialistic organization of the people. The land was not only unnecessary to the people but it was the land that made them conservative and servile. This was the case not only with us but also in Europe. And he cited from memory opinions of authorities and statistical data. The people should be liberated from the land, and the quicker the better; the more they take up factory life, and the more their land is seized by the capitalist, and the more they were oppressed, the better. Despotism, and above all capitalism, would be abolished only by the solidarity of the working people, and this solidarity could be secured, by unions, labor associations, i.e., only when the masses of the people shall cease to be landowners and should become proletariats.

Mejenetsky disputed and got heated. He was particularly exasperated by one of the women, a good-looking, thickhaired brunette with very shining eyes, who, sitting on the window-ledge, and not directly participating in the conversation, introduced from time to time a word or two corroborating Roman's

argument, or merely sneering at Mejenetsky's remarks.

"Is it possible to change all the agricultural population into factory hands?" said Mejenetsky.

"Why not?" expostulated Roman. "It is the universal economic law."

"How do we know that this is universal?"

"Read Kautzky," interpolated the brunette, smiling contemptuously.

"If even one admits," said Mejenetsky-"I do not admit it-that the people will all become proletariats, still, how do you know they will then adopt the form you have decided in advance?"

"Because it is scientifically demonstrated," remarked the brunette, glancing into the room.

But when the discussion reached the form of activity needful for the attainment of these aims their disagreement was even worse. Roman and his friends insisted that it was necessary to convert the army of factory workmen, and get them to assist in the transformation of the peasants into factory workers; and to propagate Socialism amongst the people; and that they should not only refrain from open strife with the Government but should utilize it for the attainment of their ends.

Mejenetsky said it was necessary to strive directly with the Government and to terrorize it, that the Government was both stronger and more cunning than they. "It is not you who will deceive the Government, but the Government will deceive you. We went in both for propaganda amongst the people and for the strife with the Government."

"And what a lot you have done!" ironically remarked the brunette.

"Yes, I think direct strife with the Government is an unprofitable loss of energy," said Roman.

"The first of March'-a loss of en

The date of the assassination of Alexander II. (Trans.)

ergy," exclaimed Mejenetsky. "We sacrificed ourselves, our lives, whilst you are quietly sitting at home enjoying life and merely preach.”

"Well, not much enjoying life," quietly said Roman, looking round at his comrades, and laughing triumphantly in his uninfectious, distinct, self-assured way.

The brunette, shaking her head, smiled contemptuously.

"Not much enjoying life," said Roman, "and if we are sitting here it is thanks to the reaction, and the reaction is the result precisely of the first of March."

Mejenetsky was silent; he felt he was choking from exasperation, and went out into the passage.

XII.

Endeavoring to quiet himself Mejenetsky began to walk up and down the corridor. The doors into the dormitories were left open until the evening roll-call. A tall, light-haired prisoner with a face the good nature of which was not spoilt by his head being halfshaven, approached Mejenetsky.

"A prisoner in our dormitory .has seen you, sir, and asked me to call you in."

"What prisoner?"

""Tobacco Kingdom,' that is his nick-name. He is an old sectarian. 'Bring me that man,' he said. That's you, sir, he means."

"Well, where is he?"

"In here in our dormitory. 'Call that gentleman,' he said."

Mejenetsky entered with the prisoner into a small dormitory with beds on which prisoners were sitting and lying.

On bare boards under a gray coat at the end of the row was lying the same old sectarian who, seven years before, had come to Mejenetsky to inquire about Svetlogoub. The old man's pale face had become all wrinkled up, but

his hair was just as thick; the thin bit of beard was quite white and turned up. The blue eyes were kind and attentive. He was lying on his back evidently in fever; on his cheeks there was a sickly pink color.

Mejenetsky approached him. "What is it?" he asked.

The old man with difficulty lifted himself on to his elbow and stretched out his little snaky, dried-up hand. Attempting to speak, he began to breathe heavily, as if balancing himself, and gasping for breath he said softly:

"You did not reveal it to me then, God forgive you, but I disclose it to

all."

"What do you disclose?"

"About the Lamb... about the Lamb I disclose... that youth had the Lamb; and it is said the Lamb will overcome them, will overcome all . . . and those who are with him are the elect and faithful."

"I don't understand," said Mejenetsky.

"You must understand in the spirit. The Kings have received power with the Beast. The Lamb shall overcome them."

"What kings?" said Mejenetsky. "There are seven kings, five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come: and when he cometh he must continue a short space . . . and then it will be all up with him. understand?"

...

Do you

old man's companions. But the old man well knew what he was saying, and it had for him a clear and deep meaning. The meaning was that evil has not long to rule, that the Lamb by righteousness and meekness conquers all... that the Lamb will wipe every tear, and there will be neither weeping, sickness, nor death. And he felt that this was already being accomplished in the whole world because it was being accomplished in his soul enlightened by the approach of death.

"Yea, come quickly! Amen! Yea, come! Lord Jesus! Come!" he murmured, with a slight, significant, and, as it appeared to Mejenetsky, insane smile.

XIII.

“There he is, a representative of the people," thought Mejenetsky, coming out from the old man. "This is one of the best of them, and what darkness. They" (he implied Roman and his friends) "say: with such a people as they are now, nothing can be done."

Mejenetsky at one time was occupied with revolutionary work amongst the people, and knew all the “inertia,” as he called it, of the Russian peasant. He had also associated with soldiers, both on active service and discharged, and knew all their obstinate faith in the oath, in the necessity of obedience, and knew the impossibility of influencing them by argument. He was aware of all this, but had never drawn from it the natural conclusion. The discussion with the new revolutionists upset and angered him.

"They say that all we did, all Haltourin, Kibalich, Perovskaya' did, was unnecessary, even harmful, that it was this which called forth the reaction of Alexander III., that thanks to them the people are persuaded that the revolutionary activity emanates from the landlords who have killed the Tsar be5 Leading Russian Terrorists. (Trans.)

cause he deprived them of the serfs. How absurd! What a want of comprehension, and how insolent it is to say so," he thought, continuing to pace the corridor.

All the dormitories were locked except the one used by the new revolutionists. Approaching it Mejenetsky heard the laugh of the brunette he detested, and the strident, assertive voice of Roman. They were evidently speaking about him. Mejenetsky stopped to listen. Roman was saying:

"Not understanding the economic laws, they did not realize what they were doing. And there was here a good deal of . . .”

Mejenetsky could not and did not wish to hear what it was there was a good deal of, and indeed he did not require to know this. The tone of voice alone demonstrated the complete contempt which these people felt towards him-Mejenetsky, the hero of the revolution, who had sacrificed for it twelve years of his life.

And in Mejenetsky's soul there arose a fearful hatred such as he had never before experienced. A hatred against every one, everything, against all this senseless world in which could live only people akin to beasts, like this old man with his Lamb, and similar half-bestial hangmen and warders, and these insolent, self-assured, still-born theorists.

The warder on duty came and led away the women to the female quarters. Mejenetsky retreated to the far end of the corridor in order not to encounter him. Having returned, the warder locked the door on the new political prisoners, and asked Mejenetsky to go to his room. Mejenetsky obeyed mechanically, but begged him not to lock the door.

Mejenetsky lay down on his bed with his face to the wall.

"Is it possible that all my life has indeed been spent in vain: my energy, strength of will, genius" (he deemed no

one superior to himself in mental qualities), "sacrificed in vain?" He recalled to mind how, not long ago, when already on his way to Siberia he had received a letter from Svetlogoub's mother, who upbraided him, in as he thought a silly feminine way, for having ruined her son by attracting him into the terrorist work. When he received the letter he only contemptuously smiled: what could this foolish woman understand about the aims which were before him and Svetlogoub? Now, recalling this letter, and thinking of the kind, trustful, impulsive personality of Svetlogoub, he began to meditate first about him and then about himself. "Is it possible that my whole life has been a mistake?" He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep, but suddenly he realized with horror the return of the attacks he had had during his first month at the Petropavlovsky fortress. Again the pain in his head, again the horrible faces, big-mouthed, dishevelled, dreadful, on the dark, speckled background, and again figures visible to the open eyes. The added feature was that some criminal in gray trousers with a shaved head was swinging over him.

And again, following the association of ideas, he began to search for the regulator to which he could fasten the rope.

An insufferable hatred demanding expression consumed his heart. He could not sit still, he could not calm himself, could not dispel his thoughts.

"How?" he already began to put the question to himself. "Cut open an artery? I couldn't manage that. Hang myself? Of course, that is the simplest."

He remembered a rope tied round a bundle of wood lying in the corridor. "To get on the wood or on a stool. In the corridor the warder walks. But he is sure to go to sleep or go out. I must watch, and when the opportunity comes, fetch the rope into my room and fasten it to the regulator."