malignant look. The next moment the turnkey
slammed the door and locked it. I felt sure I
had begun to distinguish Poles from Russians.

In this corridor, as all the doors were
simultaneously thrown open, we walked up and down
as in a menagerie we examine the different
animals. In the last cell to the left, a long, dimly
lit narrow cell, sat a short-sighted, heavy-
browed man, not ill dressed, who was reading
a book at a comfortable-looking table, peeringly,
as short-sighted men read. There was something
gloomy and threatening about the fellow.

"What is that man's offence?" I asked M.
Billet.

The governor muttered something sullenly and
reprovingly. M. Billet did not reply for a minute
or two; then he said, under breath,

"That is a Russian noble, imprisoned for life
for cruelties to his serfs."

I had heard too much, since I had been in
Russia, of such cruelties, not to be able to
well imagine what knoutings and flayings that
wretch had been guilty of before justice would
dare to have touched him. For such deeds, the
serf had formerly to judge his own cause; but,
since the emancipation, many a noble has been
cloven down by his serf's axe, and many a cruel
master tortured to death.

In the cell next to this noble was a degraded
priest, his long hair flowing over his shoulders,
still marking the sacred profession that he had
disgraced. This was evidently a grand and special
quarter of the prison; but the governor gave no
sign, made no comment; he did his duty, led
us through, and that was all.

"I will now show you a tower where three of
our murderers are," said the governor; "bad
subjects — we keep them by themselves."

We ascended the staircase of a tower, at the
foot of which stood a sentinel. On the first floor
were three doors, heavily barred. In each door
there was a round hole pierced, through which
the turnkey might observe the prisoners. As to
a ghastly peep-show, we each applied an eye to
one of these holes.

At first I could see nothing but a dim lofty
cell lit by a loop embrasured high in the wall.
Presently even that dim light was obscured by an
advancing shadow, a pale haggard man paced
slowly by, and in a moment was beyond my
orbit. In the second, I saw no one at first; but
at last, looking up, I distinguished a man coiled
up in the embrasure, one bandaged leg hanging
disconsolately down. In the third cell, a morose-
looking ragged boor sat rocking himself on the
edge of his bed. What terrible thoughts of
revenge, remorse, and impenitent rage were
prisoned with those three murderers in their
ghastly, lonely cells!

We had nearly completed our survey of the
prison; but there was still the parloir to see, and
to that we next went. We entered a small room,
two-thirds of which was walled off by a heavy
wire grating, that, reaching from the ceiling to
the floor, gave it the appearance of an immense
meat-safe, such as Polyphemus might have
employed to hold Ulysses and his companions.

Along its whole length there were standing,
peasants male and female, their lips close to the
wires, talking to friends, and giving or receiving
messages of sympathy. There were the usual big
bearish moujiks in sheepskin coats, the wool
inside; but, on a bench against the wall facing the
corner of the parloir nearest the door, sat a well-
dressed matronly lady, who kept her eyes fixed
on a handsome, wild-looking young man, who
clung to the grating opposite her like a new-
caught bird to the wires of its cage.

I at once set her down in my own mind as the
matron on duty, superintending the female
prisoners. She had a hard-lined mindful look, half
sad, half distrustful. When the governor
entered, she rose and addressed him in some
anxious and hurried words, as if troubled with
some difficulty she could not solve. All at once
she wrung her hands, and burst into passionate
exclamations, but no tears sprang into her eyes:
her grief was beyond tears. Then, turning
abruptly from us, she ran again to the grating, and
addressed some passionate incoherent words to
the young man who stood leaning his head
against the flexible partition, his large black
eyes almost insanely dilated, his black hair falling
over his pale face.

M. Billet whispered to us, " That is a young
man of good birth, who the other day stabbed his
mistress and a friend of whom he was jealous.
He had observed on his friend's finger a ring
which he had given to the girl. He struck them
both dead with a stiletto. He has been
condemned to work for seven years in the verdigris
mines in Siberia."

"What! only seven years?" said Ratchet, in
a disappointed way.

"Oh, it means death," said M. Billet, coolly.

I looked again at the murderer's face; it
was convulsed with the agony of that parting.
The doors of his youth's Eden were fast closing
behind him. The flaming sword was pointing
towards the north. But I saw no remorse in him.
His fixed look seemed to say, as a man guilty of
the same crime once said, " She took away my
happiness, I took away her life, now we are quit.
If she came to life again, I would again kill her."

"In England," Ratchet remarked, "this young
murderer, having moneyed friends, would have
been made out mad, and saved."

We now passed into a large court-yard, with
buildings round it devoted to those Poles and
Russians who were waiting to be transported to
Siberia. My curiosity was roused. The governor
saw it. "It is scarcely necessary," he said, "to
show you this part of the prison, as it exactly
resembles those parts you have already seen."

We, perforce, agreed with him.

"That prisoner you see there walking up and
down," said M. Billet to us, "is a Polish marshal,
who is sentenced to Siberia. His wife is a
voluntary prisoner with him, and he pays, of
course, for her support."