M. Billet stole a glance at the register, and
read us a few of the prisoners' names, their
offences, and their sentences. All at once he
turned red, and dropped the book in a half-guilty
way, like a detected schoolboy. The governor was
at the door, his malign eyes turned on us. The
clerk audibly chuckled, and wrote faster than ever.

The governor was an elderly officer, a man,
probably, who had risen from the ranks. He
wore a plain brownish uniform, with gold
shoulder-straps and gilt buttons. He had those
cold pale bluish-grey eyes that seem the special
property of merciless men. There was no sharp,
business-preoccupied manner about him, but he
seemed inflexibly suspicious of us, said little,
but led us on in a monotonous, stern way, as if
preceding us to trial. His mouth seemed to
shut with a click like the lid of a patent safe.
It was impossible to prevent fancying him
superintending a knouting, or dashing a red ink line
through the name of some banished man. He
had a subordinate manner, and yet negatively
and silently seemed to protest against the
criminal folly of those who let such spies and
Gentiles as ourselves into a Russian prison.

I saw Ratchet watching him, while we all
bowed and took off our hats, with a speech visible
all over him, which, for once, found no words.

As we passed through the first court-yard the
governor pointed us out a frame of iron bars about
six feet high, and three wide. It was riveted to
the wall, and stood on a stone platform in one
corner. It was half a cage, half a pillory, for a
man could not have had room to move in it.

"I see you look," said the general, in Russian,
interpreted to us by M. Billet. The governor,
as he spoke, assumed the air of a connoisseur
when he produces his finest piece of Sèvres.
"That is a cage in which we confined a man who,
in the time of Catherine, excited a rebellion of
the serfs, that lasted for several years, by passing
himself off as Peter the Great. We caught him
at last, and showed him to the people in this
cage, to prove he was not the dead emperor come
to life again. After that he was put to death."

We asked how.

The governor transfixed us with his stony eyes.
He thought tortured—perhaps knouted.

Ratchet made a note of the rebel's cage.

One peculiarity of every Russian house, is the
vast mountains of wood that are piled up in the
court-yard to feed the winter stoves. These
stacks of wood billets make every Russian town
very inflammable, and render a bombardment
terribly destructive. The prison we were visiting
had a square pile of wood, enough, I should have
thought, for all Moscow, had I not known that
along the line of one Russian railway alone,
four thousand square acres of forest are every
year consumed.

And now we came to the first ward, and a
soldier preceding us, threw open door after door
down the corridor, so that every moment fresh
pictures of prison interiors presented themselves.
In each room there seemed to be some eight, ten,
or a dozen prisoners, who rose from their beds
as the key turned in the lock, or rolled their
heads with stupid curiosity upon their pillows.
They had nothing to do (one or two were reading),
and were herded together in close hot rooms,
for although it was yet early in autumn, the stoves
were lit with the usual result of that hateful dry
hot foul air that always seems to fill a Russian
public building, retaining all the noxious odours
of weeks past. There was a stupid wild-beast
look about the men, who, with their tangled
hair and dirty sheepskin caftans, or still more
sordid cloth pelisses, outside shirts, and shapeless
boots, huddled together, and stared at us
unabashed, but with a patient, protesting,
melancholy air, that was utterly unlike that
hypocritical humiliation that our English thief wears
when he wishes to ingratiate himself with the
visitor or the chaplain. Everything was slovenly,
careless, ill disciplined, and dirty; but there was
no sign of watchful cruelty, or a desire to press
the punishment specially home upon each offender.
Once locked in, the prisoners could fight, sing,
dance, gamble, or plot as they liked, till the hour
came round when the turnkey visited them.

"Very sad," said Ratchet, with a sigh. "No
idea of proper supervision or cleanliness."

The governor had his stony blue eye on him in
a moment. " You find us," he said, addressing
Billet as our foreman, " in a bad state; you come
on an unlucky day. It is a fast to-morrow, and
the prisoners are all preparing to take their
vapour-baths. To-morrow we should be cleaned
up and ready for you."

As we entered the next line of cells, there was
a great bustle of men carrying wood, and turnkeys
shouting the names of prisoners who were
wanted at the parloir. Every moment a hoarse
cry for " Ivan—Demetri—Alexis," rang down
the long vaulted passages, and was caught up by
rooms full of captives. The noise was increased
by the unlocking and locking of doors, and the
departure of Ivan, Alexis, or Demetri with the
turnkeys on guard.

The governor, now passing through some
new and spacious cells, as yet empty, opened
a door in an unused outbuilding, and ushered
us sternly into a small schoolroom for the
younger offenders, with an atmosphere certainly
none of the purest. There were a dozen or two boys
there, with faces coarse, but by no means repulsive,
busy at sums and spelling. They all acknowledged
the governor's presence, for Russians are born
polite, and seemed rather pleased at our visit.

"This boy," said the governor, pointing to
one of the least attractive urchins, " has an
excellent voice, quite a genius for music; he sings
to them, shall he sing to you?"

We hoped he might be allowed to sing.

The governor gave a signal; and O! what
singing it was! With a violent strained shriek,
that little wretch (who must eventually be
hanged) poured forth a series of the most hideous
semitones, wildly monotonous and excruciatingly
discordant. He sang till he got red in the face,