and every vein in his face was swollen, to the
envy and delight of his companions. The
governor beat time with a stern approval, as
much as to say, "Listen, that is what our prison
discipline produces." We gave him some silver,
and left him as proud and happy as a successful
tenor the first night of a glorious début.

The chapel was our next station. It was a
handsome domed building, rather sombre from
association than from reality. The perfume of
incense hung about its walls, which were painted
with scriptural scenes bearing upon prisons,
such as the Escape of Peter (rather a dangerous
precedent), the Murder of Abel, and the Impenitent
Thief upon the Cross. The prisoners were
not pewed in, but could sit or kneel where they
liked. There was nothing in any way calculated to
repel them from the comforts and consolations
of religion; yet I felt sad to think how many
broken hearts, how many abandoned incarnations
of evil, those walls had encircled; creatures
like the locust, the tiger, and the serpent, created
only to slay, devour, poison, and corrupt.

The great screen hiding the altar, emblazoned
with long ranks of marshalled saints, looked
almost too gorgeous for a chapel where poor
felons and murderers were to pray; but the
Greek church is an Oriental Church, and glories
in the splendour of its ceremonials, in which the
beggar and the Czar equally participate; and I
love a Church which is consistently tolerant too
much, to be harsh at its smaller inconsistencies.

From the chapel, by an undignified transit, we
passed along a court-yard to the kitchen, where
a slovenly lavish sort of liberality prevailed. A
band of hardy young prisoners were hurrying
about with soup-cans and bread-sacks, and drudging
in a rough, careless, lazy way, at scraping
floors, and brewing of quass in vast caldrons.

A true Russian cannot live without quass, even
in prison. The receipt for this muddy light beer is:
A pailful of water, two pounds of barley-meal, half
a pound of salt, and a pound and a half of honey.
This is put into an oven at a certain temperature,
and kept stirred. It is then left to settle, and
the clear and thinner liquid poured away. At
the end of a week the quass is at its highest
perfection. The kitchen reeked with this painful
preparation.

When M. Billet gave us the above receipt, Mr.
Ratchet made a note of it.

"We are now," said the governor, " going into
the nobles' prison. It is here, to the left of the
kitchens."

I knew perfectly well that in Russia it is no
uncommon thing to see degraded colonels slaving
like beasts of burden at the brandy distilleries of
Siberia, tending the furnaces, driving carts, or
carrying wood. I had heard of general officers
broken during the Crimean war for disgraceful
peculation and for receiving pay for men long
since dead, but I still scarcely expected to find a
large room in the Moscow prison especially
devoted to swindling, thieving, homicidal nobles,
and my curiosity was whetted.

A turnkey threw open the door, we looked
into a large bare room with paillasse-beds ranged
against the walls on either side, the prisoners
standing near them or clustering round the door,
as if expecting our visit. Except that there was
less greasy sheepskin and fewer beards, I could
see no special mark of rank about the men. Their
pale faces were, however, perhaps less torpid
and sullen, and one or two of the younger ones
looked rather abashed at being exhibited. The
dress of these nobles was of the old traditional
type — cloth caftans cut like dressing-gowns and
crossing over the breast, lank hair parted down
the middle, and trousers tucked inside the boots.
They all assumed the contrite suffering manner
of men trying to look like martyrs, and no smile
or word was exchanged, though they were
boisterous enough directly we were outside the door.

"What is their crime?" I said to M. Billet,
who asked the governor the question.

The governor's eyes looked sterner than ever.
He put aside the question. He might be
compelled to show us the prison, but he was not
compelled to tell us secrets detrimental to the
government. He preceded us, in reproving
silence, till we came to a deserted tower, some
distance off.

Here he assumed a tone of crafty triumph.
"This," he said, " is the cell for political
prisoners; but, you see, we have none at present."

There was nothing to see but a dirty stone-
paved dismal-looking pigeon-house, with stucco
walls, covered with verses written in pencil,
lampoons, and scraps of treasonable songs.

"The prisoners," thought I, " cannot be very
severely guarded: but how could he say they
had no political prisoners, when about forty Poles
are leaving his paternal care every week for
Siberia? But perhaps he called the Poles rebels
and murderers, not political offenders, though
their only crime is their wish for national
independence."

"This Polish affair," said Billet, as we walked
along another quarter of the prison, "is
complicated. The true war is not in Poland, it
is waging here among us. The government
service is full of Poles, so is the army; everywhere
there are men who advocate the Polish
cause, and at the head of them is the grand-
duke, the emperor's own brother. The Poles
are a clever people, a troublesome, a false people;
the present emperor has always favoured them,
and that is how they found means to begin the
rebellion."

A turnkey led us down another corridor, and
threw open a door. I observed among the dozen
men who occupied the room into which we
looked, one or two thinner, darker, and acuter-
looking than the rest. Their faces were more oval,
their features sharper and finer, their eyes had a
different and a more alert and spiritual expression.

"Those are Poles," said I boldly to M. Billet,
pointing out the particular men to whom I
referred.

"They are," said the governor, with a coldly