Piotrowski, repelled by the sight
of the uniform, shook his head. The other flushed: "You are a Pole,
and do not understand our customs. This is my birthday, and on this
day, above all others, I should share what I have with the
unfortunate. Pray accept it in the name of my patron saint." He could
not resist so Christian an appeal. The parcel contained bread, salt
and some money: the last he handed over to the guards, who in any case
would not have let him keep it: he broke the bread with its donor. His
guards were almost the only persons with whom he had to do who showed
themselves insensible to his pain and sorrow. They were divided
between their fears of not arriving on the day fixed, in which case
they would be flogged, and of his dying of fatigue on the route, when
they would fare still worse. The apprehension of his suicide beset
them: at the ferries or fords which they crossed each of them held him
by an arm lest he should drown himself, and all his meat was given to
him minced, to be eaten with a spoon, as he was not to be trusted for
an instant with a knife. Thus they traveled night and day for three
weeks, only stopping to change horses and take their meals; yet he
esteemed himself lucky not to have been sent with a gang of convicts,
chained to some atrocious malefactor, or to have been ordered to make
the journey on foot, like his countryman, Prince Sanguzsko. At last
they reached Omsk, the head-quarters of Prince Gortchakoff, then
governor-general of Western Siberia. By some informality in the mode
of his transportation, the interpretation of Piotrowski's sentence
depended solely on this man: he might be sent to work in one of the
government manufactories, or to the mines, the last, worst dread of a
Siberian exile. While awaiting the decision he was in charge of a gay,
handsome young officer, who treated him with great friendliness, and
in the course of their conversation, which turned chiefly on Siberia,
showed him a map of the country. The prisoner devoured it with his
eyes, tried to engrave it on his memory, asked innumerable questions
about roads and water-courses, and betrayed so much agitation that the
young fellow noticed it, and exclaimed, "Ah! don't think of escape.
Too many of your countrymen have tried it, and those are fortunate
who, tracked on every side, famished, desperate, have been able to put
an end to themselves before being retaken, for if they are, then comes
the knout and a life of miser