s this? You
are certainly in error. Allow me to correct it. I drink to the health
and long life of his majesty the Czar!"

A storm of hisses greeted this toast and Pomeroff, after trying in vain
to make himself heard above the din, sat down. His face was pale and his
frame shook with suppressed anger.

Quiet was finally restored and Martinski rose and addressed the meeting,
speaking more directly to the Governor. He rehearsed the outrages
committed upon submissive Russians by the Czar Nicholas, whose despotic
government had finally driven the country into the disastrous Crimean
War. He spoke in terms of praise of the noble aims and ambitions of
Alexander during the early years of his reign, only to denounce in
unmeasured terms the reaction which had destroyed the little good that
had been accomplished. He depicted the cruelty and the tyranny practised
by the Czar upon those who had incurred his displeasure, the utter lack
of educational facilities and the consequent ignorance of the masses,
the rigorous censorship of the press and the arbitrary rule of the men
in power. He pictured in vivid colors the cruelties of Siberian exile
and the sufferings of the prisoners in those distant mines, from which
there was no escape but through the valley of death.

"But," continued he, warming up to a genuine outburst of eloquence,
"there is still a lower depth; a dungeon, a human slaughter-house
rather, has recently been contrived, the horrors of which surpass
anything hitherto conceived by man. It is the Troubetzkoi Ravelin, where
convicts condemned upon the most trivial charges are confined for life;
a hell for those for whom the mines of Siberia are not considered
severe enough. Compared to this prison, the Bastile of France was a
palace of luxury. Woe to him who is obliged to enter this frightful
place: hardships, hunger, disease and insanity await him.

"The convicts of Siberia cry to us for help. The scurvy-stricken
prisoners of the Troubetzkoi Ravelin appeal to us to avenge their wrongs
upon the author of their misfortunes. The French destroyed their
Bastile. Why should we not also demolish our dungeons before we
ourselves are called upon to fill them. O, Russia, how pitiable is your
condition! 'Despotism has blasted the high hopes to which the splendid
awakening of the first half of the century gave birth. The living forces
of later generations have been buried by the Government in the Siberian
snows or Esquimaux village