ssively active. Throughout the entire Empire despotism stalked
unimpeded. The recent attempt upon the Czar's life had increased the
vigilance of the police, and the most frightful atrocities were
committed in the holy name of Justice. The blood curdles with horror
when reading of the indignities and the injustice visited upon the
people.

"When the police deem it best," says one writer,[16] in portraying the
condition of that period, "they steal noiselessly through the streets
and alleys, surround a private dwelling in the dead of the night, and
under some false pretence, invade every room in the house, waking the
sleeping occupants. Each member of the household is given in charge of a
policeman, everything is turned topsy-turvy, books, papers, private
letters are carefully inspected--nothing is secret. It is not necessary
that the police should have any evidence for these searches. An
anonymous charge, a mere suspicion is enough. Houses have sometimes been
inspected seven times in a single day. If anything is discovered to
excite the suspicions of the police an arrest follows and the supposed
culprit is sent to the house of Preventive Detention. There he awaits
his trial for weeks and months and sometimes for years. He is brought
out occasionally for examination. If he confesses nothing he is sent
back to reflect. Sometimes the wrong man is arrested and confined a year
or two before the mistake is discovered."

The solitary confinement to which prisoners were doomed in this house of
detention was often fatal. The hardships to which they were subjected
frequently led to consumption, insanity or suicide. The examination of
prisoners and witnesses was dragged out to an interminable length. In
one celebrated case it lasted four years and over seven hundred
witnesses were kept in jail during that time. The prosecutor admitted
that only twenty persons deserved punishment, yet there were
seventy-three who died from suicide or the effects of confinement.

Louder and louder grew the clamor of the masses and the threats against
the imperial autocrat. Wholesale arrests could not quell the popular
voice. A prisoner wrote from his living tomb in the Troubetzkoi Ravelin:
"Fight on till the victory is won! The more they torment me in prison,
the better it is for the struggle!"

Governor Drentell entered upon his new duties at a trying time. His
existence was embittered by political strife and tumult, and by
complications with whi