esired, opened a movable pane at the top of the
window, which when closed was secured by a catch.

These three silent and regular visits were the sole events of the day.
Outside of these--an absolute void, a heavy silence, broken from time to
time by the clang of a sword-scabbard on the pavement or the jingle of a
spur, instantly suppressed.

This silence, this void, I feel but in a slight degree during the first
days after my arrest--that is to say, physically. Morally, however,
although separated from the world by these thick walls, I am still too
near to it. At every hour of the day I can picture to myself what is
taking place at home and amongst my friends, and I live their life. The
desire to know if the others have been arrested, and under what
circumstances, mingles with the anxiety which preoccupies me. I await
with impatience the first interrogatory examination, for the questions
then asked are for the political prisoner the only indications
obtainable from which he can form an idea of why he has been arrested,
what are the charges against him, and what fate he may expect!

[Illustration: TELEGRAPHIC SIGNALS.]

I am very weary because of sleepless nights, partly due to being obliged
to lie down in my clothes, and also because of excitement, which tends
to keep me awake. My days I spend in alternately feverishly promenading
my cell and lying on my bed in a state which is neither sleeping nor
waking. Gradually I learn to correspond with my neighbours by means of
telegraphic signals. Ah! those signals! How carefully should they be
studied by all those whose fate it may one day be to be confined in a
political prison, and who in Russia is not liable to such a fate? I know
the signals theoretically--that is to say, I know how the alphabet is
produced. But from theory to practice is a long stride, and to what
movements of impatience have I given way, how desperately in my unnerved
state have I struggled in order to learn the meaning of the light blows
struck against the walls, and to understand the precious words that were
addressed to me.

After a fortnight of such days, each of which, taken by itself, seemed
more empty and slower than the previous one, but which, taken as a
whole, appeared, by reason of their absolute uniformity, to have passed
like a dream, I am at last summoned to the cabinet of the director of
the prison, in order to be interrogated. The cabinet is at the other end
of the corridor, and only