unto death though he be, must leave the premises instantly.
Knowing full well that he will nowhere find a refuge, he walks forth
into the cold, dark, stormy night, and next morning a dead body is found
at a short distance from the village.

Why this story, which was not strikingly remarkable for artistic merit,
impressed me so deeply I cannot say. Perhaps it was because I was myself
ill at the time, and imagined how terrible it would be to be turned out
on the muddy road on a cold, wet October night. Besides this, the story
interested me as illustrating the terror which the police inspired
during the reign of Nicholas I. The ingenious devices which they
employed for extorting money formed the subject of another sketch, which
I read shortly afterwards, and which has likewise remained in my memory.
The facts were as follows: An officer of rural police, when driving on
a country road, finds a dead body by the wayside. Congratulating himself
on this bit of good luck, he proceeds to the nearest village, and lets
the inhabitants know that all manner of legal proceedings will be taken
against them, so that the supposed murderer may be discovered. The
peasants are of course frightened, and give him a considerable sum of
money in order that he may hush up the affair. An ordinary officer
of police would have been quite satisfied with this ransom, but this
officer is not an ordinary man, and is very much in need of money; he
conceives, therefore, the brilliant idea of repeating the experiment.
Taking up the dead body, he takes it away in his tarantass, and a few
hours later declares to the inhabitants of a village some miles off
that some of them have been guilty of murder, and that he intends to
investigate the matter thoroughly. The peasants of course pay liberally
in order to escape the investigation, and the rascally officer,
emboldened by success, repeats the trick in different villages until he
has gathered a large sum.

Tales and sketches of this kind were very much in fashion during the
years which followed the death of the great autocrat, Nicholas I., when
the long-pent-up indignation against his severe, repressive regime was
suddenly allowed free expression, and they were still much read during
the first years of my stay in the country. Now the public taste
has changed. The reform enthusiast has evaporated, and the existing
administrative abuses, more refined and less comical than their
predecessors, receive comparativ