e Decembrists, is in Siberia. Every effort
on the part of friends and relatives to prevent her leaving her baby and
taking this step prove of no avail. She obtains the Emperor's
permission, and sets out. The description of her journey is even more
graphic and touching than that of Princess Trubetzkoy's. She hears on
the way about the efforts which have been made to turn the latter from
her purpose, and that probably the same measures will be used with her.
At one point she meets the caravan which is bringing the silver from the
Nertchinsk mines to the capital, and she asks the young officer in
charge if the exiles are alive and well. He replies insultingly that he
knows nothing about such people. But one of the peasant-soldiers of the
caravan quietly gives her the desired information, and she adds, that
invariably throughout her long and trying experience the peasant men
have been truly sympathetic, helpful, and kind to the last degree, when
their superiors were not. Efforts to turn her aside fail. She overtakes
Princess Trubetzkoy, and the two friends pursue their sad journey
together. On arriving in Nertchinsk, the commandant questions their
right to see their husbands, refuses to recognize the Emperor's own
signature, says he will send to Irkutsk for information (they had
offered to go back themselves for it), and until it is received, they
will not be permitted to hold communication with those whom they have
come so far to see. The women resign themselves, and pass the night in a
peasant hut, so small that their heads touch the wall, their feet the
door. Princess Volkonsky, waking early, sets out on a stroll through the
village, and comes to the mouth of the mine-shaft, guarded by a sentry.
She prevails upon this sentry to let her descend, contrary to orders,
and after a long and arduous passage through the rough, dripping
corridors, and after running the risk of discovery by an official, and
even of death (when she extinguishes her torch to escape the official,
and proceeds in the dark), she reaches her husband and the other
Decembrist exiles, and delivers to them the letters from their friends,
which she has with her. The poem is most beautiful and affecting.

A third very famous poem is "Who in Russia Finds Life Good?" Seven
peasants meet by chance on the highway, and fall into a dispute on that
theme. One says, "the landed proprietor"; another, "the official"; a
third, "the priest." Others say, respectively, "the