d military commander, and lawyer, and
coroner, and administrator of the city, and the notary public--all
that used to be connected with business--was his concern.... They
could not do it in the olden days; they had to have a specially
trained man for every branch before,--and now!

"How perfectly you perform all of these different duties," I said.

42

I am a jailer; I guess the first in our family.

Together with Comrade Adolf Pashinsky,--a Pole from the dreadnaught
"Andrey Pervozvanny,"--I am walking on the Great Liberty Street,
and inside of the fence, watching the prisoners in the Mansion, and
watching to see that _supreme justice_--the will of the people--be
done.

My companion--is a muscular man of thirty, without front teeth; his
thin lips are always curved in a bad smile; his brain is such that
he cannot think and speak of anything that would not be vulgar and
vicious.

The very first night we came to change sentinels--I felt embarrassed,
as I do not know the ritual; but--there is nothing military about
these things nowadays, all is abolished. The soldiers come to
change sentinels, talk freely, laugh loudly. Instead of military
traditions--like parole, pass-words, exchange of salutes, etc.,
etc.,--they ask:

"Ah, howdy! What are "they" (meaning the prisoners) doing? Anything to
look at? All right--now you go, we'll stay."

They have, however, a tradition. When the changed jailors are
assembled near the entrance,--they start to knock on the rain pipes of
the Mansion with their rifles, to throw sand and small stones into
the windows of the Heir and the Princesses. When they think enough
frightening has been done, they start to sing something hideous and
pornographic.

"She went to the ma-a-rket,
Bought a bell as a locket...."

begins a thin trembling voice very calmly and even bashfully, as if
nothing bad will come out of this quiet song. And then, suddenly, a
chorus of twelve big fat swine would belch the notorious refrain:

"Ah, you brunette of mine,
O-oh, curly girl of mine...."

and so forth, with the licentious words of this song accompanying
it with whistles and jazzing with bayonettes, field-pans and general
noise.

I tried to analyze all of this. Why? Why is there such a hatred for
these,--this poor man, these five women and a boy? Such unnecessary
torture of people of the past,--nothing but a man who awaits the end
of his tragedy, nothing but a frail boy, nothing but fi