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court.

THE TRUBETSKOI BASTION.

THE Trubetskoi bastion is a massive, pentagonal, two-story structure of stone and brick, about 300 feet in length from the flanked angle to the base and 250 feet in width on a line drawn between the two shoulder angles.* It stands in a court which is 25 or 30 feet longer and wider than the bastion itself, and which is formed by a high wall corresponding in outline with the bastion faces and separated from them all around by a space of 12 or 15 feet. The effect of this encircling wall is to completely shut the bastion in. The casemates which serve as cells for the political prisoners are in two tiers, one above the other, and are situated in the body of the structure, between the narrow outer court and a more spacious inner yard. Their doors open upon corridors which extend around the inner inclosure, and their windows look out upon the blank encircling wall which is as high as the bastion itself, and which not only limits vision in every direction, but deprives the lower tier cells to a great extent of light and air. The number of the casemates in the entire bastion is 72,-36 in each tier, and with the exception of those in the angles, they are all alike. As they were originally intended for the accommodation of

* The dimensions of the Trubetskoi bastion as here stated must not be regarded as strictly accurate, since they are based merely upon estimates and computa

tions.-G. K.

heavy cannon, they are much larger than ordinary prison cells. Their dimensions are approximately 24 feet in length from door to window, 16 feet in width between partition walls, and 12 feet in height to a slightly vaulted ceiling. The walls and ceilings are of brick, and the floors are concrete. The massive outer face of the bastion is pierced in each casemate by one arched window at a height of eight or nine feet from the floor, the tunnel-like aperture is guarded by double gratings, and the lower right-hand pane of the iron sash is hung on hinges so that it can be opened for the admission of air. Owing to the height of the window. from the floor the prisoner cannot reach it without support, and can see nothing out of it except the upper part of the outer wall and a narrow strip of sky. The heavy doors of the casemates are of wood, and in the middle of each is a square port-hole which can be closed by a hinged panel. The panel swings up and down like a miniature drawbridge, and when lowered to a horizontal position forms a shelf upon which food for the prisoner can be placed by the guard. Immediately over it is a narrow horizontal slit about as large as the opening for letters in a street letter-box, covered by a pivoted strip of wood which can be raised and lowered like the blade of a jack-knife so as to open or close the aperture. This contrivance, which is known to the political prisoners as the "Judas," enables the guard to look into the cell at any time without attracting the attention of the occupant. The furniture of the casemate consists of a common Russian oven with its door in the corridor; an iron bedstead, bolted into the masonry at one end so that it cannot be moved; a shelf-like slab of iron, also bolted into the wall near the head of the bed and intended for use as a table; a stationary iron wash-basin; a wooden box, containing an excrement bucket; a small cheap image of the Madonna before which the prisoner can say his prayers, and a tin cup suspended against the wall under the window to catch the moisture which drips from the slopes of the deep embrasure. The general aspect of the casemate is somber, gloomy, and forbidding; and the first idea suggested to the mind by the massive walls, the vaulted ceiling, the iron window, the damp, lifeless air, and the profound stillness is the idea of a burial vault or crypt.

THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE FORTRESS.

WHEN a political prisoner is brought at night to one of these casemates he is first of all stripped naked. A careful examination is made of his person to ascertain whether he

has anything concealed in his hair, mouth, ears, or nostrils, and when the guard are satisfied that he has not, they give him in the place of his own clothing a prison costume consisting of a coarse gray linen shirt, drawers of the same material, a long blue linen dressing-gown, woolen stockings, and a pair of soft felt slippers. As soon as he has put on these garments the soldiers of the guard retire, the heavy wooden door closes behind them, the key grinds in the rusty padlock, and the prisoner is left alone in the dimly lighted casemate. The stillness is that of the grave. There is not a footstep, nor a voice, nor a sound of any kind to indicate the presence of another human being in the bastion. Every fifteen minutes the bells of the fortress cathedral chime out slowly the air with which the words, " Have mercy, O Lord!" are associated in the Russian liturgy, and every hour they ring the melody of the ecclesiastical chant, "How glorious is our Lord in Zion!" The damp, heavy atmosphere, the dripping walls, the oppressive silence, and the faint muffled tones of the cathedral bells chiming mournful airs from the church liturgy, all seem to say to the lonely and dejected prisoner, "Although not dead, you are buried." Crushed by the thought that this is the end of all his hopes and aspirations and struggles for the welfare of his country, tortured by anxiety concerning the fate of those nearest and dearest to him, he rises from the narrow iron bed upon which he has thrown himself in the first paroxysm of despair and begins to pace his cell. "How long," he asks himself, "will this continue?" He reviews mentally the events which preceded and followed his arrest, recalls the questions that were asked him at the preliminary examination, and tries to form from the facts of his case a calm judgment as to the probable duration of his imprisonment. The offense with which he is charged is not, he thinks, a serious one; there are no complicating circumstances to retard the investigation; perhaps he will be tried and released in a few weeks. But as this ray of hope enters his heart he stoops to replace the loose felt

*The history of the attempt made by a number of army and navy officers at the accession to the throne of the Emperor Nicholas to bring about a revolution and establish a constitutional form of government is well known. Lieutenant-Colonel Battenkoff, one of the participators in this movement, was punished by solitary confinement in the fortress from December, 1825, to February, 1846, a period of more than twenty years. During this time he was never outside of the Alexei ravelin, and never saw a human being except his guards. He was permitted to have a Hebrew Bible and a lexicon, and he spent a large part of his time in making a new translation of the Old Testament into Russian. This mental occupation probably saved him from insanity, which is the fate most dreaded by political prisoners and which is the almost invariable result of long

slipper which has fallen from one foot, and in so doing notices for the first time what seems to be a faint path leading from one corner of the cell to another on the same diagonal which he has been pacing. Startled by a vague apprehension, he seizes the small lamp and examines it more closely. It is unquestionably a path—a shallow but perceptible groove worn into the solid concrete by human footsteps. The mournful significance of this discovery comes to him almost with the shock of a new misfortune. He then is not the first prisoner who has been buried in this lonely casemate, nor the first who has sought in physical exercise relief from mental strain. Somebody who perhaps was also accused of a political offense-somebody who perhaps was also hopeful of a speedy trial-made that significant groove. Somebody heart-sick with hope long deferred trod that path from corner to corner not merely a hundred times nor a thousand times, but hundreds of thousands of times, until the solid floor of the casemate had been worn away by his weary feet, and a long shallow depression marked the line of his monotonous march. This melancholy record of an unknown predecessor's loneliness and isolation disheartens the prisoner more than all that has happened to him since his arrest. He recalls the history of the Decembrists, and remembers that in this same fortress many of that gallant band of revolutionists spent all the years of their early manhood and finally died, committed suicide, or went insane. One of them, Lieutenant-Colonel Battenkoff, languished here in solitary confinement for almost a quarter of a century;* another, Midshipman Diboff, was held a prisoner here until death came to his relief; a third, Lieutenant Zaikin, unable to endure the mind-destroying torture of complete isolation, killed himself by dashing his head against the wall; while a fourth, preferring even a death of agony to a life clouded by mental disorder, swallowed glass broken from his cell window.f In this same fortress still another officer lay in solitary confinement until the guards re

solitary confinement. With the exception of the lexicon and a few religious books, Lieutenant-Colonel Battenkoff had access to no literature, and in the whole twenty years did not see a newspaper nor hear a word of intelligence from the outside world. He was, in fact, buried alive in the strictest sense of the words. In February, 1846, he was finally released and exiled to western Siberia. Some interesting facts with regard to his life and character will be found in a letter from his friend Mr. A. Luchtef to the Irkutsk newspaper, "Sibir," for January 30, 1883, and in Maximoff's "Siberia and Penal Servitude," Vol. II., p. 166.

"Recollections of a Decembrist," p. 185, by A. Belaieff. St. Petersburg, 1882. Much was crossed out in the manuscript of Mr. Belaieff's book by the censor, but the above statements were allowed to stand.

of an unknown spy appearing noiselessly now and then at the aperture of the "Judas" only render his situation the more intolerable. The very solitude seems now to be pervaded and dominated by a watchful, hostile, pitiless presence which he can neither see nor escape from.

Oppressed by these gloomy recollections of fortress history, the prisoner can pace his cell no longer. He imagines that he can feel with his lightly clad feet the shallow trough made by the feet of his unknown predecessor, and every step in it suggests possibilities of suffering which he dares not contemplate. Seating himself again on the narrow bed, he listens long and intently for some sound of life from the outside world some faint, audible evidence of human activity to break up this oppressive nightmare of burial in a subterranean crypt haunted by phantasms of tortured suicides and imbeciles. The bells of the fortress cathedral chime out slowly again, "Have mercy, O Lord!" but the faint tones of the mournful supplication die away into a stillness more profound, if possible, than that which went before. Suddenly the prisoner becomes conscious of two human eyes staring at him with fixed, unwinking gaze from the middle of the casemate door. Startled, nervous, excited, it seems to him for a moment as if the phantasms of his disordered imagination were taking definite objective form as if the ghost of some political suicide, at that dead hour of the night, were peering into the gloomy casemate where on a tragic day long past it left its emaciated mortal tenement lying on the floor with a fractured skull or a throat full of broken glass. But as he gazes in spell-bound fascination at the mysterious, expressionless eyes they suddenly vanish, and a faint click, made by the cover of the "Judas" as it falls into place over the slit where the eyes have been, shows him that the fancied apparition was only the guard looking into the cell from the corridor. A momentary feeling of relief is followed by still deeper depression, as he realizes for the first time that although absolutely alone he is the object of constant suspicion and vigilance. The eyes of a supernatural visitant would at least have been compassionate and sympathetic; but the

#

Neither the name nor the offense of this officer is known. The fact of his existence was disclosed by certain gendarmes who served as guards in the Alexei ravelin in 1882, and who in August of that year were exiled to Siberia for permitting political prisoners to communicate with their friends. According to the story of these gendarmes, the imbecile officer, who was known only by the number of his casemate, had been thrown into the fortress many years before they first saw him for offering a grievous insult to the Emperor

As the prisoner's emotional excitement gradually subsides he begins to feel conscious of the damp chilliness of the casemate, and in a shiver, due partly to cold and partly to nervous reaction, he creeps into his narrow bed and draws the thin blanket up over his shoulders for the night. The last sound which he hears as he sinks into a troubled, fitful sleep is that of the cathedral chime ringing at midnight, "God save the Tsar."

ROUTINE OF LIFE IN A CASEMATE.

THE daily routine of a prisoner's life in the Trubetskoi bastion begins with the serving of hot water for tea about 8 o'clock in the morning. Nothing except the hot water is furnished at the expense of the Government; but if the prisoner has money of his own in the hands of the "smatritel," or warden, the latter will purchase for him tea, sugar, white bread, tobacco, and other simple luxuries not forbidden by prison rules. About 2 o'clock the guard appears at the port-hole in the door with the prisoner's dinner, which consists of soup with a few fragments of meat floating in it, "kasha," made of unground barley or oats boiled in enough water to saturate the grains, and a pound and a half of black rye-bread. What remains of the soup from dinner is warmed up for supper, and at a later hour in the evening hot water is brought again for tea. All food is served in block-tin or pewter dishes, and is eaten with wooden spoons. Knives and forks are regarded as dangerous implements and are not allowed to go into a prisoner's hands under any circumstances. Previous to 1879 the food provided for political prisoners in the Trubetskoi bastion was abundant and good. Thirty-five or forty out of fifty or more exiles whom I questioned on the subject in Siberia told me that during the time that they were imprisoned in the fortress-between 1873 and 1878-complaint with regard to food could not fairly be made. It was better in

Alexander II. The cause for the insult was said to be the ruin by the Tsar of the officer's sister. Whether this story had a foundation in fact, or was merely a prison rumor which obtained currency as an explanation of the officer's long confinement and strict seclusion, I do not know; but the exiled gendarmes were in perfect agreement as to the facts of the unknown prisoner's life which had come under their own immediate observation, and described with many pathetic details the gradual decay of his mental powers.

quality and more plentiful in quantity than that furnished to prisoners of the same class in other prisons of the empire. About the time, however, that the Terrorists began their activity in 1879, the treatment of political prisoners everywhere underwent a change for the worse, and in the fortress that change was marked by a decrease in the quantity and a deterioration in the quality of the food. Finally, after the assassination of Alexander II., the imprisoned revolutionists were deprived of nearly all the privileges that they had previously enjoyed, were treated with greater severity and rigor than ever, and were put virtually upon the same footing with common criminals. In 1882, when a young law student of my acquaintance named Stassoff was brought to the Trubetskoi bastion, the food furnished there was so bad that at first he could not force himself to eat it, although he had already been four months in prison in another part of the empire. The guard, noticing that he left his dinner and supper untouched, said to him, "Do you intend to starve yourself to death?"

"Suppose I do,” replied the prisoner; "why not?"

"We won't let you," said the guard; "we will feed you by force."

"How by force?"

"Simply enough; we will put a rubber pipe down your throat and pour milk into it."

"But," said Mr. Stassoff, "if you'll only give me milk, I'll take that now without any rubber pipe." The guard, a good-humored young soldier, smiled and turned away, advising the prisoner to eat what was set before him. Hunger finally compelled Mr. Stassoff to swallow the prison ration, but that the food thus forced upon him was insufficient and bad is shown by the fact that in less than three months he was prostrated by scurvy, and at the expiration of four months it was found necessary to remove him to the House of Preliminary Detention in order to save his life. He was so weak that he could not leave his bed, his face was pale and haggard, his eyes were sunken, and blood flowed from his swollen gums at every attempt to eat. He had then been eight months in solitary confinement without trial, and had been reduced from robust health to a condition so low that the fortress surgeon who was called to examine him said, "We must get you out of this grave or it will soon be too late."

The dreary monotony of life in the Trubetskoi bastion is relieved to some extent by a daily walk of ten or fifteen minutes in the small inner court-yard. Every morning or afternoon, at a certain appointed hour, a soldier enters the casemate with the clothing which VOL. XXXV.- 72.

the prisoner had on when he was arrested and, throwing it upon the bed, says, " Pazholuyte na progulku"-" You will please take your walk." It is one of the rules of the fortress that a prisoner shall put on his own dress every time he leaves his cell, in order that the prison garments which he has been wearing may be thoroughly searched during his temporary absence. He is required therefore to change his apparel throughout, even to underclothing and stockings, and is closely watched meanwhile to see that he does not transfer anything from one suit of clothes to the other. When he has made this complete change of dress he is taken out into the little court-yard where, between two gendarmes, he promenades slowly back and forth for ten minutes. He can see little more from his exercise ground than he could from his cell; but in summer and in fair weather even a walled court-yard is a pleasant change from the gloom, dampness, and death-like stillness of a bomb-proof casemate. It is at least open to the universe overhead, and as the prisoner walks back and forth in it the sun shines warmly and brightly in his face; the green foliage of a few shrubs and stunted trees gratifies the craving of his eyes for color; he can hear occasionally the whistle of a passing steamer on the unseen Neva, or the faint music of a band in the neighboring zoological garden; and now and then, when the wind is fair, it brings to his nostrils the cool, moist fragrance of the woods. If this walk could be prolonged for two or three hours, it would have a most beneficial influence upon the prisoner's health and spirits; but as there are sometimes sixty or seventy political offenders in the bastion, and as the Government does not intend that they shall ever see one another, much less have an opportunity to exchange signals, only one of them is allowed to walk in the court-yard at a time. This limits the daily outing of each to about ten minutes. While the prisoner is taking his walk, the cell which he has left and the prison dress which he has temporarily laid aside are both carefully searched, in order to make sure that he has not accidentally come into possession of an old rusty nail; that he is not saving up bits of cigarette paper with a view to surreptitious correspondence; that he is not hoarding matches with the hope of getting enough together to poison himself — that, in short, he is not hiding anything which can be used either as a means of making his life more endurable or as an instrument for putting it to an end. When the prisoner returns to his cell at the end of his walk he puts on again the coarse linen prison garb which has just been searched, and the citizen's dress which he has worn for ten minutes in the court