pour out information concerning the political convicts and their life at the mines. Much that he said was true; but the truth was so interwoven with misrepresentation that if I had been the ignorant and credulous tourist he supposed me to be I should have been completely deceived. To an on-looker who understood the situation, and could see into both hands, the game that we were playing would have been full of interest. My acquaintance with the political prison was almost as accurate and thorough as that of Captain Nikólin himself. I had a carefully drawn plan of it in a belt around my body; I had a list containing the names of all the prisoners; I could have described to him the appearance and the situation of every object in every cell; I knew exactly what the convicts had to eat and wear and how they spent their time; I knew that four of them had been chained to wheelbarrows and that several were insane; and I could have given him a detailed history of the prison for the five preceding years. With all this information in my mind, with a letter of introduction to the political convicts in my pocket, and with presents for them concealed in my overcoat, I had to sit there and listen coolly to statements that I knew to be false; assume feelings that I did not have; and play, without the quiver of an eyelash, the part of a good-humored, credulous, easy-going tourist who had nothing to conceal, who was incapable of keeping to himself even the details of his own private life, and who was naturally surprised and delighted to find that the political convicts, instead of being chained to wheelbarrows in damp subterranean mines, were really treated with humanity, consideration, and benevolent kindness by an intelligent and philanthropic commandant.
I do not know what impression I made upon Captain Nikólin in the course of our long interview; but I have some reason to believe that I succeeded in blinding and misleading one of the most adroit and unscrupulous gendarme officers in all Eastern Siberia. I may be greatly
