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SIBERIA

nent Russian novelist Count Tolstói. Miss Armfeldt herself spoke French, German, and English, drew, painted, and was an educated and accomplished woman.^[1] She was arrested in Kiev on the 11th of February, 1879, while attending one of the meetings of a secret revolutionary society. They were surprised by the police late in the evening, and the men of the party resisted arrest, drawing revolvers and firing at the police and the gendarmes. A sharp skirmish followed, in the course of which one gendarme and two of the revolutionists were shot dead and several on each side wounded. The whole party was finally captured and thrown into prison. For being present at the time of this armed resistance to the police, although she had not participated in it, and for belonging to the revolutionary party, Miss Armfeldt was sentenced to fourteen years and ten months of penal servitude, with deprivation of all civil rights and exile to Siberia for life.^[2] At the time of our visit to Kará she had finished her term of probation in prison, and was living outside in the free command with her

↑ I regret that I am unable to give more details of Miss Armfeldt's life. A Russian revolutionist to whom I applied for information wrote me as follows: "I knew Miss Armfeldt personally and have some idea of her as an individual; but as to biographical details — such matters interest us so little when we are 'in action' that we hardly ever ask one another about them. I only know that her father was a general, and that her sister, who was a tolerably well-known writer on scientific subjects, was married to the Russian explorer Fedchénko, who perished recently on a mountain in Switzerland. Personally, Nathalie Armfeldt was not one of the striking personalities, such as Perófskaya, Bárdina, and others. She belonged to that modest set of workers in whom the beautiful moral qualities of the Russian revolutionist are shown at their best — absolute devotion and absolute unselfishness. These simple virtues become great, both as qualities and as moving powers, when they are so elevated as to be almost perfectly pure. You have probably seen many of these types among the Siberian exiles. The touching sympathy that permeates what you write about them is a proof of this."
↑ Mr. Debagóri-Mokriévich, who was arrested at this time and sent to Siberia, but who succeeded in making his escape, has published an interesting account of the capture, trial, and condemnation of this party. It consisted of fourteen persons, of whom two were found to be not guilty, two were hanged, and all the rest sent to Siberia for life with fourteen years and ten months of penal servitude. See "Two Years of Life," by Debagóri-Mokriévich. [Messenger of the Will of the People, No. 1, p. 21, Geneva, 1883.]

[1] I regret that I am unable to give more details of Miss Armfeldt's life. A Russian revolutionist to whom I applied for information wrote me as follows: "I knew Miss Armfeldt personally and have some idea of her as an individual; but as to biographical details — such matters interest us so little when we are 'in action' that we hardly ever ask one another about them. I only know that her father was a general, and that her sister, who was a tolerably well-known writer on scientific subjects, was married to the Russian explorer Fedchénko, who perished recently on a mountain in Switzerland. Personally, Nathalie Armfeldt was not one of the striking personalities, such as Perófskaya, Bárdina, and others. She belonged to that modest set of workers in whom the beautiful moral qualities of the Russian revolutionist are shown at their best — absolute devotion and absolute unselfishness. These simple virtues become great, both as qualities and as moving powers, when they are so elevated as to be almost perfectly pure. You have probably seen many of these types among the Siberian exiles. The touching sympathy that permeates what you write about them is a proof of this."

[2] Mr. Debagóri-Mokriévich, who was arrested at this time and sent to Siberia, but who succeeded in making his escape, has published an interesting account of the capture, trial, and condemnation of this party. It consisted of fourteen persons, of whom two were found to be not guilty, two were hanged, and all the rest sent to Siberia for life with fourteen years and ten months of penal servitude. See "Two Years of Life," by Debagóri-Mokriévich. [Messenger of the Will of the People, No. 1, p. 21, Geneva, 1883.]

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