police; but if such consent is indispensable, I will go to Governor Chernáief myself and get it."
When Muíshkin set out for Yakútsk, the isprávnik, whose suspicions had meanwhile grown stronger, said to him, "It is not proper for an officer of your rank to travel about without any escort, and if you will permit me to do so I will send with you a couple of Cossacks." Muíshkin could not object, and the Cossacks were sent — the isprávnik instructing them that they were on no account to lose sight of this gendarme officer, because there was something suspicious about him, and it was not certain that he really was what he pretended to be. As soon as Muíshkin had gone, the isprávnik wrote a letter to the governor, apprising him of his suspicions, and sent it by another Cossack, with directions to get ahead of Muíshkin if possible and deliver it before the latter reached his destination. The Cossack overtook Muíshkin on the road, and in the course of conversation among the soldiers the fact transpired that the third Cossack had a letter from the isprávnik to the governor. Muíshkin knew then that the game was lost, and at the first favorable opportunity he attempted to escape by dashing suddenly into the woods. The Cossacks, in pursuance of their instructions, endeavored to keep him in sight; but he drew his revolver, fired at them, wounded one of them, and finally made his escape. For nearly a week he wandered around in the great primeval forests that border the river Léna; but at last, half dead from cold, hunger, and exhaustion, he was captured.[1] After some months of imprisonment in Irkútsk he was sent under strong guard to St. Petersburg and was there thrown into the fortress of Petropávlovsk. For nearly three years he lay in a bomb-proof casemate of the Trubetskói bastion awaiting trial, and all that I know of this part of his life I learned from an exile in Siberia who occupied a cell in the fortress near him. This gentleman said that Muíshkin was often delirious from
- ↑ Indictment in the case of "the 193." Official Copy, pp. 239 and 240.
