and she would then be a free woman. Not only, therefore, was her condition such as to render escape at that time utterly impossible, but there was no imaginable motive for escape. Long before she would recover from her confinement sufficiently to travel she would be free to go where she liked. This made no difference, however, to the isprávnik. A certain administrative regulation gave him power to drag to the police-station a delicate, refined, and cultivated woman at the moment when she was about to undergo the great trial of maternity; and drag her to the police-station he did. I think that his action was the result rather of stupidity and senseless formalism than of deliberate malignity. The rules and regulations which control the actions of a petty Russian bureaucrat — as contradistinguished from a human being — require the periodical appearance of every political exile at the police-station. No exception is made by the law in favor of women in childbirth, or women whose term of banishment is about to expire; and the isprávnik Známenski acted in the case of the wife just as he had previously acted in the case of the husband — that is, obeyed the rules with a stupid and brutish disregard of all the circumstances.
The two weeks that we spent in Minusínsk were full of interest and adventurous excitement. The isprávnik was evidently suspicious of us, notwithstanding our open letters, and did not return our call. The green-eyed inspector of police surprised me one day in the house of the political exile Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref, and doubtless made a report thereupon to his superior officer, and it seemed sometimes as if even science would not save us. I succeeded, however, in establishing pleasant personal relations with the colonel of gendarmes and the Government procureur from Krasnoyársk, told them frankly all about our acquaintance with Kléments, Ivánchin-Písaref, and the other political exiles, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for us to meet them on account of our common interest in archæology,
