NIKOLAÏ PALKIN
WE were spending the night at the house of a soldier ninety-five years old, who had served under Alexander I. and Nicholas I.
"Tell me, are you ready to die?"
"Ready to die? How should I be yet? I used to be afraid of dying, but now I pray God for only one thing; that God would be pleased to let me make my confession and partake of the communion; I have so many sins on my conscience."
"What sins?"
"How can you ask? Let us see, when was it I served? Under Nicholas. Was the service then such as it is now? How was it then? Uh! it fills me with horror even to remember it. Then Alexander came. The soldiers used to praise this Alexander. They said he was gracious."
I remembered the last days of Alexander, when twenty men out of every hundred were beaten to death. Nicholas must have been a terror, if in comparison with him Alexander was called gracious.
"I happened to serve under Nicholas," said the old man, and he immediately began to grow animated and to give me his recollections.
"How was it then ? At that time fifty blows with the rod was thought nothing . . . one hundred and fifty, two hundred, three hundred . . . they used to whip men to death, and with cudgels too . . . Never a week went by that they did not beat one or two men to death from each regiment. To-day people don't know what a cudgel is, but then the word 'palka' was never out of men's mouths. 'Palka!' 'Palka!'
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