Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

at least you seek your amusement in study; for there is much here to study.

I was, then, travelling upon the great road to Siberia, when I saw in the distance a group of armed men, who had stopped under one of the side alleys of the road.

" "What are those soldiers doing there ?" I asked my courier.

" They are eossaeks," he replied, " conducting

exiles to Siberia! "

It is not, then, a dream, it is not the mythology of the gazettes ; I see there the real, unhappy beings, the actual exiles, proceeding wearily on foot to seek the land where they must die forgotten by the world, far from all that is dear to them, alone with the God who never created them for such a fate. Perhaps I have met, or shall meet, their wives or mothers: for they are not criminals; on the contrary, they are Poles—the heroes of misfortune and devotion. Tears came into my eyes as I approached these unhappy men, near to whom I dared not even stop lest I should be suspected by my Argus. Alas ! before such sufferings the sentiment of my impotent compassion humiliates me, and anger rises above commiseration in my heart, I could wish to be far away from a country where the miserable creature who acts as my courier can become formidable enough to compel me, in his presence, to dissimulate the most natural feelings of my heart. In vain do I repeat to myself that, perhaps, our convicts are still worse off than the colonists of Siberia: there is, in that distant exile, a vague poetry, which adds to the severity of the sentence all the influence of the imagination ; and this