’But thirty, thirty-five years ago, there were few young men in St. Petersburg with better positions, brighter prospects, than Kasghine’s.  He belonged to an excellent family; he was intelligent, good-looking, popular; he was a Captain in a good regiment.  One of his uncles had been minister of war, and stood high in the favour of the Tsar.

’In the spring of 1847, Kasghine’s regiment was ordered to Warsaw, and garrisoned in the fortress there.  Twenty Polish patriots were confined in the casemates, awaiting execution; men of education, honourable men, men with wives and children, condemned to be hanged because they had conspired together—­a foolish, ineffectual conspiracy—­against what they regarded as the tyranny of Russia, for the liberty of their country.  They had struck no blow, but they had written and talked; and they were to be hanged.

’The fate of these men seemed to Kasghine very unjust, very inhuman.  It preyed upon his mind.  He took it into his head to rescue them, to contrive their escape.  I do not say that this was wise or right; but it was certainly generous.  No doubt he had a period of hesitation.  On the one hand was his consigne as a Russian soldier; on the other, what he conceived to be his duty as a man.  He knew that the act he contemplated spelt ruin for himself, that it spelt death; and he had every reason to hold life sweet.

’However, he opened communications with the prisoners in the casemates, and with their friends in the town.  And one night he got them all safely out,—­by daybreak they were secure in hiding.  Kasghine himself remained behind.  Some one would have to be punished.  If the guilty man fled, an innocent man would be punished.

’Well, he was tried by Court Martial, and sentenced to be shot.  But the Emperor, out of consideration for Kasghine’s family, commuted the sentence to one of hard labour for life in the mines of Kara,—­a cruel kindness.  After eight years in the mines, with blunted faculties, broken health, disfigured by the loss of an eye, and already no doubt in some measure demoralised by the hardships he had suffered, he was pardoned,—­another cruel kindness.  He was pardoned on condition that he would leave Russian territory, and never enter it again.  There are periodic wholesale pardonings, you know, at Kara, to clear the prisons and make room for fresh convicts.

’Kasghine’s private fortune had been confiscated.  His family had ceased all relations with him, and would do nothing for him.  He came to Paris, and had to engage in the struggle for existence, a struggle with which he was totally unfamiliar, for which he was totally unequipped.  The only profession he knew was soldiering.  He tried to obtain a commission in the French army.  International considerations, if no others, put that out of the question.  He tried to get work,—­teaching, translating.  He was not a good teacher; his translations did not please his employers.  Remember, his health was