The General remanded us to prison.  I looked at Alexis.  He smiled with satisfied hate, raised up his shackles to hasten his pace and pass before me.  I had no further examination.  I was not an eye-witness of what remains to be told the reader; but I have so often heard the story, that the minutest particulars are engraved on my memory.

Marie was received by my parents with the cordial courtesy which distinguished the preceding generation.  They became very much attached to her, and my father no longer considered my love a folly.  The news of my arrest was a fearful blow; but Marie and Saveliitch had so frankly told the origin of my connection with Pougatcheff, that the news did not seem grave.  My father could not be persuaded that I would take part in an infamous revolt, whose object was the subversion of the throne and the extinction of the nobility.  So better news was expected, and several weeks passed, when at last a letter came from our relative Prince B—–.  After the usual compliments, he told my father that the suspicions of my complicity in the rebel plots were only too well founded, as had been proved,—­that an exemplary execution might have been my fate, were it not that the Empress, out of consideration for the father’s white hair and loyal services, had commuted the sentence of the criminal son.  She had exiled him for life to the depths of Siberia!

The blow nearly killed my father. his firmness gave way, and his usually silent sorrow burst into bitter plaints:  “What! my son plotting with Pougatcheff!  The Empress gives him his life!  Execution not the worst thing in the world!  My grandfather died on the scaffold in defense of his convictions!  But, that a noble should betray his oath, unite with bandits, knaves and revolted slaves! shame! shame forever on our face!”

Frightened by his despair, my mother did not dare to show her grief, and Marie was more desolate than they.  Persuaded that I could justify myself if I chose, she divined the motive of my silence, and believed that she was the cause of my suffering.

One evening, seated on his sofa, my father was turning over the leaves of the “Court Almanac,” but his thoughts were far away, and the book did not produce its usual effect upon him.  My mother was knitting in silence, and from time to time a furtive tear dropped upon her work.  Marie, who was sewing in the same room, without any prelude declared to my parents that she was obliged to go to St. Petersburg, and begged them to furnish her the means.

My mother said:  “Why will you leave us?”

Marie replied that her fate depended on this journey; that she was going to claim the protection of those in favor at Court, as the daughter of a man who had perished a victim to his loyalty.

My father bowed his head.  A word which recalled the supposed crime of his son, seemed a sharp reproach.

“Go,” said he, at last, with a sigh; “we will not place an obstacle to your happiness.  May God give you an honorable husband and not a traitor!”