His
guards were almost the only persons with whom he had to do who showed
themselves insensible to his pain and sorrow. They were divided
between their fears of not arriving on the day fixed, in which case
they would be flogged, and of his dying of fatigue on the route, when
they would fare still worse. The apprehension of his suicide beset
them: at the ferries or fords which they crossed each of them held him
by an arm lest he should drown himself, and all his meat was given to
him minced, to be eaten with a spoon, as he was not to be trusted for
an instant with a knife. Thus they traveled night and day for three
weeks, only stopping to change horses and take their meals; yet he
esteemed himself lucky not to have been sent with a gang of convicts,
chained to some atrocious malefactor, or to have been ordered to make
the journey on foot, like his countryman, Prince Sanguzsko. At last
they reached Omsk, the head-quarters of Prince Gortchakoff, then
governor-general of Western Siberia. By some informality in the mode
of his transportation, the interpretation of Piotrowski's sentence
depended solely on this man: he might be sent to work in one of the
government manufactories, or to the mines, the last, worst dread of a
Siberian exile. While awaiting the decision he was in charge of a gay,
handsome young officer, who treated him with great friendliness, and
in the course of their conversation, which turned chiefly on Siberia,
showed him a map of the country.
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