was 28 when he was sent to Siberia), pale, thin, dreadfully unsociable, a man of irreproachable moral character who spoke very little and was considered by some people to be mad. This is the fictitious build-up Dostoevsky gives his hero, so it would be as well to accept the character as given by the novelist, rather than try-as some surely misguided producers of the opera have done-to make Petrovi? look like Dostoevsky. The cruel and brutal interrogation of Petrovi? at his first encounter with the notoriously severe and sadistic Major is to be found on pp. 254-5 of Constance Garnett's English translation of the novel (pub. William Hindemann, 1915). As this is still the most easily obtained English version of the novel, all page numbers quoted in this chapter refer to this particular edition. The man who is flogged is not Petrovi? but an old man known as "Z" who, it is true, is also a political prisoner and is given a hundred lashes for insolence. Readers of the novel can find this incident on p. 251. Jan?ek throws together in sequence incidents widely different in character: here the only half-serious bickering of the tall and small convicts contrasts with the violence handed out to Petrovi? a few minutes later; a moment after the new prisoner is marched off with nothing but years of cruelty and shame to endure, the convicts are fussing round a wounded eagle who attempts to fly to liberty and freedom but is prevented from doing