The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1885-05-14
THE CzAR's BAsTILE.
/ Pictures Of the aHIserabIes In the Fortress
1 of ST. Petar and st, Paul.

Pictures Of the aIIserabIes In the Fortress
Of st. Peter and st. Paui. l.
The fortress of St Peter and st. Paul,
the great dungeon on the banks of the |
Ne7a, in which Prince Krapotkine was
SO long confined. is huge, hideous and |
slabsided, and surmounted by thin |
and tapering spire that looks like the |
end of a Brobdingnagian syringe.
The fortress is in the center of the city,
and faces the imperial palace. During
the day it is in part public thorough
fare, and people pass through q mar
row defile of gloomy and tortuous
vaults, where heavily armed sentinels
march to and fro, and stone slabs In
inches hold aloft burning tapers. But
at nightfan all is closed and when
darkness covers the capital and the
quays of the Neva are all aglow with
gaslights, the prison here dedicated to
st. Peter and st. Paul remains shroud-
ed in gloom like some huge nav, ever
ready 70 swallow up all that is best and
noblest of the unhappy land which it
curses with its presence. Round the
fortress reigns deep silence; but four
times in every hour the big clock in the
syringe-shaped spire chimes a psalm
wonder that men who were taught in
their childhood that to disobey the po-
tentate was to dishonor the Creator
should have learned to detest the one
and repudiate the other.
If those hoary walls of the Russian
bastile could speak, what tales they
might tell. Since its foundation the
fortress has been the chief political
prison of the empire. In past times
the inmates were mostly court offenders
on their way to Siberia or the scaffold.
One of these was the wretched Alexis,
son of Peter the Great, and heir pre-
sumptive to the throne. Visitors are
still shown the cell where, after being
put to the torture, he was put to death
by order of his father. But for we'll
nigh 100 years there have been neither
palace plots nor coup d etat, and from
ESthe beginning of the century of 1925
the fortress prison was closed. Then
it opened to receive the Decemberists,
the flower of the Russian nobility, who
had tried, by opposing the accession of
Nicholas to the throne, to overthrow
autocracy and establish in its stead
constitutional regime. In his reign
there was little open discomfort; he
| kept it down, crushed it out of sight,
but even the strength of despots must
yield to death, and the WhirlWind he
sowed was reaped by his son. The
fortress is now filed with unfortunates.
| During the last twenty years thousands
have entered its gloomy portals, and as
fast as they perish or depart the great
army of miserables is reinforced by
| fresh victims.
Most of them only remain for time,
either pending their trial or until they
are removed to central prison or de-
ported to Siberia. But there are some
whose fate is still more terrible. There
are prisoners who have never been
tried and never will be-men and wo-
men-who are kept in prison generally
for years, often for life, simply by Or
| der of the Gar. One is an ex-officer of
the Imperial Guard by the name Of
Chevitch. 1t is said that the late En-
peror, who was of an amorous DISPOSE
ton, made the sister of Chevitch his
mistress and that the young officer
stepped out of the ranks at review
and cried to the tyrant, like Victor
Hugo's 'Saint Vallier:'' ''Sire, you
have done ILL.," For this offense he
was doomed to lifelong Imprisonment
in the Alexis revelin, and is now a
raving lunatic. Wayfarers who pass
by at midnight sometimes hear his
frightful cries and maniacal laughter,
and then they shudder and hasten
away, for the ground on which they
tread is accursed. In another case
ment, dying of consumption, is a :wo-
man whose identity is as great mys-
terry as the ''man in the iron mask. ="
Neither the jailors nor her felow-pris-
oners know either her name or the nat
ure of her crime. She is number, and
frv-
must be hidden in that woman's heart,
| if it still beats!
The easements are cells five PAGES
long and three wide, equal to about
seven and half feet by four and a half
feet-dens into which little light
struggles through a strongly barred
slit The walls steam with moisture.
For furniture the inhabitant has q
straw mattress and thin quilt, a jug,
the image of a saint, and pail which
serves for all purposes and remains
there day and night. The air of such
place, surely one of the dark places
of the earth, besides being cold and
damp, must be unspeakably foul. But
even worse than dampness and foulness
and gloom is the solitude to which the
prisoners are condemned, for the fort
ress is organized on the strictest cellu-
lar system. Every possible precaution
is taken to prevent them from commu-
nicating with each other. They never
meet, never speak to each other; are
not even allowed to exchange a word
with their jailors. A warden is forbid
den under severe penalties to answer q
| question, however meaningless or in
nocent. To prevent him from obtain
ing favors or information, either by
cajolery or collision, the turkeys are
| made to visit the cells in couples and
to prevent prisoners from communicate
ing with each other by knocks on the
walls, every alternate cell is either al
together untenanted or occupied by a
| gendarme.
Once a day the door is opened, and
the wardens signify to the inhabitant
by gesture that it is the hour for ex.
ercise. Silently he rises from his little
bed and follows his custodians into a
narrow yard so hemmed in by high
walls as to seem like the bottom of a
well. Here he PAGES to and fro for the
allotted time like a wild beast in q
cage, and is then led back to his den as
silently as he was brought out. The
prison is full of people, yet for every
inhabitant ofits easements, its bastions,
its ravelins and its curtains there is the
isolation of death. No books are al
lowed in this dismal solitude, not even
the Bible. If prisoner wants relig-
ious consolation he may look at bis
saint and raise his thoughts heaven
ward, if he can. 1t is no wonder that
men immured in these dark places
sometimes go mad.
For clothing the prisoners have the
grey dress of common malefactors. In
stead of shoes and stockings, their feet
are wrapped in rags. Even in the depth
of Winter the cells are seldom warmed,
never sufficiently; at least the fuel as
signed for the purpose is insufficient,
and embezzled at that. Hence, the
cells are always damp. Water streams
down the walls and freezes in pools on
the floor. So intense is the cold that
when the director makes his rounds he
never takes off his fur cloak, and shiv-
ers even then.-SE. Petersburg Letter.
|
, A Big ''WeII'' in Arizona.
In some sections of the northern por
J ton of Arizona the question of watel