The Indianapolis sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1880-1904, 1885-04-19
THE CARS BASTILE.
Pictures of the Miserables in the For
tress of st. Peter and St. Paul.

A Blot on the White Page of Civiliza-
ton.
st. Petersburg letter. San Francisco Chronicle |
The fortress of st. Peter and St. Paul.
the great dungeon on the banks OF the
Neva, in which Prince Krapotkine was
so long confined, is huge, hideous and
slab-sided, and surmounted by thin and
tapering spire that looks like the end OF
Brobdingnagian syringe. The fortress
is in the center of the city, and faces the
imperial-palace. During the day it is in
part public thoroughfare, and people
pass through narrow defile of gloomy
and tortuous vaults, where heavily armed
sentinels march to and fro, and stone
saints in inches hold aloft burning tapers.
But at nightfall 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 shrouded in gloom.
like some huge NAV, ever ready to swal-
low up all that is best and nOblest of the
unhappy land which it curses with its
presence. Round the the fortress reigns
a oeep silence; but four times in every
hour the big clock in the syringe shaped
sDire chimes a psalm tune in praise of
God and the Car No wonder that men
who were taught in their childhood that
to disobey the potentate was to dishonor
the Creator should have learnt to detest
the one and repudiate the other
Ii those hoary walls of the Russian bas-
tile 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 presumptive 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 well nigh 100 years there have
been neither palace plots nor coup d'etat
and from the 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 con-
stitutional 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
filled 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 a time,
either pending their trial or until they
are removed to a central prison or deport-
ed 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 women, who
are kept in prison generally for years,
often for life, simply by order of the
Gar. One is an ex-ofiicer of the Imper-
ial Guard by the name of Chevitch. 1t
is said that the late Emperor, who was of
an amorous disposition, made the sister
of Chevitch his mistress and that the
young officer stepped out of the ranks at
a review and cried to the tyrant, like
Victor Hugo's "Saint Vallier:" "Sire,
you have done ILL.," For this offence he
was doomed to life long Imprisonment in
the Alexis ravelin, and is now a raving
lunatic. Wayfarers who pass by at mid
night sometimes hear his frightful cries
and maniacal laughter and then they
shudder and hasten away, for the ground
on which they tread is accused.
In another casemate, dying of con-
sumption, is a woman whose identity is
as great mystery as that of the imam in
the iron mask" Neither the iailers nor
her fellow prisoners know either her
name or the nature of her crime. She is
a number and nothing more What a
terrible tragedy must lie hidden in that
woman's heart if it still beats.
The classmates are cells, five PAGES long
and three wide, equal to about seven and
half feet by four and half feet-dens
into which a little light struggles through
a strongly barred slit The walls steam
with moisture. For furniture the inhab-
liant has straw mattress and a thin
quilt, jug, the image of a saint and a
pail which serves for all purposes and re-
mains there day and night The air of
such a place, surely one of the dark
places of the earth, besides being cold
and damp, must be unspeakably foul.
1 C,,+ o,-o,, 1870 fbor Joro,.~o.c cd fo,,1