Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/18

viii of April (O. S.); and by a singular coincidence Tchernuishevsky's novel was dated April 4, 1863. It was proposed to bring him back to trial as an accomplice. This absurdity was not carried out; but after Tchernuishevsky had served seven years, Count Shuválof, the head of the police, had him excepted from the usual respite. Afterwards he was sent to Yakutsk, and imprisoned under the close guard of two gens d'armes and two Cossacks. In the words of the historian, "Thus Nikolaï Gavrilovitch Tchernuishevsky was cut off from society and science."

The story of Tchernuishevsky's imprisonment is heart-rending. Even before he was sentenced, he was allowed to see his sick wife only after he had starved himself almost to death, and even then only in the presence of others. Afterwards he was allowed to write her once a year; but this privilege was taken away from him when some spies reported that there was a plot to have him rescued. He was not allowed to have books or writing material, and in sheer desperation he punctured a vein in his arm, and wrote in letters of blood on the wall of his cell. It was not strange that his mind—one of the brightest minds that Russia ever produced—was broken by such tortures. Tchernuishevsky, at last accounts, was still living under police supervision in Astrakhan. A reporter of an English daily interviewed him a year or two ago, and found him still intelligent, but a mental wreck. Such action is worthy of the Austrian government towards dangerous Silvio Pellicos; but is it not incredible that a country in the nineteenth century should employ such means to deprive itself of a man who would have reflected more glory on the realm of its emperors than the emperors themselves?

The present translation has been made with great care, and it is hoped that it may be forgiven, even by that school of critics which lays down the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit translations." One single change has