Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/271

 was all military and not unlike that of the disciplinary battalions in Russia. Military government is harsher, the regulations are stricter, one is always in chains, always under guard, always behind bars and bolts; and this is not so much the case in the other two divisions. So at least all our convicts said, and there were some amongst them who knew what they were talking about. They would all gladly have passed into the first division, which is reckoned by the law to be the hardest, and often dreamed of the change. Of the disciplinary battalions in Russia, all who had been in them spoke with horror, declaring that in all Russia nothing was harder than the disciplinary battalions in the fortresses, and that Siberia was paradise compared with the life in them. So if, in such harsh conditions as in our prison under military rule, before the eyes of the Governor-General himself, and in spite of the possibility (such things sometimes occurred) of officious outsiders through spite or jealousy secretly reporting that certain political prisoners were favoured by officers of doubtful loyalty—if in such circumstances, I repeat, the political prisoners were looked upon somewhat differently from the other convicts, they must have been treated even more leniently in the first and third divisions. So I believe I can judge in this respect of all Siberia by the place where I was. All the tales and rumours that reached me on this subject from exiles of the first and third divisions confirmed my conclusion. In reality all of us, prisoners of the upper class, were treated by the authorities with more attention and circumspection in our prison. We certainly had no favour shown us in regard to work or other external conditions: we had the same work, the same fetters, the same bolts and bars—in fact, we had everything exactly like the other convicts. And indeed it was impossible to mitigate our lot. I know that in that town in the recent but so remote past there were so many spies, so many intrigues, so many people laying traps for one another, that it was natural that the governing authorities should be afraid of being denounced. And what could be more terrible at that period than to be accused of showing favour to political prisoners? And so all were afraid, and we lived on an equal footing with all the convicts; but as regards corporal punishment there was a certain difference. It is true they would readily have flogged us if we had deserved it, that is, had committed a misdemeanour. That much was dictated by official duty and equality as regards corporal punishment. But they would not