Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/281

 that nothing but the passionate desire to rise up again, to be renewed, to begin a new life, gave me the strength to wait and to hope. And at last I mastered myself; I looked forward, and I reckoned off every day, and, although a thousand remained, I took pleasure in ticking them off one by one. I saw the day off; I buried it, and I rejoiced at the coming of another day, because there were not a thousand left but nine hundred and ninety-nine days. I remember that all that time, though I had hundreds of companions, I was fearfully lonely, and at last I grew fond of that loneliness. In my spiritual solitude I reviewed all my past life, went over it all to the smallest detail, brooded over my past, judged myself sternly and relentlessly, and even sometimes blessed fate for sending me this solitude, without which I could not have judged myself like this, nor have reviewed my past life so sternly. And what hopes set my heart throbbing in those days! I believed, I resolved, I swore to myself that in my future life there should be none of the mistakes and lapses there had been in the past. I sketched out a programme for myself for the whole future, and I firmly resolved to keep to it. The blind faith that I should and could keep these resolutions rose up in my heart again. I looked forward eagerly to freedom, I prayed for it to come quickly; I longed to test myself again in fresh strife. At times I was overcome by nervous impatience. But it hurts me to recall now my spiritual condition at that time. Of course all that concerns no one but me. But I have written all this because I think every one will understand it, for the same thing must happen to every one, if he is sent to prison for a term of years in the flower of his youth and strength.

But why talk of it? I had better describe something else that I may not end too abruptly.

It occurs to me that some one may ask, was it really impossible for anyone to escape from prison, and did no one escape in all those years? As I have said already, a prisoner who has spent two or three years in prison begins to attach a value to those years and cannot help coming to the conclusion that it is better to serve the rest of his time without trouble and risk and leave the prison finally in the legal way as a “settler.” But this conclusion can only occur to a convict who has been sentenced to a brief term. The man with many years before him might well be ready to risk anything. But somehow this did not often happen in our prison. I don’t know whether it was that they were very cowardly, whether the supervision was