Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/176

148 removal into a more wholesome and spacious prison, where he was shut up together with Zakrzewski. Before parting, he promised to send books regularly, and to write to me with invisible ink, marking the place with a pin. He left me on the 15th of February. I need not say how painful this separation was to me.

It was about the same time, I may say, that the principal incidents of my captivity and my communications ceased. Samoilow and Fuchs did not appear any more. Even Makarow, the Chief Intendent of the prison, came only every third month in the course of two years. Thus I scarcely saw a living soul, or heard a human voice. The incidents of prison-life, during this long space of time, were very few. A man enjoying liberty meets with more in the course of an hour; but, if he lived half a century in the world, he would not suffer in his imagination and his heart, nor, perhaps, feel so much as a prisoner isolated and abandoned to himself. Were I to relate all the thoughts and