Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/201

Rh the corporal could sleep, and that the soldier only was obliged to watch me. When I became acquainted with my guards, I asked them why they watched me so strictly, even during the night, and when the prison was bolted on every side. “That you may not play any trick to your soul,” was their answer. Ah! it is in the silence and darkness of night, that the imagination of a poor prisoner works most actively; being deprived of all natural and possible means of escaping, he desires impossible ones. How many times during these awful and sleepless nights I wished for the days of miracles and fairies! How often I longed to be able to render myself invisible, and to transfer myself where I pleased. By these means how I would frame plans for freeing Poland; how I would achieve our liberation, and punish that abominable Catherine, rendering her a hundred-fold the evils which she had made my unhappy country endure. Towards morning exhausted nature regained her rights, and I slept until seven o'clock; then I dressed myself, combed