Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/236

224 me with a document and a small red-leather box, announcing to me at the same time that this high decoration had been sent me from St. Petersburg at the request of General Kuropatkin in recognition of my work for the army, of course before I "became the President of the Revolutionary Government," as the officer took the precaution to explain.

At first blush I did not know exactly what to do. Then my feelings took charge and I became angry. They valued my earlier services because I had provided the army with fuel; then, for my later services, which saved the army from anarchy and from starvation during the Revolution, they all but shot me and were now keeping me in the "stone bag!"

"I cannot accept a decoration from a Government which confers rewards on an individual with its right hand and slams prison doors behind him with its left!" I answered them, and bowed myself out of their presence.

This event for ever deprived me of the right to receive a decoration from the Tsar; yet I never regretted it and always maintained jokingly that I was in strained relations with Nicholas II, in spite of the fact that he sought to propitiate me by offering me "lodging free of rent and with full maintenance" for two years and a decoration in the bargain.

Days, weeks and months passed. In general the life of the prison was even and calm, interrupted only occasionally by some unanticipated flurry or some unusual event. From time to time, like gusts of wind, came disturbing rumours that the numerous escapes had attracted to our prison the unwelcome attention of the high authorities of St. Petersburg, who urged the closing of the political prison at Harbin and the scattering of its inmates among the gaols of the other towns of East