Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/238

226 though he felt confident the court would soon set him free. Often the poor man wept the whole night through, moaning and tossing like a child in pain.

In addition to his other trials, Feklin was plagued by a strange malady, an unknown skin disease, which he had caught during a short detention in one of the prisons of the Ural region. When he showed me his back, I was dumfounded, for all of the skin was tattooed with a dark-blue design like acanthus leaves or like the pattern on a frozen window pane. We called the prison doctor, who had never seen or heard of such an infection. He studied Feklin for a long time, summoned other doctors from the town and finally called in a bacteriologist, who discovered that the man had been infected with some weeds, which penetrated the skin and developed quickly, causing his great suffering. When the diagnosis had been made, the nursing was easy and rapid, so that in a few short weeks Alexei Feklin lost the "botanical garden" which he had been carrying around on his back.

Finally the man's trial came, lasted two days and had a very sad ending. Sentenced to banishment north of the district of the Amur, the unfortunate man was in despair, sobbed like a child and beat his head against the wall.

"Never, never again shall I see my beloved Maria!" he cried, almost beside himself.

When only three days remained before he was to start his long, despairing journey, he was called to the warden's office. As he entered, he stopped, swayed for a second and swooned. Returning to consciousness, he saw above him the tear-stained but happy face of his betrothed, who had searched for him everywhere and had now finally discovered and joined him. On the following day the orthodox priest came to the prison and there, before the circle of the condemned, married this Spartan