Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/241

Rh their punishment by passing through the hell of these institutions.

As this order was irrevocable, we were in despair, for we knew full well, from the stories we had heard, the inexpressible misery in which the prisoners in these gaols existed. However, even this disagreeable turn of events had its comical side.

After Nowakowski had read the proclamation which published to the prison this disheartening news, he swore energetically and persistently and completely lost his usual good humour, walking up and down for whole hours from one corner of the cell to the other, and muttering:

"Fool! Fool!"

"Who is a fool?" I finally asked him.

"I am," he answered and stopped right in front of me, as I looked at him in astonishment "I am," he repeated with emphasis and conviction, "because it was I myself who built the criminal prison over in Pristan and now I am to be locked up in it! Is it not the irony of Fate, a joke of life?" He spat energetically and again took up his tramp across the cell, snorting and muttering. I had a good laugh at his expense. Life could really not have played a sorer practical joke on this builder of the prison.

However, Nowakowski was spared the actual fulfilment of this bit of grim humour, owing to the fact that the preparations for the transfer of the political prisoners consumed so much time that the end of the term of Nowakowski and some of the others came before these were completed, so that on March 23, 1907, this little group was set free to go back into the world—and face the new persecutions by the Tsar's officials and gendarmes which awaited them.

I was left quite alone in my cell. At first I missed the