Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/291

Rh officer suddenly appeared to him one morning and said that the governor of the province would like to see him. Mr. Lázaref, who was on pleasant personal terms with the governor, went at once to the latter's office, where he was coolly informed that he was to be exiled by administrative process to Eastern Siberia for three years. Mr. Lázaref stood aghast.

"May I ask your high excellency for what reason?" he finally inquired.

"I do not know," replied the governor. "I have received orders to that effect from the Ministry of the Interior, and that is all I know about it."

Through the influence of friends in St. Petersburg, Mr. Lázaref obtained a respite of two weeks in which to settle up his affairs, and he was then sent as a prisoner to Moscow. He reached that city after the last party of political exiles had been despatched for the season, and had to live in the Moscow forwarding prison until the next spring. While there he wrote a respectful letter to the Department of Imperial Police, asking, as a favor, that he might be informed for what reason he was to be exiled to Eastern Siberia. The reply that he received was comprised in two lines, and was as follows: "You are to be put under police surveillance in Eastern Siberia because you have not abandoned your previous criminal activity." In other words, he was to be banished to the Trans-Baikál because he had not "abandoned" the "previous criminal activity" of which a court of justice had found him not guilty! In the Moscow forwarding prison, soon after Mr. Lázaref's arrival, a number of the political prisoners were comparing experiences one day, and asking one another for what offenses they had been condemned to banishment. One said that forbidden books had been found in his house; another said that he had been accused of carrying on a revolutionary propaganda; and a third admitted that he had been a member of a secret society. Finally Mr. Lázaref's turn came,