Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/353

Rh or less constantly disquieted and harassed by police supervision and searches of his house; so that his completed scientific work was limited to a few articles upon astronomical subjects, written for French and German periodicals. He was a fine linguist, and wrote almost equally well in French, German, and Russian. English he read easily but could not speak.

On the last day before my departure from Tomsk he came to my room, bringing a letter which I had promised to carry for him to one of his intimate friends in western Europe. With the keen sense of honor which was one of his distinguishing characteristics, he brought the letter to me open, so that I might assure myself by reading it that it contained nothing which would compromise me in case the Russian police should find it in my possession. I told him that I did not care to read it, that I would run the risk of carrying anything that he would run the risk of writing—his danger in any case would be greater than mine. He thereupon seated himself at my writing-table to address the envelope. We happened at the moment to be talking of his brother, Pierre Kropótkin, and his pen, taking its suggestion from his thoughts, wrote automatically upon the envelope his brother's name instead of the name of the person for whom the letter was intended. He discovered the error almost instantly, and tearing up the envelope and throwing the fragments upon the floor, he addressed another. Late that evening, after I had gone to bed, there came a knock at my door. I opened it cautiously, and was confronted by Prince Kropótkin. He was embarrassed and confused, and apologized for calling at that late hour, but said that he could not sleep without finding and destroying every fragment of the envelope upon which he had inadvertently written the name of his brother. "This may seem to you," he said, "like absurd timidity, but it is necessary. If the police should discover, as they probably will, that I visited you to-day, they would not only examine the servants