Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/463

Rh of them, Madam Kavaléfskaya and Madam Róssikova, had been school-teachers; a third, Florian Bogdanóvich, was a professor of chemistry in a Polish college; Miss Nathalie Armfeldt was the daughter of a Russian general, had been educated in western Europe, and was regarded as an unusually accomplished mathematician and astronomer; Iván M. Koválski and Vladímir Debagóri-Mokriévich were authors, and the former had just written a series of articles entitled "Rationalistic Sects in Russia" for the review Annals of the Fatherland; a number of others, whom I afterward met in Siberia, knew two or three languages and had read the works of such authors as Spencer, Mill, Draper, and Lecky; and finally, the "uneducated" prisoner himself was being tried upon the charge of distributing books among the people "in order to promote their welfare by spreading among them the light of scientific knowledge and culture."

According to the procureur Russian political offenders aim to destroy religion; but the prisoner at the bar, when allowed to say a few words in his own defense, quoted more texts from the New Testament than the court, perhaps, had ever before heard, and inculcated virtues, such as "kindness, meekness, and love to one's neighbor," that certainly are not characteristic of Russian officials as a class, and that might well seem to a Russian procureur to be evidences of fanaticism.

In General Strélnikof's opinion political offenders, with the exception of Solivióf and one unnamed Jew, have never shown any personal courage in the commission of crime, and yet, notwithstanding this timidity, they are such formidable criminals, and constitute such a serious menace to