to work in mines, with common criminals. The great success of
his book, however, was the chain.

I do not remember now the details of the weight and length of the
fetters riveted on his limbs by an "Administrative" order, but it was in
the number of pounds and the thickness of links an appalling assertion
of the divine right of autocracy. Appalling and futile too, because this
big man managed to carry off that simple engine of government with him
into the woods. The sensational clink of these fetters is heard all
through the chapters describing his escape--a subject of wonder to two
continents. He had begun by concealing himself successfully from
his guard in a hole on a river bank. It was the end of the day; with
infinite labour he managed to free one of his legs. Meantime night
fell. He was going to begin on his other leg when he was overtaken by a
terrible misfortune. He dropped his file.

All this is precise yet symbolic; and the file had its pathetic history.
It was given to him unexpectedly one evening, by a quiet, pale-faced
girl. The poor creature had come out to the mines to join one of his
fellow convicts, a delicate young man, a mechanic and a social democrat,
with broad cheekbones and large staring eyes. She had worked her way
across half Russia and nearly the whole of Siberia to be near him, and,
as it seems, with the hope of helping him to escape. But she arrived too
late. Her lover had died only a week before.

Through that obscure episode, as he says, in the history of ideas in
Russia, the file came into his hands, and inspired him with an ardent
resolution to regain his liberty. When it slipped through his fingers it
was as if it had gone straight into the earth. He could by no manner of
means put his hand on it again in the dark. He groped systematically
in the loose earth, in the mud, in the water; the night was passing
meantime, the precious night on which he counted to get away into the
forests, his only chance of escape. For a moment he was tempted by
despair to give up; but recalling the quiet, sad face of the heroic
girl, he felt profoundly ashamed of his weakness. She had selected him
for the gift of liberty and he must show himself worthy of the favour
conferred by her feminine, indomitable soul. It appeared to be a sacred
trust. To fail would have been a sort of treason against the sacredness
of self-sacrifice and womanly love.

There are in his book whole pages of self-analysis whence emer