d. From that moment he was
carefully watched, till one night he was unexpectedly roused from his
sleep by a gendarme and conveyed to the fortress.

When a man is arrested in this way for a real or supposed political
offence, there are two modes of dealing with him. He may be tried
before a regular tribunal, or he may be dealt with "by administrative
procedure" (administrativnym poryadkom). In the former case he will, if
convicted, be condemned to imprisonment for a certain term; or, if the
offence be of a graver nature, he may be transported to Siberia either
for a fixed period or for life. By the administrative procedure he is
simply removed without a trial to some distant town, and compelled
to live there under police supervision during his Majesty's pleasure.
Nikolai Ivan'itch was treated "administratively," because the
authorities, though convinced that he was a dangerous character, could
not find sufficient evidence to procure his conviction before a court
of justice. For five years he lived under police supervision in a small
town near the White Sea, and then one day he was informed, without any
explanation, that he might go and live anywhere he pleased except in St.
Petersburg and Moscow.

Since that time he has lived with his brother, and spends his time in
brooding over his grievances and bewailing his shattered illusions. He
has lost none of that fluency which gained him an ephemeral literary
reputation, and can speak by the hour on political and social questions
to any one who will listen to him. It is extremely difficult, however,
to follow his discourses, and utterly impossible to retain them in the
memory. They belong to what may be called political metaphysics--for
though he professes to hold metaphysics in abhorrence, he is himself a
thorough metaphysician in his modes of thought. He lives, indeed, in
a world of abstract conceptions, in which he can scarcely perceive
concrete facts, and his arguments are always a kind of clever juggling
with such equivocal, conventional terms as aristocracy, bourgeoisie,
monarchy, and the like. At concrete facts he arrives, not directly by
observation, but by deductions from general principles, so that his
facts can never by any possibility contradict his theories. Then he has
certain axioms which he tacitly assumes, and on which all his arguments
are based; as, for instance, that everything to which the term "liberal"
can be applied must necessarily be good at all time