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An electric telegraph, with a single wire more than eight thousand
versts in length, alone affords communication between the western
and eastern frontiers of Siberia. On issuing from the Ural, it passes
through Ekaterenburg, Kasirnov, Tioumen, Ishim, Omsk, Elamsk, Kolyvan,
Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Nijni-Udinsk, Irkutsk, Verkne-Nertschink, Strelink,
Albazine, Blagowstenks, Radde, Orlomskaya, Alexandrowskoe, and Nikolaevsk;
and six roubles and nineteen copecks are paid for every word sent
from one end to the other. From Irkutsk there is a branch to Kiatka,
on the Mongolian frontier; and from thence, for thirty copecks a word,
the post conveys the dispatches to Pekin in a fortnight.
It was this wire, extending from Ekaterenburg to Nikolaevsk,
which had been cut, first beyond Tomsk, and then between
Tomsk and Kolyvan.
This was why the Czar, to the communication made to him for
the second time by General Kissoff, had answered by the words,
"A courier this moment!"
The Czar remained motionless at the window for a few moments,
when the door was again opened. The chief of police appeared
on the threshold.
"Enter, General," said the Czar briefly, "and tell me all you
know of Ivan Ogareff."
"He is an extremely dangerous man, sire," replied the chief of police.
"He ranked as colonel, did he not?"
"Yes, sire."
"Was he an intelligent officer?"
"Very intelligent, but a man whose spirit it was impossible to subdue;
and possessing an ambition which stopped at nothing, he became involved
in secret intrigues, and was degraded from his rank by his Highness
the Grand Duke, and exiled to Siberia."
"How long ago was that?"
"Two years since. Pardoned after six months of exile by your
majesty's favor, he returned to Russia."
"And since that time, has he not revisited Siberia?"
"Yes, sire; but he voluntarily returned there," replied the chief
of police, adding, and slightly lowering his voice, "there was
a time, sire, when NONE returned from Siberia."
"Well, whilst I live, Siberia is and shall be a country whence
men CAN return."
The Czar had the right to utter these words with some pride,
for often, by his clemency, he had shown that Russian justice
knew how to pardon.
The head of the police did not reply to this observation, but it
was evident that he did not approve of such half-measures. According
to his idea, a man who had once passed the Ural Mountains in charge
of policemen, ought never again to cross them. Now, it was not thus
under the new reign, and the chief of police sincerely deplored it.
What! no banishment for life for other crimes than those against
social order! What! political exiles returning from Tobolsk,
from Yakutsk, from Irkutsk! In truth, the chief of police,
accustomed to the despotic sentences of the ukase which formerly
never pardoned, could not understand this mode of governing.
But he was silent, waiting until the Czar should interrogate him further.
The questions were not long in coming.
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