governor would pay him enough for this labor to enable him to return to European Russia at his own expense. The correspondence of the political exiles in Selengínsk is under police control; that is, all their letters are read and subjected to censorship by the isprávnik. When Mr. Shamárin's term of exile expired he was, of course, de jure and de facto a free man. He sent a petition to the governor of the province asking that the restrictions upon his correspondence be removed. The governor referred the matter to the isprávnik, and the isprávnik declined to remove them. Therefore, for more than a year after Mr. Shamárin's term of banishment had expired, and after he had legally reacquired all the rights of a free citizen, he could receive and send letters only after they had been read and approved by the police. How exasperating this cool, cynical, almost contemptuous disregard of personal rights must be to a high-spirited man the reader can perhaps imagine if he will suppose the case to be his own.
While Mr. Shamárin and I were talking, Madame Breshkófskaya came into the room and I was introduced to her. She was a lady perhaps thirty-five years of age, with a strong, intelligent, but not handsome face, a frank, unreserved manner, and sympathies that seemed to be warm, impulsive, and generous. Her face bore traces of much suffering, and her thick, dark, wavy hair, which had been cut short in prison at the mines, was streaked here and there with gray; but neither hardship, nor exile, nor penal servitude had been able to break her brave, finely tempered spirit, or to shake her convictions of honor and duty. She was, as I soon discovered, a woman of much cultivation, having been educated first in the women's schools of her own country, and then at Zurich in Switzerland. She spoke French, German, and English, was a fine musician, and impressed me as being in every way an attractive and interesting woman. She had twice been sent to the mines of Kará — the second time for an attempt to escape from
