Part 2 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sed 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.
”Did not Ivan Ogareff,” asked the Czar, ”return to Russia a second time, after that journey through the Siberian provinces, the object of which remains unknown?”
”He did.”
”And have the police lost trace of him since?”
”No, sire; for an offender only becomes really dangerous from the day he has received his pardon.”
The Czar frowned. Perhaps the chief of police feared that he had gone rather too far, though the stubbornness of his ideas was at least equal to the boundless devotion he felt for his master. But the Czar, disdaining to reply to these indirect reproaches cast on his policy, continued his questions. ”Where was Ogareff last heard of?”
”In the province of Perm.”
”In what town?”
”At Perm itself.”
”What was he doing?”
”He appeared unoccupied, and there was nothing suspicious in his conduct.”
”Then he was not under the surveillance of the secret police?”
”No, sire.”
”When did he leave Perm?”
”About the month of March?”
”To go...?”
”Where, is unknown.”
”And it is not known what has become of him?”