Something was going to happen on his behalf; of that he
was quite certain. It was perfectly ridiculous that even in Russia a
loyal subject, who had never done any illegal act in his life, a
nobleman of the empire, and a friend of the Czar, should be
incarcerated for long without trial, and even without accusation. He
had no enemies that he knew of, and many friends, and yet he
experienced a vague uneasiness when be remembered that his own course
of life had been such that he would not be missed by his friends. For
more than a year he had been in England, at sea, and in America, so
much absorbed in his researches that he had written no private letters
worth speaking of, and if any friend were asked his whereabouts, he
was likely to reply:
"Oh, Lermontoff is in some German university town, or in England, or
traveling elsewhere. I haven't seen him or heard of him for months.
Lost in a wilderness or in an experiment, perhaps."
These unhappy meditations were interrupted by the clang of bolts. He
thought at first it was his own door that was being opened, but a
moment later knew it was the door of the next cell up-stream. The
sound, of course, could not penetrate the extremely thick wall, but
came through the aperture whose roof arched the watercourse. From the
voices he estimated that several prisoners were being put into one
cell, and he wondered whether or not he cared for a companion.
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