Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. ST. PETERSBURG. Monsieur Demetrius Kamorski, Inspector- General of his Imperial Majesty's prisons in Siberia, is about as unlike the typical Russian prison official (as represented in England) as can well be. I expected to find an austere, elderly individual, hardened, if not brutalized, by years of contact with criminals—a vulgar, dictatorial man, sly as a fox and as close as wax. I am somewhat surprised therefore when received, on calling at his bright, cheerful apartments near the " Nevski Prospect," by a genial, pleasant-looking gentleman, about thirty-five years old, with laughing blue eyes and a fair moustache. M. Kamorski is fashionably attired in a light grey suit, varnished boots, and wearsa gardenia in his button-hole. We converse for a while on indifferent topics; but my host seems far more inclined to discuss the merits of this year's Derby winner, or Sarah Bernhardt's latest Parisian " success," than to refer to my impending visit to the grim establishment under his super- MONSIEUR DEMETRIUS KAMORSKI. vision. But M. Kamorski can work as well as play, as Government reports will testify. During his ten years' administration under the new rdgime, the prisons of Old Siberia are a thing of the past, and his name, among both political and criminal exiles, is a by-word for integrity and justice. " The papers authorizing you to visit the prisons of Tomsk, Tobolsk, and Tiumen will be ready in ten days," says my host, while tea and cigarettes are served by a Japanese attendant, who accompanied the inspector to St. Petersburg after his last tour through the most remote prison districts, barely a ten days' journey from Japan. " They will be delivered to you at your hotel. But why, may I ask, do you confine your visits to those three prisons ? Why not go...