Tartar hordes came with horses
to sell, freebooters of the boundless desert, banditti in league with
the Cossacks to smuggle across the {108} borders of the Chinese. And
Chinese smugglers, splendid in silk attire, hobnobbed with exiles, who
included every class from courtiers banished for political offences to
criminals with ears cut off and faces slit open. What with drink and
play and free fights--if the Czar did not hear, it was because he was
far away.
On this August night half a dozen new exiles had come in with the St.
Petersburg cavalcade. The prisoners were set free on parole to see the
sights, while their Cossack guard went on a spree. The new-comers
seemed above the common run of criminals sent to Siberia, better
clothed, of the air born to command, and in possession of money. The
leading spirit among them was a young Pole, twenty-eight years or
thereabouts, of noble rank, Mauritius Benyowsky, very lame from a
battle wound, but plainly a soldier of fortune who could trump every
trick fate played him, and give as good knocks as he got. Four others
were officers of the army in St.
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