Of all the innumerable victims transported during the last century by the Russian government to Siberia, two alone were able to escape from that dreadful place; their names are Beniowski, whose escape we have already related, and M. Piotrowski. If, on one side, the adventures of the Hungarian magnate are as full of interest as any novel, on the other, the simple story of the modest and intrepid Polish soldier inspires one with quite a different feeling. There we have all the emotion excited by a pompous show; here the hidden drama, the laceration of every fibre of a heart tortured by slow and almost secret anguish. Beniowski, as a general and a prisoner of war, was treated according to his rank, and even among exiles was allowed a certain liberty and the privileges of his order. Piotrowski, the veteran warrior of 1831, being only the simple emissary of his exiled countrymen in France, was sent to Siberia, thrown into a convict’s den, and forced to obey the orders of a scoundrel himself condemned for theft. The half-savage population of the country gave the infamous appellation of “Varnak,” as well to the noble Pole transported for patriotism, as to the vilest forger and assassin. Rufin Piotrowski is in fact the Silvio Pellico of Poland. The book of Silvio Pellico raised against Austria the indignation of all civilized nations. Beaten at Solferino, annihilated at Sadowa, the jailors of Spielberg have nowhere met a look of pity. The “Memoirs of a Siberian” are a terrible witness against the jailors of Siberia.
M. Piotrowski being sent to Russia by the Polish Emigration Society, went in 1843 to Kamiéniec, in Podolia, under the supposed name and title of Catharo, an English subject. He had remained there about nine months as a professor of languages, when he was recognised as a Pole, arrested, and condemned to hard labour in Siberia. Transported in 1844 to the place of his exile, he was sent to the distillery of Ekaterininski-Zavod, three hundred kilometres north of Omsk, and for a year was obliged to perform the hardest and most repulsive labour. A word or sign on his part, or only a fit of ill temper on the part of those over him, would have exposed him to the bastinado or the knout; but being resolved on suffering everything rather than be struck, and cherishing always in his heart the hope of escape, he learnt to control himself sufficiently to show great docility, and a constant care to do thoroughly the work imposed on him. He so succeeded by this means in raising himself, that he was allowed to enter the distillery. “My office,” said he, “was the rendezvous for many travellers who came either for the sale of grains or for the purchase of spirits; peasants, townspeople, tradesmen, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. Of passing strangers I inquired with a curiosity that never flagged concerning Siberia. I talked with men who had been, some to Berezov, others to Nertchinsk, to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, among the steppes of Kirghis, and in Bokhara, so that without leaving my office I learned to know Siberia intimately. This acquired knowledge was in the future of immense use to me in my plan of escape. A circumstance that much softened my fate was the permission I obtained from the inspector to leave the barracks; by this means I was able to quit the ordinary dwelling-place of the convicts, and live with two of my countrymen in a house belonging to Siesicki.