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.