So it was. For a fortnight no one came to take me and no one had any suspicion of me. That fortnight, though you mayn’t believe it, Alexandr Petrovitch, was the happiest time in my life. Every day I met Luise. And how tender, how tender she grew to me! She would cry and say, ‘I’ll follow you wherever they send you, I’ll leave everything for you!’ It was almost more than I could bear, she wrung my heart so. Well, and within a fortnight they took me. The old man and the aunt came to an understanding and gave information against me.⁠ ⁠…”

“But excuse me,” I interrupted, “for that they could not have given you more than ten or twelve years at the utmost in the civil division, but you are in the special division. How can that be?”