One of our convicts in the special divisions, a Kalmuck, who had been christened Alexandr or “Alexandra” as they used to call him in the prison, a queer fellow, sly, fearless and at the same time very good-natured, told me how he got through his four thousand “sticks.” He told me about it, laughing and joking, but swore in earnest that if he had not from childhood⁠—his earliest, tenderest childhood⁠—always been under the lash, so that his back had literally never been free from scars all the while he lived with his horde, he never could have endured the punishment. He seemed to bless his education under the lash.

“I was beaten for everything, Alexandr Petrovitch!” he told me one evening, sitting on my bed, before the candles were lighted, “for everything and nothing, whatever happened, I was beaten for fifteen years on end, as far back as I can remember, several times every day; anyone beat me who liked, so that in the end I got quite used to it.”