BAKUNIN  THE  APOSTLE  OF  NIHILISM.  19/
occupied  the  town  for  three  days.  He  was  taken  prisoner  and
condemned  to  death.  This  sentence  was  commuted  for  perpetual ­
  imprisonment,  which  he  at  first  underwent  in  an  Austrian
fortress,  but  afterwards,  having  been  claimed  by  Russia,  he  was
shut  up  in  the  fort  of  Petropavloffski,  at  St.  Petersburg.  There
he  remained  for  eight  years.  Imprisonment  produced  the  same
effect  upon  him  as  upon  Blanqui.  It  transformed  in  him  the
revolutionary  idea  into  fanaticism  and  a  kind  of  religion.  He
actually  compared  himself  to  Prometheus,  the  Titan  benefactor
of  men,  chained  to  a  rock  in  the  Caucasus  by  the  orders  of  the
Tsar  of  Olympus.  He  even  thought,  they  say,  of  making  a
drama  on  the  subject,  and  he  used  sometimes,  later  on,  to  chant
the  plaint  of  the  Ocean  Nymphs  coming  to  console  the  victim
of  the  vengeance  of  Zeus.  Bakunin,  of  course,  was  the  modem
Prometheus,  who  brought  to  men  the  light  of  truth.
Alexander  11,  commuted  the  perpetual  imprisonment  for
exile  in  Siberia,  where  Bakunin  arrived  in  1857.  He  found
there,  as  governor,  Muravieff-Amurski,  a  cousin  of  the  other
Muravieff,  and  consequently  his  own  connection.  He  thus
enjoyed,  it  appears,  exceptional  favours  and  complete  liberty.
Katkoff,  the  famous  journalist  of  Moscow,  and  former  friend
of  Bakunin,  has  alleged  that  he  has  letters  of  Bakunin  which
prove  that  he  used  to  take  money  from  tradesmen  on  the
understanding  that  he  would  recommend  them  to  the  governor.
He  obtained  leave  to  visit  the  whole  of  Siberia,  in  order  to  make
known  its  resources.  Having  arrived  at  the  port  of  Nikolaieffski,
  he  succeeded  in  getting  on  board  ship,  and  in  1861
reached  England,  by  way  of  Japan  and  America.  He  wrote  in
the  famous  newspaper,  the  Kolokol  (the  Bell),  edited  by  Herzen
and  Ogareff.  At  the  time  of  the  Polish  insurrection  in  1863,
he  wished  to  go  to  Lithuania  to  raise  the  peasants  there,  but
he  was  unable  to  get  further  than  Malmöe,  in  Sweden.  Soon
afterwards,  about  1865,  we  find  him  in  Italy,  fomenting  and
organizing  Socialism.  He  then  for  some  time  placed  his
activity  at  the  service  of  the  International,  but  he  never
admitted  its  expectation  of  a  brighter  future  from  the  reform
of  existing  institutions.  What  he  longed  for  was  their
destruction.