"Well, whilst I live, Siberia is and shall be a country whence
men CAN return."

The Czar had the right to utter these words with some pride,
for often, by his clemency, he had shown that Russian justice
knew how to pardon.

The head of the police did not reply to this observation, but it
was evident that he did not approve of such half-measures. According
to his idea, a man who had once passed the Ural Mountains in charge
of policemen, ought never again to cross them. Now, it was not thus
under the new reign, and the chief of police sincerely deplored it.
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."