sentenced to death on the 14th of January, 1850, but
his sentence was commuted after five months, and he
was delivered over to Austria, which claimed the
privilege of punishing him. The Austrians, in their
turn, condemned him to death in May, 1851, and
again his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for
life. In the Austrian prisons he had fetters on hands
and feet, and in one of them he was even chained to the
wall by the belt. There seems to have been some
peculiar pleasure to be derived from the punishment
of Bakunin, for the Russian Government in its turn
demanded him of the Austrians, who delivered him
up. In Russia he was confined, first in the Peter and
Paul fortress and then in the Schluesselburg. There
be suffered from scurvy and all his teeth fell out.
His health gave way completely, and he found almost
all food impossible to assimilate. ``But, if his body
became enfeebled, his spirit remained inflexible. He
feared one thing above all. It was to find himself
some day led, by the debilitating action of prison,
to the condition of degradation of which Silvio Pellico
offers a well-known type. He feared that he might
cease to hate, that he might feel the sentiment of
revolt which upheld him becoming extinguished in
his hearts that he might come to pardon his persecutors
and resign himself to his fate. But this fear
was superfluous; his energy did not abandon him a
single day, and he emerged from his cell the same
man as when he entered.''[14]