At the door of the palace we found a large crowd, who, knowing my appointment for this hour, were waiting to hear the result. A line of people was formed along the walk, who, seeing me under the charge of a soldier, turned round and looked at me with ominous silence. We passed under the walls of the prison, and the prisoners thrust their arms through the bars and hailed me, and seemed to claim me as a companion, and to promise me a welcome among them. For a moment I was infected with some apprehensions. In my utter ignorance as to what it all meant, I ran over in my mind the stories I had heard of the exercise of despotic authority, and for one moment thought of my German host at Moscow and a journey to Siberia by mistake. I did not know where the soldier was taking me, but felt relieved when we had got out of the reach of the voices of the prisoners, and more so when we stopped before a large house, which I remarked at once as a private dwelling, though a guard of honour before the door indicated it as the residence of an officer of high rank. We entered, and were ushered into the presence of the governor and commander-in-chief. He was, of course, a Russian, a man about sixty, in the uniform of a general officer, and attended by an aiddecamp about thirty. I waited till the soldier had delivered his message; and, before the governor had broken the seal, I carried the war into the enemy's country by complaining of the rude treatment I had received, interrupted in my journey under a passport which had carried me all over Russia, and laughed at and insulted by the officers of the government, at the same time congratulating myself that I had at last met those who could at least tell me why I was detained, and would give me an opportunity of explaining anything apparently wrong. I found the governor, as everywhere else in Russia where I could get access to the principal man, a gentleman in his bearing and feelings. He requested me to be seated, while he retired into another apartment to examine the passport. The aiddecamp remained, and I entertained him with my chapter of grievances; he put the whole burden of the incivility upon the Poles, who, as he said, filled all the inferior offices of government, but told me, too, that the country was in such an unsettled state that it was necessary to be very particular in examining all strangers; and particularly as at that time several French emissaries were suspected to be secretly wandering in Poland, trying to stir up revolution. The governor stayed so long that I began to fear there was some technical irregularity which might subject me to detention, and I was in no small degree relieved when he sent for me, and telling me that he regretted the necessity for giving such annoyance and vexation to travellers, handed me back the passport, with a direction to the proper officer to make the necessary _visé_ and let me go. I was so pleased with the result that I did not stop to ask any questions, and to this day I do not know particularly why I was detained.