"It happened once," she said to Katusha, "that a man followed me in the street and would not leave me on any account. At last I gave him such a shaking that he was frightened and ran away."
She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to the life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the common people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time in the servants' hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the drawing-room.
"And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with our gentlemen and ladies," she said. "Then when I came to understand things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I did not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand."
After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to town and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press. There she was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. Mary Pavlovna said nothing about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary Pavlovna was sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the police and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she pleaded guilty.