In 1834 the case reached the highest court of the Empire, the Council of State, and here for the first time the real facts came to light. Truth found its champion in the person of the aged statesman, Mordvinov, who owned some estates near Velizh, and, being well-acquainted with the Jews of the town, was roused to indignation by the false charges concocted against them. In his capacity as president of the Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Council of State, Mordvinov, after sifting the evidence carefully, succeeded in a number of sessions to demolish completely the Babel tower of lies erected by Strakhov and Khovanski and to adduce proofs that the governor-general, blinded by anti-Jewish prejudice, had misled the Government by his communications. The Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs was convinced by the arguments of Mordvinov and other champions of the truth, and handed down a decision that the accused Jews be set at liberty and rewarded for their innocent sufferings, and that the Christian women informers he deported to Siberia. The plenary meeting of the Council of State concurred in the decision of the Department, rejecting only the clause providing for the reward of the sufferers. The verdict of the Council of State was submitted to the Tzar and received his endorsement on January 18, 1835. It read as follows: The Council of State, having carefully considered all the circumstances of this complex and involved case, finds that the depositions of the material female witnesses, Terentyeva, Maximova, and Koslovska, containing as they do numerous contradictions and absurdities and lacking all positive evidence and indubitable conclusions, cannot be admitted as legal proof to convict the Jews of the grave crimes imputed to them, and, therefore, renders the following decision: 1. The Jews accused of having killed the soldier boy Yemelyanov and of other similar deeds, which are implied in the Velizh trial, no indictment whatsoever having been found against them, shall be freed from further judgment and inquiry. 2. The material witnesses, the peasant woman Terentyeva, the soldier woman Maximova, and the Shiakhta woman[1] Kozlovsta, having been convicted of uttering libels, which they have not in the least been able to corroborate, shall be exiled to Siberia for permanent residence. 3. The peasant maid Yeremyeyeva, having posed among the common people as a soothsayer, shall be turned over to a priest for admonition. [Footnote 1: i.e., a member of the Polish nobility; comp. Vol. I, p. 58, n. 1.] After attaching his signature to this verdict. Nicholas I. added in his own handwriting the following characteristic resolution, which was not to be made public: