At this moment a catastrophe was precipitated by the almost incredible news that Madame Sigida, the assailant of Colonel Masyukov, was to be flogged by order of Baron Korv, the governor-general and persecutor of Madame Kovalskaya. The punishment was to be inflicted with rods in the presence of the prison doctor, but without previous medical certificate. The surgeon of the Kara penal settlement had given it as his opinion that the poor creature was unfit to receive even a single blow, and declined to be present, as the infliction was by administrative order and without a sentence of court. The governor hesitated to inflict the punishment, but Baron Korv persisted in the flogging, surgeon or no surgeon. The executioner was the same subordinate official, Bobrovski, who had distinguished himself in the misusage of Madame Kovalskaya. He had received promotion for his brutal conduct on that occasion, and was willing to curry favour further with his merciless superiors. Details of this horrible tragedy are wanting as the lips of those who assisted are sealed. The authorities have, indeed, dared to deny the facts through their mouthpieces in the press, but they were well known throughout Siberia and their truth has been acknowledged by high officials who strove to justify the infliction. Ill-considered attempts have been made by at least imperfectly informed champions to discredit the whole story, which stands nevertheless as an indelible disgrace to Russian penal administrators, whose only excuse was that the nihilist women “had brought troubles upon themselves by being excitable and intractable, and an example was necessary.” So the example was made. Madame Sigida was stripped and beaten with rods, when in a state of unconsciousness, for she soon fainted under the infliction, and was carried back senseless from the place of punishment to her cell. Two days later she died, but whether from the effects of the flogging or from deliberate poisoning is not positively known. Three of her female companions undoubtedly committed suicide, and on the men’s side seventeen out of thirty-nine resolved to put an end to their own lives. The result was not altogether successful. The drug, opium, was either old or adulterated, and many who lay down to die only woke to excruciating agony and were saved in spite of themselves. A few of them, Bobohov among the number, tried again, choosing morphia as the means of self-destruction, but once more the drug was ineffective and only two actually died.