was to take place, three of the conspirators revealed everything to the commandant of the place, the same Colonel Degrawe whom I mentioned on my way through Omsk. Sierocinski and his accomplices were seized that same night, and couriers started off in all directions to give orders for arresting an endless number of persons. Thus was the plot discovered at the very moment when it was to have taken effect, and an enquiry began which lasted for a long time. Two commissions, selected and sent down the one after the other, were dissolved without coming to any decision, so obscure and so complicated was the whole affair; and it was only a third board, composed of persons chosen and despatched expressly from St. Petersburg, which succeeded in bringing the trial to an end. By order of the Emperor Nicholas, the Abbé Sierocinski and five of his principal accomplices, among whom was an officer of the wars of the empire more than sixty years of age, by name Gorski, and another Russian, Mélédine, were sentenced to receive each seven thousand lashes (with the rods) and ‘without mercy;’ in fact, the sentence consisted exactly of these five words, ‘Seven thousand lashes without mercy’ (_bez postchadi_). The other persons under arrest, about one thousand in all, were condemned some to three thousand, some to two thousand, some to one thousand five hundred lashes and to hard labour for life, while others were simply sent to work in the penal settlements. The day of execution arrived; it was at Omsk, in the month of March 1837. General Galafeïev, who was celebrated for his cruelty, and who had been sent down from the capital by reason of this shining quality, was at the head of the dismal procession. By daybreak two whole battalions were drawn up in a great open space near the town; one of these was destined to officiate on the principal culprits, the other on those condemned to a smaller number of lashes. I do not intend to detail in all its minutiæ the butchery of that terrible day; I shall but notice the fate of Sierocinski and his five companions. They were led upon the ground, their sentence read out, and they began to run the gauntlet (_skvosstroï_): the blows fell, as the imperial order directed, _without mercy_, and the cries of the sufferers went up to heaven. None of them lived to receive the prescribed number of lashes. All (and they were executed one after the other) after passing through the ranks twice or thrice fell upon the snow, which was crimson with their blood, and then expired. The Abbé Sierocinski had been purposely reserved to the last, in order that he might witness the sufferings of all his friends. When his turn came, and they had stripped him and tied his hands to the bayonet, the surgeon of the battalion came up to him and offered him a flask containing some strengthening drops, but he refused them, saying, ‘You may drink my blood, but I will not drink your drops, and I do not want them!’ The signal was given, the fatal