"dead " by Mr. Botwinko. The components
of the rest of the court were no less
suspicious. In Russia, the police and sheriff's
courts, and even the provincial senate itself,
are the asylums for military veterans; who,
during their long service, had never been
trained up to the law. The secretaries draw
documents for them, which they sign—very
often without reading; that task being tiresome,
and often incomprehensible to them.

The court which had promoted and
confirmed Sophie's prosecution, consisted of
illiterate, worn-out officers, who had no
scruple in committing the Procureur-General's
victim for trial to the First Criminal Court
(Sond Grodoski).

But how was the deception carried on
before the higher tribunals? This would
puzzle the most ingenious rascality to guess.
But Botwinko was a genius in his way:—he
actually brought before that court, as well as
before the highest criminal tribunal, another
young woman; who represented herself to be
the girl in question, and confessed her
supposed guilt with all the desired particulars.
The extraordinary intrigue was the more
easily accomplished from the secrecy with
which criminal investigations in Russia are
conducted. Whenever the culprit acknowledges
his crime, the sentence follows without
farther inquiry; and, the gaol being under the
control of the police office, and the judges of
the criminal courts not knowing the prisoners
personally, they were obliged to receive in this
instance the confessions of any girl whom
the police thought proper to send to them.

When the trial was over, the Procureur
paid his hireling well, dismissed her, and drew
forth his victim from her cell; substituted
her for the wretch who had stood at the
bar, and sent her to Siberia. Villainy,
however, be it ever so cunning, seldom half does
its work of deception. If Botwinko had had
the whole sentence carried into effect, and
poor Sophie knouted, he would not, perhaps,
have been discovered by his colleague at
Vitebsk; and he might have lived a respected
public officer to this day; for of such
characters does the Russian system admit the
prosperous existence. As it was, however,
on the report of Mr. Getzewicz, Botwinko,
the secretary of police, and many of his
superiors, were thrown into prison.

The end of this dreadful story is melancholy;
for in the end guilt triumphed. The Procureur-
General, having several partners in his guilty
practices, had, if one may so abuse the
expression, many friends. At first they tried
most ingeniously to bribe Mr. Getzewicz, and
to induce him to give up further proceedings;
but, finding him inflexible, they put a stop to all
that business by administering poison to the
unfortunate Sophie. They even threatened
the Governor of Minsk himself, in an anonymous
letter, to do the same for him.

That threat, it seems, produced the desired
effect on the honest but weak-minded man.

Seeing with what desperate people he had to
contend—so much so, that his own life was in
danger—he sent his final report to the (at
that time) lingering Emperor Alexander, with
request for further instructions. In the meantime
he retired to his own residence at Minsk,
leaving the illustrious Vilna officials in their
own prison.

Shortly afterwards, the Emperor died at
Taganrog. His second brother, the present
Emperor, Nicholas I.—greeted, on his accession
to the throne, with a formidable insurrection
at St. Petersburgh, and with alarming
conspiracies and political intrigues in the
army—had no time to direct his attention to
so trifling an affair as that of our heroine.
Political prisoners were to be punished first,
in order to spread terror among those who
were not discovered as yet. The stability of
the throne would not allow him to alarm the
administrative servants and other criminals
who never thought of subverting Romanoff's
dynasty. Hence, with the exception of the
political offenders, all others, whose actions
were pending in different courts of justice,
but not yet adjudicated, were amnestied by
the Emperor, on the occasion of his coronation,
in 1826, at Moscow.

Thus, the Procureur and his associates
were released from prison, losing nothing
but their former situations. The Procureur,
having scraped together a fortune by his
bribes and graspings, did not care much at
becoming an independent gentleman.

What became of Sophie's lover—the
unfortunate clerk, who was sent to the army, for
his honest but untimely application—could
not be learnt. He may now think that his
punishment was deserved, and that the girl
was really guilty; but it is more than
probable that he will never again interfere to
restrain the grossest injustice.

And here ends our melancholy tale, which
the censorship of the press in Russia
prevented from ever before being publicly related.
Corroboration can, however, be derived from
the inhabitants of Vilna, who lived there
from 1816 to 1826; from the archives of
criminal courts of that place, where M. Getzewicz's
correspondence is preserved; from the
list of all the Crown servants of Russia, sent
every year to the State Secretary of the
Home Department at St. Petersburgh; in
which, for 1825 and 1826, Procureur Botwinko
was reported to be imprisoned at Vilna for
the above case, and that the Strapchy of
Oszmiana was acting in his stead as Procureur
pro tem.

On the 29th instant will be ready, price 5s. 6d.,
neatly bound in cloth,
THE SECOND VOLUME
OF
"HOUSEHOLD WORDS,"
Containing from Number 27 to Number 52, both inclusive.