of public notoriety and of public benefit.
The soldiers were afraid of a popular
demonstration if they attempted any personal
violence in the town, so that the nuns were
not ironed until they came to their first halting-
place, about a league from Minsk.
There they were chained in couples, with
irons on their hands and feet, and in this
manner they marched for seven days, until
they reached Witebsk. They were placed
in a convent of Czermick, or Black Nuns,
chiefly widows of Russian soldiers; women
of coarse habits and cruel feelings, to whom
they were appointed servants, or rather serfs
and victims. Their coupling chains were
removed; but their irons remained on their feet;
and these they wore for the seven years of
their persecution. At this convent—which had
formerly been Basilian, and had belonged to
the Uniate Church—they found thirteen of its
former owners, Basilian nuns, subject to the
same treatment which they themselves were
about to undergo. The whole of the sisterhood
united was placed under the charge of the
Father Ignatius Michallwiez, who had formerly
been their own almoner; but who was now
orthodox and renegade.

Before six o'clock in the morning, the nuns
performed the service of the house, drew the
water, carried it, prepared the wood, lighted
the fires, and, in short, did all that was
required in the establishment. At six they
went to hard labour: breaking stones and
carrying them in wheelbarrows, to which
they were chained. From noon to one
o'clock they rested; from one till dark, hard
labour again; and, after dark, household
work and attending to the cattle. Then to
rest, such as they might find, in a low damp
room, where a few whisps of straw was
their only furniture, and where their clanking
irons were not removed. Their food was
so scanty and so wretched that the beggars
used to bring them bread, and often they
shared the provender of the cattle when
serving them, a crime the Black Nuns punished
with blows, telling them they did not deserve
to share the food of their hogs. One of their
most painful duties was, cleaning the high
leather boots worn by the Czermicks, with
a certain preparation called "dziegiec, " which
was overpoweringly sickening. But the poor
nuns of Minsk lived to remember their
leather boots and the " dziegiec " with regret.

After two months of this life—finding
them still persistent—Siemaszko ordered
them to be flogged twice a week, fifty
lashes each time. These floggings took
place in the courtyard, under a kind of
shed, in the presence of the deacons, the
priests, the children, the nuns: " of
everything," says the Mother Makrena, " that
lived and blasphemed in this dwelling."
Their flesh often hung in strips from their
bodies, and the way to their work was tracked
with blood; but they made neither resistance
nor complaint, and only wept when they
did not pray. It was in the winter; and they
were not allowed any fire; so that the cold
froze their limbs, and poisoned their wounds,
making their punishment still more severe.
After one of these flagellations, a nun, Colomba
Gorska, fainted on her way to work. They
beat her until she recovered her senses; when,
staggering to her wheelbarrow, she attempted
to move it, and fell dead. Another nun,
Baptista Downar, was burned alive in a large
stove. The Czermicks shut her up in it after
she had lighted the fire. Another, Nepomucena
Grotkowska, was killed, perhaps accidentally,
by the Czermick abbess, who " clove open her
head, by striking it with a log of wood,
because she had dared to make use of a knife
to scrape from a plank a stain of tar, which
she could not remove in any other way." It
was a breach of discipline, and disobedience to
a rule of the abbess. Another nun, Susannah
Rypinska, died from the flogging; and a
fifth, Coletta Sielawa, was also killed accidentally,
by a Black Nun, who broke her ribs by
knocking her down violently against a pile of
wood.

After they had been many months at
Witebsk, Siemaszko wrote angrily to Michallwiez,
asking why he had not been able to
overcome their obstinacy. The superintendent
answered that they were " soft as wax
in his hands," and ready to recant, and that
Siemaszko might come to receive their confession.
To bring this about, and substantiate
his boast, he began new tortures. They were
suddenly seized, and divided into four parties,
shut up in damp dungeons, and given scarcely
enough to exist on. The dungeon in which
the reverend mother and her eight sisters
were confined was full of worms and vermin,
which crawled about their persons when
they slept. Their only food was half-
putrid vegetables. The other three divisions
had for the first two days a pound of bran
bread, and a pint of water each, which was
then reduced one half. Every day, Michallwiez
attempted to induce them to recant; now
with promises, and now with threats, and
now with a false paper, which he asserted in
turn to each party that the others had signed,
and were then warm and comfortable, "enjoying
their coffee."   " Would it not be better,"
he used to say to the mother, " to be abbess
again, than to be eaten alive by the worms?
Come! sign, as all your children have done."
The brave old woman still persisted, though
trembling lest any of her nuns had given
way; but, seizing the paper from his hand,
she opened it, and found it a blank. Heaping
reproaches on his head, she flung the false
petition in his face; and this "traitor,—
Judas, envoy of Lucifer,—went back to his
master, quite ashamed," leaving her and her
children triumphant. Siemaszko, however,
arrived. He spoke to them gently, congratulated
them on their decision, promised them
grand honours, and appointed the mother,
Makrena, Mother General of her orthodox