charge. Eagerly, yet in terror lest they
should find a traitor amongst them, they all
denied their conversion; and the reverend
mother refused her office with more energy,
doubtless, than policy, flinging back the superb
cross, with which he wished to decorate her,
telling him to wear it himself, and then "instead
of, as in the old times, a thief hanging on the
cross, they should see the cross hanging on a
thief." Finding that he could make no
impression on them, Siemaszko, indignant at
the useless trouble he had taken, and the
unneccessary civility he had shown, ordered
them to be severely flogged beneath his own
windows: and so ended this prelatic
visitation.

Among other more revolting, but not
more severe cruelties, was the manner in
which they were made to bring water from
the river. To " prevent the Polish spirit
from passing into the water," the nuns were
obliged to hold the heavy copper jars at arms'
length. It was a great distance between the
convent and the river, especially in winter,
when they had to go a long way round; and
the poor creatures were sometimes unable to
keep the jars held out at the required
distance. If they drew them nearer, the water
was polluted; and the Czermick Nuns, who
were always with them, armed with whips
and sticks, flung it over them, and they were
obliged to go back to the river for more.
This happened perhaps many times in the
day, and as they were not allowed to change
their clothes—indeed they had none but what
they wore—they were sometimes the whole
day and night enveloped in a sheet of ice,
for the water froze in the clothes, instead of
drying. Another misfortune, which affected
them more than others, that seemed more
difficult to bear, was the loss of their only
cooking utensil: an earthenware pot given
them by a Jew, in which they used to cook
the only warm food they had to eat, namely,
the " braha," the grounds of a sort of spirit
made from corn. Michallwiez shattered it
with the iron heel of his boot, and the poor
nuns found all their patience and resignation
necessary to enable them to bear this loss
cheerfully. However, " they carried it to
God," with the same marvellous patience
they showed throughout; and afterwards
another Jew gave them an iron kettle.

Again Siemaszko came among them; this
time to reconsecrate the old Uniate Church at
Witebsk to the orthodox faith. He tried to
make the nuns assist in the ceremony, which
would have been equal to a public profession of
faith; but they steadfastly refused, and
suffered themselves to be cut, maimed, bruised,
ill-treated, and wounded, rather than commit
what they believed to be a mortal sin.
The abbess had her head laid open, and
there was not one of the nuns who was
not bleeding from one or many wounds.
At the church door, as they were being
forced in, one of the nuns snatched a log
of wood from a carpenter at work, and
threw it at the bishop's feet; and the abbess
Makrena offered him a hatchet, crying,
"Thou hast been our shepherd, become our
executioner! Like the father of St. Barbe,
destroy thy children! " the nuns kneeling
before him. Siemaszko dashed the hatchet
from the mother's hands; and, in falling, it
cut the leg and foot of one of the sisters.
With a blow of his hand he knocked out
one of Makrena's teeth, and beat her
brutally about the head. Then, perhaps
from the excess and reaction of his passion,
he fainted: so the barbarous scene ended.
But after this their persecutions were greatly
increased, and the death of Michallwiez,
who fell, when drunk, into a pool and was
drowned, only added to their sorrows; for
the Pope Swanow, who succeeded, continually
blamed his moderation, and repeated,
daily, " I am no Michallwiez!"

At the end of eighteen hundred and forty,
two years after their arrival at Witebsk,
they were suddenly marched off to Polosk.
By this time their clothes were completely
worn out, and they received a fresh supply;
namely, two petticoats of sacking, and a
half square of linen for the head. This was
all they had. At Polosk, they found other
Basilian nuns, whose persecutions had begun
at the same time as that of the nuns of
Witebsk, and who had lost fifteen, out of
their former number of twenty-five, from the
barbarities they had suffered. Of the
remaining ten, two were mad, who yet were
chained, fastened to the wheelbarrows, and
compelled to work like the rest. One died
soon after the arrival of the nuns of Minsk,
and the other was one day found covered with
blood, lying dead on the floor of the prison.
In Polosk, or rather at Spas, which is about
a league from the town, the nuns were set to
work on a palace about to be built for
Siemaszko. They first had to break the stones,
not with hammers, but with the stones
themselves, which dislocated their arms, so that
they were often obliged to help each other to
replace them in the sockets; tumours came
on their necks and heads, their hands were
swollen, chapped, aud bleeding, and their
bodies were one mass of open wounds and
festering sores. At night they could not
lie down nor sleep, and often passed the
whole night leaning against each other,
weeping and praying. Their numbers were
sadly thinned during this period. It might
be truly said that they moistened the foundations
of that prelatic palace with their blood.
Three died in eight days; two of over-fatigue;
and the third, too weak to guide a bucket of
lime, which she was drawing up to the third
story, let the rope slip through her hands,
and the bucket, falling on her head, crushed
her to death. Five were buried alive in an
excavation they were making for potters'
earth. The pit was very deep, and cracks
and crevices had already warned them there