brought on mere surmises, free from all suspicion; to turn over the
soldier woman Terentyeva, for her profligate conduct, to a priest
for repentance.

However, in view of the exceptional gravity of the crime, the Court
recommended to the gubernatorial administration to continue its
investigations.

Despite the verdict of the court, the dark forces among the local
population, prompted by hatred of the Jews, bent all their efforts on
putting the investigation on the wrong track. The low, mercenary
Terentyeva became their ready tool. When in September, 1825, Alexander
I. was passing through Velizh, she submitted a petition to him,
complaining about the failure of the authorities to discover the
murderer of little Theodore, whom she unblushingly designated as her own
child and declared to have been tortured to death by the Jews. The Tzar,
entirely oblivious of his ukase of 1817,[1] instructed the White-Russian
governor-general, Khovanski, to start a new rigorous inquiry.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 74.]

The imperial order gave the governor-general, who was a Jew-hater and a
believer in the hideous libel, unrestricted scope for his anti-Semitic
instincts. He entrusted the conduct of the new investigation to a
subaltern, by the name of Strakhov, a man of the same ilk, conferring
upon him the widest possible powers. On his arrival in Velizh, Strakhov
first of all arrested Terentyeva, and subjected her to a series of
cross-examinations during which he endeavored to put her on what he
considered the desirable track. Stimulated by the prosecutor, the
prostitute managed to concoct a regular criminal romance. She deposed
that she herself had participated in the crime, having lured little
Theodore into the homes of Zetlin and Berlin. In Berlin's house, and
later on in the synagogue, a crowd of Jews of both sexes had subjected
the child to the most horrible tortures. The boy had been stabbed and
butchered and rolled about in a barrel. The blood squeezed out of him
had been distributed on the spot among those present, who thereupon
proceeded to soak pieces of linen in it and to pour it out in
bottles.[1] All these tortures had been perpetrated in her own presence,
and with the active participation both of herself and the Christian
servant-girls of the two families.

[Footnote 1: According to her testimony, the Jews are in the habit of
using Christian blood to smear the eyes of their new-born babies, since
"the Jews are a