de.
However, Mr. Getzewicz stood his ground firmly. He soon discovered that
the secretary of the police court who had drawn up the depositions was a
convict, sentenced for life to Siberia for having been associated with
highway robbers. He had escaped and was retained in his situation by
merely changing his Christian name, and by being reported "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 further inquiry;
and, the jail 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 exist