ence. 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 mean time he retired to his own residence at Minsk,
leaving the illustrious Vilna officials in their own prison.

Shortly afterward, 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 learned.
He may now think that his punishment was deserved, and that the girl was
really guilty; but it is more than prob