, or the waistcoat thou hast
often worn, that I may have something to bring thee near to me."

What answers, if any, the Major vouchsafed to these pathetic letters we
know not. The probability is that they received no answer--that the
"good Samaritan" had either wearied of or grown alarmed at a passion
which he could not return, and which was fraught with danger. It was
accident only that revealed to the world the story of this strange and
tragic infatuation.

When the Tsarevitch, Alexis, was brought to trial in 1718 on a charge of
conspiracy against his father, Peter, suspecting that Eudoxia had had a
hand in the rebellion, ordered a descent on the nunnery and an inquiry.
Nothing was found to connect her with her son's ill-fated venture; but
the inquiry revealed the whole story of her relations with the too
friendly officer. The evidence of the nuns and servants alone--evidence
of frequent and long meetings by day and night, of embraces
exchanged--was sufficiently conclusive, without the incriminating
letters which were discovered in the Major's bureau, labelled "Letters
from the Tsarina," or Eudoxia's confession which was extorted from her.

This was an opportunity of vengeance such as exceeded all the Tsar's
hopes. Glebof was arrested and put on his trial. Evidence was forced
from the nuns by the lashing of the knout, so severe that some of them
died under it. Glebof, subjected to such frightful tortures that in his
agony he confessed much more than the truth, was sentenced to death by
impalement. In order to prolong his suffering to the last possible
moment, he was warmly wrapped in furs, to protect him from the bitter
cold, and for twenty-eight hours he suffered indescribable agony, until
at last death came to his release.

As for Eudoxia, her punishment was a public flogging and consignment to
a nunnery still more isolated and miserable than that in which she had
dragged out twenty years of her broken life. Here she remained for seven
years, until, on the Tsar's death, an even worse fate befell her. She
was then, by Catherine's orders, taken from the convent, and flung into
the most loathsome, rat-infested dungeon of the fortress of
Schlussenberg, where she remained for two years of unspeakable horror.

Then at last, after nearly thirty years of life that was worse than
death, the sun shone again for her. One day her dungeon door flew open,
and to the bowing of obsequious courtiers, the prisoner was conducted