ishment, seeming to doubt if such preparations could be
intended for her. One of the executioners then pulled off a kind of
furred tippet which covered her bosom; her modesty taking the alarm,
made her start back a few steps; she turned pale, and burst into tears.
Her clothes were soon afterwards all stripped off, and in a few moments
she was all naked to the waist, exposed to the looks of a vast
multitude, who were all profoundly silent. One of the executioners then
seized her by both hands, and turning half round, threw her on his back,
bending forwards, so as to raise her feet a few inches from the ground,
and the other executioner, with his rough hands, and without symptoms of
remorse, adjusted her on the back of his companion in a posture most
convenient for her to receive her punishment. Sometimes he pressed his
large hands brutally upon her head, in order to make her keep it down;
at others, like a butcher handling a lamb, he appeared to soothe her
until he had fixed her in a favourable attitude. He then took the
knout, a whip made of a long strip of leather, prepared for the purpose;
he retreated a few steps, measuring the requisite distance with a steady
eye, and looking backwards, gave a stroke with the end of the whip, so
as to carry away a slip of skin from the neck to the bottom of the back;
then striking his feet against the ground, he took his aim for a second
blow, parallel to the former, so that in a few moments all the skin of
her back was cut away in small slips, most of which remained hanging to
her shift and dress below. I fainted with horror long before the
punishment was over. "Good heavens!" thought I, "I have suffered the
bastinado and the bowstring, but both were merciful compared to this.
Is there no God in heaven to punish such despotic cruelty?" My mistress
was not dead, and the surgeons were ordered to pay her every attention,
that she might recover; and I thought this attention on the part of the
emperor in some measure made amends for his barbarity. But, God in
heaven! she was restored to life that she might be more cruelly
punished; for no sooner was she able to bear this infliction, than they
cut out her tongue, and then banished her to Siberia.

Thus, O pacha! was my beautiful mistress treated upon mere suspicion,
for guilty she never was. I had been permitted to see her previous to
her latter punishment, and she fancied, poor thing, that the emperor's
wrath had been appeased,