s mother, and several other
persons, near connections of Peter's branch of the family. The
Princess Sophia was the originator of the plot, he said, and he
specified many other persons who had taken a leading part in it.

These statements of the unhappy sufferer may have been true or they may
have been false. It is now well known that no reliance whatever can be
placed upon testimony that is extorted in this way, as men under such
circumstances will say any thing which they think will be received by
their tormentors, and be the means of bringing their sufferings to an
end.

However it may have been in fact in this case, the testimony of
Thekelavitaw was believed. On the faith of it many more arrests were
made, and many other persons were put to the torture to compel them to
reveal additional particulars of the plot. It is said that one of the
modes of torment of the sufferers in these trials consisted in first
shaving the head and tying it in a fixed position, and then causing
boiling water to be poured, drop by drop, upon it, which in a very
short time produced, it is said, an exquisite and dreadful agony which
no mortal heroism could long endure.

After all these extorted confessions had been received, and the persons
accused by the wretched witnesses had been secured, the court was
employed two days in determining the relative guilt of the different
criminals, and in deciding upon the punishments. Some of the prisoners
were beheaded; others were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; others
were banished. The punishment of Prince Galitzin was banishment for
life to Siberia. He was brought before the court to hear his sentence
pronounced by the judges in form. It was to this effect, namely, "That
he was ordered to go to Karga, a town under the pole, there to remain,
as long as he lived, in disgrace with his majesty, who had,
nevertheless, of his great goodness, allowed him threepence a day for
his subsistence; but that his justice had ordained all his goods to be
forfeited to his treasury."

Galitzin had a son who seems to have been implicated in some way with
his father in the conspiracy. At any rate, he was sentenced to share
his father's fate. Whether the companionship of his son on the long
and gloomy journey was a comfort to the prince, or whether it only
redoubled the bitterness of his calamity to see his son compelled to
endure it too, it would be difficult to say. The female members of the
family