by everybody, high in rank, and rich in worldly wealth, she stood, no longer surrounded by the attentions and homage due to her talents, her beauty, and her wit, but surrounded only by stern executioners.  She looked at them with astonishment, 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, and that she would have been permitted to return home, but her tongue was cut out without her receiving any warning of the second punishment which awaited her, and after that I was refused admittance, and I never saw my beautiful and ill-treated mistress any more.  It was from the officer who had the charge of her that I learnt this cruel intelligence, and I went back to my lodgings with a heart bursting with grief and indignation.