2.  The material witnesses, the peasant woman Terentyeva, the soldier woman Maximova, and the Shiakhta woman[1] Kozlovsta, having been convicted of uttering libels, which they have not in the least been able to corroborate, shall be exiled to Siberia for permanent residence.

  3.  The peasant maid Yeremyeyeva, having posed among the common
  people as a soothsayer, shall be turned over to a priest for
  admonition.

[Footnote 1:  i.e., a member of the Polish nobility; comp.  Vol.  I, p. 58, n. 1.]

After attaching his signature to this verdict.  Nicholas I. added in his own handwriting the following characteristic resolution, which was not to be made public: 

While sharing the view of the Council of State that in this case, owing to the vagueness of the legal deductions, no other decision than the one embodied in the opinion confirmed by me could have been reached, I deem it, however, necessary to add that I do not have, and, indeed, cannot have, the inner conviction that the murder has not been committed by the Jews.  Numerous examples of similar murders.... go to show that among the Jews there probably exist fanatics or sectarians who consider Christian blood necessary for their rites.  This appears the more possible, since unfortunately even among us Christians there sometimes exist such sects which are no less horrible and incomprehensible.  In a word, I do not for a moment think that this custom is common to all Jews, but I do not deny the possibility that there may be among them fanatics just as horrible as among us Christians.

Having taken this idea into his head, Nicholas I. refused to sign the second decision of the Council of State, which was closely allied with the verdict:  that all governors be instructed to be guided in the future by the ukase of 1817, forbidding to stir up ritual murder cases “from prejudice only.”  While rejecting this prejudice in its full-fledged shape, the Tzar acknowledged it in part, in a somewhat attenuated form.

Towards the end of January of 1835 an imperial ukase reached the city of Velizh, ordering the liberation of the exculpated Jews, the reopening of the synagogues, which had been sealed since 1826, and the handing back to the Jews of the holy scrolls which had been confiscated by the police.  The dungeon was now ready to give up its inmates, whose strength had been sapped by the long confinement, while several of them had died during the imprisonment.  The synagogues, which had not been allowed to resound with the moans of the martyrs, were now opened for the prayers of the liberated.  The state of siege which for nine long years had been throttling the city was at last taken off; the terror which had haunted the ostracized community came to an end.  A new leaf was added to the annals of Jewish martyrdom, one of the gloomiest, in spite of its “happy” finale.

7.  THE MSTISLAVL AFFAIR