Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

The rod, which, since the amelioration of manners, usually replaces the knout of Mongolic memory, is formed of a cane split into three pieces, an instrument which fetches off the skin at every stroke; at the fifth, the victim loses nearly all power to cry, his weakened voice can then only utter a prolonged, sobbing groan. This horrible rattle in the throat of the tortured creatures pierced the heart of the prisoner, and presaged to him a fate which he dared not look in the face.

M. Pernet understands Eussian; he was therefore present, without seeing any thing, at many private tortures; among others, at those of two young girls, who worked under a fashionable milliner in Moscow. These unfortunate creatures were flogged before the eyes even of their mistress, who reproached them with having lovers, and with having so far forgotten themselves as to bring them into her house — the house of a milliner ! — what an enormity! Meanwhile this virago exhorted the executioners to strike harder : one of the girls begged for mercy: they said that she was nearly killed, that she was covered with blood. No matter ! She had carried her audacity so far as to say that she was less culpable than her mistress ; and the latter redoubled her severity. M. Pernet assured me, observing that he thought I might doubt his assertion, that each of the unhappy girls received, at different intervals, a hundred and eighty blows. " I suffered too much in counting them," he added, " to be deceived in the number."

A man feels the approach of insanity when present at such horrors, and yet unable to succour the victims.

Afterwards, serfs and servants were brought by stewards, or sent by their masters, with the request that they might be punished : there was nothing, in short, but scenes of atrocious vengeance and frightful despair, all hidden from the public eye.* The unhappy prisoner longed for the obscurity of night, because the darkness brought with it silence ; and though his thoughts then terrified him, he preferred the evils of imagination to those of reality. This is always the case with real sufferers. It is

* See, in Dickens's American Journey, extracts from the United States' papers, concerning the treatment of the slaves ; presenting a remarkable resemblance between the excesses of despotism and the abuses of democracy.