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

132THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.

insanity. It is supposed that the love of Fedor, thus accidentally revealed, awoke in the heart of his foster-sister, the innocent, though passionate tenderness, which the unhappy girl had, unknown either to herself or her lover, so long felt for him; and that the suddenness of the untimely discovery broke her heart,

No exhortation or advice has hitherto been able to prevent her repeating these words, which proceed from her lips mechanically, and with an incessant volubility which is frightful.

Her mind, her whole existence, has stopped, and gathered itself around the involuntary avowal of the love of Fedor, and the organs of intelligence continue their functions, as it were, by the operation of a spring, obeying that remainder of the will which bids them for ever repeat the mysterious and sacred words which suffice for her mental life.

If Fedor did not perish after Thelenef, it was not to the weariness of the executioners that he owed his safety, but to that of the spectators; for the passive party tires of crime more quickly than he who is actively engaged in its perpetration. The crowd, satiated with blood, desired that the execution of the young man should be deferred until the following night. In the interval, considerable forces arrived from several sides. On the morrow, the canton in which the revolt had sprung up was surrounded, the villages were decimated, the most culpable — condemned, not to death, but to a hundred and twenty strokes of the knout — miserably perished. The remainder were banished to Siberia. Nevertheless, the populations in the neighbourhood of Vologda are not yet restored to quiet and order ; each day witnesses the departure