find men together and pre-occupied, to prove their treason. In a quarter of an hour the decree was pronounced, and the next morning the antechambers of the President of Police, or those of Constantine’s aides-de-camp, were crowded with victims waiting to learn their sentence. In vain the distracted mother might entreat to bid her child adieu: the sentinel drove her away with his bayonet, whilst the well-brushed, tight-laced officer gracefully saluted her as he rode off to learn the will of His Highness Constantine.
General Roznicski established a servants’ registration office in Warsaw, whence every one was required to take their domestics; and, as the servants were thus brought completely into the power of the police, family secrets were soon as fully at its mercy.
The most trifling incident in the life of every person who held any position in society was carefully reported by the spies. From papers found in the police bureau at the Revolution, it appeared that multitudes of the citizens had been watched from the moment they rose in the morning until they retired to rest. One gentleman was reported to Constantine as “having taken a walk into the country, there looked through a telescope, and walked home again without speaking;” on another occasion as “having passed a full half-hour at a confectioner’s, though he scarcely ate anything.” Nothing was too insignificant for their gleaning.
After the Pestal Conspiracy, Senator Count Soltik, then upwards of eighty years of age, one of the most respected men in Warsaw, was seized upon suspicion, thrown into a noisome dungeon, left without trial for three years, and, when apparently at the point of death, was set at liberty on condition of sending twice a day a minute report of his proceedings to the police. Those who were so fortunate as to be released from prison, could only be set free on taking a solemn oath to reveal nothing they had suffered or seen during confinement, nor were they ever after allowed to leave the country, even though they were not Russian subjects; this at least held good where Prussians were concerned. Prisoners were further required, when no trial had taken place, to sign an acknowledgment of their culpable indiscretion. Papers were delivered to all householders with blanks for the number of the persons under their roofs, their professions, &c.; these had to be sent daily to the police. Constantine set spies upon his spies, who again set spies upon him; he even had the Emperor and Empress watched by his agents during their stay at Warsaw. The graves of the famous writer, Staszic, and Colonel Godelski, one of Napoleon’s bravest officers, offered a rich harvest for the Grand Duke’s underlings. The name of every person visiting them was marked down, especially of such as stopped to pray, or to place a few flowers in honour of the dead. When the Grand Duke was leniently disposed, the perpetrators of such crimes as these were made to work chained to a barrow or a roller in his pleasure gardens, or sweep the streets and market-places of Warsaw in fetters. Often an enthusiastic exclamation, the refrain of an old Polish song, a thoughtless word, or the possession of some book distasteful to Czarism, was sufficient to furnish the denouncers with material from which to fabricate a deadly conspiracy. The victim was nearly always arrested at midnight. Before he had time to recover the terror of the first moment, he was hurried away before the secret tribunal, though not before the usual garotte-collar had been secured round his throat. His conductor, bound to silence, led him through a secret door into the Belvedere, then descended with him down the dark stairs and long vaulted passages, in which no sound was heard but the dull echo of their own footsteps. At length their destination was reached. The prisoner stood in the judgment-hall. It was large, and seemed still larger, for the darkness was but faintly dispelled by the few candles that burnt sickly and dimly in the damp unwholesome atmosphere. The silence was unbroken for some minutes, save by the grating of a pen over the leaves of the “black book,” as the name of the prisoner was registered.
In the chief seat at the central table (there was no other furniture in the place) sat the president Roznicski, with cadaverous wrinkled face, blanched hair, and hands trembling from age and debauchery; near him, Karouta, the keen-eyed, eager Greek; Kochanowski, the Grand Duke’s valet, perfumed and dressed to perfection; Birmbaum, the Jew, gloating with fierce delight on the misery of the Polish noble, whose fathers had doubtless, a thousand times, given bitter insult to his own, even whilst granting them protection. If the prisoner was of importance, all the members of the tribunal would have been summoned; but we need not recapitulate their names.
The scene in the subterranean chamber of death was well fitted to wring from the victim some sign of terror or hesitation. If he replied with self-command and dignity, he was condemned for contumacy; if he hesitated, he was suspect; if silent, then clearly guilty. The informer never, or very rarely, appeared; he had but to furnish his report and proceed to other business. Witnesses were easily obtained. The cheapest and most effectual plan was to seize some poor Jew, who, though he might never have seen the prisoner in his life, was soon taught, under threat of the knout, to swear whatever was required against him. At midnight the Kibitka arrived; the condemned was carried out loaded with chains; the doors turned heavily and noiselessly on their well-worn hinges; he was borne away never to return; his name perished from among the living, or could be whispered only at the risk of sharing his fate.
As Constantine carried his system ever wider, the prisons in Warsaw soon proved insufficient to contain all the accused; so that hospitals and convents and monasteries had to be employed in the service. The vaults below the Czarowicz’s own palaces were retained for those whose tortures he wished to superintend personally.
When a prisoner could not or would not implicate his friends, he was generally consigned to certain dungeons thirty feet below the surface of the earth; there, a prey to deadly miasma and the horrors of perpetual darkness and hunger, he was left to writhe in hopeless misery. General Karouta discovered a rapid way of making the
