Note 2 — UNDER NICHOLAS I.

Among those who witnessed this spectacle was Germain de Lagny, who describes it in his book, "The Knout and the Russians" ... "After fourteen hundred strokes, his face which had long before begun to turn blue, assumed suddenly a greenish hue; his eyes became haggard and almost started out of their sockets, from which large blood-colored tears trickeled down and stained his cheeks. He was gasping and gradually sinking. The officer who accompanied me ordered the ranks to open, and I approached the body. The skin was literally ploughed up, and had, so to say, disappeared. The flesh was hacked to pieces and almost reduced to a state of jelly; long stripes hung down the prisoner's sides like so many thongs, while other pieces remained fastened and glued to the sticks of the executioners. The muscles, too, were torn to shreds. No mortal tongue can ever convey a just idea of the sight.... It was seven months before he was cured and his health re-established; and, at the expiration of this period, he was solemnly taken back to the place of execution, and forced once more to run the gauntlet, in order to receive his full amount of six thousand strokes. He died at the commencement of this second punishment.... After all, Russia is only an immense barrack, in which every one is in a state of arrest." Yet the author of these words was a worshipper of Nicholas!