Prêche les sermons d’autrui;
Moi, qui sais qu’il les achette,
Je soutiens qu’ils sont à lui.
Russian Anecdote.
Lieutenant Rileieff, an officer on half-pay, who had participated in the insurrection, had been sentenced, with four other persons, to be torn in quarters by horses; but fearing the effect of a punishment so horrid and so unusual on the public mind, the sentence was changed to hanging, and the execution took place on the 24th July. The widowed Madame de Rileieff, who had only been a wife a few months, on the night which followed the execution, obtained from the executioner (to whom she went and offered a considerable bribe) the body of her husband; and herself, laden with this dreadful but cherished burthen, hastened to an isolated house which she occupied, where, after bathing it with her tears, she herself prepared the mutilated remains for the grave, which she made with her own hands in a secluded spot of the garden, solemnly and carefully closing the earth over it. And on that spot, soon as the stars brightened the heavens, was this poor mourner to be seen, like a phantom, clothed in deepest mourning, kneeling on the grave till morning. One winter’s night she came as usual, and knelt in prayer. The snow fell fast, and hung on her widowed garment: little by little her enfeebled frame yielded to the blast, and she fell insensible on the earth. When day dawned, she was at peace: she lay dead on her husband’s grave.
Russian Anecdote.
During the march of the exiles from the splendid city of St. Petersburg to their dreary destination, a dreadful occurrence took place whilst crossing the forest of Yirna, during a halt in the night. The military commandant of the escort had ordered that Albaniski, one of the exiles, who had been guilty of some disregard of discipline, should be lashed to a tree, about a hundred steps distant from the camp. The night was far advanced, and the wretched culprit had appeared to resign himself to his fate, when dreadful and repeated cries were heard through the dense forest, awfully disturbing the silence of night: the screams increasing, the sentinels on duty awoke their officer, but soon all was again silent. Horrid to relate, on directing their search whence the sounds had proceeded, they found Albaniski bathed in blood, and nearly devoured by wolves. There were nearly a hundred of these ravenous beasts collected about the poor expiring man, and it was with difficulty that they were separated from the mangled limbs of their prey.