R. “I knew Jerome Smilabej, and to him I confided my crime. He consented to save us, provided we abandoned the cargo to him, and he promised to arrange every thing for us, and conduct us to a place of safety.”
Q. “Why didst thou attack me?”
R. “I had promised the Armenian in case of unforeseen danger to defend his life as my own. The moment of danger had come, and I fulfilled my promise.”
Q. “Thou sayest that Tsaryna urged thee to commit crime, and aided thee to execute it—that the Armenian protected criminals, and appropriated to himself wealth which did not belong to him?”
R. “I neither denounce nor accuse any one. I have spoken the truth. I seek not to deny my crime nor to cast the consequences upon others. I am a great criminal!”
EXAMINATION OF PIERRE ALEXIECIVITCH TSARYNA, SON OF A CITIZEN OF KOSTROMA.
He is thirty-two years of age; entered the military service in 1828 as a recruit in the lancers of Archanguelk. He denies any participation in the crime.
Q. “Yet you were the first to tell the quarter-master Hortinja that a great intimacy existed between the Cornet Semenov and the girl Nadiejda.”
R. “I was joking when I said Semenov and Nadiejda were too intimate. The quarter-master was wicked as the devil; he pounded our very bones with the baton. I revenged myself by contradicting his ridiculous passion for a girl young enough to be his grand-daughter.”
Q. “Why did you rejoin Hortinja at Kostroma?”