Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/85

Rh which came to an end here, turned upon a conspiracy organised by an inferior magistrate by the name of Bardowski, a political plot wholly without a prospect of success. The conspirators had drawn up socialist proclamations, which were to be given to the working people of Warsaw; they had stabbed a cigar dealer, in whose shop one of them, an engineer by the name of Kunicki, had been stupid enough to forget the protocol with the names of all the conspirators, and who in his anxiety had taken the book to a police station.

Very little appeared against the accused, so little that the Governor-General of Poland—the celebrated General Gurko, who is of Polish descent, and whose name properly pronounced is the Polish Hurko—after the sentence of death was pronounced, twice sent the papers to St. Petersburg with the declaration that he could not see how they could condemn these men to death. Since the death sentence was nevertheless confirmed, the governor, who is humane without on that account being known as soft-hearted, acted as follows. He caused the condemned persons to be awakened early one morning, and they were then told that they were sentenced to banishment, and must therefore take leave of their relatives, and if they desired it, see a priest to prepare them for their long journey. They all declared that they did not desire to communicate with any minister of religion. One of them wished to say good-bye to his father, who was sent for. They were then taken to a closed room, where the execution was to take place. The sentence was pronounced there, and at the same moment the executioners seized them and hanged them in the room.

It is most significant that two Russian officers who were condemned to death, but who at the last moment had their sentence commuted to hard labour in the mines for life—which is virtually the death punishment, since no one can endure it for more than four or five years—were not guilty of anything whatever except that they had received some pamphlets and proclamations from Bardowski, which they had not shown to any one, so far as could be proved, much less sought to distribute, but which were found in their houses.