Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/219

Rh we may trust the reports of the trial, by Bunyan's Mr. Justice Hate-good or Rabelais's Grippeminaud. ... Witnesses were brought for- ward to speak to the character of Dr. Véimar. Their testimony was a shower of praises, both as to his moral character and his bravery in war. This was inconvenient for the prosecution. Sup- posing the charges against Dr. Véimar true, it would appear that an exemplary citizen so despaired of the condition of his country that he conspired with miscreants like Solivióf and aided other dastardly assassins. It might have been surmised that the prosecu- tion would bring evidence to damage the character of the accused, or at least to show that the praise heaped on him was undeserved. Nothing of the sort. The prosecutor said, "Gentlemen, I could have produced a series of witnesses whose testimony would have been quite the reverse. Unfortunately, all of them are absent." A military court could hardly avoid taking the word of the presiding general, but the whole proceeding, the whole conception of testi- mony and justice, are only to be paralleled in the burlesque trial witnessed by Alice in Mr. Carroll's fairy tale. ... No case could bear more direct evidence to the terrible condition of Russian society and Russian justice. Either a man who seems to have been an exemplary citizen in other respects was driven by despotism into secret and dastardly treason, or Dr. Véimar is falsely condemned and unjustly punished. In either alternative, if the reports of his trial are correct, that trial was a scandal even to military law.

After sentence had been pronounced, Dr. Véimar was taken back to the fortress, and lay there, in what is known as "the penal servitude section," for nine months more. The dampness and bad sanitary condition of his cell fi- nally broke down his health, and in February, 1881, he was found to be suffering from pleurisy and scurvy, and was removed to the House of Preliminary Detention. At last, in August, 1881, after more than two years of soli- tary confinement, he was sent, still sick, to the mines of Kará.

The Crown Princess Dagmár (now the Empress), whose hospital Dr. Véimar had managed during the Russo-Turkish war, took a deep personal interest in him, and was a firm believer in his innocence; but even she could not save him. When she came to the throne, however, as Empress, in