HARDENED TO TORTURE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 45, 3 October 1863, Page 2 (Supplement)

HARDENED TO TORTURE.

We find the following in the ' Diary of Korb, an Austrian Secretary of Legation at the Court of Peter the Great,' a translation of which has just appeared:—' Before the Czar's travels abroad, cne of the accomplices of the revolt of 1696 had already four times borne tortures of the most exquisite agony without the least confession of guilt: and the Czar, perceiving that tortures were of no avail, turned to enticements and having kissed the person under the question (osculo inquisite dato) thus spoke to him : 'lt is 110 secret to me that thou hast knowledge of the treason attempted against me. Thou hast been punished enough. Now, confess of thy own accord, out of the love that thou owest to thy prince j tnd by that God, by whose singular grace I am the Czar and prince, I swear, not alone wholly to pardon thy guilt, moreover, as a special testimony of my c.eineucy, to make thee a colonel.' This strange friendship of such a mighty prince, bent the fierce nature of that iron man, and, taking the freedom of the Czar's embrace, he thus began: ' For me this is the greatest of all tortures. By no other shou.dat thou have ever vanquished my determination and, thereupon, he proceeded to unfold at great length the whole series of the treason. The Czar, carried away with wonder that a man wha had remained silent under such awfully cruel tortures should be so softened at one little kindness, having asked him how he could have borne so many strokes of the knout and the dreadful torture of fire applied to his back, he began another and more stupendous tale. He plated that he and his accomplices had founded a kind of association; that nobody was admitted into it without being previously tortured; that he who was found capable of bearing the most pain was afterwards decreed higher honors by the others; that a person who was only once tortured was a simple associate and pa- ticipator in the common advantages; that anybody who aspired to the higher grades of distinction, was not to receive them until he had undergone fresh tortures, and had proved that he could bear more in proportion to the eminence of the dignity ; that he had been tortured himself six times, and was the president of the whole soeiely; that the knout was a mere nothing; that the roasting of the flesh after knouting was nothing ; that he had to go through far more cruel pains among his associates, 'for,'continued he, 'the sharpest pain of ail is when a burning coal is placed in the ear, nor is it less painful when the head is shaved, and extremely cold water is let to fall slowly drop by drop upon it from a height of two ells.' He said that in all these things he had surpassed himself and his associates, and that those who after being aspirants for membership were found unable to go through the first tortures, wore made away with by poison, or in some other way, for fear they should betray. That, as far as he could remember, at least 400 such inapt candidates had been killed by himself and his comrades. Thus this fellow bore ten times the most unheard-of tortures; six times from his associates, and four times in the inquiry before the Czar. He is still living, and as I have set down above, is now, by the Czar's clemency, a colonel, and away in Siberia.