It may be added that Terentyeva did not make these statements at one time, but at different intervals, inventing fresh details at each new examination and often getting muddled in her story.  The implicated servant-girls at first denied their share in the crime, but, yielding to external pressure—­like Terentyeva, they, too, were sent for frequent “admonition” to a local priest, called Tarashkevich, a ferocious anti-Semite—­they were gradually led to endorse the depositions of the principal material witness.

On the strength of these indictments Strakhov placed the implicated Jews under arrest, at first two highly esteemed ladies, Slava Berlin and Hannah Zetlin, later on their husbands and relatives, and finally a number of other Jewish residents of Velizh.  In all forty-two people were seized, put in chains, and thrown into jail.  The prisoners were examined “with a vengeance”; they were subjected to the old-fashioned judicial procedure which approached closely the methods of medieval torture.  The prisoners denied their guilt with indignation, and, when confronted with Terentyeva, denounced her vehemently as a liar.  The excruciating cross-examinations brought some of the prisoners to the verge of madness.  But as far as Strakhov was concerned, the hysterical fits of the women, the angry speeches of the men, the remarks of some of the accused, such as:  “I shall tell everything, but only to the Tzar,” served in his eyes as evidence of the Jews’ guilt.  In his reports he assured his superior, Khovanski, that he had got on the track of a monstrous crime perpetrated by a whole Kahal, with the assistance of several Christian women who had been led astray by the Jews.

In communicating his findings to St. Petersburg, the White Russian governor-general presented the case as a crime committed on religious grounds.  In reply he received the fatal resolution of Emperor Nicholas, dated August 16, 1828, to the following effect: 

Whereas the above occurrence demonstrates that the Zhyds[1] make wicked use of the religious tolerance accorded to them, therefore, as a warning and as an example to others, let the Jewish schools (the synagogues) of Velizh be sealed up until farther orders, and let services be forbidden, whether in them or near them.

[Footnote 1:  Compare Vol.  I, p, 320, n. 2.]

The imperial resolution was couched in the fierce language of the new reign which had begun in the meantime.  It rose in the bloody mist of the Velizh affair.  The fatal consequences of this synchronism were not limited to the Jews of Velizh.  Judging by the contents and the harsh wording of the resolution, Nicholas I. was convinced at that time of the truth of the ritual murder libel.  The mysterious and unloved tribe rose before the vision of the new Tzar as a band of cannibals and evil-doers.  This sinister notion can be traced in the conscription statute which was then in the course of preparation in St. Petersburg and was soon afterwards to stir Russian Jewry to its depths, dooming their little ones to martyrdom.