510 LIVES OF THE POLISH HEROES. 



for ever /" Nothing more than this mere boy's trick was wanting to 

 kindle the rage of the Russian professor Ivanowitsch OstrofFskoi. He 

 repaired immediately to the Governor Korsokoff, to whom he com- 

 mented on this affair after his own fashion, and represented it as 

 a regular plot. The Grand Duke, Constantine, informed of the fact, 

 despatched to Wilna the Commissary Novosseltzoff, who made diligent 

 search for the guilty, and found five of them. Five students of the 

 Gymnasium were sent to the army as privates, and young Plater was 

 severely punished. 



But this slight rigour exercised towards some students, was but the 

 prelude of a more general system of persecution. In the interval of the 

 holidays, repeated visits were made to the domiciles of the students, 

 till chance, one day, in that of John Jankouski, threw in their way a 

 list of the members who composed, in 1820, the Society of Morality 

 and Literature of the Gymnasium of Sivislocz. This insignificant 

 indication sufficed to give a colouring of necessity to a system of arrests. 

 Jankowski was thrown into prison, and Zan, himself, was consigned 

 to a dungeon on his return from a journey ; he was interrogated, and over- 

 whelmed with questions, but being unable to elicit any thing from 

 him, he was set at liberty. They then returned to Jaunoski, hoping 

 more from his weakness of character : nor were they mistaken, Jan- 

 kowski revealed the existence of the society of Philaretes, named first 

 Zan, Czeczott, Jezowski, Adam Meckiewicz, so celebrated since by his 

 poetry, who were all incarcerated on the 23d October, 1823 ; then 

 pressed anew, he finally denounced, at random, so many individuals, 

 that in the course of the 1st and 2d of November, almost all the students 

 of the university were arrested, and thrown together in the prisons in 

 the convents, and other public edifices of the city. Mandates were 

 sent off from Wilna to arrest all those who were residing in the province, 

 and Francis Molewski was even arrested at Berlin, on his return to 

 his country from a journey, the object of which had been purely 

 scientific. 



All these " detenus," questioned separately, denied the existence of 

 any society. The investigation had already lasted six months without 

 their obtaining any thing; when Zan, in despair at seeing so many 

 compromised, resolved to take upon himself the entire responsibility, 

 and to sacrifice himself to save his colleagues. In a document which 

 he signed, he declared himself the instigator of the Society of Philaretes, 

 detailed, at length, the origin, the object, and the labours of the 

 institution, and claimed for himself alone the punishment that threat- 

 ened his comrades. The Russian agents eagerly seized this confession, 

 but they found not judges sufficiently docile to their views to condemn 

 " en masse," a set of young men, whose object and intentions were at 

 once honourable and pure. Several of the prisoners were liberated, 

 but in the mean time they had deceived the Emperor Alexander, and 

 succeeded in making him see, in a society purely literary, a political 

 association. A decree soon arrived at Wilna, which deprived four 

 professors of the university of their chairs, and condemned eleven 

 philomates and nine philaretes. 



This decree, dated the 14th September, 1824, declared the accused 

 guilty of the crime of having attempted to propagate " the mad spirit of 

 Polish nationality, in the provinces of Russian Poland !" And condemned 

 them to exile in Siberia. Zan was sent to Orenberg, upon the confines 



