288 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
" I am/' he said ; " most truly, most devotedly."
She laid her head upon his shoulder, and a little shiver of hate ran through her veins.
" He didn't like the parting with his daughter, that old Venetian," she said. " I had a father once have now, somewhere in the world ; and I would give my life to embrace him once again ! "
" You are in a very reflective mood," said the general.
" Yes," she said, " the mood comes with thinking of your victories and the shadows that follow their sunshine. You triumphed once, did you not ; most completely and with great honor in suppressing the rising against the Jews, in the Province of Vilnavitch? Ah, that was kind of you, to protect with your strong Russian hand those poor Hebrew people ! You know, of course, that I am a Jewess ? "
" No other race could give to the world so beautiful a creature," said the general, pressing his lips upon her forehead.
" It is the nature of love to flatter," she said ; " and you do not care to talk of your generous deeds. Our Russian fellow-subjects had a fit of madness, had they not, in those days against my people ? At a place called Czarovna, if I remember the name rightly, they had made for themselves, as far as possible in Russia, what may be called a paradise. It was as if their father Abraham had brought them at last to something like a land flowing with milk and honey."
tf Yes, I believe so," said the general, absorbed in his admiration of the woman whom he pressed still closer to his side.
" You helped the poor people, and put down the insur- rection, is it not so ? "
" Well, not quite that, I fear," he said, I was the Czar's officer - 3 I tried to do my duty,"
