BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
—
CHAPTER I.
THE KLOSSTOCKS.
SHE might have sat to Titian, as the lovely daughter of a Doge of Venice in the romantic days of Christian chivalry ; and yet she was only the daughter of a Polish Jew, and lived on sufferance in the Russian village of Czarovna.
The God of Jew and Gentile alike is kind in hiding from all His creatures the book of Fate, otherwise Anna Kloss- tock might have cursed the hour in which she was born. Nevertheless at the opening of this history we find her rejoicing in her life, and grateful to her Creator for the exceptional blessings with which her girlhood was endowed. She had above all things desired of woman the gift of beauty; and as there is no beauty without health, Provi- dence had blessed her with a physical capacity for enjoy- ment, and an intellectuality beyond that which as a rule accompanies the comely attraction of good looks.
Indeed, at the beginning of this story of persecution, love and vengeance, it might have seemed to the optimis- tic philosopher that Fate had gone down into the lowliest walks of life to prove the equality of the general distribu- tion of happiness, and that Anna Klosstock had been selected as an example of the divine impartiality. For although Anna lived only in the shadow of liberty, she had never known what its sunshine is, and in her captivity was a queen the elect of every man, woman and child of
