liberal Jew. Under the unusually mild governorship of General Poltava the strict limits of the Ghetto had been practically wiped out. The mayor of the little town, being particularly anxious to stand well with the General, who lived in an old palace on the .uplands overlooking the straggling village, acted with an outward show of sympathy for the Governor's mild and beneficent edicts.
Czarovna chiefly consisted of one long broad street, with houses and shops in a strange picturesque jumble, a fine church, and in this case a more or less dilapidated palace on the outskirts, in which the Governor (who in this instance also exercised authority over much of the surrounding district, with the approval of the Governor-General of the vast province of Vilnavitch) resided, and the barracks where there were generally quartered a troop of Hussars. At the northern end of the town, creeping up from the rocky bed of the river, that wound its way into the distant forest, was the Jewish quarter, which even in this exceptional district considered it necessary to put on an outward appearance of poverty in keeping with tradition, but which had many contrary examples to show to those who excited in them no dread of plunder.
The house of Moses Grunstein, for instance, externally looked what it professed to be, the abode and warehouse of a struggling trader and merchant, who found it difficult to make both ends meet; but in reality it was in its way a palace, with a subterranean annex, that was one of the mysteries of Czarovna, and its owner's particular and special secret. Nathan Klosstock, however, made but little disguise of his prosperity, for he believed no one grudged him his wealth, because he made good use of it, and was as generous as any Christian could possibly be, and far more so than many really were. But the native who lives in the track of the tornado grows accustomed to danger. People live without fear beneath the shadow of
