12
BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
CHAPTER II.
HAPPY CZAROVNA.
IT was an interesting and characteristic group, the Kloss- tock household, with Ferrari and Losinski as guests, a few days before the year of Anna's bethrothal to the young and learned rabbi was ended. They sat round about the great stove, after dinner, Klosstock in his brown gabardine, looking venerable and picturesque ; the young rabbi similarly attired but in black, a heavy signet ring upon the forefinger of his right hand, his face singularly handsome, with soft, dreamy, hazel eyes, a brown beard, not unlike the beard which painters give to their imagin- ary portraits of Christ ; Andrea Ferrari, the Italian Jew traveler, a shrewd, keen-looking man of middle height, with a watchful manner, a dark olive complexion, a strag- gling black beard and moustache, a low compact forehead, as much of his mouth as you could see denoting firmness of character, his hand strong and nervous, boney, almost clawlike, .his dress of a far more artistic cut than the others, with a girdle of tanned leather and of ample proportions, large enough and strong enough to carry treasures even more valuable than their weight in gold ; and hidden in his breast both knife and pistol for while Andrea could play the humble Jew, he knew also how to protect himself on occasion. There had been times when he had found it useful and his conscience took no affront at it to pass himself off as a Christian citizen of Venice. He hated Russia with the intensity of aa unforgiving nature ; his father, an inoffensive pedlar in the land, having lost his life in a street brawl at the hands of a drunken crew of
