282 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
looked like a strong stone prison ; had poled a gondola under the window where the countess had been sitting thoughtful and still ; not her gondola, not the red boat which had charmed and delighted Venice, but the genuine black-bodied boat with its funeral hood.
The red gondola was comedy ; the black one tragedy. The moonlit scenes on the canal were the bright comedy pictures that were to lead up to the tragic denouement.
The meeting with Petronovitch on the previous night, as forecasted in a former chapter, was the prologue to all this ; and a very delightful prologue it was to the Russian general who had governed in Vilnavitch in the last days of the ghetto at Czarovna. She, the divine, she of his unholy Venetian dreams, was his companion. The rendez- vous had in it all the piquant force of a romance that was to be deliciously consummated.
Ferrari, it will be remembered, had had his fears in regard to the memories that might be revived in the mind of General Petronovitch ; but Anna Klosstock had long since faded out of the Russian's mental vision. His remembrance of the unfortunate child of the ghetto had been wiped out of his mind by other conquests, and he had at no time ever been troubled with an unruly con- science. Petronovitch, indeed, had discovered almost in his youth that conscience is just what you make it.
There is a good deal written that is true about the prickings of conscience,. and ruffians of the deepest dye have no doubt suffered from remorse ; but Petronovitch had no difficulties of this kind mixed up with his nature. He had come into the world armed with a cast-iron con- science, or with one that he could mould at his will ; it was either adamant or it was whatever he desired to make it. Anyhow it was not a factor in regard to his ambition or his desires. He was a sensualist and a brute ; not that he lacked the polish of courts as a veneer of the brusquerit
