BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 19
induced to accompany them ; though she knew how he would cling at last to the spot where her mother, the beloved wife of his youth, lay in her everlasting bed. But she hoped all would be as she wished, and she was glad that the journey had been talked of before the rabbi's friendly messenger had brought the bad bad news, which might otherwise have made the departure of her father seem like an act of desertion.
" Listen, both of you Nathan Klosstock and you, my dear friend Losinski," said Ferrari. "The butchers are abroad. The red fury of barbarism is once more march- ing through the land. The prediction that the anti-Semitic trouble of Germany would spread to Russia has been pushed on by Panslavist emissaries from Moscow. The flame has broken out at Elizabethgrad. The Jews, being forewarned of trouble, applied to the authorities for pro- tection. They were treated with scorn. While I speak to you the Jews' quarter is a wreck. Placards were issued, informing the orthodox Russians that the property of the Jews had been given over to them, and that they might take it. The Government did not deny the outrageous notification. The orthodox rose. The military being called out presented themselves at the scene of the massacre, but only to look on, their criminal sympathy with the mob only tending to encourage the cruel excesses."
" Didst thou say massacre ? " asked Klosstock, looking aghast at the Italian.
" I said massacre. But it was worse than massacre, my father ; twenty-five good women, our dear sisters, were violated, ten dying in consequence."
" Holy Father ! " exclaimed the rabbi.
" At the house of one Mordecai Wienarski, the mob, disappointed of plunder, caught up his child and hurled it through the window. The infant fell dead at the feet of a company of Cossacks, but they moved neither to take it