BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 335
On went the boat and its silent witness past the grove of acacia trees which rise out of its tall green grasses, where t!u first butterflies of summer were disporting themselves fjr their brief hour or two of gay and radiant life.
Presently the vessel's course was changed for the Custom House, and now she went gliding along with no swelling motion, except such as the wooing wind gave her.
The sun was up. Venice was alive. A little crowd of early workmen had gathered round the Victor Emmanuel statue. The last remnants of the decorations were being removed. The pigeons in the Grand Square of St. Mark's were fluttering over their first meal of the day. The two royal standards opposite the famous church were flying in the morning breeze.
A cluster of gondolas were lying by the steps in the shadow of the Lion of St. Mark's. Picturesque groups of men and women were standing near. The gorgeous palaces were glassing themselves in the Grand Canal with blurred effects of form and color made by the rippling water. Round the corner of the Pizarro Palace where the Countess Stravensky had looked down from the window of her boudoir, however, the water was still and showed every line of architecture, every lichen on the ancient walls, every bit of ooze and green slime that clung to the lower stones on the water's edge, but there was no trace of the tragedy of the recent festival any more than there was of those others which had preceded it in bygone days. Nor had the wavelets in front of the palace anything to show or to say of the magnificent reception, the gay and festal music of which had been the dirge which Vengeance had prepared for the Russian general who had presided over the outrages of Czarovna.
All the world looked so happy on this morning as if the bright sun, the soft breeze, the clear sky, the perfume of flowers (brought from the mainland by a passing boat) had been given as compensation for the closing of the
