336 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
royal festival ; or as if the spirit of Venice had risen up to let her worshippers feel that the city in the sea needed nothing of festival or music or royal guests, or flags and banners, and painted boats to make her desirable, but that she was loveliest with aught else but her own beauty.
And yet trailing along her dreamy city was that bleached and ghastly thing that a little way off looked like a strong swimmer at his ease, his extending arms and legs rising and falling with the motion of the vessel in company with which he was enjoying the bright gay morning. But what a ghastly mockery it turned out to be when the Chioggia smack cast anchor and dropped her sails. And what a reception it had from the chattering crowd that collected on the quay all talking at once, some crossing themselves, others professing to recognize the corpse, all presently making way for the Custom House authorities and the police.
" General Petronovitch," said one of the chiefs of police, " he who disappeared on the night of the illuminations ; and this (taking from the body a dagger that was entangled rather with the clothing than with the flesh) the cause of death, perhaps."
On the blade of the rusted knife could still be seen deeply engraven a word of Arabic, which a learned priest translated into Italian, French, and English. They were the same Arabic letters as those that were embossed upon the amulet that the Countess Stravensky wore at Mrs. Chetwynd's reception, and the word was " Vengeance ! "
Thus the judicial murderer of the Rabbi Losinski, the assassin of the household peace and joy of the Klosstocks, and the scourge of Czarovna, flung after execution into the sea, had come back again to Venice a witness of the far-reaching hand of Nihilistic vengeance,
