36 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
The news of the previous night had spread like wildfire ; reports of the massacre of Elizabethgrad had come in, and during the day strange men had taken up their quarters at the inns, without any apparent object of business or kin- ship, or for any purpose of pleasure. Occasionally a tra- veler would appear in the village, to inspect the old cathedral church and palace, or to wander over a strange group of rocks that rose in curious shape beyond the Ghetto and down to the river as if they had been thrown up by some sudden revulsion of nature and beneath which Grunstein had made his interesting and useful dis- covery ; but the newly-arrived strangers seemed to have no business of any kind, and it was said by a traveler from the West that it was thus the troubles began at Eliza- bethgrad.
Arrived at the Synagogue, after an earnest prayer for guidance and help, the rabbi related to the people what had taken place at the house of Nathan Klosstock, and he advised his brethren to have a care how they conducted themselves and their affairs in presence of the affliction that had befallen them. He spoke with emotion of the arrest of the late Governor, Poltava, and of the helpless prospect that was before them under his successor. Pass- ing over his own great trouble with much self-denial, he warned his hearers with impressive eloquence to take care they gave the new Governor, His Excellency General Petronovitch, no excuse for afflicting them, no reason for professing to suspect their allegiance to the Czar, no opportunity for affording him a hasty conviction ; for they knew how great was his power, the more so in times of political excitement, and in presence of an active hostility of the Orthodox Christian against the Orthodox Jew. The reports which had preceded the new Governor provided hin with a character exactly the opposite from that of General Poltava j and the rabbi gave point to its truth by
