58 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
number, from a human being into a caged animal. If Heaven is merciful, he will, in a little time, be attacked with some fatal disease, and so be released from the benevolent judicature of the only country which has abolished capital punishment abolished it as a fiend might, with his forked tongue in his cheek.
And when that same morning broke upon Czarovna, in the Province of Vilnavitch, Heaven appeared to be more than angry with its servant, Klosstock, and its minister, the learned Losinski, for it made its sun to shine gloriously throughout the land. The radiant ruler of the day lighted up the gruesome procession that formed and marched from the district prison to the place of punishment.
The platform of the executioner was set up opposite the barracks of the hussars, and was supported by a company of the Imperial troops. In the police cart Losinski, half naked and bound, was supported by two gaolers, and at the barracks he was literally handed to the executioner, for he was still in a condition of mental and physical collapse. To this extent God had been kind to his poor servant, who, despite his nobility of nature and his intellectual strength, did not possess the qualifications for martyrdom.
Among the crowd was Ferrari, in the disguise of the Moscow banker, and with the Moscow banker's passport in his pocket. It was he whose voice was heard at the doors of the Governor on the previous day, and he had had a narrow escape of detention ; but the judgment to know when to speak and when to be silent, and the discre- tion to know how to use money and when, had kept Ferrari free from the hard hand of the enemy, though neither his judgment, his discretion, nor his power had enabled him to help Anna.
It was with a heavy heart that he had returned to Czarovna and communed with his friend Moses Grunstein who had counselled him to bribe the executioner not to
