BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 65
against the Russian Government ? Under such disabilities is there anything astonishing in the fact that there is a good deal of wretchedness, knavery, dirt, squalor, and deceit among the commoner class of Jews in Russia ? What kind of a miracle would it be that, in spite of persecution, stripes, murder, enforced penury and hunger, with debarred constitutional, social, or any other rights, except now and then to see the light of heaven, should raise a people to the level of the masses of free countries, such as England and America ?
CHAPTER XII.
VOWS OF VENGEANCE.
THE Count Stravensky rode homewards with a conflict of many harassing feelings stirring his heart. He would have done much to save Anna Klosstock. Ever since he had met her on the road to the old palace of the Government, her face had been continually before him. Had he been a man of a stronger will, he would probably have prevented her from going to that fatal house. But he knew his own weakness ; it was not so much want of courage as the knowledge that he was not a true subject of the Czar j true to Russia, yes but untrue to his oath of allegiance, untrue to his order, and would have been openly hostile if any good could have come of it.
Meanwhile, however, he was one of the powers behind the popular movement of the time, and with the hope that the day would come when he might strike a blow for liberty in open daylight and lay down his life, if need be, to some purpose, to sacrifice himself now either to suspi- cion or to personal malice would be a useless waste of power and possibility.
Count Stravensky had already been able to help on the
