“Gen. Sergei Pavlowitz, my good and faithful servitor. I have noticed the courage and devotion with which you have served in my army. It is always my wish fitly to reward virtue and fidelity, and I therefore appoint you to the command of the —th division of my regular army.”
Hardly had these words, which His Majesty pronounced in a loud and clear voice, been spoken, than the entire army, breaking for a moment through the restraints of discipline, and the vast throng of spectators, burst into enthusiastic hurrahs and cheered again and again the name of Sergei Pavlowitz. It was a glorious and inspiring moment.
Our hero flushed with pride and gratification; but, obedient to the rules of military etiquette, said no word, but merely saluted with profound reverence, and a second later the stern command rang forth and the host marched on.
Words cannot describe the exultation which now filled the soul of General Pavlowitz. He was fairly intoxicated with joy. Every ambition of his life seemed gratified, and with rapture he thought of the delight with which the news of his great advancement would fill the heart of his beloved Olga, who had visited him during his stay in the hospital, and had now returned to their home in Kursky Kazan.
AS THE CAVALCADE PASSED A CORNER THE GENERAL HEARD A CRY
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Little did he reck that a tremendous change was impending, that an event was about to occur which would recall with irresistible force the events of his early life and change the entire current of his military career. But so it was, and the climax of his military ambition was also destined to mark its sudden and complete end.
The parade had been dismissed. The spectators had dispersed, and the various regiments were marching back to their several barracks.
Accompanied only by his staff and a small escort of cavalry, General Pavlowitz was returning to his headquarters. Their road led through some of the old streets of the town. As the cavalcade passed a corner the General heard a cry. He alone of all the company noticed it, but there was something in it that thrilled and chilled him and filled his frame with violent agitation. It was a wailing, sobbing cry in a woman’s voice, and its burden was made up of a few words, oft-repeated, in the Russo-Jewish dialect: “Oh, woe is me, my little rabbi, my Saul Isaac! oh, woe is me, my little rabbi, my little rabbi!” General Pavlowitz heard the cry and understood the words. Though for more than twenty years he had heard and spoken only Russian, yet those words came to him as the far-off echoes of his own past, intelligible, familiar, sweet, and unutterably sad. Like a flash there rolled away the many years of Russian, Christian, and military training, and he saw himself again in the happy days of his childhood, a little innocent Jewish boy, proudly reciting his week’s lesson before a circle of admiring neighbors, while father and mother beamed with satisfaction. Then, again, the memory of the awful night when he was snatched from them, and he quivered again with fresh horror and indignation. Turning his head as his horse trotted on, he saw, standing at the corner an elderly Jewish couple, gazing after him, with tears streaming from their eyes and an expression of intensest anguish upon their faces, the woman wailing and sobbing as in frenzy. He knew them at once. They were his father and mother. His resolution was instantly formed. His parents and he should meet. Hastily summoning a subaltern, who like himself was a baptized Jew, he bade him leave the ranks unobserved, go back to the old couple and inform them that the General would see them that evening at a certain quiet hotel of the town.
Faithfully the subaltern fulfilled his chief’s commission, ignorant, of course, of the reasons thereof, but with his soul filled with an indefinable sympathy with its object, which instinctively he felt was noble. Quietly he dropped behind the troop, and in a few hastily spoken words communicated to the aged couple the wish of the General, whereupon he put spurs to his horse and speedily rejoined his companions, none of whom had observed his action.