“Oh, thank you,” she replied, gratefully; “I’ll go at once.”
Turning, she directed her steps hurriedly towards the palace of the Government, about a mile from the town on the Lubkovo road, while the ispravnik laughed, muttering as he watched her retreating figure: “His Excellency is a connoisseur of pretty faces. He will thank me for sending her.”
Feeling that not a moment was to be lost, Mascha walked quickly along the muddy highway, that ran through a bare, barren country, beside the sedgy bank of the swiftly-flowing Soj.
Only by repute was General Martianoff, the Governor of Mstislavl, known to her. She knew that by the inhabitants of the Ghetto he was dreaded as a cruel, drunken, and depraved official, and she had heard the Rabbi warn them against breaking any of the thousand tyrannical laws which comprise the Swod, or penal code. A Russian District Governor is locally as much of an autocrat as his Imperial Master, the Tzar. He can do exactly what he pleases with the poor, cringing wretches over whom he is given authority. He can condemn Jew or Gentile to prison without trial; he can order any one who displeases him to be knouted, and with his colleague, the ispravnik, and his myrmidons, can enforce inhuman tortures not a whit the less terrible than those of the Spanish Inquisition.
General Martianoff, an average specimen of the nachalniki, ruled his district with the knout, and hating Jews, considered death without torture too good for them. He had even ordered unoffending Hebrews to be flogged because their children omitted to doff their caps to Government officials whom they met in the streets!
It was of this harsh, inhuman Governor that my poor, trusting sister, famished and desperate, sought aid for her dying mother.
The General was lazily smoking a cigar and reading the Novosti in his own well-furnished room, when a man-servant entered, and, after saluting, said, “A young girl desires to see your Excellency. I told her you could not give audience to any one.”
“Idiot! Why did you send her away?”
“She was only a Jewess, your Excellency. But she is still here. She’s the daughter of the financier Prèhznev, of Petersburg, who was sent to the mines.”
“Prèhznev!” repeated the General, in surprise. “Ah! Show her in—and—and see we are not disturbed, Ivanovitch—you understand.”