Rabbi and Priest Part 8

While Ivan went to fetch Jacob, the Countess related, with many embellishments and exaggerations, and with frequent appeals to her maid Tekla for corroboration, how she had found the boy on the road, how she had saved his life, and, finally, how she had decided to bring him home as a little playmate for her darling Loris. Before she had finished her story Jacob himself appeared upon the scene, the personification of abject misery. His features were still besmeared with the dirt of the highway, his clothes were in a wretched condition, and his bandaged arm and lacerated face did not improve his general appearance. Louise laughed heartily when this apparition entered the door.

"Is he not a beauty?" she exclaimed.

The Count was too much surprised to speak. After a pause, during which poor Jacob looked pleadingly from one to the other, Dimitri asked:

"In all seriousness, Louise, why did you introduce that being into our house?"

"He is not as bad as he looks," answered the Countess. "Wait till he is washed and dressed, and you will agree that he is a handsome fellow."

The Count crossed the room and looked at the boy.

"What is your name?" he asked, gruffly.

"Jacob Winenki," answered the child, timidly.

"A Jew!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Count. "By our Holy Madonna, that is just what I needed to make me completely happy--the companionship of an accursed Jew!"

Jacob instinctively divined that he was not welcome, and began to cry.

"Please, I want my mamma!"

"Stop your whimpering, you cur!" shouted the enraged Count.

But Jacob's tears would not be checked so abruptly.

"Please don't send me back to the soldiers," he pleaded, in his miserable jargon. "I don't want to go with the soldiers."

At this juncture Loris joined in the cry. "I don't want him. I want a pony to play with."

"Here, Ivan," commanded the excited Count, "take this brat out into the barn, and keep him secure until I ask for him. We will investigate his case after supper. Minka, take Loris to bed at once." Then turning to his wife, who actually trembled before his infuriated glance, he said:

"Louise, you have done some very silly things since I married you, but this is the most absurd. You know my aversion to Jews, and here you bring a dirty Jew out of the streets to become a playmate of our Loris!"

"I could not leave the poor child to die in the road," pouted Louise, who, in addition to being extremely frivolous, was very tender-hearted.

"If I had found a sick dog, I should have aided him."

"I would rather it had been a dog than a Jew."

"How could I know it was a Jew?"

"By his looks; by his language," answered the exasperated man.

"He was insensible, and could not speak," retorted Louise; "and his appearance no worse than that of other dirty children. Tell me, Dimitri," she added, throwing her arms about her husband's waist, in a childish endeavor to appease his wrath; "tell me why you have such an animosity towards the Jews?"

The count impressively rolled up his sleeve and displayed a scar about two inches in length upon his forearm.

"See, Louise," he said, gloomily; "that is some of their accursed work.

Have I not cause to detest them? They are spiteful, vengeful, implacable."

Louise lovingly kissed the scarred arm.

"Poor Dimitri," she murmured; "how it must have pained. Tell me how it happened."

"There is no need to go into details," answered the Count, abruptly.

"But if ever I acquire the power, I shall make a Jew smart for every drop of blood that flowed from the wound. Come, supper must be ready.

We will not spoil our appet.i.tes by speaking of the despicable race."

Count Drentell wisely refrained from telling his wife the cause of his scar. It was not for a wife's ear to hear the tale. Eight years before, he, with a number of young officers of the army stationed at Pinsk, while in search of a little pleasurable excitement, had raided the Jewish quarter and terrorized the helpless inhabitants. After having broken every window, the party, inflamed by wine and enthusiasm, entered the house of Haim Kusel, demolished the furniture, helped themselves to articles of value that chanced to be exposed, and having caught a glimpse of Haim's pretty daughter, Drentell, the leader of the band, attempted to embrace her. The Jew, who had offered no resistance while his hard-earned possessions were being destroyed, was driven to frenzy by the insult to his daughter. Seizing a knife he drove the party from the house, but not until he had wounded several of the wretches, among whom was Drentell. Kusel had saved his daughter's honor, but he well knew that he had forfeited his life if he remained in the village.

Packing up the few household articles that yet remained, he and his daughter fled from Pinsk to find protection with friends in a distant town.

At midnight, the officers, now reinforced by a number of sympathizing comrades, returned, and furious at the escape of their victim, burned his dwelling to the ground. Drentell never forgot his ignominious repulse nor the wound he received at the hands of Haim Kusel. His own offence counted as naught, so blunted was his moral sense. To inflict misery upon a Jew was at all times considered meritorious, but for a Jew to so far forget himself as to a.s.sault an officer of the Czar, was a crime for which the whole race would one day be held accountable.

While the Count and Countess are at supper, we may find time to examine into their past and become better acquainted with the worthy couple, into whose company the events of this story will occasionally lead us.

Dimitri was the only son of Paul Drentell, the renowned banker of St.

Petersburg, who had been raised to the n.o.bility as a reward for having negotiated a loan for the Government. Paul had been sordid and avaricious; his vast wealth was wrung from the necessities of the unfortunates Otho were obliged to borrow from him or succ.u.mb to financial disaster. Had he been a Jew, his greed, his miserly ways, his usuries, would have been stigmatized as Jewish traits, but being a devout Catholic he was spoken of as "Drentell, the financier."

The n.o.bility of Russia counts many such upstarts among its representatives. It boasts of a peculiar historical development. The hereditary element plays an unimportant part in matters of state.

Exposed to the tyranny of the Muscovite autocrats, they hailed with joy the elevation of the Romanoff family to the throne. The condition of the n.o.bles was thenceforth bettered, their political influence increased.

Under Peter the Great, however, there came a change. To n.o.ble birth, this Czar showed a most humiliating indifference, and the n.o.bles saw with horror the accession to their ranks of the lowest order of men. The condition of the aristocracy, old and new, was not, however, one of unmixed happiness. The n.o.bles were transformed into mere servants of the Czar, and heavily did their bondage weigh upon them. After the death of the great Prince, they experienced varied changes. Catherine converted the surroundings of her court into a ludicrous imitation of the elegant and refined French _regime_. Parisian fashions and the French language were adopted by the n.o.bility. It was a pleasure-seeking, pomp-loving aristocracy that surrounded the powerful Empress. But her capricious and violent son overturned this order of things and again reduced the n.o.bility to a condition of dependence and even degradation, from which it had not yet recovered in the days of Nicholas I. For these reasons the n.o.bility of Russia is not characterized by the proud bearing and firm demeanor which are the attributes of the aristocracy of Western Europe. A _parvenu_, who has, by an act of slavish submission, won the Emperor's favor, may be enn.o.bled, and he thenceforth holds his head as high as the greatest. No one of these is regarded as more important than his neighbor. Dumouriez, having casually spoken to Nicholas of one of the considerable personages at court, received the reply:

"You must learn, sir, that the only considerable person here is the one to whom I am speaking, and that only as long as I am speaking to him."[4]

Hence, we rarely find a Russian n.o.ble who is proud of his ancestry or of his ancient name. It is wealth and power, momentary distinction and royal favor that make him of worth. When, therefore, Paul Drentell, because of his valuable services in raising a loan which enabled Russia to engage in war with one of her less powerful neighbors, was elevated to the n.o.bility, it caused no surprise, and the banker at once began a life of pomp and extravagance which he thought suited to his new station. His wealth was fabulous, and was for the greater part invested in large estates, comprising confiscated lands, formerly the property of less fortunate n.o.bles, who, deprived of their rank, were now atoning for their sins in the frozen North. His possessions included about twenty thousand male serfs; consequently, more than forty thousand souls.

Dimitri, upon his father's elevation, was sent to the army, where he distinguished himself in nocturnal debauches and adventures such as we have related, and where, thanks to his father's influence, he shortly rose to the rank of lieutenant.

About five years before the beginning of this story, Paul Drentell died and his vast estates, as well as his t.i.tle of Count, descended to Dimitri, who now found himself one of the richest men in the Empire. He was, moreover, a personal friend of the young Czarewitch, Alexander, in whose regiment he served. To such a man, a notable future was open: great honors as Governor of a province or exile to Siberia as a dangerous power. One of the features of public life in Russia is the comparative ease with which either of these distinctions may be obtained.

Count Drentell was haughty and arrogant, caring for naught but his own personal advantage, consulting only his own tastes and pleasures. He was a stern officer to his soldiers, a cruel taskmaster to the serfs he had inherited, and a bitter foe of the Jews whom he had offended.

Very different was his wife, Louise. A Georgian by birth, her beauty and ingenuousness had won her great popularity at the court of St.

Petersburg, to which she had been introduced by the Governor of Tiflis.

She was neither tall nor short, possessed a wealth of raven black hair, perfect teeth, l.u.s.trous black eyes, a smile that would inspire poets and a voice that was all music and melody. When Count Drentell carried her off in the face of a hundred admirers, he was considered lucky indeed.

Dimitri never confessed, even to himself, that he regretted his hasty choice. Louise was as capricious as she was beautiful, as unlettered as she was charming, as superst.i.tious as she was fascinating. All that she did was done on impulse. She loved her husband on impulse, she deserted her child for weeks at a time on impulse, she succored the poor or neglected them on impulse. Her army of servants set her commands at defiance, for they knew them to be the outgrowth of momentary caprice.

Fortunately for the domestic happiness of the couple, the Count was with his command at St. Petersburg during two-thirds of the year, while his wife enjoyed herself as best she might on his magnificent estate at Lubny.

Brought up among the highlands of Tiflis, Louise possessed all of the unreasoning bigotry characteristic of the people inhabiting that region.

She was religious to the very depths of superst.i.tion, and she chose Lubny for a dwelling-place, less for its resemblance to the sunny hills of her native province than for its proximity to several large Catholic cloisters for both monks and nuns, whence she hoped to receive that religious nourishment which her southern and impetuous nature craved. It was while returning from an expedition to the furthest of these nunneries, in which she frequently immured herself for weeks at a time, that she found Jacob upon the road.

The Count, who, with the companions of his youth, had lost what little religious sentiment he may have once possessed, regarded this trait in his wife with great disfavor; but neither threats nor prayers effected a change, and he finally allowed her to follow her own inclinations.

While the union was not one of the happiest, there were fewer altercations than might have been reasonably expected from the thoroughly opposite natures of man and wife. Louise, with all her faults, was a loving wife, and when her husband's temper was ruffled, her smiles and caresses, her appealing looks and tender glances, won him back to serenity.

The supper, therefore, was not as gloomy as the stormy introduction indicated. Both had much to tell each other, for a great deal had occurred during their eight months' separation, and it was late when they left the table.

FOOTNOTES: