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BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 9

a fair knowledge of French, was almost learned in Biblical lore, and had the natural taste of her race for music. Her voice and her lute were heard at the Jewish festivals, and her charities might have won the commendation of the strictest worshippers of that Messiah for whom her race suffer still under the ban of having crucified.

Marcus Losinski, coming to take charge of the morals and religion of the Jews of Czarovna, was to Anna a pil- grim of light from the outer world. He was wiser than his years ; had traveled through the East, even to Jerusa- lem. He could tell her of the wonders of the great capitals. He had fulfilled missions to Paris and London, although he was only some ten or fifteen years her senior.

No queen could have held Losinski in a firmer allegiance of love and worship than Anna the Queen of the Ghetto.

" It is accounted a sin among the Christians," he had one day said to her, " to love even maid or wife beyond the man they have made their God ; and I am glad to have been born a Jew, Anna, if it were only to be untram- meled by law, human or divine, in my love for you."

" Do you not think," Anna replied, " that God's laws are as easy as man's are difficult.

" Yes, Anna, truly I do. Religion lies not in law nor in knowledge, but in a pure and holy life."

" And yet, dear love," said Anna, " I sometimes think you chafe here in Czarovna, and long for a wider sphere of usefulness."

" It is not so, Anna. My ambition is satisfied to be with you, whatever my sphere of work ; but sometimes I wonder if it were not wise to leave this land of doubt and fear, and travel further afield where our people are not ever- lastingly within the clutch of tyranny and abuse, where indeed they are safe from public persecution and private contumely."

" Ah, you envy Andrea Ferrari," Anna replied. " You