Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/12

them, who rolled up her chemise as far as her waist; he then placed her upon his shoulders, when another arranged her with his coarse dirty hands in the required position, obliging her to hold her head down, while a man of the lower classes, squatting at her feet, kept her legs still. The executioner cut her flesh into shreds by one hundred strokes of the knout, from the shoulders to the lower portion of the loins. After the infliction of the punishment, her tongue was torn out, and a short time subsequently she was sent to Siberia, whence she was recalled in 1762 by Peter III.

For the successful development of these journalistic literary and historical facts and suggestions into a full three volume novel, with truthful as well as characteristic accessories, it was necessary that I should make a study of Russian village life, and refresh my memory with such chapters of Russian history as should enable me to hold my imaginary characters and their actions within the reasonable control of probability. I was already fairly well acquainted with some of the best works of Russian fiction, which are full of strong local color and fine characterization, Gogol's stories more particularly, but in order that I might not stray from the path of truth any further than is reasonably permissible, I followed up the narrative of The Times in the files of the Daily Telegraph and the Jewish Chronicle; traced the anti-Jewish riots throughout their lurid march of fire and bloodshed; talked to several traveled authorities as to their experiences of Jewish life in Southern Russia; and settled down to a careful study of the literary, topographical, political and historical literature of the subject, in the course of which, for the purposes of this story, I have consulted and read: "The Jews and their Persecutors," by Eugenie Lawrence; "Scenes from the Ghetto," by Leopold Kompert; "The Knout and the Russians," by Germain de Lagny; "Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia," by Madame Cottin; "Russia under the Czars," by Stepniak; "Prison Life in Siberia" and "Crime and Punishment," by Fedor Dostoiffsky; "The Russian