# By Order of the Czar/Introduction

INTRODUCTION.
In the summer of 1887 I came upon a pamphlet published by The Times five years previously, giving an account of the persecution of the Jews in Russia in 1881. At about the same time I found in the Brooklyn Times (U.S.) a tragic incident in the alleged career of a Jewess, which recalled to my mind a grim passage of Russian history. These three records inspired the story I have just concluded. It occurred to me to find in the one village of Russia where the Jews had for a time lived unmolested, a heroine who, falling under the lash of Russian persecution, should survive the keenest of human afflictions, to become, under very dramatic and romantic circumstances, the instrument of Divine vengeance upon her enemy, and probably a type of the fierce injustice which characterizes the civil and military government of Russia. My inspiration for this tragic figure sprung from the following narrative, related as absolutely true by Charles J. Rosebault, in the Brooklyn Times during the month of June, 1887:—
The historic chapter which this newspaper paragraph brought to my mind was the story of Madame Lapoukin; the briefest account of which is probably the following, from The Knout, by Germain de Lagny:—
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 ​Revolt," by Edmund Noble; "The Jews of Barnow," by Karl Emil Franzos; "Russia, Political and Social," by L. Tikhanirov; "Called Back," by Hugh Conway; "Dead Souls," by Nikolai V. Gogol; "War and Peace," and "Anna Karenina," by Count Tolstoi; "A Hero of our Time," by M. V. Lermontoff; "Russia before and after the War," by the Author of "Society as it is in St. Petersburg," "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," "Russians of To-day," by the Author of "The Member for Paris;" "The Russian Peasantry," by Stepniak; "Stories from Russia, Siberia, Poland and Circassia," edited by Russell Lee; "Chambers' Encyclopaedia ;" George Kennan's Century papers on "Plains and Prisons of Western Siberia," and "Across the Russian Frontier;" Theodore Child's "Fair of Nijnii-Novogorod" in Harper's Magazine; The Times pamphlet (before mentioned), "Persecutions of the Jews in Russia, 1881;" "Venice," by Yriarte; "Venetian Life," by Howells; "Sketches from Venetian History;" "New Italian Sketches," by J. A. Symonds, and other miscellanous literature. It will be seen that I name these works without any view to classification or order. A foreign criticism upon the Venetian chapter of the story makes it desirable for me to state that the introduction of a Russian interest in the Royal Fêtes on the Grand Canal is pure invention. The pageantry is true enough; the presence of the King and Queen of Italy; the illumination and the rest; but the red gondola and the ghost of the lagoons belong to the region of fancy; though they might easily have formed part of the events of the time. I saw a dead swimmer towed into an English fishing port under very similar circumstances to those which I have described as occurring in the waters of the Adriatic.
With all due apologies for this personal note, I venture to express a hope that my readers may feel an interest in the Milbankes, the Forsyths, the Chetwynds, and the ​Klosstocks. If I shall make these people half as real to them as they are to me, they will keep them in their remembrance as acquaintances, if not as friends; and in reflective moments their hearts will go out to an old man and his daughter who in the spirit of chastened content are fulfilling their voluntary exile, their happiness a dream of the past, their chief hope in a future "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
J.H.