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 nobility 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 succumb 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 nobility 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
nobles was thenceforth bettered, their political influence increased.
Under Peter the Great, however, there came a change. To noble birth,
this Czar showed a most humiliating indifference, and the nobles 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 nobles 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 nobility. 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
nobility 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 nobility 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 ennobled, an