The Four Winds of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

obey,” the man said, and raised his whip once more.
    But he did not have a chance to bring it down. A rider on horseback was racing toward them, calling out at the top of his lungs. Through her tears, Sonia saw that it was Eusebe. The water carrier dismounted and ran to the two girls. Then, as his gentle fingers touched Anna’s wound, he raised his tortured face to the overseer and whispered, “Man, what have you done? These are our misses, the Baron’s daughters. You will be dismissed for this. I shall speak to the Baron myself, and show him Anna Davidovna’s back. Poor sweethearts, such an innocent trick that they played on their faithful Eusebe, sneaking behind my water barrel.” Eusebe was distraught. The moment he had found Sonia’s lace handkerchief in the back of the cart, he had begun his frantic search for the children, but had never imagined they would wander off as far as the Count’s property behind the brook. His voice broke, and tears spilled from his eyes. He stood up and carried each of the girls in his arms to his horse. Silence enveloped the group; the overseer’s face had turned ashen.
    â€œCome,” Eusebe said. “I’ll take you home.”
----

    W hen Anna’s back had been bathed and bandaged, and the two white-faced sisters had received a dinner tray in their beds, Ossip came to see them. “Mama says you have been far more punished than you deserved, especially you, Annushka,” he said soberly. “And Papa will have to go to the Count tomorrow. I was very frightened for you, and when no one could find you at teatime, I missed you so much! It was lucky for you that Eusebe came when he did, or you would have received a horrible whipping.”
    â€œThat is really how they flog those children who work there, isn’t it?” Anna said bitterly. She was still in great pain, but her eyes flashed brilliantly. “Oh, how unfair! They have no one to come running for them, as we did! Because they were born poor, and we weren’t.”
    â€œI suppose what you say is true,” her brother agreed. He sat down on Sonia’s bed and stroked her hand. “If it weren’t indecent, Annushka would become unbearable now and show everybody her back, like a badge of courage!” His eyes twinkled.
    But downstairs, in the living room, David de Gunzburg was saying to his wife: “Tuminsky is without doubt embarrassed at this episode. But in his heart he must be amused. After all, has his man not degraded that annoying Jew who had the audacity to settle next to him?”

Chapter 2
    D avid and Mathilde de Gunzburg , the squires of Mohilna, were undergoing quite different emotions that summer. For David, life was a simple matter which he thoroughly enjoyed. There were two sides to David: the driving force that had made his father, Baron Horace, an astute banker as well as the foremost advocate of the Jews of Russia; and the childlike passions which transported him to a bliss few mature men ever experience. With his first side, he was a dedicated scholar. He spoke over thirty languages and dialects with fluency, and he applied himself relentlessly to the mastering of each new tongue. Similarly, he found poetry a furious challenge, and often would sit up half the night attempting to place emotion within the narrow, precise boundaries prescribed by rules of prosody. He was dedicated to his religion in an almost Rabbinical manner.
    His loves, however, were founts of pure fire, and they were few but constant. He had conceived a passion for Mathilde, his cousin, when he had been twelve years old, and she, five. He had loved the serene blue eyes, the beautiful black curls, the demure, well-mannered little girl. It had never occurred to him that perhaps she might have felt another kind of emotion for him, for once David loved, it was irrevocable. He did not know why, only the fact that she was there, in his grandfather’s house, and that