It is a glorious tribute to the power of Jewish teachings that most of these helpless victims, despite their tender years and pitiful condition, were by no means quick to yield to the maltreatment or blandishments of their masters. Most of them resisted for years; some never yielded.
Four years were required to bring our Saul Isaac into the frame of mind requisite for the acceptance of Christianity. At first he wept and wailed constantly and would touch no food except dry bread and water; and, young as he was, he refused to listen to the instruction of the Russian monks. But as the weeks rolled into months and the months into years, without seeing other than Gentile faces and without any word from his parents or any other Jews, gradually his recollections grew dimmer and his resolution weaker. Finally he no longer objected to the Christian instructions, and in his twelfth year he was baptized with great pomp and parade in the chapel of the monastery, receiving the name of Sergei Pavlowitz. From this time on his advancement was rapid. After three years of general education he decided to enter upon the military career, and in his fifteenth year he entered the Imperial Cadet School at St. Petersburg.
The memory of his parents had quite faded from his mind; or if the thought of them ever came to him, they seemed like ghostly figures of an unreal world, entirely devoid of actuality or connection with his present existence.
Sergei Pavlowitz was one of the most popular students at the Cadet School. His quick intellect, which had enabled him to comprehend the abstruse debates of the Talmud, stood him in good stead in mastering the details of military science, while his handsome figure in the neat Russian uniform and his polite and obliging ways were universally pleasing. In due course of time he graduated as a lieutenant of artillery.
His career in the army justified the expectations of his student years. He combined the two most requisite military qualities, high capacity and rigid fidelity to duty. He became in rapid succession a captain and then a colonel of artillery.
While holding the latter office he attracted the attention and then aroused the love of Olga, the beautiful daughter of General Wladimir de Mitkiewicz. Shortly afterward the General sent for him, and in due form and in the most flattering terms offered to make him his son-in-law. Such a distinguished honor could not be refused. To be sure, a momentary pang went through the heart of the young colonel; and the shadowy faces of his father and mother seemed to rise from the gloomy recesses of the past and gaze at him reproachfully, but these sensations were too dim and faint to have any effect. He accepted the offer of the venerable General, which was, indeed, a most complimentary one, and because of which he became the object of many congratulations and no little envy.