A DRAMA IN A PROLOGUE, AND FOUR ACTS
PERSONS IN THE PROLOGUE.
PETER SABOUROFF (an Innkeeper).
VERA SABOUROFF (his Daughter).
MICHAEL (a Peasant).
COLONEL KOTEMKIN.
Scene, Russia. Time, 1795.
PERSONS IN THE PLAY.
IVAN THE CZAR.
PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI (Prime Minister of Russia).
PRINCE PETROVITCH.
COUNT ROUVALOFF.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD.
BARON RAFF.
GENERAL KOTEMKIN.
A PAGE.
Nihilists.
PETER TCHERNAVITCH, President of the Nihilists.
MICHAEL.
ALEXIS IVANACIEVITCH, known as a Student of Medicine.
PROFESSOR MARFA.
VERA SABOUROFF.
Soldiers, Conspirators, &c.
Scene, Moscow. Time, 1800.
PROLOGUE
SCENE: A Russian inn. Large door opening on snowy landscape at back
of stage. PETER SABOUROFF and MICHAEL.
PETER (warming his hands at a stove): Has Vera not come back yet,
Michael?
MICHAEL: No, Father Peter, not yet; ‘tis a good three miles to the post
office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare
plaguey creature for a wench to handle.
PETER: Why didn’t you go with her, you young fool? She’ll never love
you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered.
MICHAEL: She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I
fear she’ll never love me after all.
PETER: Tut, tut, boy, why shouldn’t she? You’re young, and wouldn’t
be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face.
Aren’t you one of Prince Maraloffski’s gamekeepers; and haven’t you got
a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl
want?
MICHAEL: But Vera, Father Peter –
PETER: Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I don’t think much of
ideas myself; I’ve got on well enough in life without ‘em; why shouldn’t
my children? There’s Dmitri! Could have stayed here and kept the inn;
many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but
he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to
study the law! What does he want knowing about the law? Let a man do his
duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.
MICHAEL: Ay! But, Father Peter, they say a good lawyer can break the
law as often as he likes, and no one can say him nay. If a man knows the
law he knows his duty.
PETER: True, Michael, if a man knows the law there is nothing illegal
he cannot do when he likes: that is why folk become lawyers. That is about
all they are good for; and there he stays, and has not written a line to us for
four months now – a good son that, eh?
MICHAEL: Come, come, Father Peter, Dmitri’s letters must have gone
astray – perhaps the new postman can’t read; he looks stupid enough, and
Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how
he shot the bear at the barn in the great winter?
PETER: Ay, it was a good shot; I never did a better myself.
MICHAEL: And as for dancing, he tired out three fiddlers Christmas
come two years.
PETER: Ay, ay, he was a merry lad. It is the girl that has the seriousness
– she goes about as solemn as a priest for days at a time.
MICHAEL: Vera is always thinking of others.
PETER: There is her mistake, boy. Let God and our little Father the
Czar look to the world. It is none of my work to mend my neighbour’s
thatch. Why, last winter old Michael was frozen to death in his sleigh in the
snowstorm, and his wife and children starved afterwards when the hard
times came; but what business was it of mine? I didn’t make the world. Let
God and the Czar look to it. And then the blight came, and the black plague
with it, and the priests couldn’t bury the people fast enough, and they lay
dead on the roads – men and women both. But what business was it of
mine? I didn’t make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. Or two
autumns ago, when the river overflowed on a sudden, and the children’s
school was carried away and drowned every girl and boy in it. I didn’t make
the world – let God or the Czar look to it.
MICHAEL: But, Father Peter –
PETER: No, no, boy; no man could live if he took his neighbour’s pack
on his shoulder. (Enter VERA in peasant’s dress.) Well, my girl, you’ve been
long enough away – where is the letter?
VERA: There is none to-day, Father.
PETER: I knew it.
VERA: But there will be one to-morrow, Father.
PETER: Curse him, for an ungrateful son.
VERA: O Father, don’t say that; he must be sick.
PETER: Ay! Sick of Profligacy, perhaps.
VERA: How dare you say that of him, Father? You know that is not
true.
PETER: Where does the money go, then? Michael, listen. I gave Dmitri
half his mother’s fortune to bring with him to pay the lawyer folk at
Moscow. He has only written three times, and every time for more money.
He got it, not at my wish, but at hers (pointing to VERA), and now for five
months, close on six almost, we have heard nothing from him.
VERA: Father, he will come back.
PETER: Ay! The prodigals always return; but let him never darken my
doors again.
VERA (sitting down pensive): Some evil has come on him; he must be
dead! Oh! Michael, I am so wretched about Dmitri.
MICHAEL: Will you never love any one but him, Vera?
VERA (smiling): I don’t know; there is so much else to do in the world
but love.
MICHAEL: Nothing else worth doing, Vera.
PETER: What noise is that, Vera? (A metallic clink is heard.)
VERA (rising and going to the door): I don’t know, Father; it is not like
the cattle bells, or I would think Nicholas had come from the fair. Oh,
Father! It is soldiers coming down the hill – there is one of them on
horseback. How pretty they look! But there are some men with them, with
chains on! They must be robbers. Oh! Don’t let them in, Father; I couldn’t
look at them.
PETER: Men in chains! Why, we are in luck, my child! I heard this was
to be the new road to Siberia, to bring the prisoners to the mines; but I
didn’t believe it. My fortune is made! Bustle, Vera, bustle! I’ll die a rich
man after all. There will be no lack of good customers now. An honest man
should have the chance of making his living out of rascals now and then.
VERA: Are these men rascals, Father? What have they done?
PETER: I reckon they’re some of those Nihilists the priest warns us
against. Don’t stand there idle, my girl.
VERA: I suppose, then, they are all wicked men.
Sound of soldiers outside; cry of ‘Halt!’ Enter Russian officer
with a body of soldiers and eight men in chains, raggedly dressed; one
of them on entering, hurriedly puts his coat above his ears and hides
his face; some soldiers guard the door, others sit down; the prisoners
stand.
COLONEL: Innkeeper!
PETER: Yes, Colonel.
COLONEL (pointing to Nihilists): Give these men some bread and water.
PETER (to himself): I shan’t make much out of that order.
COLONEL: As for myself, what have you got fit to eat?
PETER: Some good dried venison, your Excellency – and some rye
whisky.
COLONEL: Nothing else?
PETER: Why, more whisky, your Excellency.
COLONEL: What clods these peasants are! You have a better room than
this?
PETER: Yes, sir.
COLONEL: Bring me there. Sergeant, post your picket outside, and see
that these scoundrels do not communicate with any one. No letter writing,
you dogs, or you’ll be flogged for it. Now for the venison. (To PETER
bowing before him.) Get out of the way, you fool! Who is that girl? (Sees
VERA.)
PETER: My daughter, your Highness.
COLONEL: Can she read and write?
PETER: Ay, that she can, sir.
COLONEL: Then she is a dangerous woman. No peasant should be
allowed to do anything of the kind. Till your fields, store your harvests, pay
your taxes, and obey your masters – that is your duty.
VERA: Who are our masters?
COLONEL: Young woman, these men are going to the mines for life for
asking the same foolish question.
VERA: Then they have been unjustly condemned.
PETER: Vera, keep your tongue quiet. She is a foolish girl, sir, who
talks too much.
COLONEL: Every woman does talk too much. Come, where is this
venison? Count, I am waiting for you. How can you see anything in a girl
with coarse hands? (He passes with PETER and his aide-de-camp into an
inner room.)
VERA (to one of the Nihilists): Won’t you sit down? You must be tired.
SERGEANT: Come now, young woman, no talking to my prisoners.
VERA: I shall speak to them. How much do you want?
SERGEANT: How much have you?
VERA: Will you let these men sit down if I give you this? (Takes off her
peasant’s necklace.) It is all I have; it was my mother’s.
SERGEANT: Well, it looks pretty enough, and is heavy too. What do you
want with these men?
VERA: They are hungry and wretched. Let me go to them?
ONE OF THE SOLDIERS: Let the wench be, if she pays us.
SERGEANT: Well, have your way. If the Colonel sees you, you may
have to come with us, my pretty one.
VERA (advances to the Nihilists): Sit down; you must be tired. (Serves
them food.) What are you?
A PRISONER: Nihilists.
VERA: Who put you in chains?
PRISONER: Our Father the Czar.
VERA: Why?
PRISONER: For loving liberty too well.
VERA (to the prisoner who hides his face): What did you want to do?
DMITRI: To give liberty to thirty millions of people enslaved to one
man.
VERA (startled at the voice): What is your name?
DMITRI: I have no name.
VERA: Where are your friends?
DMITRI: I have no friends.
VERA: Let me see your face!
DMITRI: You will see nothing but suffering in it. They have tortured
me.
VERA (tears his cloak from his face): O God! Dmitri! My brother!
DMITRI: Hush! Vera; be calm. You must not let my father know; it
would kill him. I thought I could free Russia. I heard men talk of Liberty
one night in a cafe. I had never heard the word before. It seemed to be a
new God they spoke of. I joined them. It was there all the money went. Five
months ago they seized us. They found me printing the paper. I am going to
the mines for life. I could not write. I thought it would be better to let you
think I was dead; for they are bringing us to a living tomb.
VERA (looking round): You must escape, Dmitri. I will take your place.
DMITRI: Impossible! You can only revenge us.
VERA: I shall revenge you.
DMITRI: Listen! There is a house in Moscow –
SERGEANT: Prisoners, attention! The Colonel is coming – young
woman, your time is up.
Enter COLONEL, AIDE-DE-CAMP, and PETER.
PETER: I hope your Highness is pleased with the venison. I shot it
myself.
COLONEL: It had been better had you talked less about it. Sergeant, get
ready. (Gives purse to PETER.) Here, you cheating rascal!
PETER: My fortune is made! Long live your Highness. I hope your
Highness will come often this way.
COLONEL: By St. Nicholas, I hope not. It is too cold here for me. (To
VERA): Young girl, don’t ask questions again about what does not concern
you. I will not forget your face.
VERA: Nor I yours, or what you are doing.
COLONEL: You peasants are getting too saucy since you ceased to be
serfs, and the knout is the best school for you to learn politics in. Sergeant,
proceed.
The COLONEL turns and goes to the top of stage. The prisoners
pass out double file; as DMITRI passes VERA he lets a piece of paper
fall on the ground; she puts her foot on it and remains immobile.
PETER (who has been counting the money the COLONEL gave him):
Long life to your Highness. I will hope to see another batch soon. (Suddenly
catches sight of DMITRI as he is going out of the door, and screams and
rushes up.) Dmitri! Dmitri! My God! What brings you here? He is innocent,
I tell you. I’ll pay for him. Take your money (flings money on the ground),
take all I have, give me my son. Villains! Villains! Where are you bringing
him?
COLONEL: To Siberia, old man.
PETER: No, no; take me instead.
COLONEL: He is a Nihilist.
PETER: You lie! You lie! He is innocent. (The soldiers force him back
with their guns and shut the door against him. He beats with his fists
against it.) Dmitri! Dmitri! A Nihilist! A Nihilist! (Falls down on floor.)
VERA (who has remained motionless, picks up paper now from under
her foot and reads): ’99 Rue Tchernavaya, Moscow. To strangle whatever
nature is in me; neither to love nor to be loved; neither to pity nor to be
pitied; neither to marry nor to be given in marriage, till the end is come.’
My brother, I shall keep the oath. (Kisses the paper.) You shall be revenged!
VERA stands immobile, holding paper in her lifted hand. PETER is lying
on the floor. MICHAEL, who has just come in, is bending over him.
END OF PROLOGUE
ACT ONE
SCENE: 99 Tchernavaya, Moscow. A large garret lit by oil lamps hung
from the ceiling. Some masked men standing silent and apart from one
another. A man in a scarlet mask is writing at a table. Door at back.
Man in yellow with drawn sword at it. Knocks heard. Figures in cloaks
and masks enter.
Password. Per crucem ad lucem.1
Answer. Per sanguinem ad libertatem.2
Clock strikes. CONSPIRATORS form a semi-circle in the
middle of the stage.
PRESIDENT: What is the word?
FIRST CONSPIRATOR: Nabat.
PRESIDENT: The answer?
SECOND CONSPIRATOR: Kalit.
PRESIDENT: What hour is it?
THIRD CONSPIRATOR: The hour to suffer.
PRESIDENT: What day?
FOURTH CONSPIRATOR: The day of oppression.
PRESIDENT: What year?
FIFTH CONSPIRATOR: The year of hope.
PRESIDENT: How many are we in number?
SIXTH CONSPIRATOR: Ten, nine, and three.
PRESIDENT: The Galilaean had less to conquer the world; but what is
our mission?
SEVENTH CONSPIRATOR: To give freedom.
PRESIDENT: Our creed?
EIGHTH CONSPIRATOR: To annihilate.
PRESIDENT: Our duty?
NINTH CONSPIRATOR: To obey.
PRESIDENT: Brothers, the questions have been answered well. There are
none but Nihilists present. Let us see each other’s faces.
THE CONSPIRATORS unmask. Michael, recite the oath.
MICHAEL: To strangle whatever nature is in us; neither to love nor to be
loved, neither to pity nor to be pitied, neither to marry nor to be given in
marriage, till the end is come; to stab secretly by night; to drop poison in
the glass; to set father against son, and husband against wife; without fear,
without hope, without future, to suffer, to annihilate, to revenge.
PRESIDENT: Are we all agreed?
CONSPIRATORS: We are all agreed. (They disperse in various directions
about the stage.)
PRESIDENT: ’Tis after the hour, Michael, and she is not yet here.
MICHAEL: Would that she were! We can do little without her.
ALEXIS: She cannot have been seized, President? But the police are on
her track, I know.
MICHAEL: You always do seem to know a good deal about the
movements of the police in Moscow – too much for an honest conspirator.
PRESIDENT: If those dogs have caught her, the red flag of the people
will float on a barricade in every street till we find her! It was foolish of her
to go to the Grand Duke’s ball. I told her so, but she said she wanted to see
the Czar and all his cursed brood face to face for once.
ALEXIS: Gone to the State ball!
MICHAEL: I have no fear. She is as hard to capture as a she-wolf is, and
twice as dangerous; besides, she is well disguised. To-night it is a masked
ball. But is there any news from the Palace, President? What is that bloody
despot doing now besides torturing his only son? What sort of whelp is this
Czarevitch, by the way? Have any of you seen him? One hears strange
stories about him. They say he loves the people; but a king’s son never does
that. You cannot breed them like that.
PRESIDENT: Since he came back from abroad a year ago his father has
kept him in close prison in his palace.
MICHAEL: An excellent training to make him a tyrant in his turn; but is
there any news, I say?
PRESIDENT: A council is to be held to-morrow, at four o’clock, on some
secret business the committee cannot find out.
MICHAEL: A council in a king’s palace is sure to be about some bloody
work or other. But in what room is it to be held?
PRESIDENT (reading from letter): In the yellow tapestry room called
after the Empress Catherine.
MICHAEL: I care not for such long-sounding names. I would know
where it is.
PRESIDENT: I cannot tell, Michael. I know more about the inside of
prisons than of palaces.
MICHAEL (speaking suddenly to ALEXIS): Where is this room, Alexis?
ALEXIS: It is on the first floor, looking out on to the inner courtyard.
But why do you ask, Michael?
MICHAEL: Nothing, nothing, boy! I merely take a great interest in the
Czar’s life and movements, and I knew you could tell me all about the
palace. Every poor student of medicine in Moscow knows all about kings’
houses. It is their duty, is it not?
ALEXIS (aside): Can Michael suspect me? There is something strange
in his manner to-night. Why doesn’t she come? The whole fire of revolution
seems fallen into dull ashes when she is not here.
MICHAEL: Have you cured many patients, lately, at your hospital, boy?
ALEXIS: There is one who lies sick to death I would fain cure, but
cannot.
MICHAEL: Ay! And who is that?
ALEXIS: Russia, our mother.
MICHAEL: The curing of Russia is surgeon’s business, and must be
done by the knife. I like not your method of medicine.
PRESIDENT: Professor, we have read the proofs of your last article; it is
very good indeed.
MICHAEL: What is it about, Professor?
PROFESSOR: The subject, my good brother, is assassination considered
as a method of political reform.
MICHAEL: I think little of pen and ink in revolutions. One dagger will
do more than a hundred epigrams. Still, let us read this scholar’s last
production. Give it to me. I will read it myself.
PROFESSOR: Brother, you never mind your stops; let Alexis read it.
MICHAEL: Ay! He is as tripping of speech as if he were some young
aristocrat; but for my own part I care not for the stops so that the sense be
plain.
ALEXIS (reading): ‘The past has belonged to the tyrant, and he has
defiled it; ours is the future, and we shall make it holy.’ Ay! Let us make the
future holy; let there be one revolution at least which is not bred in crime,
nurtured in murder!
MICHAEL: They have spoken to us by the sword, and by the sword we
shall answer! You are too delicate for us, Alexis. There should be none here
but men whose hands are rough with labour or red with blood.
PRESIDENT: Peace, Michael, peace! He is the bravest heart amongst us.
MICHAEL (aside): He will need to be brave to-night.
The sound of sleigh bells is heard outside.
VOICE (outside): Per crucem ad lucem. (Answer of man on guard): Per
sanguinem ad libertatem.
MICHAEL: Who is that?
Enter VERA in a cloak, which she throws off, appearing in full ball
dress.
VERA: God save the people!
PRESIDENT: Welcome, Vera, welcome! We have been sick at heart till
we saw you; but now methinks the star of freedom has come to wake us
from the night.
VERA: It is night, indeed, brother! Night without moon or star! Russia
is smitten to the heart! The man Ivan whom men called the Czar strikes
now at our mother with a dagger deadlier than any ever forged by tyranny
against a people’s life!
MICHAEL: What has the tyrant done now?
VERA: To-morrow martial law is to be proclaimed over all Russia.
OMNES: Martial law! We are lost! We are lost!
ALEXIS: Martial law! Impossible!
MICHAEL: Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.
VERA: Ay, martial law. The last right to which the people clung has
been taken from them. Without trial, without appeal, without accuser even,
our brothers will be taken from their houses, shot in the streets like dogs,
sent away to die in the snow, to starve in the dungeon, to rot in the mine.
Do you know what martial law means? It means the strangling of a whole
nation. The streets will be filled with soldiers night and day; there will be
sentinels at every door. No man dare walk abroad now but the spy or the
traitor. Cooped up in the dens we hide in, meeting by stealth, speaking with
bated breath; what good can we do now for Russia?
PRESIDENT: We can suffer at least.
VERA: We have done that too much already. The hour is now come to
annihilate and to revenge.
PRESIDENT: Up to this the people have borne everything.
VERA: Because they have understood nothing. But now we, the Nihilists,
have given them the tree of knowledge to eat of, and the day of silent
suffering is over for Russia.
MICHAEL: Martial law, Vera! This is fearful tidings you bring.
PRESIDENT: It is the death-warrant of liberty in Russia.
VERA: Or the signal for revolution.
MICHAEL: Are you sure it is true?
VERA: Here is the proclamation. I stole it myself at the ball to-night
from a young fool, one of Prince Paul’s secretaries, who had been given it
to copy. It was that which made me so late.
VERA hands proclamation to MICHAEL, who reads it.
MICHAEL: ‘To ensure the public safety – martial law. By order of the
Czar, father of his people.’ The father of his people!
VERA: Ay! A father whose name shall not be hallowed, whose king-
dom shall change to a republic, whose trespasses shall not be forgiven
him, because he has robbed us of our daily bread; with whom is neither
might, nor right, nor glory, now or for ever.
PRESIDENT: It must be about this time that the council meet to-morrow.
It has not yet been signed.
ALEXIS: It shall not be while I have a tongue to plead with.
MICHAEL: Or while I have hands to smite with.
VERA: Martial law! O God, how easy it is for a king to kill his people
by thousands, but we cannot rid ourselves of one crowned man in Europe!
What is there of awful majesty in these men which makes the hand
unsteady, the dagger treacherous, the pistol-shot harmless? Are they not
men of like passions with ourselves, vulnerable to the same diseases, of
flesh and blood not different from our own? What made Olgiati tremble at
the supreme crisis of that Roman life, and Guido’s nerve fail him when he
should have been of iron and of steel? A plague, I say, on these fools of
Naples, Berlin, and Spain! Methinks that if I stood face to face with one of
the crowned men my eye would see more clearly, my aim be more sure, my
whole body gain a strength and power that was not my own! Oh, to think
what stands between us and freedom in Europe! A few old men, wrinkled,
feeble, tottering dotards whom a boy could strangle for a ducat, or a woman
stab in a night-time. These are the things that keep us from liberty. But now
methinks the brood of men is dead and the dull earth grown sick of
childbearing, else would no crowned dog pollute God’s air by living.
OMNES: Try us! Try us! Try us!
MICHAEL: We shall try thee, too, some day, Vera.
VERA: I pray God thou mayest! Have I not strangled whatever nature is
in me, and shall I not keep my oath?
MICHAEL (to PRESIDENT): Martial law, President! Come, there is no
time to be lost. We have twelve hours yet before us till the council meet.
Twelve hours! One can overthrow a dynasty in less than that.
PRESIDENT: Ay! Or lose one’s own head.
MICHAEL and the PRESIDENT retire to one corner of the stage and
sit whispering. VERA takes up the proclamation, and reads it to herself.
ALEXIS watches and suddenly rushes up to her.
ALFXIS: Vera!
VERA: Alexis, you here! Foolish boy, have I not prayed you to stay away?
All of us here are doomed to die before our time, fated to expiate by
suffering whatever good we do; but you, with your bright boyish face, you
are too young to die yet.
ALEXIS: One is never too young to die for one’s country!
VERA: Why do you come here night after night?
ALEXIS: Because I love the people.
VERA: But your fellow-students must miss you. Are there no traitors
among them? You know what spies there are in the University here. O
Alexis, you must go! You see how desperate suffering has made us. There
is no room here for a nature like yours. You must not come again.
ALEXIS: Why do you think so poorly of me? Why should I live while
my brothers suffer?
VERA: You spake to me of your mother once. You said you loved her.
Oh, think of her!
ALEXIS: I have no mother now but Russia, my life is hers to take or
give away; but to-night I am here to see you. They tell me you are leaving
for Novgorod to-morrow.
VERA: I must. They are getting faint-hearted there, and I would fan the
flame of this revolution into such a blaze that the eyes of all kings in Europe
shall be blinded. If martial law is passed they will need me all the more
there. There is no limit, it seems, to the tyranny of one man; but to the
suffering of a whole people there shall be a limit. Too many of us have died
on block and barricade: it is their turn to be victims now.
ALEXIS: God knows it, I am with you. But you must not go. The police
are watching every train for you. When you are seized they have orders to
place you without trial in the lowest dungeon of the palace. I know it – no
matter how. Oh, think how without you the sun goes from our life, how the
people will lose their leader and liberty her priestess. Vera, you must not go!
VERA: You are right: I will stay. I would live a little longer for freedom,
a little longer for Russia.
ALEXIS: When you die then Russia is smitten indeed; when you die
then I shall lose all hope – all…Vera, this is fearful news you bring –
martial law – it is too terrible. I knew it not, by my soul, I knew it not!
VERA: How could you have known it? It is too well laid a plot for that.
This great White Czar, whose hands are red with the blood of the people
he has murdered, whose soul is black with this iniquity, is the cleverest
conspirator of us all. Oh, how could Russia bear two hearts like yours and
his!
ALEXIS: Vera, the Emperor was not always like this. There was a time
when he loved the people. It is that devil, whom God curse, Prince Paul
Maraloffski, who has brought him to this. To-morrow, I swear it, I shall
plead for the people to the Emperor.
VERA: Plead to the Czar! Foolish boy, it is only those who are sentenc-
ed to death that ever see our Czar. Besides, what should he care for a
voice that pleads for mercy? The cry of a strong nation in its agony has
not moved that heart of stone.
ALEXIS (aside): Yet shall I plead to him. They can but kill me.
PROFESSOR: Here are the proclamations, Vera. Do you think they will
do?
VERA: I shall read them. How fair he looks! Methinks he never seemed
so noble as to-night. Liberty is blessed in having such a lover.
ALEXIS: Well, President, what are you deep in?
MICHAEL: We are thinking of the best way of killing bears. (Whispers
to PRESIDENT and leads him aside.)
PROFESSOR (to VERA): And the letters from our brothers at Paris and
Berlin. What answer shall we send to them?
VERA (takes them mechanically): Had I not strangled nature, sworn
neither to love nor to be loved, methinks I might have loved him. Oh, I am a
fool, a traitor myself, a traitor myself! But why did he come amongst us
with his bright young face, his heart aflame for liberty, his pure white soul?
Why does he make me feel at times as if I would have him as my king,
Republican though I be? Oh, fool, fool, fool! False to your oath! Weak as
water! Have done! Remember what you are – a Nihilist, a Nihilist!
PRESIDENT (to MICHAEL): But you will be seized, Michael.
MICHAEL: I think not. I will wear the uniform of the Imperial Guard, and
the Colonel on duty is one of us. It is on the first floor, you remember;
so I can take a long shot.
PRESIDENT: Shall I not tell the brethren?
MICHAEL: Not a word, not a word! There is a traitor amongst us.
VERA: Come, are these the proclamations? Yes, they will do; yes, they
will do. Send five hundred to Kiev and Odessa and Novgorod, five hundred
to Warsaw, and have twice the number distributed among the Southern
provinces, though these dull Russian peasants care little for our
proclamations, and less for our martyrdoms. When the blow is struck, it
must be from the town, not from the country.
MICHAEL: Ay, and by the sword, not by the goose quill.
VERA: Where are the letters from Poland?
PROFESSOR: Here.
VERA: Unhappy Poland! The eagles of Russia have fed on her heart.
We must not forget our brothers there.
PRESIDENT: Is it true, Michael?
MICHAEL: Ay, I stake my life on it.
PRESIDENT: Let the doors be locked, then. Alexis Ivanacievitch entered
on our roll of the brothers as a student of the School of Medicine at
Moscow. Why did you not tell us of this bloody scheme of martial law?
ALEXIS: I, President?
MICHAEL: Ay, you! You knew it, none better. Such weapons as these
are not forged in a day. Why did you not tell us of it? A week ago there had
been time to lay the mine, to raise the barricade, to strike one blow at least
for liberty. But now the hour is past! It is too late, it is too late! Why did
you keep it a secret from us. I say?
ALEXIS: Now by the hand of freedom, Michael, my brother, you wrong
me. I knew nothing of this hideous law. By my soul, my brothers, I knew
not of it! How should I know?
MICHAEL: Because you are a traitor! Where did you go when you left
us the night of our last meeting here?
ALEXIS: To mine own house, Michael.
MICHAEL: Liar! I was on your track. You left here an hour after
midnight. Wrapped in a large cloak, you crossed the river by a boat a mile
below the second bridge, and gave the ferryman a gold piece, you, the poor
student of medicine! You doubled back twice, and hid in an archway so
long that I had almost made up my mind to stab you at once, only that I am
fond of hunting. So! You thought you had baffled all pursuit, did you? Fool!
I am a bloodhound that never loses the scent. I followed you from street to
street. At last I saw you pass swiftly across the Place St. Isaac, whisper to
the guards some secret password, enter the palace by a private door with
your own key.
CONSPIRATORS: The palace!
VERA: Alexis!
MICHAEL: I waited. All through the dreary watches of our long Russian
night I waited, that I might kill you with your Judas hire still hot in your
hand. But you never came back; you never left that palace. I saw the
bloodred sun rise through the yellow fog over the murky town; I saw a
new day
of oppression dawn on Russia; but you never came back. So you pass nights
in the palace, do you? You know the password for the guards; you have a
key to a secret door. You are a spy – I never trusted you, with your soft
white hands, your curled hair, your pretty graces. You have no mark of
suffering about you; you cannot be of the people. You are a spy – a spy –
traitor!
OMNES: Kill him! Kill him! (Draw their knives.)
VERA: (rushing in front of ALEXIS): Stand back, I say, Michael! Stand
back all! Do not dare lay a hand upon him! He is the noblest heart amongst
us.
OMNES: Kill him! Kill him! He is a spy!
VERA: Dare to lay a finger on him, and I leave you all to yourselves.
PRESIDENT: Vera, did you not hear what Michael said of him? He
stayed all night in the Czar’s palace. He has a password and a private key.
What else should he be but a spy?
VERA: Bah! I do not believe Michael. It is a lie! It is a lie! Alexis, say
it is a lie!
ALEXIS: It is true. Michael has told what he saw. I did pass that night in
the Czar’s palace. Michael has spoken the truth.
VERA: Stand back, I say; stand back! Alexis, I do not care. I trust you;
you would not betray us; you would not sell the people for money. You are
honest, true! Oh, say you are no spy!
ALEXIS: Spy? You know I am not. I am with you, my brothers, to the
death.
MICHAEL: Ay, to your own death.
ALEXIS: Vera, you know I am true.
VERA: I know it well.
PRESIDENT: Why are you here, traitor?
ALEXIS: Because I love the people.
MICHAEL: Then you can be a martyr for them?
VERA: You must kill me first, Michael, before you lay a finger on him.
PRESIDENT: Michael, we dare not lose Vera. It is her whim to let this
boy live. We can keep him here to-night. Up to this he has not betray-
ed us.
Tramp of soldiers outside, knocking at door.
VOICE: Open, in the name of the Emperor!
MICHAEL: He has betrayed us. This is your doing, spy!
PRESIDENT: Come, Michael, come. We have no time to cut one
another’s throats while we have our own heads to save.
VOICE: Open, in the name of the Emperor!
PRESIDENT: Brothers, be masked, all of you. Michael, open the door. It
is our only chance.
Enter GENERAL KOTEMKIN and soldiers.
GENERAL: All honest citizens should be in their own houses an hour be
fore midnight, and not more than five people have a right to meet privately.
Have you not noticed the proclamation, fellows?
MICHAEL: Ay, you have spoiled every honest wall in Moscow with it.
VERA: Peace, Michael, peace. Nay, Sir, we know it not. We are a
company of strolling players travelling from Samara to Moscow to amuse
his Imperial Majesty the Czar.
GENERAL: But I heard loud voices before I entered. What was that?
VERA: We were rehearsing a new tragedy.
GENERAL: Your answers are too honest to be true. Come, let me see
who you are. Take off those players’ masks. By St. Nicholas, my beauty, if
your face matches your figure, you must be a choice morsel! Come, I say,
pretty one; I would sooner see your face than those of all the others.
PRESIDENT: O God! If he sees it is Vera, we are all lost!
GENERAL: No coquetting, my girl. Come, unmask, I say, or I shall tell
my guards to do it for you.
ALEXIS: Stand back, I say, General Kotemkin!
GENERAL: Who are you, fellow, that talk with such a tripping tongue to
your betters? (ALEXIS takes his mask off.) His Imperial Highness the
Czarevitch!
OMNES: The Czarevitch! It is all over!
PRESIDENT: I knew he was a spy. He will give us up to the soldiers.
MICHAEL (to VERA): Why did you not let me kill him? Come, we must
fight to the death for it.
VERA: Peace! He will not betray us.
ALEXIS: A whim of mine, General! You know how my father keeps me
from the world and imprisons me in the palace. I should really be bored to
death if I could not get out at night in disguise sometimes, and have some
romantic adventure in town. I fell in with these honest folks a few hours
ago.
GENERAL: Actors, are they, Prince?
ALEXIS: Ay, and very ambitious actors, too. They only care to play
before kings.
GENERAL: I’ faith, your Highness, I was in hopes I had made a good
haul of Nihilists.
ALEXIS: Nihilists in Moscow, General! With you as head of the police!
Impossible!
GENERAL: So I always tell your Imperial father. But I heard at the
council to-day that that woman Vera Sabouroff, the head of them, had been
seen in this very city. The Emperor’s face turned as white as the snow
outside. I think I never saw such terror in any man before.
ALEXIS: She is a dangerous woman, then, this Vera Sabouroff?
GENERAL: The most dangerous in all Europe.
ALEXIS: Did you ever see her, General?
GENERAL: Why, five years ago, when I was a plain Colonel, I remember
her, your Highness, a common waiting-girl in an inn. If I had known
then what she was going to turn out, I would have flogged her to death
on the roadside. She is not a woman at all; she is a sort of devil! For
the last eighteen months I have been hunting her, and caught sight of
her once last September outside Odessa.
ALEXIS: How did you let her go, General?
GENERAL: I was by myself, and she shot one of my horses just as I was
gaining on her. If I see her again I shan’t miss my chance. The Emperor has
put twenty thousand roubles on her head.
ALEXIS: I hope you will get it, General; but meanwhile you are fright-
ening these honest folk out of their wits, and disturbing the tragedy.
Good-night, General.
GENERAL: Yes; but I should like to see their faces, your Highness.
ALEXIS: No, General; you must not ask that; you know how these
gypsies hate to be stared at.
GENERAL: Yes. But, your Highness –
ALEXIS (haughtily): General, they are my friends, that is enough.
Good-night. And, General, not a word of my little adventure here, you
understand.
GENERAL: But shall we not see you back to the palace? The State ball
is almost over and you are expected.
ALEXIS: I shall be there; but I shall return alone. Remember, not a
word.
GENERAL: Or your pretty gipsy, eh, Prince? Your pretty gipsy! I’ faith,
I should like to see her before I go; she has such fine eyes through her
mask. Well, good night, your Highness; good night.
ALEXIS: Good night, General.
Exeunt GENERAL and the soldiers.
VERA (throwing off her mask): Saved! And by you!
ALEXIS (clasping her hand): Brothers, you trust me now?
Exit.
TABLEAU
ACT DROP
ACT TWO
SCENE: Council Chamber in the Emperor’s Palace, hung with yellow
tapestry. Table, with chair of State, set for the Czar; window behind,
opening on to a balcony. As the scene progresses the light outside gets
darker.
Present: PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI, PRINCE PETROVITCH, COUNT
ROUVALOFF, BARON RAFF, COUNT PETOUCHOF.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: So our young scatter-brained Czarevitch has been
forgiven at last, and is to take his seat here again.
PRINCE PAUL: Yes; if that is not meant as an extra punishment. For my
own part, at least, I find these Cabinet Councils extremely tiring.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Naturally, you are always speaking.
PRINCE PAUL: No; I think it must be that I have to listen sometimes. It
is so exhausting not to talk.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: Still, anything is better than being kept in a sort of
prison, like he was – never allowed to go out into the world.
PRINCE PAUL: My dear Count, for romantic young people like he is the
world always looks best at a distance; and a prison where one’s allowed to
order one’s own dinner is not at all a bad place. (Enter the CZAREVITCH.
The courtiers rise.) Ah! Good afternoon, Prince. Your Highness is looking a
little pale to-day.
CZAREVITCH (slowly, after a pause): I want change of air.
PRINCE PAUL (smiling): A most revolutionary sentiment! Your Imperial
father would highly disapprove of any reforms even with the thermometer
in Russia.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): My Imperial father had kept me for six months
in this dungeon of a palace. This morning he has me suddenly woke up to
see some wretched Nihilists hung; it sickened me, the bloody butchery,
though it was a noble thing to see how well these men can die.
PRINCE PAUL: When you are as old as I am, Prince, you will understand
that there are few things easier than to live badly and to die well.
CZAREVITCH: Easy to die well! A lesson experience cannot have taught
you, much as you know of a bad life.
PRINCE PAUL (shrugging his shoulders): Experience, the name men
give to their mistakes. I never commit any.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): No; crimes are more in your line.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to the CZAREVITCH): The Emperor was a good
deal agitated about your late appearance at the ball last night, Prince.
COUNT ROUVALOFF (laughing): I believe he thought the Nihilists had
broken into the palace and carried you off.
BARON RAFF: If they had you would have missed a charming dance.
PRINCE PAUL: And an excellent supper. Gringoire really excelled him-
self in his salad. Ah! You may laugh, Baron; but to cook a good salad is
a much more difficult thing than cooking accounts. To make a-good salad is
to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is entirely the same in both cases.
To know exactly how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar.
BARON RAFF: A cook and a diplomatist! An excellent parallel. If I had
a son who was a fool I’d make him one or the other.
PRINCE PAUL: I see your father did not hold the same opinion, Baron.
But, believe me, you are wrong to run down cookery. Culture depends on
cookery. For myself, the only immortality I desire is to invent a new sauce.
I have never had time enough to think seriously about it, but I feel it is in
me, I feel it is in me.
CZAREVITCH: You have certainly missed your métier, Prince Paul; the
cordon bleu of the kitchen would have suited you much better than the
Grand Cross of Honour. But you know you could never have worn your
white apron well; you would have soiled it too soon, your hands are not
clean enough.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing): You forget – or, how could they be? I manage
your father’s business.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): You mismanage my father’s business, you
mean! Evil genius of his life that you are! Before you came there was some
love left in him. It is you who have embittered his nature, poured into his
ear the poison of treacherous council, made him hated by the whole people,
made him what he is – a tyrant!
The courtiers look significantly at each other.
PRINCE PAUL (calmly): I see your Highness does want change of air.
But I have been an eldest son myself. (Lights a cigarette.) I know what it is
when a father won’t die to please one.
The CZAREVITCH goes to the top of the stage, and leans against
the window, looking out.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to BARON RAFF): Foolish boy! He will be sent
into exile, or worse, if he is not careful.
BARON RAFF: Yes. What a mistake it is to be sincere!
PRINCE PETROVITCH: The only folly you never committed, Baron.
BARON RAFF: One has only one head, you know, Prince.
PRINCE PAUL: My dear Baron, your head is the last thing any one
would wish to take from you. (Pulls out snuff-box and offers it to PRINCE
PETROVITCH.)
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Thanks, Prince! Thanks!
PRINCE PAUL: Very delicate, isn’t it? I get it direct from Paris. But
under this vulgar Republic everything has degenerated over there.
Côtelettes à l’imp riale vanished of course with the Bonaparte, and
omelettes went out with the Orleanists. La belle France is entirely ruined,
Prince, through bad morals and worse cookery. (Enter the MARQUIS DE
POIVRARD.) Ah! Marquis. I trust Madame la Marquise is well.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: You ought to know better than I do, Prince
Paul; you see more of her.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing): Perhaps I see more in her, Marquis. Your wife
is really a charming woman, so full of esprit, and so satirical too; she talks
continually of you when we are together.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (looking at the clock): His Majesty is a little late
to-day, is he not?
PRINCE PAUL: What has happened to you, my dear Petrovitch? You
seem quite out of sorts. You haven’t quarrelled with your cook, I hope?
What a tragedy that would be for you; you would lose all your friends.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: I fear I wouldn’t be so fortunate as that. You
forget I would still have my purse. But you are wrong for once; my chef
and I are on excellent terms.
PRINCE PAUL: Then your creditors or Mademoiselle Vera Sabouroff
have been writing to you? They compose more than half of my
correspondents. But really you needn’t be alarmed. I find the most violent
proclamations from the Executive Committee, as they call it, left all over
my house. I never read them; they are so badly spelt as a rule.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Wrong again, Prince; the Nihilists leave me alone
for some reason or other.
PRINCE PAUL (aside): True! Indifference is the revenge the world takes
on mediocrities.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: I am bored with life, Prince. Since the opera
season ended I have been a perpetual martyr to ennui.
PRINCE PAUL: The maladie du siècle! You want a new excitement,
Prince. Let me see – you have been married twice already; suppose you try
– falling in love for once.
BARON RAFF: I cannot understand your nature.
PRINCE PAUL (smiling): If my nature had been made to suit your com-
prehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have
made a very poor figure in the world.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: There seems to be nothing in life about which you
would not jest.
PRINCE PAUL: Ah! My dear Count, life is much too important a thing
ever to talk seriously about it.
CZAREVITCH (coming back from window): I don’t think Prince Paul’s
nature is such a mystery. He would stab his best friend for the sake of
writing an epigram on his tombstone.
PRINCE PAUL: Parbleu! I would sooner lose my best friend than my
worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured;
but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about
him.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): If to have enemies is a measure of greatness,
then you must be a Colossus, indeed, Prince.
PRINCE PAUL: Yes, your Highness, I know I’m the most hated man in
Russia, except your father, except your father of course. He doesn’t seem
to like it much, by the way; but I do, I assure you. (Bitterly.) I love to drive
through the streets and see how the rabble scowl at me from every corner. It
makes me feel I am a power in Russia; one man against millions! Besides, I
have no ambition to be a popular hero, to be crowned with laurels one year
and pelted with stones the next; I prefer dying peaceably in my own bed.
CZAREVITCH: And after death?
PRINCE PAUL (shrugging his shoulders): Heaven is a despotism. I shall
be at home there.
CZAREVITCH: Do you ever think of the people and their rights?
PRINCE PAUL: The people and their rights bore me. I am sick of both.
In these modern days to be vulgar, illiterate, common and vicious, seems to
give a man a marvellous infinity of rights that his honest fathers never
dreamed of. Believe me, Prince, in good democracy, every man should be
an aristocrat; but these people in Russia who seek to thrust us out are no
better than the animals in one’s preserves, and made to be shot at, most of
them.
CZAREVITCH (excitedly): If they are common, illiterate, vulgar, no better
than the beasts of the field, who made them so? (Enter AIDE-DECAMP.)
AIDE-DE-CAMP: His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor! (PRINCE PAUL looks
at the CZAREVITCH, and smiles.)
Enter the CZAR, surrounded by his guard.
CZAREVITCH (rushing forward to meet him): Sire!
CZAR (nervous and frightened): Don’t come too near me, boy! Don’t
come too near me, I say! There is always something about an heir to a
crown unwholesome to his father. Who is that man over there? I don’t know
him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give
him till to-morrow to confess, then hang him! Hang him!
PRINCE PAUL: Sire, you are anticipating history. This is Count Petouchof,
your new Ambassador to Berlin. He is come to kiss hands on his appoint-
ment.
CZAR: To kiss my hand? There is some plot in it. He wants to poison
me. There, kiss my son’s hand; it will do quite as well.
PRINCE PAUL signs to COUNT PETOUCHOF to leave the room.
Exeunt PETOUCHOF and the guards. CZAR sinks down into his chair.
The courtiers remain silent.
PRINCE PAUL (approaching): Sire! Will your Majesty –
CZAR: What do you startle me for like that? No, I won’t. (Watches the
courtiers nervously.) Why are you clattering your sword, sir? (To COUNT
ROUVALOFF): Take it off. I shall have no man wear a sword in my presence
(looking at CZAREVITCH), least of all my son. (To PRINCE PAUL): You are
not angry with me, Prince? You won’t desert me, will you? Say you won’t
desert me. What do you want? You can have anything – anything.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing very low): Sire, ‘tis enough for me to have your
confidence. (Aside): I was afraid he was going to revenge himself, and give
me another decoration.
CZAR (returning to his chair): Well, gentlemen.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: Sire, I have the honour to present to you a
loyal address from your subjects in the Province of Archangel, expressing
their horror at the last attempt on your Majesty’s life.
PRINCE PAUL: The last attempt but two, you ought to have said,
Marquis. Don’t you see it is dated three weeks back?
CZAR: They are good people in the Province of Archangel – honest,
loyal people. They love me very much – simple, loyal people; give them a
new saint, it costs nothing. Well, Alexis (turning to the CZAREVITCH) – how
many traitors were hung this morning?
CZAREVITCH: There were three men strangled, Sire.
CZAR: There should have been three thousand. I would to God that this
people had but one neck that I might strangle them with one noose! Did
they tell anything? Whom did they implicate? What did they confess?
CZAREVITCH: Nothing, Sire.
CZAR: They should have been tortured then; why weren’t they tortured?
Must I always be fighting in the dark? Am I never to know from what root
these traitors spring?
CZAREVITCH: What root should there be of discontent among the
people but tyranny and injustice amongst their rulers?
CZAR: What did you say, boy? Tyranny! Tyranny! Am I a tyrant? I’m
not. I love the people. I’m their father. I’m called so in every official
proclamation. Have a care, boy; have a care. You don’t seem to be cured yet
of your foolish tongue. (Goes over to PRINCE PAUL and puts his hand on his
shoulder.) Prince Paul, tell me, were there many people there this morning
to see the Nihilists hung?
PRINCE PAUL: Hanging is of course a good deal less of a novelty in
Russia now, Sire, than it was three or four years ago; and you know how
easily the people get tired even of their best amusements. But the square
and the tops of the houses were really quite crowded, were they not, Prince?
(To the CZAREVITCH, who takes no notice.)
CZAR: That’s right; all loyal citizens should be there. It shows them
what to look forward to. Did you arrest any one in the crowd?
PRINCE PAUL: Yes, Sire; a woman, for cursing your name. (The
CZAREVITCH starts anxiously.) She was the mother of two of the criminals.
CZAR (looking at CZAREVITCH): She should have blessed me for having
rid her of her children. Send her to prison.
CZAREVITCH: The prisons of Russia are too full already, Sire. There is
no room in them for any more victims.
CZAR: They don’t die fast enough, then. You should put more of them
into one cell at once. You don’t keep them long enough in the mines. If you
do they’re sure to die; but you’re all too merciful. I’m too merciful myself.
Send her to Siberia. She is sure to die on the way. (Enter an AIDE-DE-CAMP.)
Who’s that? Who’s that?
AIDE-DE-CAMP: A letter for his Imperial Majesty.
CZAR (to PRINCE PAUL): I won’t open it. There may be something in it.
PRINCE PAUL: It would be a very disappointing letter, Sire, if there
wasn’t. (Takes letter himself, and reads it.)
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to COUNT ROUVALOFF): It must be some sad news.
I know that smile too well.
PRINCE PAUL: From the Chief of the Police at Archangel, Sire. ‘The
Governor of the province was shot this morning by a woman as he was
entering the courtyard of his own house. The assassin has been seized.’
CZAR: I never trusted the people in Archangel. It’s a nest of Nihilists
and conspirators. Take away their saints; they don’t deserve them.
PRINCE PAUL: Your Highness would punish them more severely by
giving them an extra one. Three governors shot in two months! (Smiles to
himself.) Sire, permit me to recommend your loyal subject, the Marquis de
Poivrard, as the new governor of your Province of Archangel.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD (hurriedly): Sire, I am unfit for this post.
PRINCE PAUL: Marquis, you are too modest. Believe me, there is no
man in Russia I would sooner see Governor of Archangel than yourself.
(Whispers to CZAR.)
CZAR: Quite right, Prince Paul; you are always right. See that the
Marquis’s letters are made out at once.
PRINCE PAUL: He can start to-night, Sire. I shall really miss you very
much, Marquis. I always liked your taste in wine and wives extremely.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD (to the CZAR): Start to-night, Sire?
(PRINCE PAUL whispers to the CZAR.)
CZAR: Yes, Marquis, to-night; it is better to go at once.
PRINCE PAUL: I shall see that Madame la Marquise is not too lonely
while you are away; so you need not be alarmed for her.
COUNT ROUVALOFF (to PRINCE PETROVITCH): I should be more alarmed
for myself.
CZAR: The Governor of Archangel shot in his own courtyard by a
woman! I’m not safe here. I’m not safe anywhere, with that she-devil of the
revolution, Vera Sabouroff, here in Moscow. Prince Paul, is that woman still
here?
PRINCE PAUL: They tell me she was at the Grand Duke’s ball last night.
I can hardly believe that; but she certainly had intended to leave for
Novgorod to-day, Sire. The police were watching every train for her; but,
for some reason or other, she did not go. Some traitor must have warned
her. But I shall catch her yet. A chase after a beautiful woman is always
exciting.
CZAR: You must hunt her down with bloodhounds, and when she is
taken I shall hew her limb from limb. I shall stretch her on the rack till her
pale white body is twisted and curled like paper in the fire.
PRINCE PAUL: Oh, we shall have another hunt immediately, for her,
Sire! Prince Alexis will assist us, I am sure.
CZAREVITCH: You never require any assistance to ruin a woman, Prince
Paul.
CZAR: Vera, the Nihilist, in Moscow! O God, were it not better to die at
once the dog’s death they plot for me than to live as I live now! Never to
sleep, or, if I do, to dream such horrid dreams that hell itself were peace
when matched with them. To trust none but those I have bought, to buy
none worth trusting! To see a traitor in every smile, poison in every dish, a
dagger in every hand! To lie awake at night, listening from hour to hour for
the stealthy creeping of the murderer, for the laying of the damned mine!
You are all spies! You are all spies! You worst of all – you, my own son!
Which of you is it who hides these bloody proclamations under my own
pillow, or at the table where I sit? Which of ye all is the Judas who betrays
me? O God! O God! Methinks there was a time once, in our war with
England, when nothing could make me afraid. (This with more calm and
pathos.) I have ridden into the crimson heart of war, and borne back an
eagle which those wild islanders had taken from us. Men said I was brave
then. My father gave me the Iron Cross of Valour. Oh, could he see me now,
with this coward’s livery ever in my cheek! (Sinks into his chair.) I never
knew any love when I was a boy. I was ruled by terror myself, how else
should I rule now? (Starts up.) But I will have revenge; I will have revenge.
For every hour I have lain awake at night, waiting for the noose or the
dagger, they shall pass years in Siberia, centuries in the mines! Ay! I shall
have revenge.
CZAREVITCH: Father! Have mercy on the people. Give them what they
ask.
PRINCE PAUL: And begin, Sire, with your own head; they have a
particular liking for that.
CZAR: The people! The people! A tiger which I have let loose on
myself; but I will fight with it to the death. I am done with half measures. I
shall crush these Nihilists at a blow. There shall not be a man of them, no,
nor a woman either, left alive in Russia. Am I Emperor for nothing, that a
woman should hold me at bay? Vera Sabouroff shall be in my power, I
swear it, before a week is ended, though I burn my whole city to find her.
She shall be flogged by the knout, stifled in the fortress, strangled in the
square!
CZAREVITCH: O God!
CZAR: For two years her hands have been clutching at my throat; for
two years she has made my life a hell; but I shall have revenge. Martial law,
Prince, martial law over the whole Empire; that will give me revenge. A
good measure, Prince, eh? A good measure.
PRINCE PAUL: And an economical one too, Sire. It will carry off your
surplus population in six months, and save you any expense in courts of
justice; they will not be needed now.
CZAR: Quite right. There are too many people in Russia, too much
money spent on them, too much money on courts of justice. I’ll shut them
up.
CZAREVITCH: Sire, reflect before –
CZAR: When can you have the proclamations ready, Prince Paul?
PRINCE PAUL: They have been printed for the last six months, Sire. I
knew you would need them.
CZAR: That’s good! That’s very good! Let us begin at once. Ah, Prince,
if every king in Europe had a minister like you –
CZAREVITCH: There would be less kings in Europe than there are.
CZAR (in frightened whisper, to PRINCE PAUL): What does he mean? Do
you trust him? His prison hasn’t cured him yet. Shall I banish him? Shall I
(whispers)…? The Emperor Paul did it. The Empress Catherine there
(points to picture on the wall) did it. Why shouldn’t I?
PRINCE PAUL: Your Majesty, there is no need for alarm. The Prince is a
very ingenuous young man. He pretends to be devoted to the people, and
lives in a palace; preaches socialism, and draws a salary that would support
a province. Some day he’ll find out that the best cure for Republicism is the
Imperial crown, and will cut up the red cap of liberty to make decorations
for his Prime Minister.
CZAR: You are right. If he really loved the people, he could not be my
son.
PRINCE PAUL: If he lived with the people for a fortnight, their bad
dinners would soon cure him of his democracy. Shall we begin, Sire?
CZAR: At once. Read the proclamation. Gentlemen, be seated. Alexis,
Alexis, I say, come and hear it! It will be good practice for you; you will be
doing it yourself some day.
CZAREVITCH: I have heard too much of it already. (Takes his seat at the
table. COUNT ROUVALOFF whispers to him.)
CZAR: What are you whispering about there, Count Rouvaloff?
COUNT ROUVALOFF: I was giving his Royal Highness some good
advice, your Majesty.
PRINCE PAUL: Count Rouvaloff is the typical spendthrift, Sire; he is
always giving away what he needs most. (Lays papers before the CZAR.) I
think, Sire, you will approve of this: ‘Love of the people,’ ‘Father of his
people,’ ‘Martial law,’ and the usual allusions to Providence in the last line.
All it requires now is your Imperial Majesty’s signature.
CZAREVITCH: Sire!
PRINCE PAUL (hurriedly): I promise your Majesty to crush every
Nihilist in Russia in six months if you sign this proclamation; every Nihilist
in Russia.
CZAR: Say that again! To crush every Nihilist in Russia; to crush this
woman, their leader, who makes war upon me in my own city. Prince Paul
Maraloffski, I create you Maréchal of the whole Russian Empire to help
you to carry out martial law. Give me the proclamation. I will sign it at
once.
PRINCE PAUL (points on paper): Here, Sire.
CZAREVITCH (starts up and puts his hands on the paper): Stay! I tell
you, stay! The priests have taken heaven from the people, and you would
take away the earth away too.
PRINCE PAUL (hurriedly): We have no time, Prince, now. This boy will
ruin everything. The pen, Sire.
CZAREVITCH: What! Is it so small a thing to strangle a nation, to
murder a kingdom, to wreck an empire? Who are we who dare lay this ban
of terror on a people? Have we less vices than they have, that we bring
them to the bar of judgment before us?
PRINCE PAUL: What a Communist the Prince is! He would have an
equal distribution of sin as well as of property.
CZAREVITCH: Warmed by the same sun, nurtured by the same air,
fashioned of flesh and blood like to our own, wherein are they different to
us, save that they starve while we surfeit, that they toil while we idle, that
they sicken while we poison, that they die while we –
CZAR: How dare –?
CZAREVITCH: I dare all for the people; but you would rob them of
common rights of men.
CZAR: The people have no rights.
CZAREVITCH: Then they have great wrongs. Father, they have won your
battles for you; from the pine forests of the Baltic to the palms of India they
have ridden on victory’s mighty wings! Boy as I am in years, I have seen
wave after wave of living men sweep up the heights of battle to their death;
ay, and snatch perilous conquest from the scales of war when the bloody
crescent seemed to shake above our eagles.
CZAR (somewhat moved): Those men are dead. What have I to do with
them?
CZAREVITCH: Nothing! The dead are safe; you cannot harm them now.
They sleep their last long sleep. Some in Turkish waters, others by the
windswept heights of Norway and the Dane! But these, the living, our
brothers, what have you done for them? They asked you for bread, you gave
them a stone. They sought for freedom, you scourged them with scorpions.
You have sown the seeds of this revolution yourself-!
PRINCE PAUL: And are we not cutting down the harvest?
CZAREVITCH: Oh, my brothers! Better far that ye had died in the iron
hail and screaming shell of battle than to come back to such a doom as this!
The beasts of the forest have their lairs, and the wild beasts their caverns,
but the people of Russia, conquerors of the world, have no where to lay
their heads.
PRINCE PAUL: They have the headsman’s block.
CZAREVITCH: The block! Ay! You have killed their souls at your
pleasure, you would kill their bodies now.
CZAR: Insolent boy! Have you forgotten who is Emperor of Russia?
CZAREVITCH: No! The people reign now, by the grace of God. You
should have been their shepherd; you have fled away like the hireling, and
let the wolves in upon them.
CZAR: Take him away! Take him away, Prince Paul!
CZAREVITCH: God hath given his people tongues to speak with; you
would cut them out that they may be dumb in their agony, silent in their
torture! But, He hath given them hands to smite with, and they shall smite!
Ay! From the sick and labouring womb of this unhappy land some
revolution, like a bloody child, may rise up and slay you.
CZAR (leaping up): Devil! Assassin! Why do you beard me thus to my
face?
CZAREVITCH: Because I am a Nihilist! (The ministers start to their feet;
there is a dead silence for a few minutes.)
CZAR: A Nihilist! A Nihilist! Viper whom I have nurtured, traitor whom
I have fondled, is this your bloody secret? Prince Paul Maraloffski,
Maréchal of the Russian Empire, arrest the Czarevitch!
MINISTERS: Arrest the Czarevitch!
CZAR: A Nihilist! If you have sown with them, you shall reap with
them! If you have talked with them, you shall rot with them! If you have
lived with them, with them you shall die!
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Die!
CZAR: A plague on all sons, I say! There should be no more marriages
in Russia when one can breed such Serpents as you are! Arrest the
Czarevitch, I say!
PRINCE PAUL: Czarevitch! By order of the Emperor, I demand your
sword. (CZAREVITCH gives up sword; PRINCE PAUL places it on the table.)
CZAREVITCH: You will find it unstained by blood.
PRINCE PAUL: Foolish boy! You are not made for a conspirator; you
have not learned to hold your tongue. Heroics are out of place in a palace.
CZAR (sinks into his chair with his eyes fixed on the CZAREVITCH): O
God! My own son against me, my own flesh and blood against me; but I am
rid of them all now.
CZAREVITCH: The mighty brotherhood to which I belong has a
thousand such as I am, ten thousand better still! (The CZAR starts in his
seat.) The star of freedom is risen already, and far off I hear the mighty
wave Democracy break on these cursed shores.
PRINCE PAUL (to PRINCE PETROVITCH): In that case you and I must learn
how to swim.
CZAREVITCH: Father, Emperor, Imperial Master, I plead not for my own
life, but for the lives of my brothers, the people.
PRINCE PAUL (bitterly): Your brothers, the people, Prince, are not con-
tent with their own lives, they always want to take their neighbours’ too.
CZAR (standing up): I am tired of being afraid. I have done with terror
now. From this day I proclaim war against the people – war to their
annihilation. As they have dealt with me, so shall I deal with them. I shall
grind them to powder, and strew their dust upon the air. There shall be a spy
in every man’s house, a traitor on every hearth, a hangman in every village,
a gibbet in every square. Plague, leprosy, or fever shall be less deadly than
my wrath; I will make every frontier a graveyard, every province a lazar
house, and cure the sick by the sword. I shall have peace in Russia, though
it be the peace of the dead. Who said I was a coward? Who said I was
afraid? See, thus shall I crush this people beneath my feet! (Takes up sword
of CZAREVITCH off table and tramples on it.)
CZAREVITCH: Father, beware, the sword you tread on may turn and wound
you. The people suffer long, but vengeance comes at last, vengeance
with red hands and silent feet.
PRINCE PAUL: Bah! The people are bad shots; they always miss one.
CZAREVITCH: There are times when the people are the instruments of
God.
CZAR: Ay! And when kings are God’s scourges for the people. Take
him away! Take him away! Bring in my guards. (Enter the Imperial Guard.
CZAR points to CZAREVITCH, who stands alone at the side of the stage.)
We will bring him to prison ourselves: prison! I trust no prison. He would
escape and kill me. I will have him shot here, here in the open square by the
soldiers. Let me never see his face again. (CZAREVITCH is being led out.)
No, no, leave him! I don’t trust guards. They are all Nihilists! (To PRINCE
PAUL): I trust you, you have no mercy. (Throws window open and goes out
on balcony.)
CZAREVITCH: If I am to die for the people I am ready. One Nihilist
more or less in Russia, what does that matter?
PRINCE PAUL (looking at his watch): The dinner is sure to be spoiled.
How annoying politics are; and eldest sons!
VOICE (outside, in the street): God save the people! (CZAR is shot, and
staggers back into the room.)
CZAREVITCH (breaking from the guards, and rushing over): Father!
CZAR: Murderer! Murderer! You did it! Murderer! (Dies.)
TABLEAU
ACT DROP
ACT THREE
SCENE: same and business as Act One. Man in yellow dress, with
drawn sword, at the door.
Password outside. Væ tyrannis.1
Answer. Væ victis2 (repeated three times).
Enter CONSPIRATORS, who form a semicircle, masked and cloaked.
PRESIDENT: What hour is it?
FIRST CONSPIRATOR: The hour to strike.
PRESIDENT: What day?
SECOND CONSPIRATOR: The day of Marat.
PRESIDENT: In what month?
THIRD CONSPIRATOR: The months of liberty.
PRESIDENT: What is our duty?
FOURTH CONSPIRATOR: To obey.
PRESIDENT: Our creed?
FIFTH CONSPIRATOR: Parbleu, Monsieur le President, I never knew you
had one.
CONSPIRATORS: A spy! A spy! Unmask! Unmask! A spy!
PRESIDENT: Let the doors be shut. There are others but Nihilists
present.
CONSPIRATORS: Unmask! Unmask! Kill him! kill him! (Masked
Conspirator unmasks.) Prince Paul!
VERA: Devil! Who lured you into the lion’s den?
CONSPIRATORS: Kill him! Kill him!
PRINCE PAUL: En vérité, Messieurs, you are not over-hospitable in your
welcome.
VERA: Welcome! What welcome should we give you but the dagger or
the noose?
PRINCE PAUL: I had no idea really that the Nihilists were so exclusive.
Let me assure you that if I had not always had an entree to the very best
society, and the very worst conspiracies, I could never have been Prime
Minister in Russia.
VERA: The tiger cannot change its nature, nor the snake lose its venom;
but are you turned a lover of the people?
PRINCE PAUL: Mon Dieu, non, Mademoiselle! I would much sooner
talk scandal in a drawing-room than treason in a cellar. Besides, I hate the
common mob, who smell of garlic, smoke bad tobacco, get up early, and
dine off one dish.
PRESIDENT: What have you to gain, then, by a revolution?
PRINCE PAUL: Mon ami, I have nothing left to lose. That scatter
brained boy, this new Czar, has banished me.
VERA: To Siberia?
PRINCE PAUL: No, to Paris. He has confiscated my estates, robbed me
of my office and my cook. I have nothing left but my decorations. I am here
for revenge.
PRESIDENT: Then you have a right to be one of us. We also meet daily
for revenge.
PRINCE PAUL: You want money of course. No one ever joins a con-
spiracy who has any. Here. (Throws money on table.) You have so many
spies that I should think you want information. Well, you will find me the
best-informed man in Russia on the abuses of our Government. I made
them nearly all myself.
VERA: President, I don’t trust this man. He has done us too much harm
in Russia to let him go in safety.
PRINCE PAUL: Believe me, Mademoiselle, you are wrong. I will be a
most valuable addition to your circle; and as for you, gentlemen, if I had not
thought that you would be useful to me I shouldn’t have risked my neck
among you, or dined an hour earlier than usual so as to be in time.
PRESIDENT: Ay, if he had wanted to spy on us, Vera, he wouldn’t have
come himself.
PRINCE PAUL (aside): No; I should have sent my best friend.
PRESIDENT: Besides, Vera, he is just the man to give us the information
we want about some business we have in hand to-night.
VERA: Be it so if you wish it.
PRESIDENT: Brothers, is it your will that Prince Paul Maraloffski be
admitted, and take the oath of the Nihilist?
CONSPIRATORS: It is! It is!
PRESIDENT (holding out dagger and a paper): Prince Paul, the dagger or
the oath?
PRINCE PAUL (smiles sardonically): I would sooner annihilate than be
annihilated. (Takes paper.)
PRESIDENT: Remember: Betray us, and as long as earth holds poison or
steel, as long as men can strike or women betray, you shall not escape
vengeance. The Nihilists never forget their friends, or forgive their enemies.
PRINCE PAUL: Really? I did not think you were so civilised.
VERA (pacing up and down behind): Why is he not here? He will not
keep the crown. I know him well.
PRESIDENT: Sign. (PRINCE PAUL signs.) You said you thought we had
no creed. You were wrong. Read it!
VERA: This is a dangerous thing, President. What can we do with this
man?
PRESIDENT: We can use him. He is of value to us to-night and tomorrow.
VERA: Perhaps there will be no morrow for any of us; but we have
given him our word: he is safer here than ever he was in his palace.
PRINCE PAUL (reading): ‘The rights of humanity’! In the old times men
carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every
baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than
itself. ‘Nature is not a temple, but a workshop: we demand the right to
labour.’ Ah, I shall surrender my own rights in that respect.
VERA (pacing up and down behind): Oh, will he never come? Will he
never come?
PRINCE PAUL: ‘The family as subversive of true socialistic and
communal unity is to be annihilated.’ Yes, President, I agree completely
with Article 5. A family is a terrible incumbrance, especially when one is
not married. (Three knocks at the door.)
VERA: Alexis at last!
Password: Væ tyrannis!
Answer: Væ victis! (Enter MICHAEL STROGANOFF.)
PRESIDENT: Michael, the regicide! Brothers, let us do honour to a man
who has killed a king.
VERA (aside): Oh, he will come yet!
PRESIDENT: Michael, you have saved Russia.
MICHAEL: Ay, Russia was free for a moment when the tyrant fell, but the
sun of liberty has set again like that false dawn which cheats our eyes in
autumn.
PRESIDENT: The dread night of tyranny is not yet past for Russia.
MICHAEL (clutching his knife): One more blow, and the end is come
indeed.
VERA (aside): One more blow! What does he mean? Oh, impossible!
But why is he not with us? Alexis! Alexis! Why are you not here?
PRESIDENT: But how did you escape, Michael? They said you had been
seized.
MICHAEL: I was dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Guard. The
Colonel on duty was a brother, and gave me the password. I drove through
the troops in safety with it, and, thanks to my good horse, reached the walls
before the gates were closed.
PRESIDENT: What a chance his coming out on the balcony was!
MICHAEL: A chance? There is no such thing as chance. It was God’s
finger led him there.
PRESIDENT: And where have you been these three days?
MICHAEL: Hiding in the house of the priest Nicholas at the cross-roads.
PRESIDENT: Nicholas is an honest man.
MICHAEL: Ay, honest enough for a priest. I am here now for vengeance
on a traitor!
VERA (aside): O God, will he never come? Alexis! Why are you not
here? You cannot have turned traitor!
MICHAEL (seeing PRINCE PAUL): Prince Paul Maraloffski here! By St.
George, a lucky capture! This must have been Vera’s doing. She is the only
one who could have lured that serpent into the trap.
PRESIDENT: Prince Paul has just taken the oath.
VERA: Alexis, the Czar, has banished him from Russia.
MICHAEL: Bah! A blind to cheat us. We will keep Prince Paul here, and
find some office for him in our reign of terror. He is well accustomed by
this time to bloody work.
PRINCE PAUL (approaching MICHAEL): That was a long shot of yours,
mon camarade.
MICHAEL: I have had a good deal of practice shooting, since I have
been a boy, off your Highness’s wild boars.
PRINCE PAUL: Are my gamekeepers like moles, then, always asleep?
MICHAEL: No, Prince. I am one of them; but, like you, I am fond of
robbing what I am put to watch.
PRESIDENT: This must be a new atmosphere for you, Prince Paul. We
speak the truth to one another here.
PRINCE PAUL: How misleading you must find it! You have an odd
medley here, President.
PRESIDENT: You recognise a good many friends, I dare say?
PRINCE PAUL: Yes, there is always more brass than brains in an
aristocracy.
PRESIDENT: But you are here yourself?
PRINCE PAUL: I? As I cannot be a Prime Minister, I must be a Nihilist.
There is no alternative.
VERA: O God, will he never come? The hand is on the stroke of the
hour. Will he never come?
MICHAEL (aside): President, you know what we have to do? ’Tis but a
sorry hunter who leaves the wolf cub alive to avenge his father. How are we
to get at this boy? It must be to-night. To-morrow he will be throwing some
sop of reform to the people, and it will be too late for a republic.
PRINCE PAUL: You are quite right. Good kings are the only dangerous
enemies that modern democracy has and when he has begun by banishing
me you may be sure he intends to be a patriot.
MICHAEL: I am sick of patriot kings; what Russia needs is a Republic.
PRINCE PAUL: Messieurs, I have brought you two documents which I
think will interest you – the proclamation this young Czar intends
publishing to-morrow, and a plan of the Winter Palace, where he
sleeps tonight. (Hands papers.)
VERA: I dare not ask them what they are plotting about. Oh, why is
Alexis not here?
PRESIDENT: Prince, this is most valuable information. Michael, you
were right. If it is not to-night it will be too late. Read that.
MICHAEL: Ah! A loaf of bread flung to a starving nation. A lie to cheat
the people. (Tears it up.) It must be to-night. I do not believe him. Would he
have kept his crown had he loved the people? But how are we to get at him,
and shall we who could not bear the scorpions of the father suffer the whips
of the son? No; whatever is, must be destroyed: whatever is, is wrong.
PRINCE PAUL: The key of the private door in the street. (Hands key.)
PRESIDENT: Prince, we are in your debt.
PRINCE PAUL (smiling): The normal condition of the Nihilists.
MICHAEL: Ay, but we are paying our debts off with interest now. Two
Emperors in one week. That will make the balance straight. We would have
thrown in a Prime Minister if you had not come.
PRINCE PAUL: Ah, I am sorry you told me. It robs my visit of all its
picturesqueness and adventure. I thought I was perilling my head by
coming here, and you tell me I have saved it. One is sure to be disappointed
if one tries to get romance out of modern life.
MICHAEL: It is not so romantic a thing to lose one’s head, Prince Paul.
PRINCE PAUL: No, but it must often be very dull to keep it. Don’t you
find that sometimes? (Clock strikes six.)
VERA (sinking into a seat): Oh, it is past the hour! It is past the hour!
MICHAEL (to PRESIDENT): Remember to-morrow will be too late.
PRESIDENT: Brothers, it is full time. Which of us is absent?
CONSPIRATORS: Alexis! Alexis!
PRESIDENT: Michael, read Rule 7.
MICHAEL: ‘When any brother shall have disobeyed a summons to be
present, the president shall inquire if there is anything alleged against him.’
PRESIDENT: Is there anything against our brother Alexis?
CONSPIRATORS: He wears a crown! He wears a crown!
PRESIDENT: Michael, read Article 7 of the Code of Revolution.
MICHAEL: ‘Between the Nihilists and all men who wear crowns above
their fellows, there is war to the death.’
PRESIDENT: Brothers, what say you? Is Alexis, the Czar, guilty or not?
OMNES: He is guilty!
PRESIDENT: What shall the penalty be?
OMNES: Death!
PRESIDENT: Let the lots be prepared; it shall be to-night.
PRINCE PAUL: Ah, this is really interesting! I was getting afraid
conspiracies were as dull as courts are.
PROFESSOR MARFA: My forte is more in writing pamphlets than in
taking shots. Still a regicide has always a place in history.
MICHAEL: If your pistol is as harmless as your pen, this young tyrant
will have a long life.
PRINCE PAUL: You ought to remember, too, Professor, that if you were
seized, as you probably would be, and hung, as you certainly would be,
there would be nobody left to read your own articles.
PRESIDENT: Brothers, are you ready?
VERA (starting up): Not yet! Not yet! I have a word to say.
MICHAEL (aside): Plague take her! I knew it would come to this.
VERA: This boy has been our brother. Night after night he has perilled
his own life to come here. Night after night, when every street was filled
with spies, every house with traitors. Delicately nurtured like a king’s son,
he has dwelt among us.
PRESIDENT: Ay! Under a false name. He lied to us at the beginning. He
lies to us now at the end.
VERA: I swear he is true. There is not a man here who does not owe
him his life a thousand times. When the bloodhounds were on us that night,
who saved us from arrest, torture, flogging, death, but he ye seek to kill? –
MICHAEL: To kill all tyrants is our mission!
VERA: He is no tyrant. I know him well! He loves the people.
PRESIDENT: We know him too; he is a traitor.
VERA: A traitor! Three days ago he could have betrayed every man of
you here, and the gibbet would have been your doom. He gave you all your
lives once. Give him a little time – a week, a month, a few days; but now! O
God, not now!
CONSPIRATORS (brandishing daggers): To-night! To-night! To-night!
VERA: Peace, you gorged adders! Peace!
MICHAEL: What, are we not here to annihilate? Shall we not keep our
oath?
VERA: Your oath! Your oath! Greedy that you are of gain, every man’s
hand lusting for his neighbour’s pelf, every heart set on pillage and rapine;
who, of ye all, if the crown were set on his head, would give an empire up
for the mob to scramble for? The people are not yet fit for a republic in
Russia.
PRESIDENT: Every nation is fit for a republic.
MICHAEL: The man is a tyrant.
VERA: A tyrant! Hath he not dismissed his evil counsellors. That ill-
omened raven of his father’s life hath had his wings clipped and his claws
pared, and comes to us croaking for revenge. Oh, have mercy on him! Give
him a week to live!
PRESIDENT: Vera, pleading for a king!
VERA (proudly): I plead not for a king, but for a brother.
MICHAEL: For a traitor to his oath, a coward who should have flung the
purple back to the fools that gave it him. No, Vera, no. The brood of men is
not yet dead, nor the dull earth grown sick of child-bearing. No crowned
man in Russia shall pollute God’s air by living.
PRESIDENT: You bade us try you once. We have tried you, and you are
found wanting.
MICHAEL: Vera, I am not blind; I know your secret. You love this boy,
this young prince with his pretty face, his curled hair, his soft white hands.
Fool that you are, dupe of a lying tongue, do you know what he would have
done to you, this boy you think loved you? He would have made you his
mistress, used your body at his pleasure, thrown you away when he was
wearied of you; you, the priestess of liberty, the flame of revolution, the
torch of democracy.
VERA: What he would have done to me matters little. To the people, at
least, he will be true. He loves the people, at least, he loves liberty.
PRESIDENT: So, he would play the citizen-king, would he, while we
starve? Would flatter us with sweet speeches, would cheat us with promises
like his father, would lie to us as his whole race have lied.
MICHAEL: And you whose very name made every despot tremble for
his life, you, Vera Sabouroff, you would betray liberty for a lover and the
people for a paramour!
CONSPIRATORS: Traitress! Draw the lots; draw the lots!
VERA: In thy throat thou liest, Michael! I love him not. He loves me
not.
MICHAEL: You love him not? Shall he not die then?
VERA (with an effort, clenching her hands): Ay, it is right that he
should die. He hath broken his oath. There should be no crowned man in
Europe. Have I not sworn it? To be strong, our new republic should be
drunk with the blood of kings. He hath broken his oath. As the father died
so let the son die too. Yet not to-night, not to-night. Russia, that hath borne
her centuries of wrong, can wait a week for liberty. Give him a week.
PRESIDENT: We will have none of you! Begone from us to this boy you
love.
MICHAEL: Though I find him in your arms I shall kill him.
CONSPIRATORS: To-night! To-night! To-night!
MICHAEL (holding up his hand): A moment! I have something to say.
(Approaches VERA; speaks very slowly.) Vera Sabouroff, have you forgotten
your brother? (Pauses to see effect; VERA starts.) Have you forgotten that
young face, pale with famine; those young limbs twisted with torture; the
iron chains they made him walk in? What week of liberty did they give
him? What pity did they show him for a day? (VERA falls in a chair.) Oh!
You could talk glibly enough then of vengeance, glibly enough of liberty.
When you said you would come to Moscow, your old father caught you by
the knees and begged you not to leave him to die childless and alone. I
seem to hear his cries still ringing in my ears, but you were as deaf to him
as the rocks on the roadside. You left your father that night, and three weeks
after he died of a broken heart. You wrote to me to follow you here. I did
so; first because I loved you; but you soon cured me of that; whatever
gentle feeling, whatever pity, whatever love, whatever humanity, was in my
heart you withered up and destroyed, as the canker worm eats the corn. You
bade me cast out love from my breast as a vile thing, you turned my hand to
iron, and my heart to stone; you told me to live for freedom and revenge. I
have done so. But you, what have you done?
VERA: Let the lots be drawn! (CONSPIRATORS applaud.)
PRINCE PAUL (aside): Ah, the Grand Duke will come to the throne
sooner than he expected. He is sure to make a good king under my
guidance. He is so cruel to animals, and never keeps his word.
MICHAEL: Now you are yourself at last, Vera.
VERA (standing motionless in the middle): The lots, I say, the lots! I am
no woman now. My blood seems turned to gall; my heart is as cold as steel
is; my hand shall be more deadly. From the desert and the tomb the voice of
my prisoned brother cries aloud, and bids me strike one blow for liberty.
The lots, I say, the lots!
PRESIDENT: Are ready. Michael, you have the right to draw first: you
are a regicide.
VERA: O God, into my hands! Into my hands! (They draw the lots from
a bowl surmounted by a skull.)
PRESIDENT: Open your lots.
VERA (opening her lot): The lot is mine! See, the bloody sign upon it!
Dmitri, my brother, you shall have your revenge now.
PRESIDENT: Vera Sabouroff, you are chosen to be a regicide. God has
been good to you. The dagger or the poison? (Offers her dagger and vial.)
VERA: I can trust my hand better with the dagger; it never fails. (Takes
dagger.) I shall stab him to the heart, as he has stabbed me. Traitor, to leave
us for a ribbon, a gaud, a bauble, to lie to me every day he came here, to
forget us in an hour. Michael was right, he loved me not, nor the people
either. Methinks that if I was a mother and bore a man-child, I would poison
my breast against him, lest he might grow to a traitor or to a king. (PPRINCE
PAUL whispers to the PRESIDENT.)
PRESIDENT: Ay, Prince Paul, that is the best way. Vera, the Czar sleeps
to-night in his own room in the north wing of the palace. Here is a key of
the private door in the street. The password of the guards will be given to
you. His own servants will be drugged. You will find him alone.
VERA: It is well. I shall not fail.
PRESIDENT: We will wait outside in the Place Saint Isaac, under the
window. As the clock strikes twelve from the tower of St. Nicholas you will
give us the sign that the dog is dead.
VERA: And what shall the sign be?
PRESIDENT: You are to throw us out the bloody dagger.
MICHAEL: Dripping with the traitor’s life.
PRESIDENT: Else we shall know that you have been seized, and we will
burst our way in, drag you from his guards.
MICHAEL: And kill him in the midst of them.
PRESIDENT: Michael, you will lead us?
MICHAEL: Ay, I shall lead you. See that your hand fails you not, Vera
Sabouroff.
VERA: Fool, is it so hard a thing to kill one’s enemy?
PRINCE PAUL (aside): This is the ninth conspiracy I have been in in
Russia. They always end in a voyage en Siberie for my friends and a new
decoration for myself.
MICHAEL: It is your last conspiracy, Prince.
PRESIDENT: At twelve o’clock, the bloody dagger.
VERA: Ay, red with the blood of that false heart. I shall not forget it.
(Standing in middle of stage.) To strangle whatever nature is in me, neither
to love nor to be loved, neither to pity nor to be pitied. Ay! It is an oath, an
oath. Methinks the spirit of Charlotte Corday has entered my soul now. I
shall carve my name on the world, and be ranked among the great heroines.
Ay! The spirit of Charlotte Corday beats in each petty vein, and nerves my
woman’s hand to strike, as I have nerved my woman’s heart to hate. Though
he laugh in his dreams I shall not falter. Though he sleep peacefully I shall
not miss my blow. Be glad, my brother, in your stifled cell; be glad and
laugh to-night. To-night this new-fledged Czar shall post with bloody feet to
hell, and greet his father there! This Czar! O traitor, liar, false to his oath,
false to me! To play the patriot among us, and now to wear a crown; to sell
us, like Judas, for thirty silver pieces, to betray us with a kiss! (With more
passion.) O Liberty, O mighty mother of eternal time, thy robe is purple
with the blood of those who have died for thee! Thy throne is the Calvary of
the people, thy crown the crown of thorns. O crucified mother, the despot
has driven a nail through thy right hand, and the tyrant through thy left! Thy
feet are pierced with their iron. When thou wert athirst thou calledst on the
priests for water, and they gave thee bitter drink. They thrust a sword into
thy side. They mocked thee in thine agony of age on age. Here, on thy altar,
O Liberty, do I dedicate myself to thy service; do with me as thou wilt!
(Brandishing the dagger.) The end has come now, and by thy sacred
wounds, O crucified mother, O Liberty, I swear that Russia shall be saved!
ACT DROP
ACT FOUR
SCENE: Antechamber of the Czar’s private room. Large windows at the
back, with drawn curtains over it.
Present: PRINCE PETROVITCH, BARON RAFF, MARQUIS DE
POIVRARD, COUNT ROUVALOFF.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: He is beginning well, this young Czar.
BARON RAFF (shrugs his shoulders): All young Czars do begin well.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: And end badly.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: Well, I have no right to complain. He has done
me one good service, at any rate.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Cancelled your appointment to Archangel, I
suppose?
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: Yes; my head wouldn’t have been safe there
for an hour.
Enter GENERAL KOTEMKIN.
BARON RAFF: Ah! General, any more news of our romantic young
Emperor?
GENERAL KOTEMKIN: You are quite right to call him romantic, Baron; a
week ago I found him amusing himself in a garret with a company of
strolling players; to-day his whim is all the convicts in Siberia are to
be
recalled, and the political prisoners, as he calls them, amnestied.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Political prisoners! Why, half of them are no
better than common murderers!
COUNT ROUVALOFF: And the other half much worse?
BARON RAFF: Oh, you wrong them, surely, Count. Wholesale trade has
always been more respectable than retail.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: But he is really too romantic. He objected yes-
terday to my having the monopoly of the salt tax. He said the people had
a right to have cheap salt.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: Oh, that’s nothing; but he actually disapproved
of a State banquet every night because there is a famine in the Southern
provinces. (The young CZAR enters unobserved, and overhears the rest.)
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Quelle bêtise! The more starvation there is among
the people the better. It teaches them self-denial, an excellent virtue, Baron.
BARON RAFF: I have often heard so.
GENERAL KOTEMKIN: He talked of a Parliament, too, in Russia, and
said the people should have deputies to represent them.
BARON RAFF: As if there was not enough brawling in the streets al-
ready, but we must give the people a room to do it in. But, Messieurs, the
worst is yet to come. He threatens a complete reform of the public service
on the ground that the people are too heavily taxed.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: He can’t be serious there. What is the use of
the people except for us to get money out of? But talking of the taxes, my
dear Baron you must really let me have forty thousand roubles to-morrow;
my wife says she must have a new diamond bracelet.
COUNT ROUVALOFF (aside to BARON RAFF): Ah, to match the one
Prince Paul gave her last week, I suppose.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: I must have sixty thousand roubles at once,
Baron. My son is overwhelmed with debts of honour which he can’t pay.
BARON RAFF: What an excellent son to imitate his father so carefully!
GENERAL KOTEMKIN: You are always getting money. I never get a
single kopeck I have not got a right to. It’s unbearable; it’s ridiculous! My
nephew is going to be married. I must get his dowry for him.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: My dear General, your nephew must be a perfect
Turk. He seems to get married three times a week regularly.
GENERAL KOTEMKIN: Well, he wants a dowry to console him.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: I am sick of town. I want a house in the country.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: I am sick of the country. I want a house in
town.
BARON RAFF: Gentlemen, I am extremely sorry for you. It is out of the
question.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: But my son, Baron?
GENERAL KOTEMKIN: But my nephew?
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: But my house in town?
COUNT ROUVALOFF: But my house in the country?
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: But my wife’s diamond bracelet?
BARON RAFF: Gentlemen, impossible! The old regime in Russia is
dead; the funeral begins to-day.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: Then I shall wait for the resurrection.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Yes; but, en attendant, what are we to do?
BARON RAFF: What have we always done in Russia when a Czar sug-
gests reform? Nothing. You forget we are diplomatists. Men of thought
should have nothing to do with action. Reforms in Russia are very tragic,
but they always end in a farce.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: I wish Prince Paul were here. By the by, I think
this boy is rather ungrateful to him. If that clever old Prince had not
proclaimed him Emperor at once without giving him time to think about it,
he would have given up his crown, I believe, to the first cobbler he met in
the street.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: But do you think, Baron, that Prince Paul is really
going?
BARON RAFF: He is exiled.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Yes; but is he going?
BARON RAFF: I am sure of it; at least he told me he had sent two
telegrams already to Paris about his dinner.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: Ah! That settles the matter.
CZAR (coming forward): Prince Paul had better send a third telegram
and order (counting them) six extra places.
BARON RAFF: The devil!
CZAR: No, Baron, the Czar. Traitors! There would be no bad kings in
the world if there were no bad ministers like you. It is men such as you are
who wreck mighty empires on the rock of their own greatness. Our mother,
Russia, hath no need of such unnatural sons. You can make no atonement
now; it is too late for that. The grave cannot give back your dead, nor the
gibbet your martyrs, but I shall be more merciful to you. I give you your
lives! That is the curse I would lay on you. But if there is a man of you
found in Moscow by tomorrow night your heads will be off your shoulders.
BARON RAFF: You remind us wonderfully, Sire, of your Imperial father.
CZAR: I banish you all from Russia. Your estates are confiscated to the
people. You may carry your titles with you. Reforms in Russia, Baron,
always end in a farce. You will have a good opportunity, Prince Petrovitch,
of practising self-denial, that excellent virtue! That excellent virtue! So,
Baron, you think a Parliament in Russia would be merely a place for
brawling. Well, I will see that the reports of each session are sent to you
regularly.
BARON RAFF: Sire, you are adding another horror to exile.
CZAR: But you will have such time for literature now. You forget you
are diplomatists. Men of thought should have nothing to do with action.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Sire, we did but jest.
CZAR: Then I banish you for your bad jokes. Bon voyage Messieurs. If
you value your lives you will catch the first train for Paris. (Exeunt
Ministers.) Russia is well rid of such men as these. They are the jackals
that follow in the lion’s track. They have no courage themselves except
to pillage and rob. But for these men and for Prince Paul my father would
have been a good king, would not have died so horribly as he did die. How
strange it is, the most real parts of one’s life always seem to be a dream!
The council, the fearful law which was to kill the people, the arrest, the cry
in the court-yard, the pistol-shot, my father’s bloody hands, and then the
crown! One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all
life comes crowding into one single hour. I had no time to think. Before my
father’s hideous shriek of death had died in my ears I found this crown on
my head, the purple robe around me, and heard myself called a king. I
would have given it up all then; it seemed nothing to me then; but now, can
I give it up now? Well, Colonel, well? (Enter COLONEL OF THE GUARD.)
COLONEL: What password does your Imperial Majesty desire should be
given to-night?
CZAR: Password?
COLONEL: For the cordon of guards, Sire, on night duty around the
palace.
CZAR: You can dismiss them. I have no need of them. (Exit COLONEL).
(Goes to the crown lying on the table.) What subtle potency lies hidden in
this gaudy bauble, the crown, that makes one feel like a god when one
wears it? To hold in one’s hand this little fiery-coloured world, to reach out
one’s arm to earth’s uttermost limit, to girdle the seas with one’s galley;
to
make the land a highway for one’s hosts; this is to wear a crown! To wear a
crown! The meanest serf in Russia who is loved is better crowned than I.
How love outweighs the balance! How poor appears the widest empire of
this golden world when matched with love! Pent up in this palace, with
spies dogging every step, I have heard nothing of her; I have not seen her
once since that fearful hour, three days ago, when I found myself suddenly
the Czar of this wide waste, Russia. Oh, could I see her for a moment; tell
her now the secret of my life I have never dared to utter before; tell her why
I wear this crown, when I have sworn eternal war against all crowned men!
There was a meeting to-night. I received my summons by an unknown
hand; but how could I go? I, who have broken my oath! Who have broken
my oath!
Enter PAGE.
PAGE: It is after eleven, Sire. Shall I take the first watch in your room
to-night?
CZAR: Why should you watch me, boy? The stars are my best sentinels.
PAGE: It was your Imperial father’s wish, Sire, never to be left alone
while he slept.
CZAR: My father was troubled with bad dreams. Go, get to your bed,
boy; it is nigh on midnight, and these late hours will spoil those red cheeks.
(PAGE tries to kiss his hand.) Nay, nay; we have played together too often
for that. Oh, to breathe the same air as her, and not to see her! The light
seems to have gone from my life, the sun vanished from my day.
PAGE: Sire – Alexis – let me stay with you to-night! There is some
danger over you; I feel there is.
CZAR: What should I fear? I have banished all my enemies from Russia.
Set the brazier here, by me; it is very cold, and I would sit by it for
a
time. Go, boy, go; I have much to think about to-night. (Goes to back of
stage, draws aside a curtain. View of Moscow by moonlight.) The snow has
fallen heavily since sunset. How white and cold my city looks under this
pale moon! And yet what hot and fiery hearts beat in this icy Russia, for all
its frost and snow. Oh, to see her for a moment; to tell her all; to tell her
why I am a king! But she does not doubt me; she said she would trust in
me. Though I have broken my oath, she will have trust. It is very cold.
Where is my cloak? I shall sleep for an hour. Then I have ordered my
sledge, and, though I die for it, I shall see Vera to-night. Did I not bid thee
go, boy? What! Must I play the tyrant so soon? Go, go! I cannot live
without seeing her. My horses will be here in an hour; one hour between me
and love! How heavy this charcoal fire smells. (Exit the PAGE. Lies down on
a couch beside brazier.)
Enter VERA, in a black cloak.
VERA: Asleep! God, thou art good! Who shall deliver him from my
hands now? This is he! The democrat who would make himself a king, the
republican who hath worn a crown, the traitor who hath lied to us. Michael
was right. He loved not the people. He loved me not. (Bends over him.) Oh,
why should such deadly poison lie in such sweet lips? Was there not gold
enough in his hair before, but he should tarnish it with this crown? But my
day has come now; the day of the people, of liberty, has come! Your day,
my brother, has come! Though I have strangled whatever nature is in me, I
did not think it had been so easy to kill. One blow and it is over, and I can
wash my hands in water afterwards, I can wash my hands afterwards.
Come, I shall save Russia. I have sworn it. (Raises the dagger to strike.)
CZAR (starting up, seizes her by both hands): Vera, you here! My
dream was no dream at all. Why have you left me three days alone, when
I
most needed you? O God, you think I am a traitor, a liar, a king? I am, for
love of you. Vera, it was for you I broke my oath and wear my father’s
crown. I would lay at your feet this mighty Russia, which you and I have
loved so well; would give you this earth as your footstool; set this crown on
your head. The people will love us. We will rule them by love, as a father
rules his children. There shall be liberty in Russia for every man to think as
his heart bids him; liberty for men to speak as they think. I have banished
the wolves that preyed on us; I have brought back your brother from
Siberia; I have opened the blackened jaws of the mine. The courier is
already on his way; within a week Dmitri and all those with him will be
back in their own land. The people shall be free – are free now. When they
gave me this crown first, I would have flung it back to them, had it not been
for you, Vera. O God! It is men’s custom in Russia to bring gifts to those
they love. I said, I will bring to the woman I love a people, an empire, a
world! Vera, it is for you, for you alone, I kept this crown; for you alone I
am a king. Oh, I have loved you better than my oath! Why will you not
speak to me? You love me not! You love me not! You have come to warn
me of some plot against my life. What is life worth to me without you?
(CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)
VERA: Oh, lost! Lost! Lost!
CZAR: Nay, you are safe here. It wants five hours still of dawn. To-
morrow, I will lead you forth to the whole people –
VERA: To-morrow –
CZAR: Will crown you with my own hands as Empress in that great
cathedral which my fathers built.
VERA (loosens her hand violently from him, and starts up): I am a
Nihilist! I cannot wear a crown!
CZAR (falls at her feet): I am no king now. I am only a boy who has love-
d you better than his honour, better than his oath. For love of the people
I would have been a patriot. For love of you I have been a traitor. Let
us
go forth together, we will live amongst the common people. I am no king.
I will toil for you like the peasant or the serf. Oh, love me a little too!
(CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)
VERA (clutching dagger): To strangle whatever nature is in me, neither
to love nor to be loved, neither to pity nor – oh, I am a woman! God help
me, I am a woman! O Alexis! I too have broken my oath; I am a traitor. I
love. Oh, do not speak, do not speak – (kisses his lips) – the first, the
last time. (He clasps her in his arms; they sit on the couch together.)
CZAR: I could die now.
VERA: What does death do in thy lips? Thy life, thy love are enemies
of death. Speak not of death. Not yet, not yet.
CZAR: I know not why death came into my heart. Perchance the cup of
life is filled too full of pleasure to endure. This is our wedding night.
VERA: Our wedding night!
CZAR: And if death came himself, methinks that I could kiss his pallid
mouth, and such sweet poison from it.
VERA: Our wedding night! Nay, nay. Death should not sit at the feast.
There is no such thing as death.
CZAR: There shall not be for us.
(CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)
VERA: What is that? Did you not hear something?
CZAR: Only your voice, that fowler’s note which lures my heart away
like a poor bird upon the limed twig.
VERA: Methought that someone laughed.
CZAR: It was but the wind and rain; the night is full of storm.
(CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)
VERA: It should be so, indeed. Oh, where are your guards? Where are
your guards?
CZAR: Where should they be but at home? I shall not live pent round
by sword and steel. The love of a people is a king’s best bodyguard.
VERA: The love of a people!
CZAR: Sweet, you are safe here. Nothing can harm you here. O love, I
knew you trusted me! You said you would have trust.
VERA: I have had trust. O love, the past seems but some dull, grey
dream from which our souls have wakened. This is life at last.
CZAR: Ay, life at last.
VERA: Our wedding night! Oh, let me drink my fill of love to-night!
Nay, sweet, not yet, not yet. How still it is, and yet methinks the air is full
of music. It is some nightingale who, wearying of the south, has come to
sing in this bleak north to lovers such as we. It is the nightingale. Dost thou
not hear it?
CZAR: O sweet, mine ears are clogged to all sweet sounds save thine
own voice, and mine eyes blinded to all sights but thee, else had I heard that
nightingale, and seen the golden-vestured morning sun itself steal from its
sombre east before its time, for jealousy that thou art twice as fair.
VERA: Yet would that thou hadst heard the nightingale. Methinks that
bird will never sing again.
CZAR: It is no nightingale. ’Tis love himself singing for very ecstasy of
joy that thou art changed into his votaress. (Clock begins striking twelve.)
Oh, listen, sweet, it is the lovers’ hour. Come, let us stand without, and hear
the midnight answered from tower to tower over the wide white town. Our
wedding night! What is that? What is that? (Loud murmurs of CONSPIRATORS
in the street.)
VERA (breaks from him and rushes across the stage): The wedding
guests are here already! Ay! You shall have your sign! (Stabs herself.) You
shall have your sign! (Rushes to the window.)
CZAR (intercepts her by rushing between her and window, and snatches
dagger out of her hand): Vera!
VERA (clinging to him): Give me back the dagger! Give me back the
dagger! There are men in the street who seek your life! Your guards
have betrayed you! This bloody dagger is the signal that you are dead.
(CONSPIRATORS begin to shout below in the street.) Oh, there is not a
moment to be lost! Throw it out! Throw it out! Nothing can save me now;
this dagger is poisoned! I feel death already in my heart. There was no other
way but this.
CZAR (holding dagger out of her reach): Death is in my heart too; we
shall die together!
VERA: Oh, love! Love! Love! Be merciful to me! The wolves are hot
upon you! – you must live for liberty, for Russia, for me! Oh, you do not
love me! You offered me an empire once! Give me this dagger, now! Oh,
you are cruel! My life for yours! What does it matter? (Loud shout in the
street, ‘VERA! VERA! To the rescue! To the rescue!’)
CZAR: The bitterness of death is past for me.
VERA: Oh, they are breaking in below! See! The bloody man behind
you! (CZAR turns round for an instant.) Ah! (VERA snatches dagger and
flings it out of window.)
CONSPIRATORS (below): Long live the people!
CZAR: What have you done?
VERA: I have saved Russia! (Dies).
TABLEAU
CURTAIN