Prince Petro. Cancelled your appointment to Archangel, I suppose?
Marq. de Poiv. 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 Emperor?
Gen. Kotemk. 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 political prisoners, as he calls them, amnestied.
Prince Petro. Political prisoners! Why, half of them are no better than common murderers!
Count R. And the other half much worse?
Baron Raff. Oh, you wrong them, surely, Count. Wholesale trade has always been more respectable than retail.
Count R. But he is really too romantic. He objected yesterday to my having the monopoly of the salt tax. He said the people had a right to have cheap salt.
Marq. de Poiv. 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 Petro. Quelle bétise! The more starvation there is among the people, the better. It teaches them self-denial, an excellent virtue, Baron, an excellent virtue.
Baron Raff. I have often heard so; I have often heard so.
Gen. Kotemk. 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 already, 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 in the public service on the ground that the people are too heavily taxed.
Marq. de Poiv. He can’t be serious there. What is the use of the people except to get money out of? But talking of taxes, my dear Baron, you must really let me have forty thousand roubles tomorrow? my wife says she must have a new diamond bracelet.
Count R. (aside to Baron Raff). Ah, to match the one Prince Paul gave her last week, I suppose.
Prince Petro. 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!
Gen. Kotemk. 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 Petro. My dear General, your nephew must be a perfect Turk. He seems to get married three times a week regularly.
Gen. Kot. Well, he wants a dowry to console him.
Count R. I am sick of town. I want a house in the country.
Marq. de Poiv. I am sick of the country. I want a house in town.
Baron Raff. Mes amis, I am extremely sorry for you. It is out of the question.
Prince Petro. But my son, Baron?
Gen. Kotemk. But my nephew?
Marq. de Poiv. But my house in town?
Count R. But my house in the country?
Marq. de Poiv. But my wife’s diamond bracelet?
Baron Raff. Gentlemen, impossible! The old regime in Russia is dead; the funeral begins to-day.
Count R. Then I shall wait for the resurrection.
Prince Petro. Yes, but, en attendant, what are we to do?
Baron Raff. What have we always done in Russia when a Czar suggests reforms? — 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 R. I wish Prince Paul were here. By the bye, 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 Petro. But do you think, Baron, that Prince Paul is really going?
Baron Raff. He is exiled.
Prince Petro. 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 R. Ah! that settles the matter.
Czar (coming forward). Prince Paul 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 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 Petro. 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. (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 courtyard, 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 a 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? (Exeunt Ministers.) Russia is well rid of such men as these. They are the jackals that follow in the lion’s track. Enter Colonel of the Guard.)
Colonel. What password does your Imperial Majesty desire should be given tonight?
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 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