Mich. (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? ( I seem to hear his cries still ringing in my ears, but you were as deaf to him as the rocks on the roadside; as chill and cold as the snow on the hill. 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 humanity, was in my heart you withered up and destroyed, as the canker worm eats the corn, and the plague kills the child. 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 for revenge. I have done so; but you, what have you done?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 childless and alone.
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.
Mich. 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!
Pres. Are you 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.)
Pres. 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.
Pres. 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. (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 to him, lest he might grow to a traitor or to a king. (Take 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. Prince Paul whispers to the President.)
Pres. Ay, Prince Paul, that is the best way. Vera, the Czar sleeps tonight in his own room in the north wing of the palace. Here is the key of the private door in the street. The passwords 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.
Pres. We will wait outside in the Place St. 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?
Pres. You are to throw us out the bloody dagger.
Mich. Dripping with the traitor’s life.
Pres. Else we shall know that you have been seized, and we will burst our way in, drag you from his guards.
Mich. And kill him in the midst of them.
Pres. Michael, you will head us?
Mich. Ay, I shall head you. See that your hand fails 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.
Mich. It is your last conspiracy, Prince.
Pres. At twelve o’clock, the bloody dagger.
Vera. Ay, red with the blood of that false heart. I shall not forget it. (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 laughs 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 tonight. Tonight 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 amongst us, and now to wear a crown; to sell us, like Judas, for thirty silver pieces, to betray us with a kiss! (Standing in the middle of the stage.) 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 dagger.) The end has come now, and by thy sacred wounds, O crucified mother, O Liberty, I swear that Russia shall be saved!
CURTAIN.
End Of Act III.
ACT IV.
Scene. — Antechamber of the Czar’s private room. Large window at the back, with drawn curtains over it.
Present. — Prince Petrovitch, Baron Raff, Marquis de Poivrard, Count Rouvaloff.
Prince Petro. He is beginning well, this young Czar.
Baron Raff (shrugs his shoulders). All young Czars do begin well.
Count R. And end badly.
Marq. de Poiv. Well, I have no right to complain. He has done me one good service, at any rate.
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.