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.
·24· 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.
·25· 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 among us.
michael
[Aside.] He will need be brave to-night.
[The sound of the sleigh bells is heard outside.]
voice
[Outside.] Per crucem ad lucem.
Answer of man on guard. Per sanguinem ad libertatem.
michael
Who is that?
·26· 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 call the Czar strikes now at our mother with a dagger deadlier than 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 in Russia.
omnes
Martial law! We are lost! We are lost!
alexis
Martial law! Impossible!
·27· 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.
·28· 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 tocsin of 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 insure the public safety—martial law. ·29· 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 kingdom 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 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, ·30· 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. And these are the things that keep us from democracy, that keep us from liberty. But now methinks the brood of men is dead and the dull earth grown sick of child-bearing, else would no crowned dog pollute God’s air by living.