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Vera: or, The Nihilists

Mich. 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.

Mich. 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!

Mich. (to President). Remember to-morrow will be too late.

Pres. Brothers, it is full time. Which of us is absent?

Consps. Alexis! Alexis!

Pres. Michael, read Rule 7.

Mich. "When any brother shall have disobeyed a summons to be present, the President shall enquire if there is anything alleged against him."

Pres. Is there anything against our brother Alexis?

Consps. He wears a crown! He wears a crown!

Pres. Michael, read Article 7 of the Code of Revolution.

Mich. "Between the Nihilists and all men who wear crowns above their fellows, there is war to the death."

Pres. Brothers, what say you? Is Alexis, the Czar, guilty or not?

Omnes. He is guilty!

Pres. What shall the penalty be?

Omnes. Death!

Pres. 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.

Prof. Marfa. My forte is more in writing pamphlets than in taking shots. Still a regicide has always a place in history.

Mich. 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.

Pres. Brothers, are you ready?

Vera (starting up). Not yet! Not yet! I have a word to say.

Mich. (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.

Pres. 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? —

Mich. To kill all tyrants is our mission!

Vera. He is no tyrant. I know him well! He loves the people.

Pres. 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 not now! – O God, not now!

Consps. (brandishing daggers). To-night! to-night! to-night!

Vera. Peace, you gorged adders; peace!

Mich. 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.

Pres. Every nation is fit for a Republic.

Mich. 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!

Pres. Vera pleading for a king!

Vera (proudly). I plead not for a king, but for a brother.

Mich. For a traitor to his oath, for a coward who should have flung the purple back to the fools that gave it to him. No, Vera, no. The brood of men is not dead yet, nor the dull earth grown sick of child-bearing. No crowned man in Russia shall pollute God's air by living.

Pres. You bade us try you once; we have tried you, and you are found wanting.

Mich. 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.

Pres. 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.

Mich. 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!

Consps.Traitress! Draw the lots; draw the lots!

Vera. In thy throat thou liest, Michael! I love him not. He loves me not.

Mich. 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.

Pres. We will have none of you! Begone from us to this boy you love.

Mich. Though I find him in your arms I shall kill him.

Consps. To-night! To-night! To-night!

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? (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. 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. 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. (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. 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. (Prince Paul whispers to the President.)

Pres. 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 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. (Standing in the middle of the 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 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 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 amongst 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 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. 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 to-morrow? 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 to-morrow 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. (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 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? (Enter Colonel of the Guard.)