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 (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 tonight, not tonight. Russia, that hath borne her centuries of wrong, can wait a week for liberty. Give him a week.with an effort, clenching her hands). Ay, it is right that he should die. He hath broken his oath.
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. Tonight! Tonight! Tonight!
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,
