I seem to hear his cries still ringing in my ears, but you were as deaf to him as the rocks on the roadside. 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 love, whatever humanity, was in my heart you withered up and destroyed, as the canker worm eats the corn. 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 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.
MICHAEL:
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!
PRESIDENT:
Are 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.)]
PRESIDENT:
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.
PRESIDENT:
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. [(Takes 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 against him, lest he might grow to a traitor or to a king. [(PRINCE PAUL whispers to the PRESIDENT.)]
PRESIDENT:
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 a key of the private door in the street. The password 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.
PRESIDENT:
We will wait outside in the Place Saint 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?
PRESIDENT:
You are to throw us out the bloody dagger.
MICHAEL:
Dripping with the traitor's life.
PRESIDENT:
Else we shall know that you have been seized, and we will burst our way in, drag you from his guards.
MICHAEL:
And kill him in the midst of them.
PRESIDENT:
Michael, you will lead us?
MICHAEL:
Ay, I shall lead you. See that your hand fails you not, Vera Sabouroff.
