PRINCE PETROVITCH:
But do you think, Baron, that Prince Paul is really going?
BARON RAFF:
He is exiled.
PRINCE PETROVITCH:
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 ROUVALOFF:
Ah! that settles the matter.
CZAR:
[(coming forward )] Prince Paul had 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 are 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 PETROVITCH:
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 court-yard, 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 one 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.)]
COLONEL:
What password does your Imperial Majesty desire should be given to-night?
CZAR:
Password?
COLONEL:
For the cordon of guards, Sire, on night duty around the palace.
CZAR:
You can dismiss them. I have no need of them. [(Exit COLONEL.