PRINCE PAUL:

If he lived with the people for a fortnight, their bad dinners would soon cure him of his democracy. Shall we begin, Sire?

CZAR:

At once. Read the proclamation. Gentlemen, be seated. Alexis, Alexis, I say, come and hear it! It will be good practice for you; you will be doing it yourself some day.

CZAREVITCH:

I have heard too much of it already. [(Takes his seat at the table. COUNT ROUVALOFF whispers to him.)]

CZAR:

What are you whispering about there, Count Rouvaloff?

COUNT ROUVALOFF:

I was giving his Royal Highness some good advice, your Majesty.

PRINCE PAUL:

Count Rouvaloff is the typical spendthrift, Sire; he is always giving away what he needs most. [(Lays papers before the CZAR.)] I think, Sire, you will approve of this:---`Love of the people,' `Father of his people,' `Martial law,' and the usual allusions to Providence in the last line. All it requires now is your Imperial Majesty's signature.

CZAREVITCH:

Sire!

PRINCE PAUL:

[(hurriedly)] I promise your Majesty to crush every Nihilist in Russia in six months if you sign this proclamation; every Nihilist in Russia.

CZAR:

Say that again! To crush every Nihilist in Russia; to crush this woman, their leader, who makes war upon me in my own city. Prince Paul Maraloffski, I create you Maréchal of the whole Russian Empire to help you to carry out martial law. Give me the proclamation. I will sign it at once.

PRINCE PAUL:

[(points on paper)] Here, Sire.

CZAREVITCH:

[(starts up and puts his hands on the paper)] Stay! I tell you, stay! The priests have taken heaven from the people, and you would take the earth away too.

PRINCE PAUL:

[(hurriedly)] We have no time, Prince, now. This boy will ruin everything. The pen, Sire.

CZAREVITCH:

What! is it so small a thing to strangle a nation, to murder a kingdom, to wreck an empire? Who are we who dare lay this ban of terror on a people? Have we less vices than they have, that we bring them to the bar of judgment before us?

PRINCE PAUL:

What a Communist the Prince is! He would have an equal distribution of sin as well as of property.

CZAREVITCH:

Warmed by the same sun, nurtured by the same air, fashioned of flesh and blood like to our own, wherein are they different to us, save that they starve while we surfeit, that they toil while we idle, that they sicken while we poison, that they die while we---

CZAR:

How dare---?

CZAREVITCH:

I dare all for the people; but you would rob them of common rights of men.

CZAR:

The people have no rights.

CZAREVITCH:

Then they have great wrongs. Father, they have won your battles for you; from the pine forests of the Baltic to the

palms of India they have ridden on victory's mighty wings! Boy as I am in years, I have seen wave after wave of living men sweep up the heights of battle to their death; ay, and snatch perilous conquest from the scales of war when the bloody crescent seemed to shake above our eagles.

CZAR:

[(somewhat moved)] Those men are dead. What have I to do with them?

CZAREVITCH:

Nothing! The dead are safe; you cannot harm them now. They sleep their last long sleep.