“No.”
“But you are a—European? What are you, French? English? Russian? German?”
“No, no....”
Markof, in exasperation, struck the side of the bed with his fist.
“Well, who are you, then? And why the devil do I know your face so well? Have we ever met anywhere?”
The old man bent his head still lower and sat for a long time saying no word. At last he began to speak, as if hesitating:
“Yes, we have met, Markof, but you have never seen me. Probably you don’t remember, or you’ve forgotten, how once, during an epidemic of plague, your uncle hanged in one morning fifty-nine persons. I was within two paces of him that day, but he didn’t see me.”
“Yes ... that’s true ... fifty-nine ...” muttered Markof, feeling himself overwhelmed by an intolerable heat. “But they ... were ... rioters....”
“I saw your father’s cruel exploits at Sevastopol, and your work after the capture of Ismaila,” the old man went on in his hollow voice. “Before my eyes has been shed enough blood to drown the whole world. I was with Napoleon on the fields of Austerlitz, Friedland, Jena, and Borodina. I saw the mob applauding the executioner when he held up before them on the platform of the guillotine the bloody head of Louis XVI. I was present on the eve of St. Bartholomew, when the Catholics, with prayers on their lips, murdered the wives and children of the Huguenots. In the midst of a crowd of enraged fanatics I gazed whilst the holy fathers of the Inquisition burned heretics at the stake, flayed people alive for the glory of God, and poured white-hot lead into their mouths. I followed the hordes of Attila, Genghis Khan, and Solyman the Magnificent, whose paths were marked by mountains of human skulls. I was with the noisy Roman crowd in the circus when they sewed Christians up in the skins of wild animals and hunted them with dogs, when they fed the beasts with the bodies of captive slaves ... I have seen the wild and bloody orgies of Nero, and heard the wailing of the Jews at the ruined walls of Jerusalem....”
“You’re—only my dream ... go away ... you’re—only a figure in my delirium. Go away from me!” Markof’s parched lips uttered the words with difficulty.