“It may be too soon to thank God,” said the prisoner.
“Is this the man who did it?” the Czar asked, advancing toward him. “Who are you?”
“My name is Glazoff.”
The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when a man who stood no more than three feet from him raised a white object high over his head and dashed it to the ground, between the Emperor and himself.
There was another explosion, still more violent and deafening than the first. The air was a turmoil of smoke, snow-dust and shreds of uniforms, concealing everything else from view. Sophia hurried away.
More than half a minute later, when the chaos had partly cleared away, the Czar was seen in a sitting posture on the snow-covered sidewalk, leaning against the railing, his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak gone. He was breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of his bared legs lacerated, the blood gushing from them over the snow. A heap of singed, smoking tatters nearby was all that had been left of his cloak.
With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders rushed forward. Among them was a man with a bomb under his coat like the two which had just exploded. He was one of the four men who had shifted their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief to her nose. Had the second bomb failed to do its bloody work, this Terrorist would have thrown his missile when the imperial carriage came by his corner. As he beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the suffering man.
At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the author of the first explosion, began to shower blows on him.
“Don’t,” he begged them, shielding his head and face. “I meant the good of the people.”
Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious figure of a civilian. Further away were several other prostrated men, in all sorts of uniforms.