Then it was that Zeneida, drawing a hyacinth from out her bouquet, aimed it at the raging man's forehead. And the seasoned man, who had never known what it was to shrink from a bullet, was so confused by this playful projectile that, letting fall the dagger from his hand, he put his hand to his brow.
A quiet smile passed over the faces of those present, and before the Caucasian could recover his dagger, Zeneida was beside him, had picked it up from the ground, restored it to him, and was stroking his beard with caressing action.
"Dear friend, be courteous. Our guest Krizsanowski, the delegate of the Polish 'Kosynyery,' wishes to speak. Let us listen to him, and put this shaving apparatus away!"
Jakuskin calmed down. This delicate woman had more than once stepped in to spread oil on the waves of the most impassioned debates when, dagger or pistol in hand, the disputants seemed bent on doing one another a violence.
And now Krizsanowski, hat in hand, began:
"Gentlemen, I wish to bid farewell to you. I will not enter upon the subject under discussion with you, nor have I any desire to await the resolution arrived at. I will not listen to the question of murdering the Czar, still less will I submit to be bound by your decisions. There is not one among you who has endured such wrongs; not one among you who carries such grief in his heart as I. What did your sovereign, as its king, do with your country? He freed it from foreign conquest, made it great and powerful, added new territory to it. What did he do with your people? He gave them prosperity and knowledge, and erected a school in every one of your villages. What is your ruler? A noble mind in a noble body—'the handsomest man in all Europe,' as Napoleon said of him—and with heart as good as he looks. And the most remarkable thing about him is that, in every fault, in every feeling, he is a Russian to the backbone. His only crime in your eyes is that he is the Czar. And to you that is crime enough to make him die. And what is my ruler, the Czar's brother, Constantine? A monster, in whose very face nature has curiously wedded the hideous with the ridiculous; and his hideous features are a true mirror of the hideous promptings of his soul. He is what he seems to be—cruel and contemptible. In the whole extent of my poor, unhappy nation there is not one feeling heart which he has not trampled upon; no article of value, no relic, no Church money, he has not appropriated to himself. But a Pole would see in that no cause to treacherously murder his king. A Pole's hand is accustomed to the sword; it knows not the use of a dagger. Let me take leave of you; I would go back to my people. I came hither in the belief that I should find here brave men ready for battle; who, at the appointed hour, would range themselves in fighting order, and declare war upon their oppressors as do we, who fight in open battle—as do we who, in open and honorable warfare, settle on whose side is the right. Such I thought to find here. On my journey hither, on the way from Warsaw to the Niemen, my predecessor, glorious Valerian Lukasinski, was being conveyed before me—he whom treachery had given over to the authorities. He was my relative, friend, and leader—trebly dear to me. He had been subjected to every species of physical and mental torture in order to make him reveal the aims of and participators in the conspiracy. They had not succeeded in drawing a word out of him. Constantine himself took the knout from the executioner's hands, and taught him how to use the agonizing implement. When Lukasinski was wellnigh flayed to death, no sign of humanity left in him, only one mass of bleeding flesh and bones and gaping wounds, the viceroy had him laid bound on a gun-carriage, and had this still breathing, bleeding mass dragged to his captivity through the rigor of mid-winter. I followed his track guided by the drops of blood which fell on the snow. Those frozen drops I gathered up one by one on the way, and placed them in a reliquary. Heaven had compassion on the sufferer; he died on the road. They made a hole in the ice of the river Niemen, and threw the body in; the current carried it off to the sea. I know that I shall follow him, and that my end will be like his. Still that knowledge neither moves me from fear or revengeful feeling to lie in ambush and murderously strike my ruler in the back at any time, when he may be sleeping, or kneeling in prayer! Our God was never a God of murder. The dagger which struck down Cæsar but opened the door to Caligula and Heliogabalus. While William Tell told Gessler to his face, 'With this arrow I will kill you. Defend yourself as best you can!' I do likewise. When the time comes I will declare war upon my enemies, and if God is with me, I shall destroy them; but as long as I do not feel myself strong enough to engage in open warfare, no oppression, no cruelty, and no fantastic ravings shall lead me, by any untimely revolt, to draw the cord tighter, which I fain would loose. Your plans are untimely, unripe, without sufficient basis; they destroy, but do not build up again. I know them, and will not unite our cause to yours. Let me go."
Pestel, seizing the Pole by the hand, held him back.
"You cannot go yet; you have learned nothing of our intentions. What you have heard hitherto was only a weak, academical discussion. The words this madman said were only the ravings of his mad passion. I, too, do not inscribe upon my shield, 'Strew their ashes to the winds'; not because my soul would shrink from it, but because such a dictum would scatter our several societies like shots among a flock of birds. The people themselves would turn against us. To the masses the prayer for Czar and Grand Dukes is a necessity, and were the priest ever to leave it out, they would hang him for a heretic. If I were to ask my soldiers, 'Do you want a republic?' they would straightway answer, 'Yes, if the Czar commands.' We must begin at the beginning; we must not startle any one. The first step is the difficulty; the others will follow of themselves. Thus let us go back to the point where Jakuskin interrupted us. And you, Krizsanowski, resume your seat. The question is the removal of the Czar and Grand Dukes—their removal only. Let them go to America, by all means. There Russia has noble possessions; there they can reign. But to this end you Poles must lend us a helping hand. For what use would it be to us to ship off the three brothers, when the fourth, Constantine, who by fundamental law is next after Alexander in succession to the throne, remains at large in Warsaw?"
"Let us clearly understand one another, Pestel," replied Krizsanowski. "We Poles have ever been, since our first existence as a nation, ready to shed our blood for the benefit of others. Tell me, what is to become of us if we succeed in freeing ourselves from the Romanoffs?"
"Form Poland into a republic."