“The country is saved! Hurrah! Death to the tyrant!”
These and other exclamations became mixed in an inextricable jumble, so excited were all the speakers. Sergius saw that some great news had arrived, and became as excited as the rest.
“Silence, some of you,” he cried, “until I know what has happened! You, Vassoffskoy, what is it?”
“We have been anticipated. The czar will never come to Moscow now! Our St. Petersburg contingent has achieved the great deed. The tyrant has been assassinated! Long live the people!
CHAPTER XV.
It was all quite true. The czar had been assassinated. Though he was not killed outright by the bomb which was thrown under his carriage, it was known that he was mortally injured, and could not live long. The messenger who brought the news to Sergius had started from St. Petersburg to Moscow as soon as the deed was done, being previously armed with a railway ticket and a passport, and was already on his way to the frontier, whither it was advisable for all other suspects to proceed at once, if they would escape the tremendous hue and cry which would doubtless be raised without delay.
In spite of the fact that I was the associate of conspirators, the news which elated them horrified me, and I was more than ever convinced that my rightful avocation lay among scenes of peace and domesticity. It was, therefore, all the more strange that the whole of my grown-up life so far should have been one of danger, turmoil and excitement.
Yet, as all things have their limit of prominence in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of life, even so would that fever of existence, which is variously termed “patriotism” and “treason,” cease to influence my daily being ere long. Such, at all events, was my hope, and I no longer doubted that Sergius would at once use his utmost endeavors to escape to England.
But, for a time, it was difficult to obtrude individual interests into the jumble of excited comment in which the ever-increasing number of fresh arrivals discussed the tragedy which had taken place at St. Petersburg, and its probable effects upon the members of the Society.