I bent to Feodosova to kiss her hand, but she whispered, “The czar’s hand, the czar’s hand.”
Then I stretched myself toward the czar and kissed his hand.
“My faith,” I whispered equally softly, “and my royal lord I may not desert.”
The czar’s cheek still twitched, and the dwarfs in their terror pulled forth the Zaporogean from his nook to make the czar laugh at his ridiculous figure. But then the czar’s arms began to move convulsively. His face grew gray and he trembled in one of his dreaded fits. He went toward the Zaporogean and struck him in the face with clenched fist so that the blood streamed from his nose and mouth, and with such a hoarse and altered voice that it could no longer be recognized he hissed: “I have seen through you, liar, from the moment you came into the room. You are a Zaporogean, a renegade, who have hidden yourself in Swedish clothes.—To the wheel with him, to the wheel!”
All, even the drunken men, began to tremble and feel toward the doors, and in his terror one of the Boyars whispered: “Bring forward the woman! Shove her forward! As soon as he gets to see pretty faces and woman’s limbs, he grows quiet.”
They seized her, her bodice was cut over the bosom, and, softly wailing, she was supported forward step by step to the czar.
It grew black around me, and I staggered backward out of the room. I remained standing on the street under the stars and I heard the clamor grow muffled and the dwarfs began to sing.
Then I clenched my hands and remembered a promise on the field of battle to pray for a poor sinner’s soul. But the more fervently I spoke with my God, the further went my thoughts, and my invocation became a prayer for a yet greater sinner who with his last faithful followers wandered about on the desolate steppes.
The surgeon ceased with an anxious glance toward the coffin, and the lady-in-waiting followed him forward to the catafalque.
“Amen!” said she, and the two again spread the covering over the wax-pale Queen Dowager, Charles’ mother.