And while he was speaking, Captain Stoyanovitch advanced to my bedside, and leaning over, asked in a low voice:
“How are you, Trewinnard? The Emperor has sent me to inquire.”
“Tell His Majesty that I—I thank him. I’m getting round—I—I hope I’ll soon be well. I—I—”
“That’s right. Take great care of yourself, mon cher,” he urged.
And then the doctors ordered my visitors away, and I sank among my pillows into a state of semi-consciousness.
How long I lay thus I do not know. I remember seeing soldiers come and go, and at length discovered that I was in the hospital attached to the artillery barracks on the road to Warsaw Station. Beside me always sat a grave-eyed nursing sister, silent and watchful, while ever and anon one or other of the doctors would approach, bend over me, and inquire of her my condition.
Saunderson came again some hours later. It was then night. And from him, now that I was completely conscious, I learnt how, after the explosion, the police had in the confusion shot down two men, afterwards proved to be innocent spectators, and made wholesale indiscriminate arrests. It was believed, however, that the man I had seen, the perpetrator of the dastardly act, had escaped scot-free.
Dozens of windows in the market-hall opposite where the outrage was committed had been smashed, and many people besides the killed and injured had been thrown down by the terrific force of the explosion.
“The poor Grand Duke Nicholas has, alas! been shattered out of recognition,” he told me. “His body was taken at once to his palace, where it now lies, while you were brought here together with the Grand Duchess Natalia. But her wound being quite a slight one, was dressed, and she was driven at once to the Winter Palace, at the order of the Emperor. Poor child! I hear that she is utterly prostrated by the fearful sight which her father presented to her eyes.”
I drew a long breath.