by Oscar Wilde
GENERAL: Actors, are they, Prince?
ALEXIS: Ay, and very ambitious actors, too. They only care to play before kings.
GENERAL: I’ faith, your Highness, I was in hopes I had made a good haul of Nihilists.
ALEXIS: Nihilists in Moscow, General! With you as head of the police! Impossible!
GENERAL: So I always tell your Imperial father. But I heard at the council to-day that that woman Vera Sabouroff, the head of them, had been seen in this very city. The Emperor’s face turned as white as the snow outside. I think I never saw such terror in any man before.
ALEXIS: She is a dangerous woman, then, this Vera Sabouroff?
GENERAL: The most dangerous in all Europe.
ALEXIS: Did you ever see her, General?
GENERAL: Why, five years ago, when I was a plain Colonel, I remember her, your Highness, a common waiting-girl in an inn. If I had known then what she was going to turn out, I would have flogged her to death on the roadside. She is not a woman at all; she is a sort of devil! For the last eighteen months I have been hunting her, and caught sight of her once last September outside Odessa.
ALEXIS: How did you let her go, General?
GENERAL: I was by myself, and she shot one of my horses just as I was gaining on her. If I see her again I shan’t miss my chance. The Emperor has put twenty thousand roubles on her head.
ALEXIS: I hope you will get it, General; but meanwhile you are frightening these honest folk out of their wits, and disturbing the tragedy. Good-night, General.
GENERAL: Yes; but I should like to see their faces, your Highness.
ALEXIS: No, General; you must not ask that; you know how these gypsies hate to be stared at.
GENERAL: Yes. But, your Highness –
ALEXIS (haughtily): General, they are my friends, that is enough. Good-night. And, General, not a word of my little adventure here, you understand.
GENERAL: But shall we not see you back to the palace? The State ball is almost over and you are expected.
ALEXIS: I shall be there; but I shall return alone. Remember, not a word.
GENERAL: Or your pretty gipsy, eh, Prince? Your pretty gipsy! I’ faith, I should like to see her before I go; she has such fine eyes through her mask. Well, good night, your Highness; good night.
ALEXIS: Good night, General.
Exeunt GENERAL and the soldiers.
VERA (throwing off her mask): Saved! And by you!
ALEXIS (clasping her hand): Brothers, you trust me now?
Exit.
TABLEAU
ACT DROP
ACT TWO
SCENE: Council Chamber in the Emperor’s Palace, hung with yellow tapestry. Table, with chair of State, set for the Czar; window behind, opening on to a balcony. As the scene progresses the light outside gets darker.
Present: PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI, PRINCE PETROVITCH, COUNT ROUVALOFF, BARON RAFF, COUNT PETOUCHOF.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: So our young scatter-brained Czarevitch has been forgiven at last, and is to take his seat here again.
PRINCE PAUL: Yes; if that is not meant as an extra punishment. For my own part, at least, I find these Cabinet Councils extremely tiring.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Naturally, you are always speaking.
PRINCE PAUL: No; I think it must be that I have to listen sometimes. It is so exhausting not to talk.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: Still, anything is better than being kept in a sort of prison, like he was – never allowed to go out into the world.
PRINCE PAUL: My dear Count, for romantic young people like he is the world always looks best at a distance; and a prison where one’s allowed to order one’s own dinner is not at all a bad place. (Enter the CZAREVITCH. The courtiers rise.) Ah! Good afternoon, Prince. Your Highness is looking a little pale to-day.
CZAREVITCH (slowly, after a pause): I want change of air.
PRINCE PAUL (smiling): A most revolutionary sentiment! Your Imperial father would highly disapprove of any reforms even with the thermometer in Russia.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): My Imperial father had kept me for six months in this dungeon of a palace. This morning he has me suddenly woke up to see some wretched Nihilists hung; it sickened me, the bloody butchery, though it was a noble thing to see how well these men can die.
PRINCE PAUL: When you are as old as I am, Prince, you will understand that there are few things easier than to live badly and to die well.
CZAREVITCH: Easy to die well! A lesson experience cannot have taught you, much as you know of a bad life.
PRINCE PAUL (shrugging his shoulders): Experience, the name men give to their mistakes. I never commit any.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): No; crimes are more in your line.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to the CZAREVITCH): The Emperor was a good deal agitated about your late appearance at the ball last night, Prince.
COUNT ROUVALOFF (laughing): I believe he thought the Nihilists had broken into the palace and carried you off.
BARON RAFF: If they had you would have missed a charming dance.
PRINCE PAUL: And an excellent supper. Gringoire really excelled himself in his salad. Ah! You may laugh, Baron; but to cook a good salad is a much more difficult thing than cooking accounts. To make a-good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar.
BARON RAFF: A cook and a diplomatist! An excellent parallel. If I had a son who was a fool I’d make him one or the other.
PRINCE PAUL: I see your father did not hold the same opinion, Baron. But, believe me, you are wrong to run down cookery. Culture depends on cookery. For myself, the only immortality I desire is to invent a new sauce. I have never had time enough to think seriously about it, but I feel it is in me, I feel it is in me.
CZAREVITCH: You have certainly missed your métier, Prince Paul; the cordon bleu of the kitchen would have suited you much better than the Grand Cross of Honour. But you know you could never have worn your white apron well; you would have soiled it too soon, your hands are not clean enough.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing): You forget – or, how could they be? I manage your father’s business.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): You mismanage my father’s business, you mean! Evil genius of his life that you are! Before you came there was some love left in him. It is you who have embittered his nature, poured into his ear the poison of treacherous council, made him hated by the whole people, made him what he is – a tyrant!
The courtiers look significantly at each other.
PRINCE PAUL (calmly): I see your Highness does want change of air. But I have been an eldest son myself. (Lights a cigarette.) I know what it is when a father won’t die to please one.
The CZAREVITCH goes to the top of the stage, and leans against the window, looking out.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to BARON RAFF): Foolish boy! He will be sent into exile, or worse, if he is not careful.
BARON RAFF: Yes. What a mistake it is to be sincere!
PRINCE PETROVITCH: The only folly you never committed, Baron.
BARON RAFF: One has only one head, you know, Prince.
PRINCE PAUL: My dear Baron, your head is the last thing any one would wish to take from you. (Pulls out snuff-box and offers it to PRINCE PETROVITCH.)
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Thanks, Prince! Thanks!
PRINCE PAUL: Very delicate, isn’t it? I get it direct from Paris. But under this vulgar Republic everything has degenerated over there. Côtelettes à l’impriale vanished of course with the Bonaparte, and omelettes went out with the Orleanists. La belle France is entirely ruined, Prince, through bad morals and worse cookery. (Enter the MARQUIS DE POIVRARD.) Ah! Marquis. I trust Madame la Marquise is well.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: You ought to know better than I do, Prince Paul; you see more of her.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing): Perhaps I see more in her, Marquis. Your wife is really a charming woman, so full of esprit, and so satirical too; she talks continually of you when we are together.
PRINCE PETROVITCH (looking at the clock): His Majesty is a little late to-day, is he not?
PRINCE PAUL: What has happened to you, my dear Petrovitch? You seem quite out of sorts. You haven’t quarrelled with your cook, I hope? What a tragedy that would be for you; you would lose all your friends.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: I fear I wouldn’t be so fortunate as that. You forget I would still have my purse. But you are wrong for once; my chef and I are on excellent terms.
PRINCE PAUL: Then your creditors or Mademoiselle Vera Sabouroff have been writing to you? They compose more than half of my correspondents. But really you needn’t be alarmed. I find the most violent proclamations from the Executive Committee, as they call it, left all over my house. I never read them; they are so badly spelt as a rule.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: Wrong again, Prince; the Nihilists leave me alone for some reason or other.
PRINCE PAUL (aside): True! Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
PRINCE PETROVITCH: I am bored with life, Prince. Since the opera season ended I have been a perpetual martyr to ennui.
PRINCE PAUL: The maladie du siècle! You want a new excitement, Prince. Let me see – you have been married twice already; suppose you try – falling in love for once.
BARON RAFF: I cannot understand your nature.
PRINCE PAUL (smiling): If my nature had been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world.
COUNT ROUVALOFF: There seems to be nothing in life about which you would not jest.
PRINCE PAUL: Ah! My dear Count, life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
CZAREVITCH (coming back from window): I don’t think Prince Paul’s nature is such a mystery. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
PRINCE PAUL: Parbleu! I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
CZAREVITCH (bitterly): If to have enemies is a measure of greatness, then you must be a Colossus, indeed, Prince.
PRINCE PAUL: Yes, your Highness, I know I’m the most hated man in Russia, except your father, except your father of course. He doesn’t seem to like it much, by the way; but I do, I assure you. (Bitterly.) I love to drive through the streets and see how the rabble scowl at me from every corner. It makes me feel I am a power in Russia; one man against millions! Besides, I have no ambition to be a popular hero, to be crowned with laurels one year and pelted with stones the next; I prefer dying peaceably in my own bed.
CZAREVITCH: And after death?
PRINCE PAUL (shrugging his shoulders): Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.
CZAREVITCH: Do you ever think of the people and their rights?
PRINCE PAUL: The people and their rights bore me. I am sick of both. In these modern days to be vulgar, illiterate, common and vicious, seems to give a man a marvellous infinity of rights that his honest fathers never dreamed of. Believe me, Prince, in good democracy, every man should be an aristocrat; but these people in Russia who seek to thrust us out are no better than the animals in one’s preserves, and made to be shot at, most of them.
CZAREVITCH (excitedly): If they are common, illiterate, vulgar, no better than the beasts of the field, who made them so? (Enter AIDE-DE-CAMP.)
AIDE-DE-CAMP: His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor! (PRINCE PAUL looks at the CZAREVITCH, and smiles.)
Enter the CZAR, surrounded by his guard.
CZAREVITCH (rushing forward to meet him): Sire!
CZAR (nervous and frightened): Don’t come too near me, boy! Don’t come too near me, I say! There is always something about an heir to a crown unwholesome to his father. Who is that man over there? I don’t know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till to-morrow to confess, then hang him! Hang him!
PRINCE PAUL: Sire, you are anticipating history. This is Count Petouchof, your new Ambassador to Berlin. He is come to kiss hands on his appointment.
CZAR: To kiss my hand? There is some plot in it. He wants to poison me. There, kiss my son’s hand; it will do quite as well.
PRINCE PAUL signs to COUNT PETOUCHOF to leave the room. Exeunt PETOUCHOF and the guards. CZAR sinks down into his chair. The courtiers remain silent.
PRINCE PAUL (approaching): Sire! Will your Majesty –
CZAR: What do you startle me for like that? No, I won’t. (Watches the courtiers nervously.) Why are you clattering your sword, sir? (To COUNT ROUVALOFF): Take it off. I shall have no man wear a sword in my presence (looking at CZAREVITCH), least of all my son. (To PRINCE PAUL): You are not angry with me, Prince? You won’t desert me, will you? Say you won’t desert me. What do you want? You can have anything – anything.
PRINCE PAUL (bowing very low): Sire, ‘tis enough for me to have your confidence. (Aside): I was afraid he was going to revenge himself, and give me another decoration.
CZAR (returning to his chair): Well, gentlemen.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD: Sire, I have the honour to present to you a loyal address from your subjects in the Province of Archangel, expressing their horror at the last attempt on your Majesty’s life.
PRINCE PAUL: The last attempt but two, you ought to have said, Marquis. Don’t you see it is dated three weeks back?
CZAR: They are good people in the Province of Archangel – honest, loyal people. They love me very much – simple, loyal people; give them a new saint, it costs nothing. Well, Alexis (turning to the CZAREVITCH) – how many traitors were hung this morning?
CZAREVITCH: There were three men strangled, Sire.
CZAR: There should have been three thousand. I would to God that this people had but one neck that I might strangle them with one noose! Did they tell anything? Whom did they implicate? What did they confess?
CZAREVITCH: Nothing, Sire.
CZAR: They should have been tortured then; why weren’t they tortured? Must I always be fighting in the dark? Am I never to know from what root these traitors spring?
CZAREVITCH: What root should there be of discontent among the people but tyranny and injustice amongst their rulers?
CZAR: What did you say, boy? Tyranny! Tyranny! Am I a tyrant? I’m not. I love the people. I’m their father. I’m called so in every official proclamation. Have a care, boy; have a care. You don’t seem to be cured yet of your foolish tongue. (Goes over to PRINCE PAUL and puts his hand on his shoulder.) Prince Paul, tell me, were there many people there this morning to see the Nihilists hung?
PRINCE PAUL: Hanging is of course a good deal less of a novelty in Russia now, Sire, than it was three or four years ago; and you know how easily the people get tired even of their best amusements. But the square and the tops of the houses were really quite crowded, were they not, Prince? (To the CZAREVITCH, who takes no notice.)
CZAR: That’s right; all loyal citizens should be there. It shows them what to look forward to. Did you arrest any one in the crowd?
PRINCE PAUL: Yes, Sire; a woman, for cursing your name. (The CZAREVITCH starts anxiously.) She was the mother of two of the criminals.
CZAR (looking at CZAREVITCH): She should have blessed me for having rid her of her children. Send her to prison.
CZAREVITCH: The prisons of Russia are too full already, Sire. There is no room in them for any more victims.
CZAR: They don’t die fast enough, then. You should put more of them into one cell at once. You don’t keep them long enough in the mines. If you do they’re sure to die; but you’re all too merciful. I’m too merciful myself. Send her to Siberia. She is sure to die on the way. (Enter an AIDE-DE-CAMP.) Who’s that? Who’s that?
AIDE-DE-CAMP: A letter for his Imperial Majesty.
CZAR (to PRINCE PAUL): I won’t open it. There may be something in it.
PRINCE PAUL: It would be a very disappointing letter, Sire, if there wasn’t. (Takes
letter himself, and reads it.)
PRINCE PETROVITCH (to COUNT ROUVALOFF): It must be some sad news. I know that smile too well.
PRINCE PAUL: From the Chief of the Police at Archangel, Sire. ‘The Governor of the province was shot this morning by a woman as he was entering the courtyard of his own house. The assassin has been seized.’
CZAR: I never trusted the people in Archangel. It’s a nest of Nihilists and conspirators. Take away their saints; they don’t deserve them.
PRINCE PAUL: Your Highness would punish them more severely by giving them an extra one. Three governors shot in two months! (Smiles to himself.) Sire, permit me to recommend your loyal subject, the Marquis de Poivrard, as the new governor of your Province of Archangel.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD (hurriedly): Sire, I am unfit for this post.
PRINCE PAUL: Marquis, you are too modest. Believe me, there is no man in Russia I would sooner see Governor of Archangel than yourself. (Whispers to CZAR.)
CZAR: Quite right, Prince Paul; you are always right. See that the Marquis’s letters are made out at once.
PRINCE PAUL: He can start to-night, Sire. I shall really miss you very much, Marquis. I always liked your taste in wine and wives extremely.
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD (to the CZAR): Start to-night, Sire?
(PRINCE PAUL whispers to the CZAR.)
CZAR: Yes, Marquis, to-night; it is better to go at once.
PRINCE PAUL: I shall see that Madame la Marquise is not too lonely while you are away; so you need not be alarmed for her.
COUNT ROUVALOFF (to PRINCE PETROVITCH): I should be more alarmed for myself.
CZAR: The Governor of Archangel shot in his own courtyard by a woman! I’m not safe here. I’m not safe anywhere, with that she-devil of the revolution, Vera Sabouroff, here in Moscow. Prince Paul, is that woman still here?
PRINCE PAUL: They tell me she was at the Grand Duke’s ball last night. I can hardly believe that; but she certainly had intended to leave for Novgorod to-day, Sire. The police were watching every train for her; but, for some reason or other, she did not go. Some traitor must have warned her. But I shall catch her yet. A chase after a beautiful woman is always exciting.