ble, the captain, upon Annouchka's prayers, approached and cut
short his sufferings by firing a revolver into his ear. Now it was
Annouchka's turn. She knelt by the body of her brother, kissed his
bloody lips, rose and said, 'I am ready.' As the guns were raised, an
officer came running, bearing the pardon of the Tsar. She did not
wish it, and she whom they had not bound when she was to die had to be
restrained when she learned she was to live."

Prince Galitch, amid the anguished silence of all there, started to
add some words of comment to his sinister recital, but Annouchka
interrupted:

"The story is ended," said she. "Not a word, Prince. If I asked you
to tell it in all its horror, if I wished you to bring back to us the
atrocious moment of my brother's death, it is so that monsieur" (her
fingers pointed to Gounsovski) "shall know well, once for all, that if
I have submitted for some hours now to this promiscuous company that has
been imposed upon me, now that I have paid the debt by accepting this
abominable supper, I have nothing more to do with this purveyor of
bagnios and of hangman's ropes who is here."

"She is mad," he muttered. "She is mad. What has come over her? What has
happened? Only to-day she was so, so amiable."

And he stuttered, desolately, with an embarrassed laugh:

"Ah, the women, the women! Now what have I done to her?"

"What have you done to me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and
Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to
revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them
hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your
slavish task. And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my
artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any
other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who
believed they could talk freely in my dressing-room--where are they?
Why have they left me, one by one? Why have they disappeared? It is you,
wretch, who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven't any
doubt, your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you
dog! You knew what they call me. You have known it for a long time, and
you may well laugh over it. But I, I never knew until this evening; I
never learned until this evening all I owe to you. 'Stool pigeon! Stool
pigeon!' I! Horror! Ah, you dog, you dog! Your mother, when you were
brought into the world, your mother...