y blood seems turned to gall; my heart is as cold as
steel is; my hand shall be more deadly. From the desert and the tomb the
voice of my prisoned brother cries aloud, and bids me strike one blow
for liberty. The lots, I say, the lots!

PRES. Are you ready. Michael, you have the right to draw first; you are
a Regicide.

VERA. O God, into my hands! Into my hands! (_They draw the lots from a
bowl surmounted by a skull._)

PRES. Open your lots.

VERA (_opening her lot_). The lot is mine! see the bloody sign upon it!
Dmitri, my brother, you shall have your revenge now.

PRES. Vera Sabouroff, you are chosen to be a regicide. God has been good
to you. The dagger or the poison? (_Offers her dagger and vial._)

VERA. I can trust my hand better with the dagger; it never fails. (_Take
dagger._) I shall stab him to the heart, as he has stabbed me. Traitor,
to leave us for a ribbon, a gaud, a bauble, to lie to me every day he
came here, to forget us in an hour. [27]Michael was right, he loved me
not, nor the people either.[27] Methinks that if I was a mother and bore
a man-child I would poison my breast to him, lest he might grow to a
traitor or to a king. (_PRINCE PAUL whispers to the PRESIDENT._)

PRES. Ay, Prince Paul, that is the best way. Vera, the Czar[28] sleeps
to-night in his own room in the north wing of the palace. Here is the
key of the private door in the street. The passwords of the guards will
be given to you. His own servants will be drugged. You will find him
alone.

VERA. It is well. I shall not fail.

PRES. We will wait outside in the Place St. Isaac, under the window. As
the clock strikes twelve from the tower of St. Nicholas you will give us
the sign that the dog is dead.

VERA. And what shall the sign be?

PRES. You are to throw us out the bloody dagger.

MICH. Dripping with the traitor's life.

PRES. Else we shall know that you have been seized, and we will burst
our way in, drag you from his guards.

MICH. And kill him in the midst of them.

PRES. Michael, you will head us?

MICH. Ay, I shall head you. See that your hand fails not, Vera
Sabouroff.

[29]VERA. Fool, is it so hard a thing to kill one's enemy.[29]

PRINCE PAUL (_aside_). This is the ninth conspiracy I have been in in
Russia. They always end in a "voyage en Siberie" for my friends and a
new decoration for myself.

MICH. It is your last conspiracy, Prince.

PRES. At twelve o'clock, the bloody dagger.

VERA. Ay, red with