There was that sneering smile upon his face now, but I held my ground.
"I am not a traitor, but I will not carry out your request, and I will not permit it to be carried out." He was aghast at my effrontery. He could only gaze at me in amazement, too greatly confounded for speech; and I continued: "Listen to me one moment, your majesty."
"I will not listen to you. The road to Siberia may be traveled by you as well as by the friends whom you apprehended last night, and by heaven, you shall follow it!"
"You forget one thing," I said. "You have forgotten----"
"I foresaw this moment, your majesty, and my men have their orders to meet it. If I am molested, every nihilist who was arrested last night--every one who was in prison in the city before that time--will be liberated in an hour, and you have not soldiers nor policemen enough to stop the tide that will flow against you then. Your empire will crumble like dust, and your life will go out like the snuffing of a candle. For the present, I am the Czar of Russia, and you are only Alexander Alexandrovitch." He sat still and looked at me with staring eyes. "You are only a man, after all, monsieur," I continued more softly. "In your fears for the safety of your family, for your empire, and for yourself, you are led to do unjust things. Only an hour ago you said that you owed me a debt that you could never repay. You do owe me a debt, and you can repay it if you will forget for a moment that you are a monarch, and remember that you are a man. You can repay all you owe me, and more, if you will still be my friend, and forget that this scene has occurred; and when you have done that, I will tell you that Zara de Echeveria is to be the wife of Daniel Derrington; is to leave Russia forever with her husband, and were she the worst nihilist in the empire--and I know that she is not--she will be far away from any temptation to do you harm, and under the guidance of one who has proven his devotion to you. I will tell you more: I will leave the direction of the affairs of the fraternity in the hands of one of my men who is as expert as I am, and who is in every way as worthy of your confidences as I have proven myself to be--Canfield."