A group of Russians, old men mostly, hawkers of lemon drinks and of _prianniki_, or biscuits, presently came hurrying out into the street, chattering and crossing themselves, a few French soldiers chasing them through the archway out of the Kremlin.
"_Bóje moy_, it is horrible!" she heard an old man exclaim; "I shall dream of it!"
Vera accosted him. "What is it, father? What has happened?" she asked.
"What has happened?" said the old fellow crossing himself and looking round to see whether the French soldiers listened, "Why, murder has happened; the shedding of good Russian blood; butchery I call it! Did you not hear the shots? A dozen of them, all shot down one after another by these most damnable foreigners! As if they have not shed blood enough already, Russian blood too, which is the holiest of all and the best!"
"Yes, but whose blood is this you speak of? who has been shot?" asked Vera, her heart feeling like lead.
"Why, Russians; good patriotic fellows who had done nothing worse than attempt to burn down the great palace with the French Tsar inside it--would to God they had succeeded! Well, they were caught and shot, a dozen or more of them."
"All shot--every one of them?" Vera asked faintly. "Are you sure that all were shot?"
"Every single one--I saw it done; that's what I say, that I shall dream of it; I called the French soldiers shameful names, but they do not understand Russian, though they turned us all out for booing at them; it is a mercy we too were not shot; yet who could stand and see the murder done without protesting? Why, what ails you, _dooshá tui moyá_? One would think your sweetheart had been among these butchered men."
Vera said nothing but turned away with dry eyes and a steady lip. Within her breast, however, her heart lay dead-cold and heavy as lead.
"I wish I had been among them," the thought came a hundred times into her brain. "Why was I not among them, at his side?"
"Yes, that would have been far better--to have died at his side!"
Vera heard the sound of horses' hoofs behind her, but took no notice. Some one shouted, and she stepped automatically out of the roadway upon the raised wooden pavement at the side.
"That is a French dress," she heard a man say, and seemed to recognise the voice, but her thoughts were far away. "How came she here?--ask her, General." Vera half awoke from her dream of misery and looked up; Napoleon was at her elbow on horseback, with his suite in attendance. She was about to make the reverence which her familiarity with the Court in Paris prompted her to offer automatically at sight of the sovereign; but she bethought herself and left the curtsy half made.