CZARE. What! is it so small a thing to strangle a nation, to murder a kingdom, to wreck an empire? Who are we who dare lay this ban of terror on a people? Have we less vices than they have, that we bring them to the bar of judgment before us? PRINCE PAUL. What a Communist the Prince is! He would have an equal distribution of sin as well as of property. CZARE. Warmed by the same sun, nurtured by the same air, fashioned of flesh and blood like to our own, wherein are they different to us, save that they starve while we surfeit, that they toil while we idle, that they sicken while we poison, that they die while we strangle? CZAR. How dare--? CZARE. I dare all for the people; but you would rob them of common rights of common men. CZAR. The people have no rights. CZARE. Then they have great wrongs. Father, they have won your battles for you; from the pine forests of the Baltic to the palms of India they have ridden on victory's mighty wings in search of your glory! Boy as I am in years, I have seen wave after wave of living men sweep up the heights of battle to their death; ay, and snatch perilous conquest from the scales of war when the bloody crescent seemed to shake above our eagles. CZAR (_somewhat moved_). Those men are dead. What have I to do with them? CZARE. Nothing! The dead are safe; you[18] cannot harm them now. They sleep their last long sleep. Some in Turkish waters, others by the windswept heights of Norway and the Dane! But these, the living, our brothers, what have you done for them? They asked you for bread, you gave them a stone. They sought for freedom, you scourged them with scorpions. You have sown the seeds of this revolution yourself!-- PRINCE PAUL. And are we not cutting down the harvest? CZARE. Oh, my brothers! better far that ye had died in the iron hail and screaming shell of battle than to come back to such a doom as[19] this! The beasts of the forests have their lairs, and the wild beasts their caverns, but the people of Russia, conquerors of the world, have not where to lay their heads. PRINCE PAUL. They have the headsman's block. CZARE. The headsman's block! Ay! you have killed their souls at your pleasure, you would kill their bodies now. CZAR. Insolent boy! Have you forgotten who is Emperor of Russia? CZARE. No! The people reign now, by the grace of God.[20] You should have been their shepherd; you have fled away like the hireling, and let the wolves in upon them. CZAR. Take him away! Take him away, Prince Paul! CZARE. God hath given this people tongues to speak with; you would cut them out that they may be dumb in their agony, silent in their torture! But God hath given them hands to smite with, and they shall smite! Ay! from the sick and labouring womb of this unhappy land some revolution, like a bloody child, shall[21] rise up and slay you. CZAR (_leaping up_). Devil! Assassin! Why do you beard me thus to my face?