PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI (Prime Minister of Russia)

PRINCE PETROVITCH

COUNT ROUVALOFF

MARQUIS DE POIVRARD

BARON RAFF

GENERAL KOTEMKIN

A PAGE

COLONEL OF THE GUARD

Nihilists

PETER TCHERNAVITCH, President of the Nihilists

MICHAEL

ALEXIS IVANACIEVITCH, known as a Student of Medicine

PROFESSOR MARFA

VERA SABOUROFF

SOLDIERS, CONSPIRATORS Etc.

PROLOGUE

SCENE: A Russian inn. Large door opening on snowy landscape at back of stage. PETER SABOUROFF and MICHAEL.

PETER (warming his hands at a stove): Has Vera not come back yet, Michael?

MICHAEL: No, Father Peter, not yet; ‘tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plaguey creature for a wench to handle.

PETER: Why didn’t you go with her, you young fool? She’ll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered.

MICHAEL: She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I fear she’ll never love me after all.

PETER: Tut, tut, boy, why shouldn’t she? You’re young, and wouldn’t be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face. Aren’t you one of Prince Maraloffski’s gamekeepers; and haven’t you got a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl want?

MICHAEL: But Vera, Father Peter –

PETER: Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I don’t think much of ideas myself; I’ve got on well enough in life without ‘em; why shouldn’t my children? There’s Dmitri! Could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law? Let a man do his duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.

MICHAEL: Ay! But, Father Peter, they say a good lawyer can break the law as often as he likes, and no one can say him nay. If a man knows the law he knows his duty.

PETER: True, Michael, if a man knows the law there is nothing illegal he cannot do when he likes: that is why folk become lawyers. That is about all they are good for; and there he stays, and has not written a line to us for four months now – a good son that, eh?

MICHAEL: Come, come, Father Peter, Dmitri’s letters must have gone astray – perhaps the new postman can’t read; he looks stupid enough, and Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how he shot the bear at the barn in the great winter?

PETER: Ay, it was a good shot; I never did a better myself.

MICHAEL: And as for dancing, he tired out three fiddlers Christmas come two years.