The soldiers did not wish to fire at him.  He had to summon them again to fulfill their duty, and obey their chief.  Then they fired again, and he fell.  He looked at his sister with his eyes full of horrible suffering.  Seeing that he lived, and wishing to appear charitable, the captain, upon Annouchka’s prayers, approached and cut short his sufferings by firing a revolver into his ear.  Now it was Annouchka’s turn.  She knelt by the body of her brother, kissed his bloody lips, rose and said, ‘I am ready.’  As the guns were raised, an officer came running, bearing the pardon of the Tsar.  She did not wish it, and she whom they had not bound when she was to die had to be restrained when she learned she was to live.”

Prince Galitch, amid the anguished silence of all there, started to add some words of comment to his sinister recital, but Annouchka interrupted: 

“The story is ended,” said she.  “Not a word, Prince.  If I asked you to tell it in all its horror, if I wished you to bring back to us the atrocious moment of my brother’s death, it is so that monsieur” (her fingers pointed to Gounsovski) “shall know well, once for all, that if I have submitted for some hours now to this promiscuous company that has been imposed upon me, now that I have paid the debt by accepting this abominable supper, I have nothing more to do with this purveyor of bagnios and of hangman’s ropes who is here.”

“She is mad,” he muttered.  “She is mad.  What has come over her?  What has happened?  Only to-day she was so, so amiable.”

And he stuttered, desolately, with an embarrassed laugh: 

“Ah, the women, the women!  Now what have I done to her?”

“What have you done to me, wretch?  Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and Strassof?  And Pierre Slutch?  All the comrades who swore with me to revenge my brother?  Where are they?  On what gallows did you have them hung?  What mine have you buried them in?  And still you follow your slavish task.  And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who believed they could talk freely in my dressing-room — where are they?  Why have they left me, one by one?  Why have they disappeared?  It is you, wretch, who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven’t any doubt, your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you dog!  You knew what they call me.  You have known it for a long time, and you may well laugh over it.  But I, I never knew until this evening; I never learned until this evening all I owe to you.  ’Stool pigeon!  Stool pigeon!’ I!  Horror!  Ah, you dog, you dog!  Your mother, when you were brought into the world, your mother ...”  Here she hurled at him the most offensive insult that a Russian can offer a man of that race.

She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag.  She was the statue of hate and vengeance.  She was horrible and terrible.  She was beautiful.  At the final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as though he had received an actual blow in the face.  He did not look at Annouchka, but fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch.  His finger pointed him out: