aying for him, perhaps.

For him or for Menko?

No, for him! She was not vile enough to have lied, when she asked,
implored, besought death from Zilah who held her life or death in his
hands.

"Yes, I had the right to kill her, but--I have the right to pardon
also," thought Zilah.

Ah, if Menko were dead!

The Prince gradually wrought himself into a highly nervous condition,
missing Varhely, uneasy at his prolonged absence, and never succeeding
in driving away Marsa's haunting image. He grew to hate his solitary
home and his books.

"I shall not want any breakfast," he said one morning to his valet; and,
going out, he descended the Champs-Elysees on foot.

At the corner of the Place de la Madeleine, he entered a restaurant,
and sat down near a window, gazing mechanically at this lively corner of
Paris, at the gray facade of the church, the dusty trees, the asphalt,
the promenaders, the yellow omnibuses, the activity of Parisian life.

All at once he was startled to hear his name pronounced and to see
before him, with his hand outstretched, as if he were asking alms, old
General Vogotzine, who said to him, timidly:

"Ah, my dear Prince, how glad I am to see you! I was breakfasting over
there, and my accursed paper must have hidden me. Ouf! If you only knew!
I am stifling!"

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Andras.

"Matter? Look at me! I must be as red as a beet!"

Poor Vogotzine had entered the restaurant for breakfast, regretting
the cool garden of Maisons-Lafitte, which, now that Marsa no longer
sat there, he had entirely to himself. After eating his usual copious
breakfast, he had imprudently asked the waiter for a Russian paper; and,
as he read, and sipped his kummel, which he found a little insipid and
almost made him regret the vodka of his native land, his eyes fell upon
a letter from Odessa, in which there was a detailed description of the
execution of three nihilists, two of them gentlemen. It told how they
were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of
them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription,
in black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General
shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution
seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could
see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each
gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray
pall.