meet an honest
man.... Stay with me, because you belong to me."

After a terrible internal combat the man yields to this unknown will
which is oppressing him. A traitor to his party, he decides to
become the companion of this painted girl, with whom he then gets
drunk.

"As long as I am in the shadows," he murmurs with the sombre
resignation of an Andreyev hero, "I might as well remain there."

At dawn, the police come to arrest him. And while his friend tries
desperately to resist the agents of the force, he contemplates the
brutal scene with an ironic smile.

* * * * *

"The Seven Who Were Hanged," written in 1908, right after the
executions at Kherson and Warsaw, shows us pictures of terror and
fright aptly described by the genius of Andreyev. This work has
prodigious color and strength, and one experiences deep emotions on
reading it. Five terrorists, captured at the very moment when they
are going to assassinate a minister, and two criminals, are
condemned to be hanged on the same day. The writer shows them to us
tortured by the most horrible anguish, that which immediately
precedes death. The word "madness" appears on every page: mystical
madness of hallucination that hears music and voices, such is that
of the young revolutionary Moussya; then there is the brutal madness
of her comrades Kashirine and Golovine, who are ready to scream with
terror; the madness of the victims, the frenzy of the executioners.

The night before the execution the prisoners are visited by their
relatives. The farewell which Serge Golovine takes of his family is
rightly considered one of the most poignant and most cleverly
constructed scenes that Andreyev has ever written.

Followed by his mother, who totters along, Serge's father, a retired
colonel, enters the room where visitors are received. Serge does not
know that the colonel spent the whole night in preparing for this
meeting. He has told his wife what to do: embrace her son, keep from
crying, and say nothing. But the unhappy mother in the presence of
her son cannot control her emotions; her eyes are strained and she
breathes faster and faster.

"Don't torture him!" commands the colonel.

Several stupid and insignificant words are exchanged in order to
hide the terrible suffering that they all are going through. The
visit ends: the parents must bid their son good-bye forever. The
mother gives her son a short kiss, then she shakes her head