the Warden:--

"I implore you to remain; in a moment more I shall finish; hardly have I
strength to conclude--Warden--I shall die this night."

"What, brother?" cried the Judge, "I have seen your wound; it is trifling:
why do you say this? Send for the priest! Perhaps it has been ill tended:
I will send for the doctor; he is at the apothecary's."

"It is too late, brother," interrupted the Monk. "In the same place I have
an earlier gunshot wound; I received it at Jena. It was ill healed, and
now it has been irritated--there is gangrene there already. I am familiar
with wounds; see how black the blood is, like soot; a doctor could do
nothing. But this is a trifle; we die but once; to-morrow or to-day we
must yield up our souls. Warden, thou wilt forgive me; I must die!

* * * * * * * *

"There is merit in refusing to betray your country, though your own people
proclaim you a traitor! Especially for a man who had such pride as mine!

* * * * * * * *

"The name of traitor clove to me like a pestilence. The neighbours turned
their faces from me, my former friends fled from me, the timid greeted me
from afar and turned aside; even a mere peasant boor or a Jew, though he
bowed, would, as he passed by, smite me with a sneering laugh. The word
'traitor' rang in my ears and echoed through my house and over my fields;
that word from morn till dark hovered before me like a spot before a sick
man's eye. And yet I was _not_ a traitor to my country.

"The Muscovites showed by acts of violence that they regarded me as one of
their partisans: they gave the Soplicas a considerable part of the dead
man's estates; later the Targowica confederates wished to bestow an office
upon me.176 If I had then consented to turn Muscovite!--Satan counselled
it--I was already influential and rich; but if I had become a
Muscovite?--The foremost magnates would have sought my favour; even my
brother gentlemen--even the mob, which is so ready to disparage those of
its own number, is prone to forgive those happier men who serve the
Muscovites! I knew this, and yet--I could not.

* * * * * * * *

"I fled from my country! Where have I not been! what have I not suffered!

* * * * * * * *

"At last God deigned to reveal to me the one true remedy: I must reform
myself and repair as much as possible what----