The Sorrows of Belgium / A Play in Six Scenes

, and it was with every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious attempt upon his life had

had already been betrayed by a provocateur, and who were now under the vigilant surveillance of detectives, were to meet at one o'clock in the

I was to leave the house at one o'clock in the afternoon with my r

rds stretched out hi

k in the afternoon, yo

, and still smiling obediently, and not desiring to interfere with the plans of the police, he hastily made ready, and went out to pass the night in some one else'

pected reward. But the people went away, the lights were extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and fantastic reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its paintings, its statues

been thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled how the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty brick walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by these meditations, it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body, outspread on the bed, was already experiencing the fiery shock of the explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his arms being severed from the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his brains scat

odtsi! Molodts

essful terrorists, he nevertheless did not believe in his safety, he was not sure that his life would not leave him suddenly, at once. Death, which people had devised for him, and which was only in their minds, in their intention, seemed to him to be already standing there in the room. It seemed to him that Death would remain

heerfully mocking, now angry, now dull and obstinate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up gramophones had been placed in

n the afternoon,

he dial of his gold watch, assumed an ominous finality, sprang out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched itself into an enormously huge black pole which cut all life in two.

sked the Minister angrily,

mophone

ed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed to a sitting posture, leaning hi

few instants later, everything-the fur coat and his body and the coffee within it-would be destroyed by an explosion, would be seized by death. The doorkeeper would have opened the glass door.... He, the amiable, kind, gentle doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals across his breast-he himself with his own hands would have opened the terrible door, opened it because he knew nothing. Everybody would have smiled because they did not know anything. "Oho!" he suddenly said aloud, and slowly remov

d made him bare, had torn away from him the magnificence and splendor which had surrounded him-and it was hard to believe that it was he who had so much power, that his body was but an ordinary plain human body that must have perished terribly in the flame a

r and had become so agitated! That was why Death seemed to s

d emphatically,

to whom he was referring might hear it. He was referring to those whom he had praised but

I been suffering with kidney trouble, and I must surely die from it some day, and yet I am not afraid-because I do not know anything. And those fools told me: 'At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!' and they thought I would be glad. But instead of that Death stationed itself in the corner and would

old, sick man who had gone through endless experience. It was not given to any living being-man or beast-to know the day and hour of death. Here had he been ill not long ago and the physicians told him that he must expect the end, that he should make his final arrangements-but he had not believed them and he remained alive. In his youth he had become e

ain hour again filled him with horror. It was probable that some day he should be assassinated, but it would not happen to-morrow-it would not happen to-morrow-and he could sleep undisturbed, as if he wer

rnoon, your Excellency, but no one

swered Silenc

did say s

ay: to-morrow, at one o

of the dial should have passed. Only the shadow of the knowledge of something which no living being could know stood there in the corner, and that was enough t

es and incidents which surrounded his life. He now feared something sudden and inevitable-an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some foolish

dark, he had had to stir in order not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright, cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so filled with horror that he could not move in order to get a cigarette or to ring for some one. His nerv

ife. The small, metallic tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing cap, became si

t shadows. The shadows appeared everywhere; they rose in the corners, they stretched across the ceiling; tremulously clinging to each and every elevation, th

octor was hastily summoned by telephone; the dignitary wa