MY BEST BELOVED,
When you get this letter cease to sorrow for what will have happened, for I shall be at rest, and in peace at last, freed from a world in which I have known bitter sorrow and, until you came into my life, but little joy.
For these past months I am grateful to God, if such a being exists and regulates the conduct of a world gone mad.
For in a few hours I am to die.
It is harder for you than for me; one moment of agony I suffered, a moment that seemed to last a century, when, amidst the sea of faces that swam in a confused mass before me at the trial, I saw your eyes and the torture that you were suffering. When I saw your eyes I knew that the President had said I must die. I am glad that I was told this by you, the only one amongst all these men who loved me. I suppose the President spoke; I never heard him, but I saw your eyes and I knew.
My darling, it was cruel of you to come, cruel to me and cruel to yourself, but I loved you for being there; it showed me that up till the last you would stand by me, and until you read this you cannot know all the facts. That to you, as to the others, I must have seemed a woman spy and that nevertheless you stood by me, is to me a recollection of unsurpassable sweetness, compared with which all other thoughts of you fade into insignificance.
Know now, oh, well beloved, that I was not unworthy of your love.
I have a story to tell you, and I have such a little time left that I must write quickly. The priest who has been with me comes again an hour before the dawn, and he has promised to deliver these my last words of love into your hands.
My real name is Zoe Xenia Olga Sbeiliez, and I was born twenty–nine years ago at my father's country house at Inkovano, near Koniesfol. I am Polish; at least, my father was, and my mother comes from the Don country. There was a day when my father's ancestors were Princes in Poland. Poor Poland was torn by the vultures of Europe, just as your countrymen, my Karl, are tearing poor Belgium and France, and so my family lost estates year by year, and my grandfather is buried somewhere in the dreary steppes of Siberia because he dared to be a Polish patriot.
My father bowed before the storm, and under my mother's influence he never became mixed up with politics. Thus he lived on his estates at Inkovano, and nursed them for my younger brother, Alexandrovitch, the child of his old age. Alex would be nineteen now, had he lived. The estates were large as these things go in Western Europe, but they were but a garden as compared with the lands held by my great–grandfather, Boris Sbeiliez.
My father had a dream, and he dreamed this dream from the day Alex was born to the day they both died in each other's arms.
My father dreamt that one day the Tsars would soften their heart to Poland, and raise her up from the dust to a place amongst the nations, and my father dreamt that Alexandrovitch Sbeiliez would become a leader of Poland, as his ancestors had been before him. And so my father nursed his estates and pinched and saved, in preparation for the day when his beautiful dream should come true.
My poor idealistic father never realized, oh, my Karl, that when one wants a thing one must fight—to the death. Alex was the apple of his eye, but I was much loved by my mother; perhaps she dreamed a dream about me—I know not, but she determined that I should have all that was necessary. Paris, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and a season in London, then I came home at twenty–one, perfectly educated according to the world, beautiful according to men, and dressed according to Paris. But I was only to find out how little I knew. My mother and I used to take a house in Warsaw for the season, and I met many notable men and women. In these days I, also, thought I could do something for Poland, but after two or three seasons I found that I, too, was only dreaming idle dreams. Oh! my beloved, beware of dreaming idle dreams.
Listen! I once met the Prime Minister of all Russia at a reception. I captivated him, and thought, now! now! I shall do something.
