“Ah! Here’s the little lady herself!” said the Police Master. “Come here, please. … The coffins of your infants, eh?” he added, winking towards Migoúrski. Albína did not answer, but clutching at her breast, stared open-mouthed and horror-stricken at her husband.
As happens at the moment of death, and in general at the decisive moments of life, a crowd of feelings and thoughts passed through her mind in a single instant, before she had yet realized or quite believed in her misfortune. The first feeling was one already long familiar to her—a feeling of offended pride at seeing her hero-husband humiliated by these coarse, savage people who now had him in their power. “How dare they hold him—the best of all men—in their power?” At the same time another feeling—the consciousness of misfortune—seized her. This consciousness of her misfortune awoke the memory of the greatest misfortune of her life—her children’s death. And at once the question arose: “Why—why were the children taken?” And this question suggested another: “Why is he now perishing and being tormented—he, my beloved, my husband, the best of men?” And then she remembered the shameful punishment awaiting him, and that it was all her doing.
“What is he to you? Is he your husband?” the Police Master repeated.
“Why? What for?” she cried; and bursting into hysterical laughter, she fell on the box, which had been removed from the tarantass and now stood on the ground beside it. Shaking with sobs, her face bathed in tears, Ludwíka approached her.
“Mistress … dear, darling mistress! … By God, nothing will come of it—nothing! …” she said, mechanically passing her hand over Albína.
Migoúrski was handcuffed and led out of the yard. Seeing this, Albína ran after him.
“Forgive me! Forgive me!” she said. “It is my fault—my fault alone!”