La Dodun dit à Frison:Coiffez-moi avec adresse.Je prétends avec raisonInspirer de la tendresse.Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez-moi!
La Dodun dit à Frison:Coiffez-moi avec adresse.Je prétends avec raisonInspirer de la tendresse.Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez-moi!
La Dodun dit à Frison:
Coiffez-moi avec adresse.
Je prétends avec raison
Inspirer de la tendresse.
Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez-moi!
He also recited a Russian poem on the charms of life in Paris.
O beautiful city on flowing SeineThe gods have chosen thy fair domain.The manners of boors are driven out henceBy thy most exquisite influence,And never shall I in my soul forgetThe town that I leave with such deep regret!
O beautiful city on flowing SeineThe gods have chosen thy fair domain.The manners of boors are driven out henceBy thy most exquisite influence,And never shall I in my soul forgetThe town that I leave with such deep regret!
O beautiful city on flowing Seine
The gods have chosen thy fair domain.
The manners of boors are driven out hence
By thy most exquisite influence,
And never shall I in my soul forget
The town that I leave with such deep regret!
The old Moscow boyars, hostile to the new customs, sat a little way off, warming themselves near the stove, holding converse with one another in allusions and riddles.
“What do you think, my lord, of life in Petersburg, eh?”
“To the devil with you and your Petersburg life! These compliments and reverences and obeisances of the woman-folk, and the foreign food, make one’s head go round!”
“What’s to be done, friend, but bear it? One cannot leap into heaven, nor bury oneself in the earth. Patience, patience!”
Mons was whispering into Nastenka’s ears a newly composed ditty:
Without love and passion,All days are dreary.Love sighs acquaint usWith all life’s sweetness.What, say, is life for,If one loves not?
Without love and passion,All days are dreary.Love sighs acquaint usWith all life’s sweetness.What, say, is life for,If one loves not?
Without love and passion,
All days are dreary.
Love sighs acquaint us
With all life’s sweetness.
What, say, is life for,
If one loves not?
Suddenly, it seemed to her that the ceiling was shaking and that the naked Cupids were falling upon her head. She cried out; William Mons reassured her; it was only the wind bulging out like a sail the canvas of the picture nailed to the ceiling.
Again the shutters rattled, this time with such force that everybody looked round in terror.
The polonaise began; the couples set out and music drowned the noise of the storm. Only the shivering old nobles, warming themselves round the stove, listened to the howling of the wind in the chimney, and whispered to one another, sighing and shaking their heads. They seemed to hear in the sounds of the storm, rendered more ill-omened still by the music, the old words: “out of the sea sorrow, out of the water, grief!”
Peter continued his conversation with Theodosius; he asked him about the heresy of the Moscow iconoclasts, Fomka the barber and Dmitri the physician. Both heretics, in propagating their teaching, had referred to the Tsar’s recent decrees: “Thanks be to God, nowadays in Muscovy everybody is free to follow what faith he chooses.”
“According to their teaching,” continued Theodosius, with a smile which made it impossible to infer whether he disagreed or sympathised with the heresy, “the true faith is founded on the Scriptures and good works, and not on miracles and traditions.
“People of any creed can be saved according to the apostle’s word: ‘In every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
“Very reasonable,” remarked Peter and the monk’s smile seemed to be reflected on the Tsar’s face; they understood one another without words.
“And the icons,” continued Theodosius, “being but man’s work, according to their teaching are idols. How can painted boards work miracles? You throw them into the fire, they burn just like ordinary wood. It is not the icons but God, who should be worshipped. And who gave the saints ears so long as to enable them to hear the prayers said on earth? If, say they, a son is slain by a stick or a knife, how can the slain man’s father love that knife or stick? In the same way how can God love the wood on which His Son had been crucified? And the Virgin, they ask, why should she be honoured? She is like a plain bag filled with precious stones and pearls. When the bag is emptied of its treasure what value or honour remain to it? About the Eucharist, too, they usesophisms: how can Christ be broken up, distributed and eaten at the services of which such numbers are held all over the world on the same day? How can the prayers of priests change bread into our Lord’s body, especially as there are all sorts of men among priests: drunkards, sybarites and veritable scoundrels. This is highly improbable and we very much doubt it. The bread smells bread to us, and the blood, so far as our senses can ascertain, is but red wine.”
“It is not right for us Orthodox even to listen to such heresy,” the Tsar checked Theodosius.
The latter stopped short, yet his smile seemed to grow only more insolent and more malignant.
The Tsarevitch raised his eyes and furtively glanced at his father. He seemed to notice confusion in Peter’s look. The Tsar no longer smiled; his face had grown serious, almost wrathful, yet at the same time helpless and perplexed. Had he not a moment ago recognised the basis of heresy as being reasonable? Accepting the basis how can he regret the inferences? It is easy to forbid, but how refute? The Tsar is clever, yet is not his cleverness exceeded by that of the monk; was not the latter leading the Tsar, as an evil guide leads a blind man, straight towards a precipice?
Thus thought Alexis; and the subtle smile of Theodosius found reflection no longer on the father’s but on the son’s face. Now they too understood one another without words.
“There is nothing to be wondered at in Fomka and Dmitri,” said Avrámoff, breaking the awkward silence.
“‘The music sways the dance.’ The sheep do but follow the shepherd.” He steadily eyed Theodosius; the same took the hint and quivered with rage.
At this moment some immeasurable force hurled itself against the shutters, as if a thousand fists were beating at them. This something hissed, howled, wailed, and then died slowly away in the distance. Then the assailants seemed to return more and more formidably to the attack, and to be breaking into the house.
Devière ran out every ten minutes to learn about the rise of the water. The news was bad, the Mia and Fontanna were already in flood. The town was panic-stricken.
Devière lost his head; several times he approached the Tsar, trying to catch his eye and attract his notice, but Peter, engrossed in conversation, did not pay any attention to him. At last, no longer able to restrain himself, with desperate resolution he stooped and stuttered in the Tsar’s ear:—
“Your Majesty!—the water!”
Peter without a word of warning, with a quick, almost involuntary movement, gave him a slap in the face. Devière felt neither shame nor insult, nothing except the pain, so used was he to such treatment.
“It is a privilege,” said Peter’s eaglets “to be struck by a monarch whose blows are favours.”
Peter with a calm countenance, as though nothing whatever had happened, turned to Avrámoff and asked him the reason why the publication of the astronomer Huyghen’s work,Contemplation or Description of Heavenly and Earthly Bodies, had been delayed so long.
For a moment Avrámoff was taken aback, but he instantly recovered and looking straight into the Tsar’s eyes he said with firmness:—
“That book is exceedingly blasphemous; it has been written, not with ink but with hellish charcoal, and therefore it is only fit to be burnt.”
“What does the blasphemy consist of?”
“The rotation of the earth round the sun is asserted, as well as the existence of a plurality of worlds, and all those worlds are supposed to be like ours, with human beings, meadows, fields, woods, animals, and everything else just as we have it. And in this sly and subtle way the author tries to glorify and establish Nature (which means self-existent life), while a God-Creator is dispensed with.”
A discussion began: the Tsar began proving that Copernicus’ Chart of the universe explained in a natural and suitable way all the life of the planets.
Under the protection of the Tsar and Copernicus more and more daring thoughts were expressed.
“To-day all philosophy can be reduced to mechanics,” suddenly declared the naval councillor, Alexander Kikin. “The universe is believed to be a clock on a large scale; everything acts in it by fixed motions, which depend on aperfect arrangement of the automaton. The same mechanism pervades the whole——”
“A senseless atheistical philosophy, a corrupt and unstable basis of reasoning,” exclaimed the terrified Avrámoff; but nobody listened to him.
Each tried to outdo the other in learning.
“The ancient philosopher Dicaearchus taught that man’s being is in his body, and that the word ‘soul’ is only an accidental meaningless term,” added the vice-chancellor Shafiroff.
“The microscope has revealed in man’s seed animals very much like frogs or tadpoles,” said Monsieur George with such a mischievous smile, that it was obvious he meant to say there cannot be such a thing as a soul. After the manner of all Parisian dandies, he had his own “Petite Philosophie,” in expounding which he displayed the same polite frivolity as when singing the coiffeur’s song: ‘Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez moi.’
“According to Leibnitz we are but thinking hydraulic machines: the oyster is far behind us in reasoning capacity.”
“Not far behind you,” somebody remarked; but Monsieur George continued imperturbably:
“The oyster is far behind us in reasoning capacity. Its life is, so to speak, limited to its shell, and hence it stands in no need of the five senses. It is possible that creatures in other worlds possessing ten or more senses are infinitely superior to us; that Newton and Leibnitz excite no more wonder among them than the ape or spider among us.”
The Tsarevitch was listening, and it seemed to him, that this conversation acted on his ideas, just as the Petersburg thaw on the snow in spring; everything was unraveling, drifting, melting, growing rotten; everything was changing into mud and mire under the influence of the baleful western wind. Doubt in all things, negation of all things, without regard, without reservation, rose like the Neva, which, swollen by the wind, was threatening an inundation.
“Enough of this idle talk,” concluded Peter rising. “He who denies God is either mad or a fool. He, who has eyes, ought to discern God in His creations. Deniers of God bring shame to the country and must not be tolerated,for they undermine the basis of law upon which rest vows and the oath of allegiance.”
“The cause of lawlessness,” interposed Theodosius, unwilling to miss an opportunity, “is rather to be sought in hypocritical zeal than in atheism; atheists themselves insist that God should be taught to the masses, else, say they, the people will revolt against authority.”
The whole building was now continuously shaking under the pressure of the storm. Yet nobody noticed the sounds, they had grown used to them; the Tsar’s face was calm, and his appearance reassured the others.
Somebody spread the report that the wind had changed round, and that there was hope that the waters would abate.
“You see,” said Peter, and his face grew bright, “there was no reason to get frightened. Never fear, the barometer will not lie!”
He went into the next room and joined the dancers.
When the Tsar was merry, he infected every one else with his merriment. In dancing he stamped, jumped and performed various feats with such enthusiasm that the most indolent were eager to join in.
In the English country dance the lady of each first pair invented a new figure. The Princess Tsherkassky kissed her partner Peter Tolstoi and pulled his wig over his nose, the rest of the ladies did likewise, while the gentlemen had to stand motionless as logs. A general scramble, laughing, all sorts of nonsense ensued, all were merry as school children and Peter was the merriest of all.
Only the old princes continued to sit in their corner listening to the howling of the wind. They whispered, sighed, and shook their heads.
One of them remembered a passage in the Holy Fathers against dancing; “The twirling dances of women alienate people from God and hurl them into the depths of Hell. Laughter will be turned into mourning; dancers will be hung up by their navels.”
The Tsar came up to the old men and invited them to join the dance. Vain were their refusals, the plea of their inability and of various ailments, rheumatism, asthma, gout; the Tsar would take no excuse.
A solemn, quaint “Grossvater” was played; the sprightliestyoung ladies were purposely chosen as partners for the old men, who at first hardly moved, stumbled, and muddled both themselves and others; yet when the Tsar threatened them with a glass of that terrible pepper brandy, they jumped about as lively as the younger ones; they paid for it, however, at the end of the dance, when they fell back on their seats half dead with fatigue, groaning, puffing, and sighing.
They had hardly time to recover when the Tsar began a new dance more intricate even than the first, known as the “Chain dance;” thirty pairs, all tied together with handkerchiefs followed a fiddler, a small hunchback who went skipping along in front of them.
The dancers first went round the two rooms of the wing, then across the gallery they entered the main building; all over the house, from room to room, from staircase to staircase the saraband swept along, shrieking and laughing. The hunchback led the way, fiddling and leaping frantically, making faces as though some evil spirit possessed him. He was followed by the Tsar and his partner, the rest following after; as though the Tsar were leading the captives while he himself, the giant, was led and twirled along by the caprices of the little demon.
On their way back to the pavilion they saw people running towards them across the gallery waving their hands in terror and crying:—
“The water, the water, the water!”
The couples in front stopped short, but they were crushed by those running up from behind; a general confusion ensued.
They were hurled against one another, knocked down, dragging and tearing at the handkerchiefs, which bound them to one another, to undo them. The men swore, the ladies screamed; the chain was broken. A larger number headed by the Tsar hurried back through the gallery into the main building. A smaller number, those who were in front and in consequence nearer the wing, tried to follow, but before they had time to reach even the middle of the gallery, the shutter at one of the windows cracked, quivered and fell, sending the window pane in shivers; a stream of turbulent water rushed in after it. At the same time imprisonedair in the cellar below pressing against the floor began raising and bulging, and finally burst the floor up with a crash and rumble like the firing of cannon.
Peter called out from the other end of the gallery to those who were cut off:—
“Go back to the pavilion! Don’t be afraid, I will send boats.”
The words did not reach them, yet they understood his signs, and stood still.
Only two went on running along the flooded floor of the corridor. Theodosius was one of them. He had nearly reached the end where Peter stood waiting for him, when suddenly a plank gave way. Theodosius the monk fell through and began to sink. The other, a fat woman, the wife of a Dutch captain, picking up her skirts jumped over the monk’s head, red stockings flashed above his black hood. The Tsar hurried to the rescue of Theodosius, seized him by the shoulder, pulled him out and carried him in his arms like a little child. Theodosius was shivering and dripping all over. The wide black sleeves of his mantle running with water made him look like a wet bat. The hunchback fiddler too, on reaching the middle of the gallery, had disappeared in the water; he came to the surface again, tried to swim, but at that moment the middle of the ceiling gave way, came down with a crash, and buried him.
Then the few who were left, numbering about ten, seeing they were entirely cut off by water from the main building, hurried back into the wing, their last refuge. But here, too, the water was fast gaining ground. The waves were beating just below the windows, the shutters creaked, cracked and threatened any moment to be torn off their hinges.
The water came in through the broken window panes and the cracks; it oozed, gushed and gurgled down the walls, forming pools, flooding the floor.
All lost their heads, save Tolstoi and Wilim Ivanovitch Mons, who with presence of mind searched for another exit; they discovered a small door hidden by hangings; it opened upon a staircase which led to the garret. All rushed towards it. Even the gallantest cavaliers, now that death stared them in the face, neglected, even jostled, the ladies; each thought only of himself.
It was dark in the garret. Groping their way among beams, planks, empty barrels and cases, they reached the furthermost corner partly protected from the wind by a prominent chimney, which was still warm; they huddled close to it and for some time remained in the dark, flurried and stupefied by fear. The ladies in ball-dresses had their teeth chattering with cold.
At last Mons decided to go down and find help.
Downstairs the grooms, up to their knees in water, were leading into the room their master’s horses, which they had just saved from drowning in the stables. The Assembly Room was changed into a stable, the mirrors reflected the heads of horses; rags of canvas painted with the journey to the “Isle of Love” were hanging down from the ceiling; the naked Cupids bulged in mortal anguish. Mons gave money to the grooms, and they procured him a lantern, a bottle of brandy and several sheepskins. They told him there was no way out of the wing; the gallery was shattered, the yard flooded, they themselves were obliged to seek refuge in the garret. The promised boats never arrived; it turned out afterwards that those sent by the Tsar were unable to get near the wing; the courtyard was surrounded by a high fence and the only gateway was filled up by the debris of a shattered building. Mons returned to his companions in the garret; the light of the lantern seemed to give them a little courage; the men drank some of the brandy, the women wrapped themselves in the sheepskins.
The night seemed endless; the whole house was trembling under the pressure of the waves, like a rotten vessel on the brink of destruction. Overhead the storm tore off the tiles from the roof; now rushing past with furious howls and stamping like a herd of wild beasts, now with piercing hiss and rustle like a flock of gigantic birds; at times it seemed as if the wind would tear off the roof itself and blow them all away. In the voice of the storm they seemed to hear the cries of the drowning; they expected the whole town would disappear at any moment.
One of the ladies, the wife of the Danish resident, who was with child, was suddenly seized by violent pains and screamed most piteously; a premature delivery was feared.
George Proskóurov kept praying: “Holy Father Nicholas, St. Sergius have mercy upon us!” It was difficult to recognise in him the free-thinker who had been expounding the non-existence of the soul. Michael Avrámoff was also quaking with fear, yet seemed to rejoice at the misfortune which had befallen them.
“How argue with God? His wrath is just. This town will be destroyed from the face of the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah: ‘And God looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon earth. And God said:The end of all flesh is come before me. And behold I will bring a flood of water on the earth and destroy all flesh wherein is breath of life from under heaven.’”
Listening to these prophecies the refugees felt a new, hitherto unexperienced terror, as if the end of the world, the day of judgment were at hand.
A glow of fire flashed in the black sky; the sound of a clashing bell was heard through the noise of the storm; it was the alarm bell: the grooms said that in the Admiralty dockyards close by, the workmen’s dwellings and the rope and cable stores were on fire. Notwithstanding the abundance of water the fire was especially dangerous in this high wind; burning logs were blown about, and the whole city threatened to blaze up any moment. Petersburg was perishing from these two elements: fire and water; the prophecies were being fulfilled, Petersburg was doomed.
Towards dawn the storm subsided; in the grey transparency of the dim light the gentlemen in wigs, covered with dust and cobwebs, the ladies in “robes-rondes” and hooped skirts after the Versailles fashion, wrapped in sheepskins, their faces blue with the cold, appeared like spectres to each other.
Mons looked out of the garret window and saw in place of a town, a limitless lake. This lake was agitated not only on the surface but seemed to boil, seethe, and bubble up from the very bottom like water in a kettle over a hot fire. This lake was the Neva, variegated like the skin of a serpent’s belly, yellow, purple, black, but patched with white foam; wearied, yet angry, under the terrible, low, leaden sky, grey as the expanse below. Wrecks of barges, overturned boats, logs, planks, roofs, the skeletons of completehouses, carcases of animals—all these were floating slowly past on its waves.
Melancholy were the traces of human life in the midst of this triumphant element; here and there above the water peered the towers, spires, domes and roofs of flooded houses.
Mons perceived at a distance, opposite to the Peter and Paul fortress, a number of rowing galleys and boyers; he took up a long pole, one of those used for scaring pigeons, fixed Nastenka’s red silk neckerchief to it, pushed it through the window and began to wave, making signs to attract attention. One of the boats left the rest and coming straight across the Neva, approached the Assembly Room pavilion.
Peter had worked without a break all the night through, rescuing people from water and flames like a common fireman; his hair was singed; he narrowly escaped being crushed by a beam; while helping to rescue the chattels of poor people, who lived in cellar dwellings, he stood up to his waist in water and was chilled to the bone; he suffered with all and cheered all; wherever the Tsar appeared the work was done so heartily that both water and flames receded. The Tsarevitch was in a boat with his father, but whenever he ventured to offer help, Peter refused as if in disdain.
When the fire was quenched and the water began to subside the Tsar remembered it was time to go home to his wife, who had probably spent the night in great anxiety about her husband. On his way back he could not resist the desire to go round by the Summer Garden, and see what damage the flood had done there.
The pavilion projecting over the Neva was partially ruined, but the statue of Venus had remained whole. The pedestal was submerged, so that the Goddess, the Foam-born, seemed to be again rising from the waves; not the blue, tender waves of old, but the lurid, dark, waves, heavy as though leaden, of the Styx.
At the foot of the statue a black speck was visible. Peter looked through the telescope and found it was a man. By order of the Tsar a sentinel watched night and day at this precious statue. Caught by the waters, not daring to leavehis post, he had climbed up the pedestal of Venus and huddled himself close to her feet, embracing them; and thus he had probably spent the whole night, starved with cold, half dead with fatigue.
The Tsar hastened to his rescue. Standing at the rudder, he steered the boyer against current and wind. Suddenly an enormous wave seized the side of the boat, swept over them showering them with spray and making the craft heel over to such an extent that it threatened to capsize. But Peter was an experienced helmsman. Setting his feet against the stern, leaning with all his weight on the rudder, he overcame the danger, and steered steadily towards his goal.
The Tsarevitch glanced at his father and suddenly, for some reason or other, he remembered what his teacher Viasemski had once told him when drunk:—
“Theodosius is wont to sing with the choristers before your father: where God wills it the order of nature is conquered, and such like psalm verses. They sing them to flatter your father, and he rejoices to be compared unto God; forgetting that not only God but the devil also has power over the elements; there are such things as demon miracles.”
Clad in a plain sailor’s jacket, with high leather boots and waving hair—his hat had been carried off by the wind—the gigantic helmsman looked at the flooded city, his face, calm and firm, like sculptured stone, expressed neither confusion, fear, nor pity. There was something superhuman in this man. Like fate he held in his power men and elements. Men would bow before him, the wind would abate, the water would subside, and again the city would stand where he ordained it should be. “The order of nature is conquered, when he wills it.”
“Whose will,” the Tsarevitch asked himself, not daring to reply, “God’s, or the devil’s?”
A few days later, when the usual aspect of Petersburg had well nigh obliterated all traces of the flood, Peter wrote in a jovial letter to one of his eaglets:
“Last week, the west-south-west wind beat up such a flood, as, they say, had never happened before. In myapartments water stood twenty-one inches high, while in the garden and on the opposite shore it was high enough to boat on. It was very amusing to see people, men and women, perched on roofs and trees as on Ararat at the Great Flood. The water though high, didn’t do much damage.”
The letter was dated from “Paradise.”
Peter fell ill. He had caught cold during the flood when, in rescuing the poor people’s chattels from the cellar dwellings, he had stood waist-deep in water. At first he paid no heed to his illness, and tried to get over it by ignoring it, but on November 15, he was obliged to take to his bed and the Court Physician, Blumentrost, declared that the Tsar’s life was in danger.
These days were to decide the fate of Alexis. On October 28, the day of Alexis’ wife’s funeral, on their return from the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Peter gave him a letter, “a declaration to my son,” which demanded immediate reform on the threat of severe anger and the loss of the crown.
“I am at a loss to know what to do,” the Tsarevitch kept saying to his friends; “Am I to become a beggar and hide myself amongst outcasts for the time being, or shall I retreat to some monastery; or shall I seek refuge in some country where fugitives are safe?”
“Become a monk,” urged Kikin, an old confidant of Alexis. “The monk’s hood is not nailed on his head; it will come off again; and meanwhile you will at least have peace.”
“I have rescued you from your father’s axe,” declared Prince Basil Dolgorúki. “Be of good cheer, there is nothing left for you to worry about. Write a thousand letters of resignation—of renunciation of the crown—if necessary. Time is with us. The old proverb says: ‘The snail has started on its way, but there’s no knowing when it will arrive.’ Your decision is not irrevocable.”
“It is well that you have not set your heart on the inheritance,” said Prince George Troubetzkoi, trying to console him; “‘is not gold the source of many tears?’”
With Kikin the Tsarevitch repeatedly talked over thepossibility of a flight abroad, where he might live simply, away from everything, in peace.
“If it must be,” advised Kikin, “go to the Emperor at Vienna. You will be safe there. The Emperor said he would receive you like a son. Or else go to the Pope, or the French Court, even kings find refuge there. It would be easy for them to protect you.”
The Tsarevitch listened to these counsels, but unable to make up his mind, he lived from day to day waiting till the will of God should reveal itself.
Suddenly the whole situation changed. Peter’s death threatened to disturb not only Russia but the whole world. He, who but yesterday was thinking of hiding himself with beggars, might on the morrow ascend the throne.
Unexpected friends surrounded Alexis; they met, whispered, and consulted together,
“We must wait and see.”
“What will be, will be.”
“Our turn will come!”
“The mice will bury the cat!”
On the night between the first and second of December, the Tsar’s condition became so much worse that he ordered his confessor, the Archimandrite Theodosius, to be summoned and received the last rites of the Church. Neither Catherine nor Ménshikoff quitted the sick chamber. The residents of foreign courts, Russian Ministers, Senators, spent the night in the Winter Palace. When Alexis came in the morning to inquire about his father, the latter did not receive him, yet the sudden hush of the crowd which let him pass, the servile bows, the searching looks, pale faces, especially of his stepmother and Ménshikoff, told Alexis of the nearness of that which had always seemed to him so remote, so well-nigh impossible. His heart sank, his breath came quick and short, whether from joy or terror he knew not.
The same day, towards evening, he went to see Kikin, and the two had a long talk together. Kikin lived on the outskirts of the town, hard by the Ochta quarter. Thence the Tsarevitch returned straight home.
The sleighs dashed across the desert wood and wide empty streets, like vistas in a forest, with scarcely noticeable rows of log buildings buried in the snow drifts. The moonitself was invisible; but the air was filled with bright moonlit sparks. The snow did not fall from on high. The wind sent it in whirlwinds and in pillars like smoke. The luminous snowstorm sparkled and foamed in the dull blue sky like wine in a goblet.
He breathed the frosty air with delight. He felt bright as though his soul also was filled with a wild, luminous, intoxicating storm, and as the hidden moon lit up the storm, so also was his brightness due to a hidden thought, which though afraid to own, he yet felt to be the cause of his heady fear and joy.
Dim lights were glimmering through the bluish moonlit mist. They came from the frost-rimed windows of the huts, which, overhung with icicles, suggested drunken eyes glowing from under hoary eyebrows.
“Perhaps,” he thought, looking at them, “people are there drinking my health, the health of ‘Russia’s Hope’!” and his elation increased.
On his return, he sat down before the hearth where the embers were faintly glowing, and ordered Afanássieff to prepare him a hot drink. The room was dark, the candles had not yet been brought in. Alexis loved the dusk. Suddenly in the glow of the embers there flared up the blue centre of the spirit flame. The moonlit snowstorm peered with its blue eyes into the room through the transparent faery designs of the frost. Behind the window panes there quivered also a huge, living, blue, delirious flame.
Alexis was relating to Afanássieff his conversation with Kikin; it was the outline of a plot drawn up in case flight was inevitable and return only possible after his father’s death, which he thought would soon happen—the Tsar was suffering from epilepsy, and such people do not live long.
The Ministers, the Senators,—Tolstoi, Golóvkin, Shafiroff, Apraksin, Streshneff, Dolgorúki, were all his friends, and would side with him. Bauer in Poland, the Archimandrite Petchorski in the Ukraine, Sheremetieff with all his forces.
“From the European frontier all would belong to me.”
Afanássieff was listening with his usual stubborn, morose expression, which as much as said: The talk is all very fine, but how will it work?
“And what about Ménshikoff?” he queried, when Alexis had ended.
“Ménshikoff will be impaled.”
The old man shook his head.
“Why talk so rashly, my lord? What if some one should hear and report? Curse not the king—no, not in thy thought—and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter——”
“Oh, stop that meandering,” the Tsarevitch waved his hand in annoyance, and yet with an unrestrainable sense of joy.
Afanássieff was roused.
“I am not meandering; I am only speaking the truth. It is as well not to praise the dream before it has proved true. Your Highness indulges in building castles in the air. You won’t listen to us humble folk; you heed only those who deceive you. Both Tolstoi, the Judas, and Kikin, the Atheist, both are traitors. Be on your guard, my lord, you are not the first they have betrayed.”
“I spit upon them all, if only the people stand by me! When the time comes and my father is dead, I will whisper to the prelates, and the prelates to the priests, and the priests to their flock, and they will make me Tsar, whether I will or no.”
The old man remained silent, his face still bore the same stubborn, morose expression which clearly said, “This kind of talk is all very fine, but how will it work?”
“Why don’t you say something?” said Alexis.
“What should I say, Tsarevitch, it is for you to decide. But as for running away from your father, I do not advise it.”
“And why not?”
“Simply for this reason; it’s all very well if you succeed, but suppose you fail, I shall have to bear the consequences. As it is you are ever ready to vent your wrath on me. We are unimportant people, yet we, too, can feel.”
“Be on your guard, Afanássieff, and don’t let any one know I told you. No one, save you and Kikin, knows of my plans. But even if you should report, you won’t be believed; I will deny everything, you will be tortured.”
Alexis had made this addition about the torture just for the sake of teasing the old man.
“When you are Tsar, will you then also threaten your faithful servants with the torture-chamber?”
“Have no fear, Afanássieff! If ever I am Tsar, I will do my best by you—— But I shall never be a Tsar.”
“You will, you will.” retorted the old man with such conviction that again Alexis was half-choking with joy.
Bells, the grating of sleighs on the snow, the snorting of horses, and voices were heard under the windows.
Alexis exchanged looks with Afanássieff. Who could it possibly be at so late an hour? Not from the palace, surely!
Afanássieff ran into the hall. It was the Archimandrite Theodosius. The Tsarevitch, on seeing him, thought his father had died; he grew so pale, that the monk, notwithstanding the darkness, noticed it while giving the blessing, and faintly smiled.
When they were alone, Theodosius sat near the fire opposite to the Tsarevitch, and silently looking at him with the same scarcely perceptible smile, began to warm his hands over the fire, opening and closing his fingers, which looked like bat-claws.
“How is my father?” at last Alexis asked, plucking up courage.
“Very bad,” the monk sighed heavily, “so bad that we don’t expect him to live.”
The Tsarevitch made a sign of the cross.
“God’s will be done!”
“Man is like a cedar of Lebanon to look upon,” began Theodosius, chantingly in the church style, “yet he passes and no trace is left. His spirit will leave him; to earth will he return, and all his thoughts will perish with him on the same day”—he stopped short suddenly, and bringing his tiny shrunken face up to Alexis, he began to whisper in a quick, insinuating voice—“God waits a long time, yet when He visits He is severe. The Tsar’s illness has been brought about by his incessant drinking and voluptuousness. It is God’s revenge for attacking the clergy, whom he wanted to exterminate. No good can come while the Church is overawed by tyranny. Can this religion of oursbe called Christianity; it might be the Turkish religion; yet even in Turkey such things do not happen. Our Russian country is doomed.”
Alexis could scarcely believe his ears. He had expected anything from Theodosius save this.
“But what were you prelates, guardians of the Russian Church, doing? Whose business is it but yours to stand up for the Church?” the Tsarevitch said, gazing intently at Theodosius.
“Ah, Tsarevitch, what power is left to us? Our prelates are so bridled that they will follow whichever way you lead them. They have as much power as the country police; they do the will of him who appoints them. They turn whichever way the wind blows. They are not prelates, but a mob.”
And hanging his head, he added in a low voice, as if to himself, and to Alexis it seemed to be the voice of the past, “We were all eagles, now we have become bats.”
His black hood, the wide sleeves of his gown, his ugly pointed face lit up by the blaze of the dying embers, all this made him look very much like a huge bat; only in his clever eyes there glowed the light of an eagle’s.
“It ill behoves you to talk and me to listen;” the Tsarevitch at last burst out. “Who has brought the Church under the State? Who is trying to introduce Lutheran customs among the people? Who has persuaded the Tsar to destroy all the chapels, defile icons, and close the monasteries? Who gives him dispensation for all this?”
He stopped. The monk continued to eye him with the same persistent, penetrating gaze. Alexis felt uneasy. Was this not after all a trap? Had Theodosius been sent to him as a spy by Ménshikoff, or by his father?
“Does your Highness remember a figure of speech called ‘the reductio ad absurdum’ in logic?” said the monk, winking with an infinitely cunning smile. “That is what I am doing. The Tsar has attacked the Church, yet dares not oppose it openly, only secretly he destroys, corrupts, and corrodes it. As for me, I had rather do a thing thoroughly, if I do it at all, and quickly if it has to be done. I prefer honest Lutheranism to a crooked orthodoxy; an avowed atheism to crooked Lutheranism. The worsethe better! That is my way. What the Tsar indicates I carry out. What he whispers I openly declare to the people. I make him convict himself; let every one know that the Church of God is defiled. By dint of patience one can get used to anything; yet if this won’t work, the time will come when we, too, will have our fling. The cat will have to pay for all the tears it has caused the mice.”
“Now this is adroit,” laughed the Tsarevitch; he felt admiration for Theodosius, though he did not believe a single word he said. “You are sly, Father, sly as the devil himself.”
“Don’t disdain devils. Satan serves God’s purpose even against his will.”
“Does your holiness compare yourself to a devil?”
“I am a diplomatist,” modestly retorted the monk, “with wolves I howl like a wolf. Dissimulation is not only recommended by political teachers, but by God Himself; as a fisherman hides the hook with a worm, so did the Lord hide His Spirit in the flesh of His Son, and casting His line into the world’s pool, outdid and caught Satan the Fiend. Intrigue of divine wisdom! Heavenly diplomacy!”
“May I ask you, Holy Father, do you believe in God?” Again the Tsarevitch eyed him narrowly.
“How can a country be without a Church, and the Church without God?” And then with a strange simper, half timid, half insolent, he added: “But you, too, Alexis Petrovitch, are not a fool; you are more intelligent than your father, the Tsar; though he is clever, yet he does not know men; we often used to lead him by the nose. You will be a better judge of men.” And suddenly he stooped and kissed Alexis’ hand so quickly and adroitly that the latter had no time to pull it away; only a shudder passed through him.
Though he could not help feeling that the monk’s flattery was only honey on a knife, yet the honey was sweet.
He blushed, and in order to conceal his confusion, he continued with feigned curtness: “Be careful, father, and don’t over-reach yourself. The pitcher goes to the well till it breaks. As a cat tries to scratch a bear, so youdare my father; but suppose the bear objects, and, turning round, crushes you, where will you be then?”
The monk’s face fell, contracted, his eyes dilated, and looking round to ascertain that no one was standing behind him, he began to whisper in a hurried, disjointed, as it were feverish whisper:—
“Ah! your Highness, it is bad enough as it is, I always had a feeling that he will kill me! When yet I was but a child I was brought to Moscow, together with other nobles; we were led into a hall and allowed to kiss the sovereign’s hand. I first went up to your uncle, the Tsar Ivan Alexeyevitch; but when I came to kiss Tsar Peter’s hand, such fear possessed me that my knees shook; I could hardly keep upright; and ever since I have had the feeling that I shall die by that hand.”
Even now he was trembling with fear, yet hatred was stronger than fear. He began talking about Peter in such terms that Alexis almost believed them to be sincere. He discerned in this talk his own secret, wicked thoughts about his father.
“He is called Great! but in what does his greatness reveal itself? He reigns as a tyrant. He introduces civilization with axe and knout! And the axe, too, is nothing extraordinary, anybody can buy one. He is ever on the search for plots and rebellions. But he does not realize that he himself is the source of all this unrest. He himself is the first rebel. He breaks, knocks down, fells with all his might. But there is no method in it. What multitudes have been executed, what quantities of blood have been shed! Yet the wrong does not decrease. People’s consciences are not bound. Blood is not water, it cries for vengeance! Soon God’s wrath will come down upon Russia, and when civil war begins then the eyes of every one will be opened. Such an uproar, such decapitations will be set going—shwisk, shwisk, shwisk!”—he passed his hand across his throat and tried to imitate the sound of an axe. “And only then, out of this sea of blood will arise the Church of God, pure, whiter than the snow, like a woman arrayed in the glory of the sun, reigning over all rulers.”
Alexis watched his face, disfigured by passion, his eyesflashing with wild fire, and it seemed as if a madman was sitting before him.
He remembered hearing from a monk that Father Theodosius was sometimes subject to melancholy; tormented by the evil spirit, he falls to the ground and behaves like one beside himself.
“I anticipated this, and that is what I was leading up to,” concluded Theodosius, “but it seems that God has shown mercy to Russia; the Tsar is struck down, the people are spared. You are sent unto us, you are our salvation, our joy, our bright son of the Church, the most pious sovereign, Alexis Petrovitch, Autocrat of all the Russias, Your Majesty!”
The Tsarevitch started up in terror. Theodosius too had risen, fallen at his feet, embraced his knees, and lifted up his voice in a frenzied, inexorable, almost threatening prayer.
“Protect, have mercy on your servant! I will give you all! All I have kept back from your father, all I have reserved for myself. I wanted to become a Patriarch, I no longer want it. I want nothing. Everything belongs to you, my darling, my joy, my heart’s delight. Aliósha! I love you! You shall be Tsar and Patriarch! You will unite the earthly with the heavenly, the white hood of Constantine with the crown of Monomachus. You shall be greater than any other Tsar on earth. You, the first, you alone! You and God. While I, I will be your slave, your dog, a worm under your foot. Truly, your Majesty, I embrace your feet like those of Christ and adore you.”
He bowed very low before him; the wide black of his pall spread on the floor like the gigantic wings of a bat. The diamond-set panagia with the portrait of the Tsar and the Crucifix fell to the ground with a clatter. Abomination filled Alexis’ soul, a cold shudder ran through him as from the touch of some vermin. He wanted to push him back, strike him, spit into his face; yet he could not move, he was as if spell-bound by some fearful nightmare. And it seemed to him that this was no longer the miserable Theodosius, but someone strong, terrible, powerful, who lay prostrate before him, some one who had been an eagle and had become a bat; was it not the Church herself, dishonoured, dominated by the State? And through this abomination,through this terror, a mad delight, a giddying sense of power turned his head. It seemed that somebody was lifting him on black, gigantic wings and showing unto him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, saying—“If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine!”
The embers on the hearth were faintly glimmering under the thick layer of ashes. The blue flame of the spirit had all but gone out. The blue flame of the luminous storm had grown faint outside the windows.
Somebody pale with pale eyes was peering through the windows. And the flowers wrought by the frost on the window panes stood out white, like the phantoms of flowers.
When Alexis recovered he was alone. Theodosius had disappeared as if he had fallen through the ground or melted away into the air.
“What has he been raving about,” thought Alexis, as if waking from a sleep. “The white hood—the crown of Monomachus—madness—melancholy—and how can he tell that the Tsar will die! Where did he get this from? How many times did we despair of his life, God always showed mercy——”
And suddenly he remembered what Kikin had said to him this evening:
“Your father is not so ill as he seems. The last rites of the Church were administered to him on purpose to make people believe he is very ill, but it is only deception. He is only testing you and the others, trying to see how you all will act after his death. You know the fable—‘The mice gathered together to bury the cat, they pranced and danced when suddenly up leapt the cat!—There was an end to the revel.’ As for his taking communion, he has his own views on this subject.”
At the time these words had stung Alexis’ heart with shame and disgust. Yet he purposely let them pass, he was in too good a humour to trouble about anything.
“Kikin is right,” he now decided, and a dead hand seemed to grip his heart. “Yes, all was deception, pretence, dissimulation, devil’s policies, a game of cat and mouse—the cat suddenly leapt up and grabbed—Nothing has been, nothing will be. All these hopes, rhapsodies, dreams aboutglory, liberty, power were only visions, a delirium, a madness!”
The blue flame lit up for the last time and then went out. Darkness ensued, only the glowing embers peering from under the ashes seemed to wink, smiling like an artful blinking eye. The Tsarevitch felt uneasy. It seemed to him that Theodosius had not gone away, that he remained here somewhere in a corner hiding, holding his breath; that at any moment he would whirl round with his black bat-like wings, and whisper in his ear, “All the power will I give thee and the glory of them, for all is delivered unto me, and unto whosoever I will, I give it.”
“Afanássieff!” called out the Tsarevitch. “Bring a light! be quick!”
The old man coughed and grunted angrily at having to come down from his warm couch.
“And what did I hope for?” the Tsarevitch questioned himself, for the first time recovering full consciousness during those days. “Is it possible?”
Afanássieff, pattering with his bare feet, brought in a snuffy tallow candle. The light hurt Alexis’ eyes, it seemed blinding, dazzling after the darkness. A light as it were flashed across his soul, he suddenly saw what he neither wanted nor dared to face—the reason why he felt so happy—the thought that his father would die. And he was horror-struck to comprehend that he longed for that death.
“Do you remember, my Lord, how in your room at Preobrazhensky I asked you before the Holy Gospels, whether you would regard me as your confessor, your guardian-angel, God’s apostle—the judge of your actions; and whether you believed that I, unworthy though I might be, possessed that holy power of the priest to bind, or to loose, which Christ granted to his apostles; and you answered ‘Yes’?”
So spake to the Tsarevitch the arch-priest Father James Ignatief, who had come from Moscow to Petersburg, about three weeks after Alexis’ interview with Theodosius.
Ten years before Father James had stood in the same relationship to Alexis as the Patriarch Nicon had stood to his grandfather, the gentle Tsar Alexis Michailovitch. The grandson had followed his grandfather’s precept: “Let the clergy be first; submit to them without question, the priesthood is higher than the Tsarhood.” Amid the universal desecration and thraldom of the Church, the Tsarevitch felt it a sweet privilege to bow before the humble priest James. In the pastor’s face he saw the face of the Lord himself, and he believed that the Lord was Lord of lords, and King of kings. The more absolute and severe Father James was, the more humble was the Tsarevitch, and the more he rejoiced in his humility. He bestowed upon his spiritual father all that love he could not give to his father after the flesh. It was a jealous, tender, passionate friendship, almost like that between lovers. “I take God for witness that in the whole Russian Empire I have no other such friend as your holiness,” he wrote to Father James from abroad. “I did not mean to say it, but, never mind, I will now; may God grant you long life, and should yoube called to a better world I should have no desire to return to Russia.”
Suddenly it all changed. Father James had a son-in-law, the clerk Peter Anfimoff. Yielding to the entreaties of his confessor, Alexis had taken this Anfimoff into his service and entrusted to him the administration of his estates at Poretzkoye, in the Government of Nishni-Novgorod. The arbitrary rule of the clerk ruined the peasants, and almost drove them to revolt. Many times did they write to Alexis complaining about Peter the thief, but the latter always came out unscathed, thanks to the protection of Father James. At last it dawned upon the peasants to send a messenger to Petersburg, to their old friend and countryman, Ivan Afanássieff, valet to the Tsarevitch. Ivan went himself to Poretzkoye to investigate matters, and on his return, reported in such a way that no doubt whatever remained of Peter’s dishonesty and villainy, and what was more important, that Father James knew all about it. It was a severe blow to Alexis. He was indignant, not because of the harm done to him or his peasants, but because the Church of God seemed to him desecrated in the person of her unworthy pastor. For a long time he would not see Father James, he concealed his resentment and said nothing; but at last it burst out.
Under the nickname of Father Hell, together with Jibanda, Sleeper, the Lasher and other boon companions of the Tsarevitch, the arch-priest was wont to take part in the drinking bouts of the Most Drunken Conclave, an imitation of Peter’s more famous association. At one of their orgies Alexis began denouncing the Russian clergy, calling them Judas, the Betrayers of Christ.
“When will the new prophet Elijah arise to break your backs, ye priests of Baal?” exclaimed Alexis, looking straight at Father James.
“You speak wildly, Tsarevitch,” the latter interposed with severity, “it ill becomes you to cast reproaches at us, your unworthy intercessors with God——”
“Oh! we know your prayers,” interrupted Alexis, “You seek pardon and in the same breath pray for God’s blessing on your knavery. My father, the Tsar Peter, may God grant him long life! did well to clip your wings!You deserve to be treated much worse than this, you Pharisees, hypocrites, serpent brood.”
Father James got up from the table, came up to the Tsarevitch and asked in a solemn voice:—
“Of whom do you speak, my Lord. Is it myself?”
At this minute Father James resembled the holy Father, the patriarch Nikon, but Peter’s son no longer resembled the gentle Tsar Alexis Michailovitch.
“You too are included,” answered the Tsarevitch, standing up and continuing to look at Father James. “You too, Father, cannot be exempt from the general rule; you too have sold your soul to the devil; and have become a priest from motives of self interest. Why do you assume such pride? You want the Patriarchate, no doubt? If so, you are a long way off it. Wait, the Lord will soon cast you down from the pride of place which your Church assumes, and you will fall into the mud, mud, mud!”
He added a ribald expression; all laughed. Father James lost control over himself, he too was drunk, though not so much with wine as with anger. “Hold your tongue, Alexis,” he cried. “Be quiet, you puppy.”
“If I am a puppy, you, Father, are a dog!”
Father James’ face became purple, he trembled all over, raised both his hands over the head of the Tsarevitch, and with the voice in which he was wont to pronounce the anathema against all heretics and apostates, he now called out:
“I will curse you with the power given to us by the Lord Himself, through the Apostle Peter——”
“Spare your breath,” retorted Alexis with a malignant smile. “Don’t invoke Peter the Apostle, but Peter Anfimoff the clerk, the thief, your beloved son-in-law, it’s he, Peter the vile, Peter the evil one, who possesses you and cries within you!”
Father James dropped one hand and struck Alexis on the cheek: “Closing the mouth of the evil one.”
The Tsarevitch fell upon him, with one hand he seized him, the other was searching for a knife on the table. Distorted by anger, pale, with flashing eyes, the face of Alexis bore a momentary, mysterious likeness to his father Peter. It was one of those fits of fury which from time to time theTsarevitch was subject to, and while it lasted he was capable of any crime.
The others started up and rushed to separate them; they seized the combatants by hands and feet, and, after considerable effort, succeeded in parting them.
This quarrel, like all similar quarrels, had no result: a drunkard is not responsible for his deeds; it is a usual thing to drink, fight, sleep it off and be friends again. They too made it up; but the old love did not return. The priest had lost his authority over the grandson as he had done over the grandfather.
Father James was the intermediary between the Tsarevitch and a whole secret confederacy, almost a conspiracy, against Peter and his new town. This society had for its centre the disgraced Tsaritsa Eudoxia, the first wife of Peter, who had been banished to Sousdal. When the news spread of the Tsar’s supposed fatal illness, Father James hurried to Petersburg, bearing a message from Sousdal, where great things were expected when Alexis should become Tsar. But things had taken a new turn by the time the priest had arrived. The Tsar grew better so rapidly that his recovery seemed almost miraculous, or else his illness had been feigned. Kikin’s prophecy had been fulfilled: the cat which was supposed to be dead had leapt up, and there was an end to the mice’s merry-making; all dispersed and hid themselves. Peter had gained his end, and had learnt what his son’s strength would be, should he, the Tsar, really die.
Rumours had reached Alexis that his father was very wroth with him. One of the spies, was it Theodosius himself? had whispered, it was said, to Peter, that the Tsarevitch was cheerful at the time of his father’s illness and that his face was bright and joyous.
Again all forsook the Tsarevitch, avoided him as a leper. After having dreamt of the throne he saw himself nigh to the scaffold, and he knew that he should find no mercy. Daily he dreaded an interview with his father. Yet hatred and revolt stifled fear. This deception, this dissimulation, this feline slyness, this sacrilegious trifling with death seemed vile to him. He could not help remembering another dissimulation of his father’s. The letterthreatening disinheritance, “a declaration to my son,” which the Tsarevitch received on the day of his wife’s funeral, October 22, 1715, had been dated October 11, the eve of his son’s, young Peter Alexeyevitch’s, birth. At the time he had not noticed the antedating; but now he saw the reason for this subterfuge. When a son was born to him, Alexis, the Tsar could not very well have ignored the same in his “declaration”; nor could he threaten absolute disinheritance when a new heir had appeared. The substitution of dates leant an appearance of legitimacy to what was in reality unlawful.
The Tsarevitch smiled bitterly, when he remembered how his father always liked to pose as artless and straightforward.
He could forgive his father everything, all the great wrongs and ill-doings, but he could not get over this petty cunning.
Father James found the Tsarevitch immersed in these thoughts. Alexis was pleased to see him; he was lonely and welcomed any visitor. But Nikon’s spirit was strong in Father James. Feeling that Alexis now more than ever needed his help, he resolved to remind him of his wrongs.
“Tsarevitch,” continued Father James, “you have broken the vow made unto me in Preobrazhensky before the Holy Gospels, treating it lightly and with contempt. You no longer consider me your guardian angel, the apostle of Christ, the judge of all your actions; on the contrary you have taken upon yourself to judge and outrage us with reviling words. And much misery did you bring into our household through this affair, between our son-in-law and the peasants of Poretzkoye. And you have plucked me, your spiritual father, by the beard, a thing your highness had no right to do, if only for fear of the living God.... Though I be a vile sinner, yet I am, nevertheless, a minister of the pure body and blood of Christ. The Lord of lords will judge between us on the day of the great reckoning, when there will be no dissimulation. Then the power of the world will fade away, and the Tsar will stand before God simply as a man.”
Without a word the Tsarevitch raised his eyes to him;they expressed neither grief nor despair, but such blank indifference that Father James did not continue; he understood that this was not the right moment to settle old accounts. He was warm-hearted and deeply attached to Alexis.
“Well, God will forgive you,” he said in conclusion, “and you, my friend, forgive me also——”
Then he added, looking into his face with tender anxiety:
“Why are you so downcast, Alexis?”
The Tsarevitch hung his head and did not reply.
“I have brought you something,” Father James smiled with a cheerful, mysterious air, “a letter from your mother. I have recently been to see them. Their joy has invigorated me. Again they have had visions, voices, saying: The time will soon come.” He searched in his pocket for the letter.
“Don’t,” the Tsarevitch stopped him, “don’t, Father James. It would be better not to let me see it. What good can it do? Life is particularly difficult for me at this moment. This might be reported, my father could get wind of it. We are surrounded by spies. Don’t go to see the religious again, and bring me no more letters in future. We must not——”
Father James again looked at him long and anxiously.
“This is what they have brought him to ...the son denies his mother!”
“Can’t you get on with your father?” he asked in a whisper.
Alexis only waved his hand and his head sank lower still. Father James understood it all. Tears filled the old man’s eyes, he bent over the Tsarevitch, laid one hand on the young man’s, while with the other he began gently to stroke his hair, as he would that of a sick child, saying:
“What is it, my little son? What is it, my son? the Lord be with thee! If you have something on your mind, don’t keep it back; it will do you good for us to talk it over together. I am your father, remember; though I am but a sinner yet the Lord may give me wisdom.”
The Tsarevitch continued to be silent and avoided his gaze. But suddenly his face fell, his lips quivered with a hollow tearless sob, he sank at his confessor’s feet.
“It’s hard, Father, it’s hard! I know not what to do. I can bear it no longer—— I wish my father——”
He was unable to proceed, he seemed frightened by what he was going to say.
“Come into the chapel, come quickly, I’ll tell you all there, I want to confess. Judge, Father, in the sight of God between my father and me——”
In the chapel, a small room next to the bedchamber, the walls were covered with ancient icons, in gold and silver trimmings set with precious stones; they were a heritage of Tsar Alexis. No ray of sunshine ever penetrated here. Lamps lit the perpetual gloom.
The Tsarevitch knelt before the desk which held the Gospels. Father James, robed, solemn, as it were transfigured, his face quite simple and peasant like, slightly heavy, and bloated with age, yet from a distance still handsome, reminding one of the Saviour’s face on old images—held the cross, saying:—
“My son, Christ is invisibly present to receive thy confession; be not ashamed, neither afraid; conceal nothing from me, but recount to me all thy sins so that thou mayest receive the absolution of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And as the sins were named one after the other in the order of the confession, the priest putting the questions, the penitent answering them, Alexis’ heart grew lighter and lighter, as though some powerful being were removing load after load from his soul, and, touching with light finger the wounds of his conscience, healed them. He felt happy and awed; his heart burned within him and it seemed to him, that not Father James, but Christ Himself was standing before him.
“Tell me, son, hast thou willingly or unwillingly slain a man?”
This was a question the Tsarevitch was anticipating with dread.
“I have sinned here,” he replied in a scarcely audible voice, “not in deed, nor in words, but in thought. I wished my father——”
And again, as before, he stopped short as if what he was going to say had frightened him. But the All-seeing Eyepenetrated the very depths of his soul, and nothing could be hid from It.
With effort, trembling, pale and bathed in cold sweat, he concluded:
“When my father was ill, I longed for his death.”
He stopped and shrank together and bent his head lower still. He closed his eyes so as not to see Him who stood before him; his heart sank in an agony of dread, as though he were waiting for the last word of condemnation, or absolution, which would peal forth like thunder as on the day of Judgment, when suddenly he heard the familiar, ordinary human voice of Father James, saying: “God will forgive thee, child. We all desired it!”
The Tsarevitch lifted his head, opened his eyes, and saw the familiar, ordinary, human face, not in the least alarming, with little wrinkles round the brown eyes; kind and slightly cunning, a mole with three hairs on the round plump cheek, the reddish grizzled beard, the same he had once pulled in a scuffle, when in his cups. An ordinary priest, nothing remarkable about him; yet, if a thunderbolt had fallen, Alexis would have been less dumbfounded than by those simple words—“God will forgive thee, we all desired it.”
And meanwhile, the priest continued, as if nothing had happened:—
“Tell me, my son, hast thou abstained from blood, carrion, from the flesh of strangled animal, or those killed by the wolf, and smitten by the bird? Hast thou ever defiled thyself by eating what has been forbidden in the holy laws? Hast thou tasted in Lent, or on Wednesdays and Fridays, butter and cheese?”
“Father,” exclaimed the Tsarevitch, “great is my sin, the Lord knows how great it is!”
“Hast thou broken the Lenten fast?” asked Father James with anxiety.
“I did not mean that, Father; I speak of my father, the Tsar. How is it possible? I am his son, flesh of his flesh. The son prayed for the death of his father! He who longs for another person’s death is a murderer. I am a parricide in thought. I am troubled, Father James, sorely troubled. Verily, Father, I confess to thee as to Christ Himself. Judge me, help me, be gracious unto me, O Lord!”
Father James looked at him, first in astonishment, then in anger.
“You repent for having revolted against your father after the flesh, but you forget your revolt against your father after the spirit! Inasmuch as the spirit is more than the flesh, by so much is the father after the spirit greater than the father after the flesh——”
And again he talked in an empty, laboured, literary manner, insisting again and again upon the honour due to the priesthood above all. “You, my son, have rebelled. Like a frenzied man, like a mad goat you have screamed at me. May God not count this unto you! It is not your own doing, but Satan plays me false through you. He has saddled you like a sorry jade and rides you proudly like a wild boar, according to the vision of the holy Fathers, wherever he chooses, till at last he will drive you into eternal perdition.”
And gradually he led the talk to the affair with the Poretzkoye peasants and his son-in-law Peter Anfimoff. A veil like a cobweb, grey, wan and sticky, spread before the eyes of the Tsarevitch, and the face which stood before him seemed to dilate and double, as in a fog; another face appeared instead, also familiar, with a red pointed nose ever scenting the air, blear-eyed and sly, the face of Peter the clerk; and it seemed as if the dignified face of the Most Reverend Father James, which resembled the face of Christ as painted on ancient icons, merged and mingled in a strange unholy way with the features of Peter the thief, Peter the rogue.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ by the grace and abounding compassion of His love, doth pardon and forgive thee, son Alexis, all thy sins!” recited Father James, covering the young man’s head with the stole, “and I, unworthy minister, unto whom He has given the power to pronounce pardon and absolution, declare thee free of thy sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!”