“My Son,—When I said good-bye to you, and asked about your resolution concerning a certain matter, on which you always gave me the reply that owing to your weakness you were not fit for the throne, but would prefer the monastery, I again told you to think it well over, and communicate to me your decision. I have waited for it these seven months, but to this day you have written me nothing. Now, therefore, as you have had ample time for consideration, on receipt of this letter, decide at once one way or the other. Should you choose the throne, do not tarry longer than a week, but come to me here, for you will yet be in time to take part in the campaign. But should you choose the monastery, write me when and where and what day, so that knowing what I may have to expect from you, my heart may be at rest. To this messenger entrust the final answer. Should it be the first, state the day of your departure from Petersburg; should it be the second, the date of your entry into the cloister. And again we emphasize that this choice must be final, for I perceive that, as usual, you are spending your time to no purpose.”
“My Son,—When I said good-bye to you, and asked about your resolution concerning a certain matter, on which you always gave me the reply that owing to your weakness you were not fit for the throne, but would prefer the monastery, I again told you to think it well over, and communicate to me your decision. I have waited for it these seven months, but to this day you have written me nothing. Now, therefore, as you have had ample time for consideration, on receipt of this letter, decide at once one way or the other. Should you choose the throne, do not tarry longer than a week, but come to me here, for you will yet be in time to take part in the campaign. But should you choose the monastery, write me when and where and what day, so that knowing what I may have to expect from you, my heart may be at rest. To this messenger entrust the final answer. Should it be the first, state the day of your departure from Petersburg; should it be the second, the date of your entry into the cloister. And again we emphasize that this choice must be final, for I perceive that, as usual, you are spending your time to no purpose.”
The courier Saphnov brought this letter to Roshdestveno, where Alexis had returned on leaving Moscow. The Tsarevitch sent his father word that he was coming to him at once, but in reality decided nothing. To him the two alternatives, either to become a monk or to prepare himself for the duties of the throne, were but a double trap. To become a monk with the idea that the hood was not “nailed to the head” would mean to lose his soul before God by a false vow. And as to fitting himself for the duties of a future monarch in the sense his father demanded, it waslike asking him to enter his mother’s womb and be born anew.
The letter neither frightened nor grieved Alexis. It found him in that senseless, listless torpor which had of late repeatedly laid hold of him. When in that condition he spoke and did everything as in a dream, never knowing a moment beforehand what he would say or do next. His heart was light and empty; whether from reckless cowardice or despairing insolence, it was difficult to say.
He went to Petersburg and put up at his house near the church dedicated to the Virgin of all the Sorrowing. He ordered his valet, Ivan Afanássieff, to pack what he needed for the journey like the last time he went abroad.
“Are you going to join your father?”
“I am going, the Lord knows best, either to him or somewhere else,” Alexis said drowsily.
“Tsarevitch! How somewhere else?” The valet was frightened, or else feigned to be so.
“I should like to see Venice,” began Alexis smiling, but in the next moment he added in a mournful voice, as if to himself, “I only do this to save myself. Yet, mind you keep silence. There is no one else besides you and Kikin who know anything about it.”
“I will keep your secret,” answered the old man in his usual gruff manner, though at this moment his eyes lit up with devotion. “Only we’ll have a rough time of it when you have left. Bethink yourself what you intend doing——”
“I did not expect any message from my father,” continued the Tsarevitch in the same drowsy tone, “and it never came to my mind; but now I see it is God who guides me. I dreamt last night that I was building churches, which means I have a journey to take——”
He yawned.
“Many in your station have sought refuge in flight,” remarked Afanássieff, “but it has never happened in Russia within the memory of man.”
From his house Alexis went straight to Ménshikoff and informed him that he was going to join his father. The Prince spoke amiably, and before parting asked:—
“And where will you leave Afrossinia?”
“I’ll take her as far as Riga and then send her back to Petersburg,” answered Alexis at random, hardly realising what he said; afterwards he marvelled at his instinctive cunning.
“Why send her back?” said Ménshikoff looking him straight in the face, “better take her with you.”
Had Alexis been more attentive he would have been surprised. Ménshikoff must have known that a son “desirous of fitting himself for the throne,” could not appear in his father’s camp, “to study military duties” with his mistress Afrossinia. What did the advice mean? When in the course of time Kikin heard about it, he suggested that Alexis should thank the prince by letter for his advice: “Your father might chance to find the letter at the prince’s house, and suspicion at his having been an accomplice in your flight might be aroused.”
Ménshikoff told him to come to the Senate for the passport and money for the journey before leaving.
In the Senate all vied with one another in trying to render a service to the Tsarevitch, as if they wanted to show secretly a sympathy for him, which they did not dare to confess openly. Ménshikoff provided him with 2,000 gold roubles; the Senate another 1,000, and at the same time arranged with the High Commissioner of Riga for a loan of 5,000 in gold, and 2,000 in small money. No one asked awkward questions; they all seemed to have agreed not to inquire why Alexis should need so much money. After the meeting was over, Prince Basil Dolgorúki took him aside: “Are you going to your father?”
“Where else, Prince?”
Dolgorúki looked carefully round, and then bringing his aged effeminate lips close to Alexis’s ear, he whispered:—
“What else? Come, I’ll tell thee”—— and after a short silence he added, still in a whisper, “Had I considered only the Tsar’s temper, and had there been no Tsaritsa, I would have been the first to desert at Stettin myself.”
He pressed Alexis’ hand, and tears stood in his sly, kindly eyes. “Could I serve thee in any way later on, I would gladly lay down my life for thee.”
“Don’t forget me,” murmured Alexis quite mechanically, prompted by no thought or feeling.
He learnt in the evening that Jacob Dolgorúki, one of the Tsar’s most devoted servants, had indirectly sent him word not to join his father: “a bad reception awaits him there.”
The next morning, September 26, 1706, Alexis left Petersburg, in a mail coach, together with Afrossinia and her brother Ivan, a freed serf. He had not yet decided where he was going. On leaving Riga he still took Afrossinia with him, saying that he “had orders to proceedincognitoto Vienna in order that he might arrange an alliance against the Turks.”
In Libau he was met by Kikin, who was returning from Vienna.
“Have you found me a refuge?” inquired the Tsarevitch.
“I have. Go straight to the Emperor, they will not betray you there. The Emperor himself told the Vice-Chancellor, Schönborn, that he will receive you like a son.”
“Should envoys from my father meet me at Dantzic, what shall I do then?”
“Escape at night,” answered Kikin, “with one of the lads, leaving the luggage and other servants behind. If two envoys are sent, pretend to be ill, send back one in advance and run away from the other.”
Observing his indecision, Kikin continued:—
“Remember, Tsarevitch, your father will not let you become a monk now, even if you should want to. Your friends, the Senators, have persuaded him to keep you always near him, and to make you accompany him everywhere, hoping thus to kill you by overtaxing your strength, and your father said it was well thought of. Further, Prince Ménshikoff reasoned with him, saying that you would have too much peace in the monastery and might live too long. Knowing these plans I am surprised they have not laid violent hands on you before now. They might, however, do this, get you on to Danish soil and then your father, under pretext of instruction, will put you on board a man of war, the captain of which will have orders to engage with a Swedish vessel standing by, and thus get you shot—this rumour comes from Copenhagen, and it will explain why you are now wanted. Nothing but flight cansave you. To voluntarily run your head into a noose would be the height of idiocy,” continued Kikin, gazing intently at Alexis.
“What’s the matter with you? You look so sleepy! Do you not feel well?”
“I am very tired,” Alexis replied simply.
They had already taken leave of one another, when Kikin suddenly turned and ran back to Alexis, stopped him, and looking him straight in the face, said slowly, accentuating every word, and so great was the conviction behind them that the Tsarevitch, notwithstanding his indifference, shuddered:—
“Should your father send some one to try and persuade you to come back, and promise you absolute pardon, do not, on any account, listen to him. He will publicly behead you.”
On quitting Libau, Alexis was as undecided where to go as on leaving Petersburg. Besides, he had hoped that there would be no need to come to a decision, since he expected to find envoys from his father at Dantzic.
In Dantzic the road branched out, one led to Copenhagen, one across Breslau to Vienna. No envoys were there. It was impossible to waver any longer. When the landlord at the hostel where Alexis had put up for the night, came in to ask where the horses had to be ordered for on the morrow, the Tsarevitch looked at him for a moment with an absent gaze, as if he were thinking about something else, and then said, hardly conscious of what it was,
“For Breslau.”
The next moment this word, decisive of his fate, frightened him. Yet he thought there would be time to cancel the order on the morrow. In the morning the horses were ready, nothing remained but to enter the coach and be off. He postponed altering his decision till the next station, at the next station till Frankfort on the Oder, at Frankfort till Tübingen, at Tübingen till Grossen and so on. He went on and on, and already it was beyond his power to stop; he seemed to have broken loose and was now rolling down a slippery slope. The same sense of fear which before had kept him back now seemed to drive him on and on, and the fear increased with the travelling. He realizedthat his fright was groundless, that his father could as yet know nothing about his flight, yet his blind, senseless fear he could not quell. Kikin had supplied him with false passes. Alexis gave out that he was now a Polish cavalier Kremenétzky, now the Lieutenant Colonel Kochánsky, now the Lieutenant Bálka, now a Russian merchant. Yet it seemed to him that all the innkeepers, coachmen, drivers, and post-masters knew that he was the Russian Tsarevitch, escaping, escaping from his father! When sleeping at night in an inn he would start and jump out of bed alarmed at the least sound, noise of steps or creaking of the floor. Once, when a man of about the same height as his father, dressed in a grey coat such as Peter was wont to wear, entered the dusky dining room where Alexis was just having his supper, he nearly fainted. He saw spies everywhere. The liberality with which he spent his money made the careful Germans suspect, indeed, that they were dealing with a person of royal blood; he was given the best horses on the extra posts, and the coachmen went at their fullest speed. Once in the twilight, noticing a coach driving behind them, he fancied it was in pursuit. He promised the driver ten gulden; the latter went at a mad pace. On turning a corner the axle was caught on a stone, and the wheel flew off. They were obliged to stop and get out. The people driving behind caught them up. Alexis was frightened to such an extent, that he wanted to leave everything and alone with Afrossinia run on foot to hide in the wood. He was already dragging her, and it was only after considerable effort that she succeeded in holding him back.
After Breslau he hardly stopped anywhere. He travelled night and day without rest. He could neither eat nor sleep. Every morsel he tried to swallow seemed to choke him. No sooner did he doze off than the next moment he awoke, shuddering all over, bathed in cold sweat. He would rather have died or be at once caught, anything to escape this torture.
At last, after five sleepless nights, he fell into a deep slumber.
He woke in the coach; it was early; dawn had not yet broken. The sleep had refreshed him, he felt almost vigorous.
Afrossinia lay sleeping next to him. It was cold, he wrapped her up and kissed her sleeping face. They were passing through some small unknown city, with tall narrow houses, and streets which echoed noisily the rattle of the wheels. The shutters were closed, all seemed asleep. In the middle of the market place before the town hall, bubbled a fountain which flowed over the edges of a moss-grown stone shell, supported by stooping tritons. A holy lamp was burning in the niche before a Madonna.
On leaving the town they ascended the hill, thence the road led down into a wide, gently sloping plain. The coach was driven by six horses as swift as an arrow; the wheels softly rustled through the damp dust, the mists of night were still clouding the valleys; yet round the slopes the shroud had already began to grow less and less dense; the mist lifted slowly like a curtain, leaving behind it the dry grass and the sticky threads of cobweb beaded with sparkling dewdrops. A gleam of blue sky pierced the wafted vault. A flock of cranes passed across it, caught by the rays of the rising sun not yet visible from below; through the autumnal air rang their gathering cry. Hills appeared on the borders of the plain wrapped in a bluish haze; these were the mountains of Bohemia. Suddenly a dazzling ray flashed from behind them straight into Alexis’ eyes, the sun was rising, and joy rose within his breast like the sun. It was God who had saved him, no one but God!
He laughed and wept for joy, as if it was for the first time he saw earth and sky and mountains. He watched the cranes, and it seemed to him that he too had wings, he too was flying. He breathed deep, again and again.
“Freedom, Freedom!”
The Courier Saphnov, who had been sent in advance from Petersburg, informed the Tsar that the Tsarevitch was following immediately after him, yet two months passed by and he did not appear. The Tsar would not believe for some time that his son had run away: “How can he? he would not dare.” But in the end he believed, and sent detectives along all roads and gave his Resident, Abraham Vesselóvsky, in Vienna, the following order: “It lies with you to make inquiries in Vienna, Rome, Naples, Milan, Sardinia, and Switzerland; whenever you get information of our son’s abode, after having carefully made investigations, go thither and follow him up; at the same time inform us at once by special messenger; yourself remaining incognito.”
Vesselóvsky, after a long search, at last came across his track. “We can trace him so far,” he wrote to the Tsar from Vienna—“A certain Lieutenant Kochánsky stayed at the Black Eagle outside the town. The waiter tells me that he took him to be some distinguished person, as he spent his money very freely, was not unlike the Tsar of Moscow, possibly his son—the which Tsar he had seen in Vienna.”
Peter was surprised; to him there was something strange and terrible in these words, “not unlike the Tsar.” It had never occurred to him that Alexis could resemble him.
“After a stay of only twenty-four hours at the inn,” continued Vesselóvsky, “he had his things taken away by a hired driver, and himself went on foot, after paying his bill, so that they do not know whether he has gone further or not. During his stay at the inn he bought his wife a man’s suit of brown colour which she put on. All furthertraces have disappeared. I have inquired in all the local inns, taverns, in private and public houses, but to no purpose. I have also engaged the help of detectives. I went myself along two mail roads which lead from here into Italy, the Tyrolese and the Carinthian Road, but nobody could supply me with the needed information.”
The Tsar, divining that the Emperor had welcomed the fugitive and was hiding him in his dominions, sent him a letter from Amsterdam.
“Most Serene and most mighty Emperor,“I am compelled to announce to your Imperial Majesty, in fraternal confidence with heartfelt sorrow, a calamity which has unexpectedly befallen us. It concerns our son Alexis. We have grounds for believing that your Majesty is not unaware that his past behaviour was always in opposition to our fatherly will, to our greatest discomfort, and that his conduct in wedded life with your relative left much to be desired. Some time ago we ordered him to join us here, hoping by this means to sever him from his useless life and companions. Taking none of his servants appointed by us, but in the company of several young people, he abandoned the road to ourselves, and disappeared no one knows where, and to this day we remain in ignorance of his whereabouts. And we, convinced that he has taken this blameworthy decision on the advice of certain people, have fatherly compassion upon him, and, afraid lest he should bring eternal destruction upon himself by this insubordinate act, and still more, to prevent his falling into the hands of our enemies, have given a command to our Resident Vesselóvsky at your court, to find him and bring him hither. Therefore we pray your Imperial Majesty, should he be in hiding in your dominions, secretly or openly, to give orders that he be sent to us with our Resident, and under the safe convoy of several officers, in order that we may fatherly chide him for his well-being. And we shall eternally feel obliged to you for this service and mark of friendship.“We remain,“Your Imperial Majesty’s faithful brother,“Peter.”
“Most Serene and most mighty Emperor,
“I am compelled to announce to your Imperial Majesty, in fraternal confidence with heartfelt sorrow, a calamity which has unexpectedly befallen us. It concerns our son Alexis. We have grounds for believing that your Majesty is not unaware that his past behaviour was always in opposition to our fatherly will, to our greatest discomfort, and that his conduct in wedded life with your relative left much to be desired. Some time ago we ordered him to join us here, hoping by this means to sever him from his useless life and companions. Taking none of his servants appointed by us, but in the company of several young people, he abandoned the road to ourselves, and disappeared no one knows where, and to this day we remain in ignorance of his whereabouts. And we, convinced that he has taken this blameworthy decision on the advice of certain people, have fatherly compassion upon him, and, afraid lest he should bring eternal destruction upon himself by this insubordinate act, and still more, to prevent his falling into the hands of our enemies, have given a command to our Resident Vesselóvsky at your court, to find him and bring him hither. Therefore we pray your Imperial Majesty, should he be in hiding in your dominions, secretly or openly, to give orders that he be sent to us with our Resident, and under the safe convoy of several officers, in order that we may fatherly chide him for his well-being. And we shall eternally feel obliged to you for this service and mark of friendship.
“We remain,
“Your Imperial Majesty’s faithful brother,
“Peter.”
At the same time it was intimated to the Emperor, that if he refused to deliver Alexis up of his own goodwill, the Tsar would seek his son out like a traitor, with armed force.
Each piece of new information that reached the Tsar was a fresh insult to him. Under the feigned sympathy of Europe lurked a secret enmity. “A certain major-general, on his return from Hanover,” Vesselóvsky reported, “meeting me at court, spoke with me in the presence of the Ambassador of Mecklenburg; he sympathized with your Majesty’s illness, which he presumed had been caused by grief, from the fact that your Crown Prince ‘had become invisible,’ using the French phrase, ‘Il est éclipsé.’ I asked him where he got this false information from. He answered me that this information was true and authentic, and he had it from the Hanoverian ministers. To which I replied that it was a calumny, owing its existence to the ill-will of the Hanoverian Court.”
“The Emperor has good reason to support the Crown Prince,” reported Vesselóvsky, as an opinion which is current at the foreign court, “because the aforesaid Crown Prince is in the right as against his father, and had cause for escaping from his father’s dominions. Quite in the beginning, soon after the birth of the Tsarevitch Peter, your Majesty is supposed to have forced Alexis to abdicate the throne and to retire for the rest of his life to a hermitage. And when your Majesty was in Pomerania, seeing that the Crown Prince did not attempt to retire, you were supposed to have devised a new plan. This, was to lure him to Holland and, under the pretext of instruction, to place him on one of your war vessels, give the Captain orders to engage in a fight with a Swedish vessel, which it was arranged should stand close by, and thus cause the Tsarevitch to be killed. This was the reason for his flight.”
The Tsar was informed at the same time about the secret negotiations between the Emperor and King George the First of England. “The Emperor, prompted by ties of relationship, as well as by compassion for the sufferings of the Tsarevitch, and by the generosity of the imperial house towards all innocently persecuted persons, had granted shelter and protection to the Tsar’s son. He asked the King of England whether he, too, felt disposed as an Electorand relative of the house of Braunschweig, to protect the Tsarevitch. Attention was called to his miserable condition—‘Miseranda conditio’—the father’s evident and unrelenting tyranny—‘clara et continua paterna tyrannidas’—also suspicion of poisoning and such like Russian ‘galanterien.’”
The son became a judge, an accuser of the father.
And what more might happen? The Tsarevitch might become a weapon in the enemy’s hand—might kindle an insurrection in the heart of Russia, entangle the whole of Europe in the war, and God alone knows how this would end. “To kill him were too little!” mused the maddened Tsar.
Yet another feeling overpowered him, a new feeling. The father had become afraid of the son.
The Tsarevitch and Afrossinia were boating one summer moonlight night, on the Gulf of Naples.
The very soul of Alexis was thrilled by the harmony around him; harmony in the tremor of the moon’s golden train which fell upon the water, a blazing path reaching from Posilippo across to the very brink of the horizon; harmony in the murmur of the sea, and the light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the sea air, sweet perfume from the shores of Sorrento, clad in lemon and orange groves; harmony in the silvery azure outlines of Mount Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mist, emitting a white smoke and, from time to time, flaring up like dying embers on an altar consecrated to the gods; the gods who had died, who had risen again, and again had expired.
“Dearest one, see how lovely this is,” whispered the Tsarevitch.
Afrossinia looked round her with the same placid indifference as if the scene were the Neva and the Peter and Paul fortress.
“Yes, it is warm; though we are on the water we don’t seem to feel the damp,” she replied with a suppressed yawn.
He closed his eyes, and before him rose a vision of a room in Viasemski’s house in Petersburg; it was a spring evening, slanting rays of the setting sun flooded the room; the servant girl Afrossinia, in a well tucked-up skirt and barefooted, bending low over her work, scrubbing the floor. She is a simple peasant girl, one of those whom village ladscall as “firm, plump and white as a well-washed turnip.” Yet sometimes looking at her he would recall an ancient Dutch picture he had seen in his father’s collection at Peterhof, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” a naked red-haired witch, goat-legged with split hoofs like a faun. In the face of Afrossinia with its too full lips, its slightly turned up nose, its large, lucid, languishing, almond-shaped eyes, there was something wild, innocently shameless, almost goat-like. To his mind would come the sayings of old writers about the fatal fascination of women: Sin began with woman, and through her we all die; to fall into her arms in love is to fall into the fire. He could not tell how it happened, but he loved her almost at first sight with a rude tender love, strong as death.
Here, on the Gulf of Naples she had remained the same Afrossinia as of old; here she was cracking with her teeth little nuts and spitting the shells in the silvered waves, just as she used to crack sunflower seeds in Petersburg, sitting in the kitchen among her fellow-servants on feast-days. Only now, dressed in the French fashion with beauty spots, and “robe ronde,” she appeared yet more alluring and innocently shameless. No wonder she was stared at by the two soldiers and even by the elegant Count Esterhazy himself, who always escorted the Tsarevitch on all his expeditions from the St. Elmo fortress. Alexis loathed these leers of men, ever drawn to her like flies to honey.
“How now, Æsop, are you tired of this life, and longing to get home?” she asked in a drawling sing-song voice, turning to her neighbour, a tiny, ugly creature, a naval apprentice, Alexis Yourov—Æsop was only his nickname.
“Ah, Mistress Afrossinia, I find life here very hard. The instruction is so difficult that we might well spend all the rest of our life in trying to master it, and then without success. One is really baffled to know where to begin first, the language or the sciences. In Venice our lads, my messmates, are positively starving to death; their allowance is only three kopecks a day; and really they have been so neglected that they have neither drink nor meat, nor any clothes left, but walk about the streets in disgusting fashion, half in rags! We are left here like mere cattle. But my chief complaint is, that I can’t stand the sea, itmakes me sick. I am not a seafaring man. It will be my death, unless some one takes pity on me. I would gladly walk back to Petersburg to escape the sea. I would rather beg my way than go by water—may it please his Majesty!”
“Ah, my friend, you will only drop from the frying pan into the fire. You won’t escape your dose of the lash at Petersburg for deserting your apprenticeship,” remarked the Tsarevitch.
“A bad job, Æsop. What will become of you, poor orphan? Where will you go?” asked Afrossinia.
“What choice is left for me? I must either go hang myself, or become a monk on Mount Athos!”
Alexis gazed at him with compassion; he involuntarily compared his own lot with that of the sailor deserter.
“Never mind, friend, we may yet, with God’s help, happily return to old Russia,” he said with a kindly smile.
They had now passed out of the golden stream of moonlight and were returning to the dark shore. Here at the foot of a hill stood an abandoned villa, built during the Renaissance period, on the ruins of an ancient Venus temple.
Along both sides of the half-ruined steps, which led down to the sea, gigantic cypresses were ranged like torch-bearers at a funeral. Their entwined tips, continually caught by the wind from the sea, remained bent like heads drooping in sorrow. White statues of gods gleamed spectre-like in the dark shade. And the fountain jet seemed also a pale spectre. In the laurel thickets were shining glow-worms, like funeral tapers. The heavy scent of the magnolias recalled the smell of balsam used for anointing dead bodies. A peacock in the villa, roused by the voices and splashing of oars, strutted out on the steps, opening his tail, and shimmered in the moonlight with dim iridescence, a fan set with gems. Plaintive cries of the peahens sounded like piercing wails of mourners. The waters of the fountain, trickling from an overhanging rock along the thin, hair-like grass, fell into the sea, drop after drop like silent tears, as though a nymph was weeping in the cave, bewailing her sisters. All this sad villa brought to mind some dark Elysium, the subterranean grove of shadows, the burial ground of dead gods; of gods who had died, who had risen again, and again had died.
“Could you believe it, gracious mistress, it is well nigh three years since I had a vapour bath!” continued Æsop.
“Ah! could I but have a few fresh birch twigs and then some cherry honey after the bath,” sighed Afrossinia.
“Tears almost rise to my eyes when drinking the sour stuff of this place, and remember our vodka,” moaned Æsop.
“And some pressed caviar!” echoed Afrossinia.
“And salt sturgeon!”
“And smelt from the White Lake!”
Thus they went on, aggravating their regrets. The Tsarevitch listened to them, while looking at the villa and involuntarily smiled. The contrast seemed so strange between these prosaic dreams and the fantastic reality.
Another boat was gliding along the fairy path of the sea, leaving a black trace in the quivering gold. The sound of a mandoline and a song sung by a young girl’s voice was wafted across the water.
Quant’ è bella giovinezza,Che si fugge tuttavia.Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non c’è certezza!
Quant’ è bella giovinezza,Che si fugge tuttavia.Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non c’è certezza!
Quant’ è bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c’è certezza!
This love song had been composed by Lorenzo di Medici Il Magnifico, for the triumphant procession of Bacchus and Ariadne at Florentine festivities. It sounded the short-lived joy of the Renaissance, and infinite sorrow for its loss. The Tsarevitch listened, unable to make out its meaning, yet the music filled his soul with sweet melancholy.
Fair fleeting youth must snatch at happiness.He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.
Fair fleeting youth must snatch at happiness.He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.
Fair fleeting youth must snatch at happiness.
He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.
“And now, Mistress, a Russian song!” begged Æsop.
He meant to go down on his knees, but floundered and just escaped tumbling into the water. He was not over steady on his feet, owing to the continual sipping of the sour wine from a bottle, which he modestly tried to conceal under the lapel of his coat. One of the oarsmen, a half-naked, fine, dark fellow seemed to understand his request, for he smiled at Afrossinia, beckoned Æsop and handed hima guitar. The latter started jingling on it as on some three-stringed balalaïka.
Afrossinia smiled, glanced at the Tsarevitch and suddenly began her song in a loud, slightly shrieking voice, just as she used to sing in the choir on dusky spring evenings near the birch grove which overshadowed the banks of the river. The shores of Naples, antique Parthenope, resounded with the unwonted alien strains:—
“Oh my pretty balcony, newlyBuilt with maple tree, latticed fair!”
“Oh my pretty balcony, newlyBuilt with maple tree, latticed fair!”
“Oh my pretty balcony, newly
Built with maple tree, latticed fair!”
Infinite yearning for the past—the distant—breathed in the Italian song:—
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non c’è certezza.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non c’è certezza.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c’è certezza.
Infinite desire for the future breathed in the Russian:—
Fly my falcon fair, far away from here,To that country dear, which was once mine own!
Fly my falcon fair, far away from here,To that country dear, which was once mine own!
Fly my falcon fair, far away from here,
To that country dear, which was once mine own!
Both songs, the known and the unknown, mingled in one. The Tsarevitch could hardly restrain his tears; never yet had he loved Russia so dearly as now. But he loved it with a new, all-embracing love as part of Europe, he loved the foreign country as his own. And this love for his own country mingled harmoniously with his love for the foreign one, like the two songs over the water.
The Emperor, when he took the Tsarevitch under his protection, the more securely to hide him from his father, lodged him, under the name of a Hungarian Count, in the solitary, inaccessible castle of Ehrenberg—a real eagle’s nest, clinging to the peak of a rock in the upper Tyrolean mountains, on the road from Fussen to Innsbruck. The Tsarevitch felt himself a prisoner, but safe.
“Immediately on receiving this,” ran the Emperor’s instructions to the commander of the fortress, “have two rooms ready for the chief person, with strong doors and iron-barred windows. Soldiers and their wives must not be allowed to leave the fortress under severe penalty, even death. If the distinguished prisoner expresses a desire to talk to you, you may do as he wishes, both in this case and in several others; as for instance if he asks for a book or something else for diversion, or even if he should invite you to dine or to take part in some game. Moreover, you may grant him permission to walk about in the rooms or the courtyard for fresh air, but always take precautions lest he escape.”
Alexis had spent five months at Ehrenberg; from December until April.
Notwithstanding all precautions, the Tsar’s spies, Roumiantzev, captain of the guards, together with three other officers, who had secret orders to obtain possession of a certain person at all costs, and bring him to Mecklenburg, learnt of the Tsarevitch’s sojourn in Ehrenberg. They arrived in Upper Tyrol and secretly installed themselves in the tiny village of Reite at the very foot of the Ehrenberg Rock.
The Resident Vesselóvsky declared “that his Majestythe Tsar will be exceedingly hurt by the answer, given in the Emperor’s name, that a certain person was not to be found in the Emperor’s domains, while a messenger had seen his retinue in Ehrenberg, where he is kept at the Emperor’s cost. Not only Captain Roumiantzev, but all Europe, knows that the Tsarevitch is within the Emperor’s domains. Suppose the Archduke should run away from his father and find refuge in Russia, and this refuge be accorded to him secretly, how would this affect the Emperor? Would it not be a grief to him?”
“Your Majesty,” wrote Peter to the Emperor, “may infer what we, as a father, must feel in regard to our first-born son, who, showing us such disobedience, left us without our sanction, and is now kept under a stranger’s protection or arrest, which we know not. On this point we desire an explanation from your Majesty.”
The Tsarevitch was informed that the Emperor left it to him to decide whether he would return to Russia or continue under his protection. In the latter case it was obvious that he must be transferred to some remoter place, for instance Naples. At the same time it was hinted to Alexis that the Emperor wished him to leave behind at Ehrenberg, or quite dispense with, the company of certain persons his father had raised objections to in his letter, and thus rob the Tsar of any just ground of complaint that the Emperor was extending his protection to worthless creatures. This was said with a view to Afrossinia. It really seemed unbecoming for the Tsarevitch to implore the Emperor’s protection in the name of his dead wife, who was sister to the Empress, and at the same time to bring with him a woman with whom it was rumoured he had been allied even during his wife’s lifetime.
Alexis declared his readiness to go wherever the Emperor sent him, and live in whatever way the Emperor desired, provided he was not delivered up to his father.
On the 15th of April, at three o’clock in the morning, Alexis, in spite of the spies, left Ehrenberg as an imperial officer. He had only one servant with him, this was Afrossinia in the disguise of a page.
“Our Neapolitan pilgrims have safely arrived,” reported Count Schönborn, “I will send my secretary at the veryfirst opportunity with detailed description of this journey—very entertaining, as might be expected. Our little page, among other things, was discovered to be a woman, neither married and still less a maid. She is declared to be a mistress and indispensably necessary.”
“I take no end of measures to keep our company from drinking so often and so much, but all effort is vain,” reported Schönborn’s secretary, who was accompanying the Tsarevitch.
They passed through Innsbruck, Mantua, Florence, and Rome. On May 6, 1717, at midnight, they reached Naples and put up at the Three Kings Hotel. On the eve of the next day the Tsarevitch was taken in a hired carriage outside the town as far as the sea, then brought by a secret way into the castle. There he remained for two days, during which time the chambers especially assigned to him in the St. Elmo Fortress were being prepared. The fortress stood on a high hill overtowering Naples.
Though here also he lived as a kind of prisoner, yet he did not feel dull or oppressed by the fact; the higher the walls, the deeper the ditch round the fortress, the more trustworthy protection they were to him from his father.
The windows of his apartments, with a covered balcony, overlooked the sea. Here he spent whole days. He fed, just as he used to in Russia, the pigeons which, flocking from all sides, were soon tamed by him; he read historical and philosophical books, chanted psalms and litanies, gazed at Naples, Vesuvius, Ischia, Procida and Capri, which glowed like sapphires in the distance; but by more than anything was he attracted by the sea; he could not tear himself away from looking at it. It seemed to him that this was the first time he had ever seen the sea. The northern dull waters of Petersburg, the sea of commerce and war, so beloved by his father, was quite unlike this southern, blue, boundless expanse.
Afrossinia was with him. When he forgot his father he was almost happy.
He was guarded with great strictness. He had obtained however, after great difficulty, a pass for Æsop into St. Elmo. Æsop had already made himself indispensable. He amused Afrossinia, who was often dull; played cards and draughtswith her, diverted her by jokes, tales and fables, thus acting the part of the real Æsop.
What Æsop enjoyed most of all was relating to the pair his own travels in Italy. Alexis listened to him with interest, while reviving his own impressions. Much as Æsop longed to return to Russia, much as he missed the Russian bath and vodka, it was evident that he also, like the Tsarevitch, was beginning to love the foreign country as if it were his own, to love Russia as a part of Europe, with a new all-embracing love.
“The way is extremely dreary, and difficult,” he used to narrate, describing the pass across the Alps. “The path is very narrow; on one side mountains tower high as the clouds, on the other yawn exceedingly deep precipices, which boisterous torrents fill with incessant noise like watermills. And to look down makes men shiver. Those hills are always covered with much snow because the sunbeams never penetrate among them.
“But coming down we found, although it was winter in the heights, fair summer reigning in the valleys. Along both sides of the road a mass of vine and fruit trees, lemons, oranges, and among the trees creepers formed curious figures. The whole of Italy seemed one great garden, an image of God’s Paradise! On March 7th we noticed fruit; lemons and oranges, some ripe, some not quite; others green, or yet in the germ, and even blossoms, the same tree bearing all.
“There, hard by the hills in a pleasant place stood a house called a villa, built in a very superb style. This house is surrounded by a most beautiful garden and orchards; people spend their time in walking there. And in those gardens all the trees are planted regularly, even the foliage is clipped in keeping with the rest. Flowers and grass are sown in pots and placed about according to design. A splendid perspective is maintained. And many a famous fountain is fitted up in these gardens from which springs extremely clean water in various cunning ways; and along the paths, instead of curb-stones, marble men and women are placed. Jove, Bacchus, Venus, and other heathen gods, so well made that they almost seem alive. And these statues belonging to past ages had beendug from the earth.” About Venice he recited such wonders that for a long time Afrossinia did not believe him, and confused Venice with a legendary town spoken of in Russian tales.
“You are a great inventor, Æsop,” she would say, yet listened to him with avidity.
“Venice stands in the water; sea-water covers all the streets and lanes, and boats are used to go about in. There are no horses or other beasts; neither, Madam, are there any carriages, landaus, carts; as for sledges they have never even heard of them. In summer the air is oppressive, and sometimes filled with an extremely bad smell coming from stagnant water, such as we get in Petersburg from the Fontanna canal when it is choked up. And all over the town there are lots of carrier boats, called gondolas, which are constructed in a peculiar manner: long and narrow like those made of one tree trunk, both bow and stern are pointed; an iron comb crowns the bow, and in the middle stands a hut with glass windows and damask curtains; all the gondolas are black, covered with black cloth, looking very much like coffins; as for the oarsmen, one of them stands at the bow while the other, at the stern, rows and steers with the same oar. They have no rudders yet manage perfectly without them.
“There are such wonderful operas and comedies played in Venice! Beyond one’s power to describe accurately. Nowhere in the whole world can one meet with such extraordinary comedies and operas. And the halls in which these operas are performed are large and round, the Italians call them ‘theatrum,’ and in these halls numerous closets are fitted up five stories high with ingenious gilt work. And in these operas the ancient legends of heroes, Greek and Roman gods are represented. Everyone has in his theatre that legend performed which he prefers. These operas are frequented by people wearing masks so that one should not recognise another. Also during the whole of Carnival time they wear masks and curious dresses; everybody walks just where it pleases them; they have music on their gondolas, dance, eat sweetmeats and drink fine lemonades and chocolates. Thus they are constantly amusing themselves and are not in the least inclined to dowithout merriment. These revels, though, often lead to sin; for when they thus come together all masked, many of the women and maidens without the slightest shame take foreigners by the arm and amuse themselves without stint.
“The women folk of Venice are extremely good-looking, tall, slender, fine and well mannered; they are rusées and dress extremely well. They despise manual labour. They spend their time in indolence; they love pleasure and have a weakness for carnality, simply because they want money. It is their only trade. Many of the wenches live in separate houses and in no way consider their profession a thing to blush at. Others who have no houses of their own live in separate streets in low small chambers on the ground floor. Every room has a door leading straight into the street, and when they see a man coming towards them each one does her best to capture him. The day that brings most visitors is reckoned the happiest. As a consequence they suffer from the French malady, and they who visit them are soon generously gratified by a share of it. The clergy sermonise, but do not otherwise interfere. They are extremely skilful,” said Æsop meditatively, “in curing the French complaint in Venice.”
The same interest which he had shown in his tales about the Venetian revels appeared in his descriptions of various Church miracles and holy relics.
“I was found worthy to see a cross in which, under glass, was a bit of the nose of St. John the Baptist; and the relics of St. Nicolas, which produce the holy oil that never dries up. I’ve also seen the boiling blood of St. Januarius, and a bone of St. Laurence himself. This bone is shut up in a crystal box, and when one kisses the box one can feel the surprising heat of the bone—through the crystal.”
With equal wonder he would describe the miracles of science.
“At Padua, in the medical academy there are embalmed children, born before their time, or else cut out of their dead mothers; they float in glass bottles filled with spirit, and thus can be preserved a thousand year, and more.”
Æsop was a lover of everything classical. All the productions of the middle ages seemed barbarous to him. He went into ecstasies over imitations of ancient sculpture,their symmetry, their perfection of line, proportion—all his eye had already got used to in young Petersburg. He did not like Florence.
“There are few really splendid, well proportioned houses. All Florentine houses are of an older date. One does occasionally come across palaces three or four stories high, but their style is plain, not in the least architectural.”
He was most of all struck with Rome. He spoke about it with that almost superstitious feeling of reverence which the Eternal City always rouses in Barbarians.
“Rome is really agreatcity. Even to this day the boundaries of ancient Rome can be traced and thus the vast dimensions of the old city revealed. Districts, once in the very centre of Rome, are now fields and ploughland, sown with wheat, planted with vineyards, or else used as pasturage for buffalos, oxen and sundry other cattle.
“Many an ancient edifice, ruined with age, lies scattered on these fields, even in its ruins revealing a master’s hand acquainted with symmetry, such as is no longer met with. And from the mountains leading up to Rome are seen ancient stone pillars connected by arches; they bear a stone trough which held the extremely pure spring water coming from the hills. And those pillars are called aqueducts, and the fields the ‘Campagna di Roma.’”
The Tsarevitch had had only a glimpse at Rome, but now, as he sat listening to Æsop, it seemed some awful shadow of indescribable grandeur was sweeping past him.
“In these fields,” went on Æsop, “among the ruins of Roman buildings there is an entrance to some caves. In these caves Christians sought refuge in times of persecutions and were tortured, and even unto this day many a martyr’s bones remain there. These caves, called catacombs, are so large that, it is said, they have underground passages leading to the sea, besides many others not yet explored. And close to these catacombs, in a tiny, solitary church stands an extremely large coffin—a sarcophagus—of Bacchus, hewn out of porphyry stone. This sarcophagus tomb is empty. Long, long ago, runs the legend, it contained an incorruptible body of indescribable beauty, which, by a trick of the devil, bore the likeness of the pagan god Bacchus. The holy men threw this foul thing away, hallowedthe spot and built a church upon it.... Then I came to another place called the Colosseum, where the ancient Roman Emperors, who persecuted the Christians, offered holy martyrs as a prey to wild beasts. The place is round, very huge, would measure about forty yards in height; the walls are made of stone. On them the ancient torturers would walk watching the animals tear the holy martyrs to pieces. Under these walls on the ground are stone caves where the animals lived. St. Ignatius was devoured in this Colosseum, and every bit of its soil is stained with the blood of martyrs.”
The Tsarevitch remembered how, in his childhood, he was repeatedly told that, in the whole world, Russia alone was a holy land and all the other peoples were pagans. He also remembered how he himself had once said to Fräulein Arnheim, standing on the pigeon-house in Roshdestveno: “We alone have Christ.” “Is this true?” he now asked himself. “What if they also have Christ, and not only Russia? What if all Europe were holy land? The soil in that place is all stained with martyr’s blood. Can such a place be pagan?”
He was convinced that the third Rome, as Moscow was occasionally termed, was as far off the first, real Rome, as Petersburg was from the real Europe.
“At a time when Moscow was not even thought of,” declared Æsop, “there were many empires in the west older and greater than Moscow.”
The words with which he concluded a description of the Venetian Carnival remained in the Tsarevitch’s memory.
“Thus they all amuse themselves and think no evil of one another, neither do they fear anybody. Everyone does as best pleases him. And such freedom is always maintained in Venice, and the Venetians live in peace, without fear of insult, and without heavy taxation.”
The implication was clear; their life is very different from ours in Russia, where no one dares even so much as hint at freedom.
“In all European nations one course of action is especially commendable,” remarked Æsop one day, “and that is with regard to education. The children are not treated brutally either by parents or teachers; but with the help ofkindly or else sharp rebuke alone, which have been found more effective than blows, they are brought up in the spirit of freedom and courage. And being aware of this, Moscow people would not send their children to be educated in foreign parts, afraid lest, once acquainted with the faith and customs and beneficent freedom of other countries, they should change their religion and neither desire nor think of returning home. They do send them nowadays, but what’s the good of it? For as the bird can’t live without air, knowledge can’t prosper without freedom; and with us they try to teach new things in the old way. The stick, though dumb, is still expected to impart knowledge.”
Thus both of them, the fugitive naval apprentice and the fugitive Tsarevitch, confusedly felt, that the Europeanism which Peter was introducing into Russia—calculation, navigation, fortifications—was not the whole of Europe, nor even European in its essential characteristic; the real Europe possessed a higher truth, not yet revealed to the Tsar. And without this truth, in spite of all knowledge, the old Moscow barbarism would only be supplanted by a new Petersburg vulgarity. To this blessed mysterious liberty it was that the Tsarevitch addressed himself in summoning Europe to judge between him and his father.
One day Æsop told the “history of the Russian sailor Basil Koriotsky and the beautiful Florentine Princess Irakli.”
To the listeners, and perhaps to the narrator himself, the meaning of the story was obscure and yet mysteriously suggestive. The marriage of a Russian sailor with a Princess of Florence—of the land where the Renaissance had its springtime, the most beautiful flower of European liberty—was a prophetic vision of the unknown, yet approaching, union of Russia with Europe.
The Tsarevitch in listening to the story thought of a picture his father had brought from Holland: the Tsar in a sailor suit embracing a buxom Dutch wench. Alexis could not help smiling at the thought that this red-faced girl was as remote from the Florentine Princess, “who was bright as the unveiled sun,” as new Russia was from what she ought to be.
“I dare say your sailor did not return to Russia,” Alexis asked.
“Why should he?” grunted Æsop, with a sudden indifference towards the Russia he had only so lately sighed for. “In Petersburg he would probably have had the cat-o’-nine-tails, and then been sent off to Rogerwick; while the Florentine Princess would have been stuck into the weaving yard for a prostitute.”
But Afrossinia suddenly interposed:—
“Well, now you see, Æsop, what your sailor gained by his education. Had he run away from his teacher, as you have, he would never have gained the Princess. What is the good of praising the freedom of this country? The mountain-ash berries are not meant for a crow’s beak. To grant you freedom is to make you good for nothing. How else can you be taught but with a stick, seeing you won’t learn of your own free will? Thanks be to our father the Tsar. You only get your deserts.”