Anne talked about the marvellous docility and good nature of her pet Mishka, the tame seal which lived in the middle fountain of the Summer Garden.
“Why couldn’t we have a saddle made for him and ride him like a horse?”
“And suppose he dives, won’t you get drowned?” asked Peter.
He talked and laughed with the children like a child.
Suddenly in the pier glass he caught sight of Mons and Catherine as they stood in the adjoining room before the Tsaritsa’s pet, a green parrot, feeding it with sugar.
“Your Majesty’s—— a fool,” shrieked hoarsely the parrot.
He had been taught to say two phrases: “Good-morning, your Majesty;” “the parrot is a fool,” but he joined both sentences in one. Mons bending down to the Tsaritsa was speaking to her almost in whispers. Catherine lowered her eyes, slightly blushed, and listened with the affected mincing smile of a shepherdess in the “Journey to the Isle of Love.”
Peter’s face grew suddenly dark. Nevertheless he kissed the children and affectionately sent them away,
“Now go, go, you little rascals; Anne will give my greetings to Mishka.”
The sunbeam vanished. The room grew dark, damp and cold. A crow cawed just under the very window. Again the hammer was heard; the last of the risen gods were being nailed up and ensconced in their coffins.
Peter sat down to a game of chess with Bruce. He usually played well, but to-day he was absent-minded. He lost his queen after the fourth move.
“I checkmate with the queen,” said Bruce.
“Your Majesty’s—a fool,” cried the parrot.
Peter happened to lift his eyes, again saw Mons and Catherine reflected in the same glass. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they did not notice how a little monkey, like a little devil, had crept up to them frombehind, and, making a waggish grimace, stretched out one paw to lift the bottom of Catherine’s dress.
Peter jumped up and with his foot overturned the chess-board, scattering the pieces over the floor. He dropped his pipe, it broke and spilled its burning ashes. Bruce jumped up in terror. Catherine and Mons turned round, attracted by the noise. At this moment Mary Hamilton entered the room. She walked as in a dream, as it were hearing and seeing nothing. Passing the Tsar she slightly inclined her head and looked fixedly at him. Her beautiful lifeless face, which struck the beholder with chill, made her resemble one of those goddesses who were being nailed up in their coffins.
The Tsar followed her with his eyes till she had disappeared behind the door; then, turning to Bruce and the overturned chess-board, he said in apologetic tones:—
“Forgive me, Bruce, it was an accident!”
He left the palace, stepped into his boat, and went to rest on the yacht.
Peter was a light sleeper. Walking or driving past the palace at night was forbidden. As it was impossible to avoid all noise in the house during the day he slept on his yacht.
To-day when he lay down, he felt wretchedly tired. Possibly he had got up too early and worn himself out at the Dockyards. He yawned, stretched himself, closed his eyes, and was already beginning to fall asleep, when he started as if from sudden pain. It was the thought of his son Alexis. It never quite left him; but when he was quiet and by himself it began to assert itself with renewed vigour like a probed wound.
He tried to sleep, yet sleep would not come. Thoughts surged through his brain.
He had received a few days ago Tolstoi’s letter informing him that Alexis would on no consideration return. Would he really be driven to go to Italy himself, and begin a war with the Emperor and England, perhaps with the whole of Europe, now when he ought to be thinking of nothing save the termination of the war with Sweden and the establishment of peace? Why should the Lord punish him with such a son?
“Oh, heart of Absalom! who hatest all thy father’s work and wishest thine own father’s death,” he moaned pressing his head against his hands.
He remembered how his son had described him before the Emperor and the whole world as a malefactor, a tyrant, an atheist. How his son’s friends, the long-bearded priests and monks, called him Peter the Antichrist.
“Fools!” he thought with calm contempt. How could he have accomplished all he had without God’s help? Andhow could he help believing in God when God had always been with him, from his youngest days until this hour? Questioning his conscience as if he were his own confessor, he recalled his life.
Was it not God who had implanted in his heart the desire to learn? At sixteen he scarcely knew how to write; and could only do addition and subtraction sums with the greatest difficulty. But even then he already felt what afterwards he so clearly realised. “The salvation of Russia lies inknowledge. All other nations have adopted the policy of keeping Russia in ignorance and have prevented her acquiring knowledge, especially in military affairs, lest she should realise her own powers.” He decided to go abroad himself and learn. When this decision was known in Moscow, the Patriarch, Boyars, Tsaritsas and Princesses came to him, laid his son Alexis at his feet, wept, and with foreheads bowed to the floor implored him not to go to school to the foreigners; for the like had never happened in Russia before. The people too wept, and saw him off as if to his death. And yet he went, and something unheard of happened; the Tsar took into his hands and wielded an axe instead of a sceptre. “My rank is that of a mere scholar, and I need teachers. You cannot buy for money what you do yourself.” And God blessed his labours: a formidable army had been the outcome of his playing at soldiers, with what Sophia contemptuously termed—“grooms and riffraff”; the little toy boats in which he sailed on artificial lakes had led to a victorious fleet. His first contest with the Swedes was the defeat at Narva. “The whole action was like child’s play, without the least approach to military art. And now as I think it over, I consider it a dispensation of God, for when this misfortune befell us, necessity drove us from indolence to hard work, and made us apply ourselves to the study of military art night and day.” The defeat seemed hopeless. Charles XII went about boasting, “whips, and not swords, would have sufficed to have driven the Russiancanaillenot only from their own country, but out of the world.” If the Lord had not helped him then, surely he would have been lost!
There had been no copper for cannons. Peter melted down church bells. The monks threatened him with God’spunishment. But he knew God was with him. There were no horses; men harnessed themselves and dragged the new artillery “cast in tears.”
All was in a ferment like new wine. Outside the state war; within revolution, a mutiny in Astrakhan and Boulavinsk. Charles crossed the Vistula, the Niemen, and entered Grodno, two hours after Peter left it. Expecting day by day to see the Swedes advance towards Moscow or Petersburg, he reinforced both cities, and prepared them for siege. At the same time he was very ill, so ill that his life was despaired of. Again God intervened. Charles, contrary to all expectations and probabilities, stopped in his course, turned south-west and marched towards Small Russia. The mutiny subsided of itself. “The Lord had wonderfully quenched flame with flame, and showed us anew that all depends not on man’s will but God’s.”
Then came the first victories over the Swedes. At the battle of Lesnoy, having stationed Cossacks and Kalmucks with spears in the rear, he ordered them to mercilessly demolish all deserters, not excepting even the Tsar. They stood the whole day under fire, their ranks remained unbroken, they did not yield an inch; four times the guns became red hot with firing, four times the pouches and cartridges boxes had to be filled with cartridges. “Since I began to serve, I have not witnessed such play. We executed this dance well before the eyes of the hot-headed Charles. Henceforward the Swedes became more manageable.”
Poltava! Never in his whole life did he feel God’s help more than on that day. Again good luck, almost a miracle! On the eve Charles had been wounded by a Cossack’s stray shot. Again, quite at the beginning of the day of battle, a shell struck the king’s litter. The Swedes thinking Charles was killed, confusion ensued in their ranks. Peter looked at the flying Swedes and felt he was lifted on invisible wings; he knew the day of the Poltava battle was the day of Russia’s resurrection, and the radiant sun of that day the sun of the new Russia.
Now the existence of Petersburg is assured; henceforth it will be possible to sleep peacefully in Petersburg. This town, created in defiance of the elements, amid bogs andwoods, “grows like a child in beauty,” “it is a holy land, a paradise of God.” Is it not also a great miracle, a sign of God’s favour towards him, which will not pass away but remain visible before the face of the coming generations?
And now, when everything seemed to be accomplished, it all falls. God has withdrawn, and abandoned him? Having granted him victories over external foes He strikes Peter in his very heart, in his own flesh and blood, in his son. His son’s most dreaded allies are not the foreign troops, but the armies of knaves, parasites and extortioners and other worthless folk which swarm in the Empire.
Peter judged how things would go after his death by the way they went during his last absence from Russia, when in the space of a couple of months all had begun to creak and stagger like some old vessel which had struck in a storm.
Enormous corruptions sprang into being. Ukase succeeded ukase in regard to bribery, the last always more severe than the preceding. Nearly every one of them began with the words: “Should any one defy this our last decree,” but it was generally followed up by another containing the same threats and the addition that it was the last.
At times his heart would sink in despair. He felt a terrible impotence. Alone against them all, like a great wild animal bitten to death by gnats and flies.
Realising he could do nothing by force, he resorted to cunning. He encouraged tale-bearing. He instituted a special order of informers. This started universal chicanery and slander. “The informers see nothing—do not attend to their business, but live like parasites, shielding one another, because they all work into each other’s hands.” Knaves denounce knaves, impeachers denounce impeachers, informers informers, and the arch informer himself appears to be the arch knave.
A loathsome abyss, a bottomless cesspool, stables of Augeas which no Hercules can cleanse. Foulness penetrates everywhere—earth becomes mud, or dissolves like the snow in spring. The ancient rot re-appears on the surface. A stench spreads all over Russia, such as rose from the Poltava battlefield which drove the army away, choked by the stench of innumerable corpses.
Russian hearts are dull because darkness reigns in theirminds. They refuse the good for they recognise it not. The nobles and the simple folk are well represented by Jeremy and Thomas, two proverbial characters: “Jeremy does not teach; and Thomas knows nothing.” Laws are powerless in that state of things.
“Our understanding is dull, our hands unskilled, the people of our nation are heavy-minded,” said the old people to him.
Once a Dutch boatswain told him the old legend:—
“Some sailors noticed in the ocean an unknown island. They moored their vessel to it, landed and made a fire to cook their food. Suddenly the earth began to shake and sank; they narrowly escaped being drowned; what seemed to them an island was in reality a sleeping whale.”
Was all this new enlightenment of Russia a fire made on the back of a leviathan, the inert mass of a sleeping people?
Cursed labours of a Sisyphus, labour similar to that of the convicts on Rogerwick, who build a breakwater; no sooner does a storm rise than in one hour the labours of years lie destroyed; and again they build, and again it is destroyed, and so on without end.
“We all see,” an intelligent peasant once told him, “that you are a great sovereign and labour hard, but with little success, because helpers are wanting. You with the strength of ten men are pulling up while a million pull down hill! What can come of this?” “A burden, a terrible burden,” groaned Peter on his couch, anguished as if the weight of Russia lay on him alone.
“Wherefore hast thou afflicted Thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in Thy sight, that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that Thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which Thou swearest unto their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if Thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in Thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness!”
Suddenly he again remembered Alexis and felt that thisterrible burden, the deadly inertia of Russia, was incarnate in Alexis alone, his own son.
At last by a supreme effort of will he once more gained mastery over himself, called his orderly, dressed and returned by boat to the palace, where senators accused of bribery and corruption were summoned to appear before him.
Prince Ménshikoff, Prince James and Basil Dolgorúki, Sheremetieff, Shafiroff, Jagushinski, Golóvkin, Apraksin and others were crowded in the small reception room next to the workshop.
Fear possessed them all. They remembered how two years ago, two noble extortioners, Prince Volkonsky and Opouchtine, had been publicly flogged and had their tongues burnt with red hot irons.
Strange rumours were whispered; officers of the guard and other military men were supposed to have been appointed to judge the senators.
Yet they hoped against hope that the storm would blow over, and all would again revert to the old way. They found consolation in old sayings: “Who has not sinned before God? who is found guiltless before the king? They can’t hang us all. Everybody has his own foibles. Every man thirsts for a dainty. Whether honest men or knaves, all live under sin.”
In strode Peter. His face was hard-set and stern; only his eyes were flashing and the left corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
Without greeting them, without inviting them to sit down, he addressed the senators with words evidently prepared beforehand.
“Gentlemen of the Senate! I have written and spoken to you many times about your negligencies, self indulgencies and entire disregard of civil laws; my words have had no effect, and all ukases have been utterly ignored. I repeat for the last time, it is vain to issue laws, if they are not kept, but trifled or played with like a pack of cards, and sorted according to their colours; a habit unheardof anywhere else except in our country. And what will this corruption lead to? If robbery is allowed to pass with impunity, few will be strong enough to remain untempted, and thus, little by little, the law will deter none, the nation will be ruined, and God’s wrath will be brought down upon it. And this, more surely than private perfidy, will bring the Empire not only to disaster but to its ultimate fall. Therefore it is meet and just to apply the same punishment to peculators as to deserters from the battlefield or traitors to the country.”
He spoke without looking at anyone. And again he was conscious of his impotence. His words dropped like water off a duck’s back. These humble, frightened faces, and averted eyes, all expressed the same thought. “Whether we are honest men or knaves, all are under sin.”
“Henceforward no one must trust to his station,” concluded Peter, his voice trembling with wrath. “I herewith declare, that a thief, whatever his rank, even though he be a senator, shall be judged by martial law.”
“This cannot be,” began Prince James Dolgorúki, a ponderous old man, with long white moustaches on his bloated purple face, fixing his bright child-like eyes on the Tsar. “This cannot be, Sovereign; soldiers cannot sit in judgment over senators. You will not only disgrace us; it is an unheard of affront to the whole Russian Empire.”
“Prince James is in the right,” rejoined Sheremetieff, a Knight of Malta; “nowadays the whole of Europe considers Russian aristocrats to be noble knights. Why should you disgrace us, Sovereign, rob us of our knighthood? Not all of us are robbers—”
“Who is innocent, traitor?” cried Peter, his face contorted with wrath. “Do you imagine I do not know you? I do, my friend, I see you through and through! Should I die to-day, you would be the first to stand up for that villain, my son. You are all siding with him.”
But again with a supreme effort of will, he mastered his wrath, and having detected Ménshikoff among the rest he said in a hollow, suppressed, yet perfectly calm voice:—
“Alexander, follow me!”
Together they went into the workshop. The prince was a small shrivelled-up man, frail-looking, but in reality strongas iron, mobile as quicksilver, with a thin agreeable face and uncommonly quick, intelligent eyes, which reminded one of the street boy, who had at one time called out “Hot pies.” He slipped in after the Tsar, cowed like a dog going to be thrashed.
The short fat Shafiroff sighed with relief and mopped his brow. Golóvkin, long and thin as a pole, quaked, blessed himself with the sign of the cross and murmured a prayer. Jagushinski had fallen back in an arm-chair and groaned; fear had given him the colic.
Little by little, as the angry voice of the Tsar and the monotonous plaintive voice of Ménshikoff reached them from the door—it was impossible to distinguish the words—all grew calmer. Some even rejoiced: it is nothing new for the Most Serene; he can stand a good deal, he has been used to the Tsar’s cudgel from his youth, it is nothing to him, he will manage to get over it.
Suddenly shrieks and moans came from inside. The door flew open and out dashed Ménshikoff. His gold embroidered kaftan was torn, the blue St. Andrew’s ribbon was tattered, the decorations on his breast dangled, half torn off, the wig of royal hair—Peter at one time as a mark of friendship gave him his hair every time he had it cut—was all on one side; his face was bleeding. The Tsar came tearing after him, with an unsheathed short sword, and a fierce cry:
“I’ll catch you, son of a bitch!”
“Peter! Peter!” rang out Catherine’s voice; as usual she had appeared just in the nick of time.
She caught hold of him at the door, locked it and pressing her whole body against him, she clung to him, hanging on his neck.
“Let me go, let me go! I must kill him,” he screamed, quite beside himself.
But she only huddled closer to him, repeating, “Peter! Peter! calm yourself, my sweetheart. Throw the knife away, the knife, throw it away, you will do some harm with it.”
At last the little sword dropped from his hands. He threw himself into an arm-chair, his body twisted in violent convulsions. And again, as at the time after the last interviewbetween father and son, Catherine sat down on the arm of the chair, took his head between her hands and pressed it against her breast and began to gently stroke his hair, fondling and caressing him, as a mother her sick child. And gradually the gentle caress soothed him. The convulsions grew weaker. He continued to shudder, but less and less frequently. He no longer screamed, only moaned as if sobbing, crying without tears.
“It is hard, ah, so hard Catherine! I can bear it no longer! There is no one with whom I can talk things over. Not one helper. Always alone, alone! Is it possible for one man? Not even an angel, much less a man could stand it—— the burden is too heavy!”
The moans gradually subsided, at last they ceased altogether—he fell asleep.
She listened to his breathing, it was regular. He always slept heavily after such fits, nothing could wake him as long as Catherine would sit by him. While one hand continued to encircle the head, the other under the semblance of a caress fumbled in the breast pocket of his kaftan with the quick motion of a thief. Feeling a bundle of letters she took them out, looked through them and found among them a large, soiled, evidently anonymous letter, in a blue wrapper, sealed with red wax, unopened; She guessed it was the one she was searching for, a second denunciation of her alliance with Mons, more alarming than the first. Mons (who afterwards died by torture) had warned her of the blue letter. He himself had learnt about it from the talk of some drunken servants.
Catherine was surprised her husband had not opened the letter. Was he afraid to learn the truth? Turning slightly pale, with teeth closely set, yet without losing her presence of mind, she looked into his face. He was peacefully slumbering, like a child after a big cry. She gently leaned his head against the back of the chair, undid a few buttons, crumpled the letter up and pushed it down into the hollow of her breast; then stooped, lifted the dirk from the floor, slit the pocket where the letters had lain, and also the bottom of the kaftan along the seam, so that the cut could be easily taken for a chance hole, and put the rest of the letters back in the pocket. Should Peter notice the disappearanceof the blue letter, he would easily think that it had dropped through into the lining and then slipped out through the rent and so got lost. Holes were not unusual in the Tsar’s well-worn clothes.
Catherine did all this in a second, then she took Peter’s head and pressed it again to her bosom and began to gently stroke, fondle and caress him, looking at the sleeping giant as a mother would at her sick child, or as a tamer of lions at his terrible animal.
He woke, composed and refreshed, at the end of an hour, as if nothing had happened.
Now the Tsar’s dwarf had recently died. The funeral had been fixed on this day; it was to be one of those mock pageants Peter was so fond of. Catherine did her best to persuade him to postpone the funeral till the morrow and not go out, but have a rest to-day. Peter paid no heed; he ordered the drum to be beaten, the standards to be hung out. As though it were for some very important business, he hurriedly got himself ready, put on half mourning, half masquerading dress, and went off.
CONCERNING MONSTERS AND ABORTIONS“Since monsters or abortions are known to occur among human beings, animals and birds, and are in all countries collected as curiosities, a decree was issued some years ago that the aforesaid monstrosities should with us also be presented to public museums; but ignorant people try to conceal these things, thinking such deformities are caused by the devil, or by witchcraft and spells,—which is an impossibility, since God alone is the Creator of every living thing and not the devil, who has no dominion whatever over creatures.—Such monstrosities are the result of internal injury, or of the mother’s fear and imagination during the time of her pregnancy. There are many examples of children bearing the marks of whatever frightened their mothers. We renew this decree, so that without fail such abortions should be brought to the governors of each town, the bringer to receive payment for the same as follows: ten roubles for the body of a human prodigy, five for that of an animal, three for that of a bird; if alive, a hundred roubles for a human prodigy, fifteen for an animal, seven for a bird. And if they are exceptional more will be given. Those, who in spite of this decree, continue to conceal abortions must be reported, and when convicted will be fined a tenth of what their prodigy is worth and the money given to the informers. If the above-named deformities die, they shall be preserved in spirit, and if that is not within reach, double-distilled brandy or plain brandy, and securely sealed so as to prevent them putrefying; the brandy will be paid for out of a special fund.”
CONCERNING MONSTERS AND ABORTIONS
“Since monsters or abortions are known to occur among human beings, animals and birds, and are in all countries collected as curiosities, a decree was issued some years ago that the aforesaid monstrosities should with us also be presented to public museums; but ignorant people try to conceal these things, thinking such deformities are caused by the devil, or by witchcraft and spells,—which is an impossibility, since God alone is the Creator of every living thing and not the devil, who has no dominion whatever over creatures.—Such monstrosities are the result of internal injury, or of the mother’s fear and imagination during the time of her pregnancy. There are many examples of children bearing the marks of whatever frightened their mothers. We renew this decree, so that without fail such abortions should be brought to the governors of each town, the bringer to receive payment for the same as follows: ten roubles for the body of a human prodigy, five for that of an animal, three for that of a bird; if alive, a hundred roubles for a human prodigy, fifteen for an animal, seven for a bird. And if they are exceptional more will be given. Those, who in spite of this decree, continue to conceal abortions must be reported, and when convicted will be fined a tenth of what their prodigy is worth and the money given to the informers. If the above-named deformities die, they shall be preserved in spirit, and if that is not within reach, double-distilled brandy or plain brandy, and securely sealed so as to prevent them putrefying; the brandy will be paid for out of a special fund.”
Peter had been very fond of his “Eminent dwarf” and had arranged a magnificent funeral for him.
First came thirty choristers walking two and two, all little boys, a tiny priest followed them, robed, and with a censer in his hand; he had been chosen from among all the Petersburg clergy for his short stature. Six small black horses covered with long black caparisons were drawing the small coffin on a toy carriage. Then solemnly, hand in hand, under the guidance of a diminutive master of ceremonies, who carried a huge staff, there walked twelve pairs of dwarfs, in long black mantles bordered with white crêpe, and the same number of female dwarfs,—all ranged according to their size, the smaller in front, the taller at the back, ranged like organ pipes. These dwarfs were humpbacked, fat-bellied, splay-mouthed, splay-footed, some like badger hounds and others more grim-looking than ludicrous. The procession was flanked on both sides by giant grenadiers and imperial guards, who bore in their hands burning torches and funeral tapers. One of the giants, dressed in a baby’s shirt, was conducted in leading strings by two of the tiniest dwarfs with long grey beards; another, swaddled like a newborn infant, was drawn in a carriage by six tame bears.
Last of all came the Tsar, accompanied by all his generals and senators. Dressed as a Dutch naval master-drummer, he marched along with an important air, beating the drum.
The procession, followed by the crowd, passed along the Nevsky Prospect, from the wooden bridge across the river Fontanna to the cemetery in the Jamskoy Quarter. People looked out of their windows, ran out of their houses, and seized by superstitious fears, did not know whether to cross themselves or to spit; while the foreigners were saying—“Such a procession can be seen nowhere else save in Russia!”
It was five o’clock in the afternoon. Darkness was swiftly setting in. Wet snow fell in large flakes. Along both sides of the Prospect the two rows of bare limes and the low roofs of the houses gleamed in their white shroud. The fog thickened. In the muddy yellow mist illumined by the dull red glare of the torches the absurd procession seemed a nightmare, a diabolical suggestion.
The crowd, though frightened, ran after it, splashingin the mud and whispering strange weird tales about the unclean spirits which were supposed to have taken up their abode in Petersburg.
Quite lately the night-watchman at the Troïtsa Church heard a noise in the nave, as if caused by hurried footsteps. And in the belfry too, somebody had been running up and down the ladder steps so heavily that the floors trembled, and when in the morning the clerk went to ring the bells, he saw that the ladder had been torn off and the bell rope coiled up.
“It is the devil himself,” urged some.
“Not the devil, but an evil spirit,” suggested others.
An old woman, who sold herrings on the Ochta, had herself seen the ghost at a spinning wheel, quite naked, lean, black, with a tiny head about the size of a thimble; you could not tell the body from a straw.
“Was it not the house-haunting spirit?” asked some one.
“House spirits don’t visit churches,” he was informed.
“Perhaps it was a stray one; they are liable to the same plague as cows and dogs. That’s why they play pranks.”
“It’s the spring. In spring the house spirits moult, they shed their old skin; that is the reason they rummage about.”
“Whether it be a house spirit, devil, or ghost, one thing is clear,” they all agreed, “the spirit was a bad one.”
In the muddy yellow mist illumined by the dull red flare of the torches, which cast monstrous shadows from the dwarfs, the procession itself seemed to be a manifestation of things evil.
More terrible tales yet went from mouth to mouth in the crowd as the dwarf’s funeral went by.
On the Finnish side of the river, a priest, for the performance of some mad act, had attired himself in a goat’s skin with horns, and this skin had at once stuck to him, and in this guise he was to be taken at night to execution. The son of a dragoon, Zwarikin, had sold his soul to the devil “who had appeared to him in the shape of a foreigner; the compact had been signed with blood.” In the Apothecary’s garden, the cemetery, thieves had opened a grave, broken the coffin and begun to drag out the body by his feet. They did not finish however, for they got frightened and ran away. In the morning, some one saw the feet sticking out of thegrave; the news spread of the resurrection of the dead. In the Tartar Quarter, beyond the Crown works, an infant had been born with a cow-horn for a nose, and in the Mitny Dvor, a pig with a human face. “These are bad omens for the town where they happened.” In one place a cock with five legs had appeared. In Ládoga blood had rained from the sky. The earth had trembled and groaned; three suns had appeared.
“Some evil will happen, some evil,” they all repeated.
“Petersburg will perish—and not only Petersburg, but the whole world is coming to an end. The day of judgment! Antichrist!”
Frightened by these tales, a little boy, dragged along by his mother in the crowd, suddenly broke into sobs and screamed with fright. A woman in rags with a half crazy look, began shrieking in an inhuman voice. She was hurriedly taken to a neighbouring house. The Tsar did not dally with these hysterical women whom the people thought were possessed; he flogged the devil out of them. “The tail of the knout reaches further than the devil’s tail,” he used to remark when informed of the pranks of Satan.
Many of the senators and nobles showed terror in their faces.
Prior to the procession starting, Shafiroff had handed to the Tsar the letters of Tolstoi and the Tsarevitch, brought by messenger from Naples.
The Tsar had them unopened in his pocket; he probably did not want to read them in public. Shafiroff, however, from a short note received by him from Tolstoi knew already the amazing news; it spread like wildfire.
“The Tsarevitch is returning!”
“Peter Tolstoi, the Judas, has lured him! it is not the first he has led to perdition!”
“It is said the father has promised to marry him to Afrossinia!”
“Marry him? What next, fool! The block, not marriage, is in store for him.”
“And suppose the marriage comes off?”
“That marriage will be celebrated in the he-goat’s bog; the best man and match maker—the hatchet and block!”
“Fool! Fool! He is running blindfold to destruction.”
“The young ox is on the brink of the precipice.”
“Hewon’t keep his head on long!”
“No! He may be pardoned. He is the Tsar’s own son, not a stranger. Even the serpent does not devour her young. First a severe lesson, and then pardon.”
“It is too late to teach, he is no longer a child and adults don’t change.”
“They should have taught him while he was tall as a bench is wide; but now that he covers the whole length of it, it is too late!”
“Come into my mortar, and I’ll bray thee with my pestle, sweetheart! that will be his lesson!”
“They’ll soothe the child finely, he won’t make a sound; they’ll see to that!”
“And we, too, shall in all probability have a hot time.”
“A great calamity, brothers; even two minds are not enough to get one out of this scrape.”
Among the nobles, as among the people, all repeated.
“Evil will befall us! Evil will befall us!”
Meanwhile on tramped the Tsar, tramping, marching through the mud, beating the drum, drowning the melancholy funeral chants. The mist thickened, the fog grew denser. Everything seemed to lose its precision, dissolve, grow phantom-like, and the whole town, together with its people, houses and streets, as if it would lift in another instant, together with the fog, and vanish into thin air.
On his return from the funeral to the Summer Palace, Peter took a light wherry and rowed himself across the Neva to a small wooden landing stage on the opposite shore.
Here on the river’s bank, close to the Trinity Church, stood a small, low house, one of the first buildings erected by the Dutch carpenters, in the earliest days of Petersburg—this was Peter’s first palace; it resembled the modest huts of sailors in Saardam. The frame work was made of pine, grown in the wild Keivoussary bog on the Birch Island; it was painted to imitate the colour of bricks and roofed with wooden shingles instead of tiles.
The rooms were low, small, and only three in number. On the right side of the hall was the small working-room, on the left, the dining-room, and beyond, the bedroom, the smallest of the three, only about four yards long and three wide, hardly large enough to turn round in. The furniture was simple but homely, in the Dutch style. The ceilings and walls were covered with white canvas. The leaded windows were wide, low, and provided with oak shutters on iron hinges. The doors were hardly made for Peter; he had to stoop in order to prevent his head knocking against the lintel.
After the Summer and Winter Palace had been built, this little house stood empty. The Tsar seldom slept in it; only when he wanted to be quite alone, even without Catherine. On entering the hall, he woke the servant, who lay snoring on the felt carpet, ordered a light to be brought, and passed into the working-room, turned the key, placed the light upon the table, sat down in the arm-chair, and took out of his pocket the letters sent by Tolstoi, Roumiantzevand the Tsarevitch. Yet before unsealing them he again stopped, as if hesitating; he listened to the measured, sonorous chimes of the Troïtsa Church clock. It struck nine. When the last sound had died away, a silence ensued as in those days when Petersburg was not in existence, and when there had stretched to the horizon only endless forests and impenetrable marshes.
At last he broke the seal. While reading, his face slightly paled, his hands trembled. When he reached the last words in his son’s letter: “and will leave Naples together with your envoys in a few days for Petersburg,” joy took his breath away; he could not read any further. He blessed himself with the sign of the cross.
Was not this again a miracle, a sign of God? He had been despondent, miserable, thinking God had forgotten him, and here again God’s hand was revealed.
He felt again strong and vigorous, years younger, equal to any work or exploit.
Then hanging his head, and looking at the flickering flame of the candle he fell into a reverie.
When his son returned what should he do with him? “Kill him,” he used to think in his fury, when there seemed to be no hope of his return. But now that Alexis was returning his fury had abated, and for the first time he asked himself the question, quite calmly, collectedly, “What shall I do?”
All at once he remembered the words written in his first letter, sent to Naples by Tolstoi and Roumiantzev: “I promise and declare in the sight of God that you shall suffer no punishment, but great love will be shown unto you, should you return.” Now that his son had trusted to this oath, it acquired an awful power.
But how to fulfil it?
To forgive his son,—will this not also imply forgiveness for all other traitors to Tsar and country? A number of worthless people, peculators, thieves, parasites, hypocrites, monks, the whole party of stupor and reaction will join themselves to him and grow so fearless that no law will deter them. This will bring about the ruin of the Empire. And if his son in his father’s lifetime so braves his father, what will he do after his death? “He willdestroy, scatter everything, not one stone will be left in its place, he will ruin Russia——”
No, better break the oath than pardon!
This will involve renewed examinations, tortures, piles of blazing wood, axes, gibbets, blood?
He remembers how once, during the Streltsy execution, he rode on horseback to the Red Square, where on that day 300 heads were doomed to fall. The Patriarch met him with a wonder-working icon, imploring him to pardon the Streltsy. The Tsar bowed before the icon, but angrily pushed the Patriarch aside, saying: “Why have you come here? I revere the Virgin no less than you do. But duty bids me pardon the just and punish the criminal. Go! don’t detain me, old man, I know what I am doing.”
He could answer the Patriarch, but will he be able to answer God?
And he saw as in a vision an endless row of heads, which lay on a long beam for a block, their faces to the ground, fair, auburn, black, grey, bald and curly. Drunk, coming straight from an orgy together with Danilitch and other guests, he strides in with an axe, like a headsman, and cuts off one head after the other. When he is tired the guests take the hatchet in turn from his hands and also strike. Blood has intoxicated them all. Their dress is splashed with blood, blood covers the earth, their feet slip on it. Suddenly one head, over which the axe is already lifted, slowly rises, turns round and looks into his eyes. It is he—little Alexis!
“Aliósha, my darling boy!” Another vision rises before him. He had come home from abroad, and at night he had stealthily found his way into his boy’s bedroom, he bent over the bed, took him up in his arms, kissing the sleepy little body, so soft and warm under his nightgown.
“Kill his son!” only now he realized what it meant. He felt it was the most important, most awful act of his life; more important than Sophia, the Streltsy, Europe, science, the army, the fleet, Petersburg and Poltava, in that here his judgment for all eternity would lie. In one scale would be placed whatever good and great he had done; in the other the death of this son. Who could tell which would weigh the heavier? Would not all his glory be tarnishedby this stain of blood? What would Europe, what would posterity, say about an oathbreaker, a murderer of his own son? Difficult it would be for any who may not know all, to discern his innocence—and who would know all?
Can a man be justified before God for shedding his son’s blood, even for the good of his country?
Which decision is he to make? Pardon his son, and ruin Russia; or kill his son and ruin his own soul and fame? He felt incapable of making any decision.
It was impossible to decide alone. But who could help him? The Church? What ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. That is how it used to be, but now, where is the Church? The Patriarch? He no longer existed. He himself had abolished that office. Or the Metropolitan, “Stephen the servitor,” who falling to the ground himself petitions the Tsar? Or the Administrator of Spiritual affairs, Theodosius, the double-faced? He and the prelates are so bridled that they will follow any lead; whatever he tells them to do they will do it. He himself is the Patriarch, the Church. He stands alone before God.
And what did he rejoice at, insensate, a moment since? Yes, God’s hand is truly spread over him and weighs heavily on him. It is terrible, terrible, to fall into the hands of the living God!——
An abyss yawned at his feet. Horror rose from it. His hair stood on end.
He hid his face in his hands.
“Depart from me, Lord! deliver me from bloodguiltiness O God, Thou God of my salvation!”
He rose and went into his bedchamber where in the corner over his bed a lamp was ever burning before the miraculous icon of Christ. This icon had been presented to the Tsar Alexis Michailovitch by the court painter, Oushakoff, and had at one time been placed in the hall of the Kremlin palace. It was a Russian replica of a very old Byzantine picture. According to the familiar tradition, our Lord on His way to Golgotha, fainting under the burden of the cross, had wiped the sweat off His brow withVeronica’s cloth, and the same had retained the imprint of His face. This was the first icon.
Ever since Peter’s mother, Tsaritsa Natalia Kirilovna, had blessed her son with this icon, he had never parted from it. On all campaigns and voyages, on ships and in tents, at the foundation of Petersburg and on the field of Poltava, the icon always accompanied him.
On entering his bedchamber he added a little oil to the lamp and trimmed the wick. The flame glowed more vividly, and in the gold, which surrounded the dark face crowned with thorns, the diamonds sparkled like tears, the rubies like drops of blood.
Peter knelt and began to pray.
The icon had grown so familiar to him that he hardly noticed its real character and quite unconsciously always addressed his prayers to the Father and not to the Son; not to the God who dying shed His blood on Golgotha, but to the living God, mighty and strong in battle, the God of armies, the just Giver of Victories, Him who spoke of Himself through the mouth of the prophets: “I have trodden the people in mine anger, and trampled them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments and I have stained all my raiment.”
But now, when he raised his eyes to the image and wanted as usual to address his prayers direct to the Father past the Son, he could not. He seemed for the first time to realise theSufferer’sface in the crown of thorns; and the countenance had gained life and penetrated into his very soul with His meek look. He seemed for the first time to fathom, what he had often heard in his childhood yet had never really grasped: the meaning of “the Father,” and “the Son.” All at once there flashed across his mind an ancient tragic story, also about a father and a son.
“God tempted Abraham and said unto him; take thy son, thy only son whom thou lovest and offer him for a burnt-offering. And Abraham built an altar and bound his son and laid him on the altar, and Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.”
This was only a prototype on earth of the yet more awful heavenly sacrifice. God so loved the world that He did not spare His only begotten Son. And the Father’s wrath isappeased by the blood of the Lamb, the blood of His Son which is ever flowing. Here was some near and all-important mystery, so terrible that he hardly dared to think about it. His thought grew faint, as in madness.
Did God want him, or not, to slay his son? Would this blood be forgiven or would it fall upon him? And what if this sin should be visited, not only on him, but on his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, all Russia?
He fell on his face, and remained a long time prostrate, motionless, as if dead.
At last he lifted his eyes again to the image, but now with a desperate, frenzied prayer, straight to the Father.
“Let this blood fall on me, me alone! Slay me, O Lord, but spare Russia!”
Alexis had his eyes fixed on the door through which Peter was expected to enter.
The yellow February sun flooded the small reception room of the Preobrazhensky Palace, a house almost as white and plain as the Tsar’s house in Petersburg. The windows opened on a landscape familiar to Alexis from earliest childhood; a snow-covered field dotted with black crows, grey walls of barracks, prison buildings, earth ramparts with pyramids of cannon balls, sentry houses and motionless sentinels outlined against the transparent emerald sky. Sparrows were chirping on the window-sill, just as in spring; clear drops fell like tears from stalactites of ice. It was nearing midday, an odour betrayed the cooking of a cabbage pie. The monotonous ticking of a clock’s pendulum alone broke the silence.
The Tsarevitch had been calm, almost gay, throughout the journey from Naples back to Russia: a kind of insensibility seemed to have possessed him; he had been unable to realize what was happening to him, or why and whither he was being taken back.
Only now, sitting waiting with Tolstoi in the reception room and gazing, just as on that nervous night in Naples, at a fatal door, he seemed to awake and begin at last to understand. Just as then he trembled as in a fever, now crossing himself with muttering prayers, now gripping Tolstoi’s hand:
“Peter Andreitch! Peter Andreitch! what will happen? I confess I am afraid!”
Tolstoi tried to pacify him with his velvety voice “Courage, your Highness! A sin confessed is half forgiven. With God’s help everything will arrange itself, slowly, gently and peacefully——”
The Tsarevitch did not listen, he was rehearsing the speech he had prepared:—
“Father, I can justify nothing. I only pray with tears for your gracious forgiveness and fatherly dispensation. I have no other hope save God and you; and I give myself up into your hands.”
Familiar steps approached the door. It opened. Peter came in.
Alexis jumped up, stumbled and would have fallen had not Tolstoi supported him.
As in the momentary metamorphosis of a were-wolf, two faces flashed before Alexis, a strange, terrible one like a death-mask, and also the familiar one, his father’s face as he remembered it in his earliest childhood.
The Tsarevitch came forward and was going to fall on his knees, but Peter stretched out his arms to meet him and pressed him to his bosom.
“Welcome, Aliósha, thank the Lord! thank the Lord! we have met at last——”
Alexis felt the familiar touch of his father’s plump, clean-shaven cheek, the old smell of strong tobacco and sweaty clothes; he saw the large, dark, lucid eyes, dear and yet so terrible; the winning, slightly cunning, smile on the thin, curved, almost feminine lips. Forgetting his long speech, he only stammered out:—
“Forgive me, father!”
And bursting into irrepressible sobs, he repeated again and again: “Forgive, forgive!”
His heart had melted suddenly, like ice before fire.
“Aliósha, quiet, quiet, my boy, quiet!”
The father was stroking his son’s hair, kissing his forehead and eyes with the tenderness of a loving mother.
Meanwhile Tolstoi witnessing this tenderness, said to himself, “The hawk will kiss the chicken till the last feather has gone.”
The Tsar made a sign and he disappeared.
Peter took his son into the dining-room. The dogLisette growled at first, but, recognizing the Tsarevitch, wagged her tail in confusion and licked his hand. The table was set for two; an orderly brought in the dishes together and left the room. They remained alone. Peter poured out two glasses of anisette cordial.
“Your health, Aliósha!”
They clinked glasses. The hand of the Tsarevitch trembled so violently that he upset half his liquor.
Peter had prepared “zakouska,” a favourite dish of his, a slice of black bread with butter, spread with minced onion and garlic; he halved the piece, one part for himself, one for his son.
“You have grown thin abroad,” he said, looking at his son, “wait a bit, we’ll soon fill you out. Russian bread is better feeding than the German.”
He pressed him to eat and drink with many a jocular saying.
“Bumper on bumper is not like blow on blow!” “All good things go in threes!” “To multiply himself by four makes the guest more cheerful than before!”
The Tsarevitch ate little, but he drank much and soon became over-exhilarated, more from joy, however, than wine.
He was still timid, he had not fully recovered his senses, he could hardly trust his eyes and ears. Yet his father’s talk was so simple and good humoured that it was impossible not to hope. He inquired after everything, wanted to know all about Italy, the fleet, the Pope, and the Emperor. He joked with him like a comrade.
“Your taste is not bad, sir,” he winked at Alexis. “Afrossinia is a strapping—a superb wench; were I ten years younger it might have happened (who knows?) that you’d have had to beware ofme. I might have put horns on ye! It’s evident the apple does not fall far from the tree! The father with a washerwoman, the son with a charwoman, for they say Afrossinia washed floors formerly at the Viasemski’s house. Eh, but what of it? Catenka washed clothes. Do you want to get married?”
“If you would permit it, father.”
“What else can I do? I promised you, and can’t help myself now.”
Peter poured some red wine into crystal goblets; they raised and clinked them, the crystal rang, the wine glowed like blood in the sunshine.
“To peace and eternal friendship!” said Peter.
They drained their glasses to the last drop.
Alexis turned giddy. His spirits took wild wings; his heart now sank, now throbbed, as if it would burst; he thought he would die of joy. Present, Past and Future—all had disappeared. He remembered, saw, felt, only one thing, his father’s love. It might only be for a moment. What of it? To pay for the happiness of this moment, a whole life of torment would be nothing. He longed to speak out and confess everything.
Peter, as if divining his thought, touched his hand with a gentle caress.
“Tell me, Aliósha, all about your flight.”
The Tsarevitch felt that the moment had come which would decide his fate, and that suddenly what he had tried to ignore, ever since he had first resolved to return to his father, lay clearly before him. A choice was inevitable; he had either to relate everything without restraint, name his accomplices, and betray his friends; or else deny everything, and so doing allow the insurmountable barrier-wall to grow up, the bottomless abyss between himself and his father to open anew.
He remained silent, his eyes cast down, afraid lest the unfamiliar, terrible death-mask face had taken the place of the loved one. At last he got up, approached his father and fell on his knees before him. Lisette, who had been sleeping on a cushion at Peter’s feet, woke up, rose and went away leaving her place to Alexis. He sank down on the cushion. Were it but possible to remain for ever at his father’s feet, like a dog, looking into his eyes, waiting to be fondled, petted.
“I will tell you everything, only forgive them all, as you have forgiven me,” said he, with a look of intense adoration. His father stooped and laid his hands on Alexis’ shoulders with the same gentle tenderness:—
“Listen, Aliósha! How can I forgive while ignorant of both the innocent and the guilty? I can forgive so far as I myself am concerned, but not a crime against the country.God will ask me to account for this. He who tolerates evil, works evil himself. One thing I can promise, I will pardon all those you name, but terrible penalties will fall on those whose names you conceal. Therefore, be not a traitor, but the protector of your friends, conceal nothing from me, tell me everything. Don’t be afraid, I will hurt no one. We will think it all over between us.”
Alexis remained silent. Peter embraced him, pressed his head against his breast, and added with a heavy sigh:—
“Aliósha, Aliósha, could you but see my heart, know my grief! It fares sadly with me! I have no one to help me, I am always alone. All are enemies, evildoers, you at least have compassion on me. Be my friend, or do you not want to? Do you not love me?”
“I love you, my dearest father!” whispered Alexis with that same timid tenderness, as in his childhood, when his father would sometimes secretly come at night and take his sleeping boy up in his arms. “I will tell you all, all, ask me?”
And he told everything; named everybody.
Yet when he ended Peter was still waiting for the main point. He had expected a plot, and found none; only words, rumours, gossip, illusory suggestions, on which it was impossible to base real inquiry. Alexis took the whole fault upon himself, and exonerated all the rest.
“When I was drunk I used to say all sorts of things; I could not control my tongue before others, I troubled them by my vain fancies and seditious conversation.”
“But apart from talk, there was no thought for action; for stirring up the people to revolt? Did they not desire to put you in my place by force?”
“No, father, I swear it! Nothing of the sort was ever contemplated. There were words only—words!”
“Did your mother know about the flight?”
“I don’t think she did,” then after a pause he added: “I can say nothing definite about that.”
He stopped short and cast down his eyes. He remembered the visions and prophecies of Bishop Dositheus of Rostoff and other monks, prophecies which his mother believed in and rejoiced at; the fall of Petersburg, the death of Peter, the ascendancy of Alexis. Should hemention this too? Betray his mother? Mortal anguish gripped his heart, he felt he could not speak about this. Besides, his father did not ask for it. What did it matter to him? Could such a man as he be moved by women’s babble?
“Is this all, or have you something else upon your mind?” asked Peter.
“I have, only I know not how to word it. I am afraid.”
He pressed close to his father, and hid his face upon his father’s bosom.
“Speak, it will ease you. Speak out and clear yourself, as in a confession.”
“When you were ill,” Alexis whispered into his ear, “I thought you would not live, and I rejoiced! I wished you dead.”
Peter slowly, gently pushed him back and looked straight into his eyes. He saw there what he had never seen before in human eyes.
“Did you contemplate my death with any one?”
“No, no, no!” exclaimed Alexis, with such terror on his face and in his voice that his father believed him.
In silence they gazed at one another, their look had the same expression, and these two faces, so different, were suddenly alike. They reflected and fathomed one another like two mirrors.
Suddenly the Tsarevitch smiled feebly and said simply, but with a voice so strange, so altered that it seemed that, not he, but some one else was speaking through him:—
“I know father, it is perhaps impossible for you to forgive me. So be it, have me beaten, killed. I would die for you, only love me! love me always. Let no one know about this—you and I alone will know, you and I——”
His father did not answer, but covered his face with his hands.
Alexis looked at him as if expecting something.
At last Peter uncovered his face, again stooped to his son, took his head between his hands and silently kissed him. For the first time in his life the Tsarevitch saw tears in his father’s eyes. Alexis wanted to say something more, but Peter rose and hurriedly left the room.
The same day in the evening, his new confessor, Father Varlaam, came to the Tsarevitch.
On his return to Moscow, Alexis had begged to have his former confessor, Father James Ignatief. He was refused, and Father Varlaam was appointed instead. He was an old man, “without guile,” “quite a chicken,” according to Tolstoi’s expression.
The Tsarevitch was glad, however, to have even him; he longed for an opportunity of confessing as soon as possible. He repeated in confession all he had said to his father. He also added what he had held back from him, as to his mother, the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, his aunt the Tsarevna Marya, and his uncle, Abraham Lopoukhin, and their united wish for a “speedy fulfilment,”—his father’s death.
“You ought to have spoken the whole truth to your father,” remarked Father Varlaam, who appeared somewhat agitated. Something strange, hasty and mysterious seemed to have passed between them, yet so instantaneously that Alexis could not say whether it was real or only a fancy.
On the morning of Monday, February 3, 1718, two days after Peter’s first interview with Alexis, a meeting was summoned of all the ministers, generals, prelates and other civil and clerical officials in the Audience Hall of the old Kremlin Palace. The assembly was convoked to hear the manifesto, declaring the abdication of the throne by the Tsarevitch, and to take the oath of allegiance to the new heir, Peter Petrovitch.
Battalions of the Preobrazhensky Guard were stationed within the walls of the Kremlin, in all the squares, palace galleries and staircases. A rising was feared.
In the Audience Hall nothing of the old decoration had been retained save the frescoes on the ceiling, which represented the course of the stars, the twelve months of the year, and other heavenly phenomena.
All the rest were new: Dutch tapestries, crystal chandeliers, straight-backed chairs, narrow pier glasses between the windows. In the centre of the hall, under a red silk canopy, on a raised platform, reached by three steps, stood the throne, a gilt arm-chair with a golden double-headed eagle, and the keys of St. Peter embroidered on the crimson velvet.
Slanting rays of pale sunshine fell through the windows upon the white wigs of the senators and the black hoods of the prelates. The faces of all present expressed fear and that eager curiosity which is seen in a crowd at executions. The drum rolled.
A movement passed through the crowd, it separated, the Tsar entered and took his seat on the throne.
Two huge Preobrazhensky guards, with drawn swords, led in Alexis, like a prisoner.
Without wig or sword, dressed in a plain black suit, pale,yet calm and meditative, he walked slowly, his head bent low. When near the throne and he saw his father, a gentle smile, which recalled his grandfather, the gentle Tsar Alexis, lit up his face.
Tall, narrow across the shoulders, with a thin visage surrounded by scanty tufts of straight smooth hair, suggesting now a village deacon, now the image of Saint Alexis, amid all these new Petersburg faces he seemed a being apart, a stranger as it were from another world, a phantom of ancient Muscovy. On many a face pity for this phantom mingled with curiosity and fear.
He stopped near the throne, not knowing what to do next.
“Kneel! kneel! and speak what you have prepared!” Tolstoi whispered to him from behind.
The Tsarevitch knelt and began in a loud calm voice:—
“Most gracious Sovereign and Father! On recognising my transgression towards you, as my parent and sovereign, I wrote a penitent letter and sent it to you from Naples; to-day I repeat and declare that, forgetful of my duties as a son and subject, I deserted Russia and put myself under the Emperor’s protection, entreating him to defend me. For which transgression I beseech your gracious pardon and forgiveness.”
After this he bowed low before his father, not according to ceremonial, but prompted solely by his heart.
On a sign from the Tsar, the Vice-Chancellor Shafiroff began reading the manifesto, which the same day would be read, by order, to the people in the Red Square.
“We trust that it is known to the greater number of our faithful subjects how assiduously and carefully we have striven to bring up our first-born son, Alexis. But all our efforts were in vain, the seed fell on stony soil; our son did not only not profit by it, but hated study, and has shown no inclination whatever for military and civil affairs. He has preferred intercourse with worthless, vile people of coarse habits.”
Alexis hardly listened. He was trying to meet his father’s eye. But the latter gazed past him with a motionless, impenetrable look. “Feint, dissimulation!” Alexis assured himself; “revile me, beat me, if you will, I still know you love me!”
Shafiroff continued: “And, seeing his obstinacy in wrongdoing, we declared unto him that, should he not act according to our will in future, we would disinherit him. And we granted him time to amend his ways. But he, forgetful of all responsibility, and of God’s law, which commands obedience to parents generally, and much more to a father who is a sovereign, repaid our manifold parental cares with unheard-of ingratitude. When, having left him in Petersburg on our departure for the campaign in Denmark, we wrote him thence summoning him to Copenhagen, to take part in the action and thus increase his military knowledge, he, our son, instead of joining us, furnished himself with a good supply of money, took a certain woman with whom he lived unlawfully, deserted and went to put himself under the protection of the Emperor. Having declared many untrue calumnies against his father and his sovereign, he entreated the Emperor, not only to hide him, but also to defend him with armed force against us, his enemy and torturer, from whose hands he expected to suffer death. To what shame and dishonour before the world he brought our country by this his action, is evident! It is difficult to find a precedent for it in history! Yet, though he, our son, has by all these misdoings earned death, we pity him with our fatherly heart, forgive and free him of all punishment. But——”
Here a strange hollow, husky, terrible voice interrupted the reading. It was the voice of Peter, so full of anger and grief that all formality seemed to vanish, and every one suddenly realized the horror of the situation.
“I cannot have an heir who would waste all that his father, with God’s help had gained, and would overthrow the glory and honour of the Russian people. I should fear to meet my God if I entrusted the Government to one I knew to be unfit for it. And you——”
He looked at his son, and Alexis’ heart sank, he felt there was no dissembling.
“And you remember this: though I have pardoned you, yet if you have made a single omission or reservation which comes out later, do not reproach me, it will cost you your pardon. You shall suffer death——”
Alexis leant forward, his hands raised in eager protest; he wanted to speak, to cry out to his father, but Peter looked past him with his motionless, impenetrable look. At a sign from the Tsar, Shafiroff continued reading:—
“Thus in our anxiety for our country and subjects we herewith by reason of our power as father and absolute sovereign, take from our son Alexis, for his sins and misdoings, the right to succeed to the Russian throne, even though no one of our family should survive him. And we herewith appoint and declare our son Peter, though yet a child, heir to the throne, seeing we have no other grown-up heir. And we conjure our son Alexis never to lay any claim to the succession. We desire all our faithful subjects and the whole Russian people after this our wish and declaration to consider our son Peter appointed by us as the legitimate heir, and to revere him as such, and to ratify this by oath in the sanctuary upon the holy Gospels, kissing the cross. All those who from this day forth contrary to our desire shall persist in considering our son Alexis heir to the throne, and help him with this intent, we herewith declare traitors to us and to the country.”
The Tsar rose and ordered all those present to go to the Church of the Assumption, where the oath of allegiance was to be taken.
When all except Tolstoi, Shafiroff and a few other of the highest dignitaries had retired from the hall, Peter said to his son:—
“Follow me!”
Together they crossed the vestibule into “the Secret Chamber of Replies” whence the ancient Tsars of Muscovy, concealed behind silk curtains, listened to the conferences of ambassadors in the adjoining hall. It was a small room, with bare walls and a mica window which always let in yellow-amber twilight. In the other corner before the Saviour’s icon, a dark, meek, sorrowful face in a crown of thorns, a holy lamp was always kept burning. Peter shut the door and came up to his son.
As on that terrible day at Naples in his delirium, and a few days since in Preobrazhensky, the Tsarevitch shivered and trembled. But he hoped still; surely his father wouldpresently embrace him, say that he still loved him, and all these terrors would vanish for ever.
“I know you love me,” he kept repeating under his breath to himself, like some formula of faith. Nevertheless his heart beat with dread.
He dropped his eyes and dared not lift them, feeling his father’s heavy steadfast glance upon him. Both remained silent. All was hushed around them.
“Did you hear,” Peter said at last, “what has just been declared before the people? one concealment will cost you your life.”
“I heard it, father.”
“And have you nothing to add to what you declared the day before yesterday?”
Alexis remembered his mother, and again he felt he could not betray her, even though it meant instant death. “Nothing,” said he; as though some one else, not himself, had spoken.
“Are you sure there is nothing?” repeated Peter.