CHAPTER I
The Tsar had been warned, when he contemplated building Petersburg, that the site was not suitable for habitation, on account of the floods; twelve years previously the whole country up to Nienshantz had been under water, and similar disasters recurred about every five years. The original inhabitants of the Neva Delta did not erect permanent houses, but only small huts. Whenever a great flood, by one sign or another, seemed to be threatened, they were taken to pieces, the logs and planks were tied together in a raft and fastened to trees, while the people themselves sought refuge on the hill Dooderhof. But to Peter, the new city seemed a “Paradise” just because of the abundance of water which, like a waterfowl, he loved; and he hoped that in this place, quicker than anywhere else, he could accustom his subjects to a seafaring life.
At the end of October 1715, the Neva began to freeze, snow fell, the sleighs were brought out and everybody was expecting an early, settled winter. But quite unexpectedly the weather changed; it became warm again. In one night all the snow and ice had melted. The wind brought a fog from the sea, a putrid, yellow, suffocating mist, which caused much sickness among the people.
“I pray God to deliver me from this place of perdition,” wrote an old boyar to Moscow. “I am seriously afraid of falling ill; since the thaw began we have been enveloped in such a balmy scent and such gloom, that it is impossible to go out. Many die because of the infectious air in this ‘Paradise.’”
The south-west wind continued to blow for nine days; the water in the Neva rose; several times it began to overflow. Peter issued decrees by which the inhabitants were bidden to empty their cellars of all goods, to keep boats in readiness and to drive the cattle on to the higher ground.
But the water after mounting, receded every time. The Tsar, noticing that his decrees only troubled the people, and having come to the conclusion, by signs known only to himself, that there would be no great flood, resolved to trouble himself no more about the rise of the water.
The first fashionable winter “Assembly” was fixed on November 6, in the house of Fédor Apraksin, President of the Admiralty. The house was situated on the quay opposite to the Admiralty buildings, and next to the Winter Palace. On the eve of the Assembly the water rose again. People of experience predicted that this time the calamity could not be escaped, and various signs were quoted in support of this belief; the cockroaches in the palace had begun to creep from the cellars up to the garret; the mice had left the flour stores; the Tsaritsa had dreamt that Petersburg had become a prey to the flames, and fire in a dream means flood. Not quite recovered from her confinement, she could not accompany Peter to the “Assembly,” and entreated him to stay at home.
Peter read in the looks of all that ancient dread of water, which all his life he had vainly sought to overcome: “the sea brings sadness and grief—where water is there is grief also—even the Tsar cannot appease a flood.”
He was warned on all sides. At last he was so annoyed that he forbade even the mentioning of a flood. He all but struck the Chief Constable Devière with his club. An unknown peasant had terrified the whole town by predicting that the water would rise above the high elm which grew on the quay near the Trinity Church. Peter ordered the elm tree to be felled and the peasant to be flogged on the site; during the performance a drum was to be beaten and a persuasive exhortation addressed to the people.
Before the “Assembly” commenced, Apraksin came to the Tsar asking permission to have it in the house itself, and not in the pavilion generally used on such occasions, which stood out in the courtyard and was connected with the main building only by a narrow glazed gallery, far from safe in case of a sudden rise of water, when the guests might easily be cut off from the staircase which led out to the upper rooms. Peter thought it over, yet decided to have his own way, and ordered the “Assembly” to be held in its usual quarter, the pavilion.
“An Assembly,” the decree explained, “is a free gathering not only for pleasure but for work.
“The host is neither obliged to receive his guests nor to see them to the door when they depart, nor is he expected to press them to eat.
“At the ‘Assembly’ people are free to sit, walk about, or join in the games and no one has a right to interfere, or check another’s actions; ceremonies, such as rising up to greet, conducting to the door, are forbidden under penalty of the fine of the ‘Great Eagle.’”
Both the supper-room and the room for dancing were spacious, but with exceedingly low ceilings; the walls of the former were covered with blue tiles, after the style of Dutch kitchens, pewter dishes were ranged along the shelves, the brick floor was strewn with sand, the large tiled stove was overheated. One of the three long tables was spread with cold savoury dishes, Peter’s favourite oysters, pickled sprats, lemons; on another table, chess and draught boards were laid; on a third packets of tobacco, baskets with clay pipes and piles of wooden splinters for pipe-lighters.
Tallow candles were faintly glimmering through the clouds of smoke. The low room, packed with people, reminded one of a skipper’s saloon in Plymouth or Rotterdam. The similarity was accentuated by a number of English and Dutch ship captains. Their wives, fat, smooth, glossy, with red cheeks, their feet tucked in fur warmers, knitted stockings, chatted and evidently felt quite at home.
Peter, smoking a short clay pipe, sipping mulled ale mixed with cognac, sugar and lemon juice, was playing chess with the Archimandrite Theodosius.
Anton Devière, the Chief Constable, timidly approached the Tsar like a guilty dog. It was difficult to decide whether he was a Jew or a Portuguese; his feminine face expressed that combination of sweetness and weakness found sometimes amongst southern faces.
“Your Majesty, the water is rising.”
“How much?”
“Two feet nine inches.”
“And the wind?”
“West south-west.”
“Nonsense, I myself have just registered it, South-west south.”
“It has changed,” replied Devière apologetically, as if he were responsible for the direction of the wind.
“Never mind,” said Peter decidedly, “the water will soon fall. The barometer points to fair; it won’t deceive, never fear.”
He believed in the infallibility of the barometer as he did in that of mechanics in general.
“Your Majesty, is there no order?” Devière asked plaintively. “Otherwise I really don’t know what to do. People are getting exceedingly frightened. Intelligent experts say——”
The Tsar closely eyed him.
“One of these intelligent experts I have had flogged near Trinity Church; and you too won’t escape, unless you give up talking nonsense. Go, fool!”
Devière, shrinking yet more, like the affectionate dog, Lizette, at the sight of a stick, instantly disappeared.
“What is your opinion about this extraordinary ringing, Father?” Peter turned to Theodosius, continuing their conversation about the Novgorod church bells which, according to recent information, were tolling miraculously at night: the rumour spread that this was a foreboding of great calamities.
Theodosius stroked his thin beard, played with the double-faced panagia, adorned with the crucifix and the Tsar’s portrait, cast a side glance at the Tsarevitch Alexis, who was sitting next to them, blinked with one eye as if taking aim, and suddenly his diminutive face, like the snout of a bat, lit up with rarest subtlety:—
“Anybody can understand the meaning of this speechless droning. It obviously comes from the fiend; Satan is sobbing because his reign over the Russian people is coming to an end; he is cast out from the possessed, the Raskolniks, the monks, the old hypocrites, whom your Majesty has taken great pains to cure.”
And Theodosius led the conversation to his favourite topic, the uselessness of the monks.
“Monks are parasites. They escape taxation in order to eat the bread of idleness. What gain are they to society? They count their civil position for nothing, describing it as part of the vanities of the world. They have a saying to this effect:—‘He who becomes a monk no longer works for the Tsar of earth, but for the Tsar of heaven. They lead an animal life in the deserts. They seem incapable of realizing that the Russian climate makes a real hermit life impossible.”
Alexis understood that this talk about hypocrites was aimed at him.
He rose. Peter looked at him and said, “Stay where you are!”
The Tsarevitch submissively returned to his seat, casting down his eyes, as he felt, with the air of a hypocrite.
Theodosius was in his best vein. Stimulated by the attention of the Tsar, who had brought out his notebook and was taking notes for future decrees, he suggested measure after measure; ostensibly for the reform, but to Alexis it seemed for the destruction, of monasticism in Russia.
“Establish in the monasteries regulation hospitals for discharged dragoons, also schools for arithmetic, geometry; in the convents foundling institutions for illegitimate children; the nuns should be employed in weaving.”
The Tsarevitch did his best not to hear; yet stray words would reach him like authoritative commands.
“The sale of mead and oil in churches must be finally forbidden, the burning of tapers before icons placed outside the churches must be stopped. Chapels must be closed up; no new relics to be announced. Mendicants to be taken into custody and relentlessly beaten with rods; no miracles to be invented.”
The wind rattled at the window shutters; a draught passed through the room, and the candles flickered. A countless host of enemies seemed to be besieging and breaking into the house; and in the words of Theodosius, Alexis felt the same inimical force.
It was the attack of a storm from the west.
The walls of the dancing-room were hung with woven tapestry and pier glasses; chandeliers with wax candles supplied the light. Musicians with deafening wind instruments were placed on a small platform. The ceiling, with its allegorical representation of “A journey to the Isle of Love,” was so low that the naked Cupids with their fat calves and legs were almost brushed by the wigs of the dancers.
The ladies in the intervals between the dances sat as if dumb; they seemed dull and stupefied; in dancing, they hopped round like wax figures; they answered all questions in monosyllables, and were quite scared by compliments. Daughters seemed tied to their mother’s skirts; while the mother’s faces clearly expressed: we would rather our daughters were drowned than here.
William Mons was repeating a compliment, culled from a German book of savoir-faire, to that same Nastenka, who was in love with a naval officer and had been crying over a tender missive at the Venus Festival in the Summer Garden.
“Through repeatedly meeting you, fair angel, such a desire to know you better has arisen within me, that, unable to conceal it any longer, I am compelled to lay it deferentially before you. I heartily wish that you, my lady, might have found in me a person whose habits and agreeable conversation could satisfy you; a person whose behaviour and conversation might not displease you; but since nature has given me no advantages, deign to accept instead my devoted faithfulness and service!”
Nastenka was not listening. The buzz of monotonously sounding words had made her sleepy; later on, she complained to her aunt, that though her partner seemed to speak Russian, yet with the best intention she could not make out a single word.
The Secretary to the French Ambassador, George Proskóurov, son of a Moscow clerk, who had lived for some time in Paris, and had become there a “Monsieur George,” a perfect “petit maître” and “galant homme,” was singing to the ladies a modern ditty about the coiffeur Frison, and the street-girl, Dodun:
La Dodun dit à Frison:
Coiffez-moi avec adresse.
Je prétends avec raison
Inspirer de la tendresse.
Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez-moi!
He also recited a Russian poem on the charms of life in Paris.
O beautiful city on flowing Seine
The gods have chosen thy fair domain.
The manners of boors are driven out hence
By thy most exquisite influence,
And never shall I in my soul forget
The town that I leave with such deep regret!
The old Moscow boyars, hostile to the new customs, sat a little way off, warming themselves near the stove, holding converse with one another in allusions and riddles.
“What do you think, my lord, of life in Petersburg, eh?”
“To the devil with you and your Petersburg life! These compliments and reverences and obeisances of the woman-folk, and the foreign food, make one’s head go round!”
“What’s to be done, friend, but bear it? One cannot leap into heaven, nor bury oneself in the earth. Patience, patience!”
Mons was whispering into Nastenka’s ears a newly composed ditty:
Without love and passion,
All days are dreary.
Love sighs acquaint us
With all life’s sweetness.
What, say, is life for,
If one loves not?
Suddenly, it seemed to her that the ceiling was shaking and that the naked Cupids were falling upon her head. She cried out; William Mons reassured her; it was only the wind bulging out like a sail the canvas of the picture nailed to the ceiling.
Again the shutters rattled, this time with such force that everybody looked round in terror.
The polonaise began; the couples set out and music drowned the noise of the storm. Only the shivering old nobles, warming themselves round the stove, listened to the howling of the wind in the chimney, and whispered to one another, sighing and shaking their heads. They seemed to hear in the sounds of the storm, rendered more ill-omened still by the music, the old words: “out of the sea sorrow, out of the water, grief!”
Peter continued his conversation with Theodosius; he asked him about the heresy of the Moscow iconoclasts, Fomka the barber and Dmitri the physician. Both heretics, in propagating their teaching, had referred to the Tsar’s recent decrees: “Thanks be to God, nowadays in Muscovy everybody is free to follow what faith he chooses.”
“According to their teaching,” continued Theodosius, with a smile which made it impossible to infer whether he disagreed or sympathised with the heresy, “the true faith is founded on the Scriptures and good works, and not on miracles and traditions.
“People of any creed can be saved according to the apostle’s word: ‘In every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
“Very reasonable,” remarked Peter and the monk’s smile seemed to be reflected on the Tsar’s face; they understood one another without words.
“And the icons,” continued Theodosius, “being but man’s work, according to their teaching are idols. How can painted boards work miracles? You throw them into the fire, they burn just like ordinary wood. It is not the icons but God, who should be worshipped. And who gave the saints ears so long as to enable them to hear the prayers said on earth? If, say they, a son is slain by a stick or a knife, how can the slain man’s father love that knife or stick? In the same way how can God love the wood on which His Son had been crucified? And the Virgin, they ask, why should she be honoured? She is like a plain bag filled with precious stones and pearls. When the bag is emptied of its treasure what value or honour remain to it? About the Eucharist, too, they use sophisms: how can Christ be broken up, distributed and eaten at the services of which such numbers are held all over the world on the same day? How can the prayers of priests change bread into our Lord’s body, especially as there are all sorts of men among priests: drunkards, sybarites and veritable scoundrels. This is highly improbable and we very much doubt it. The bread smells bread to us, and the blood, so far as our senses can ascertain, is but red wine.”
“It is not right for us Orthodox even to listen to such heresy,” the Tsar checked Theodosius.
The latter stopped short, yet his smile seemed to grow only more insolent and more malignant.
The Tsarevitch raised his eyes and furtively glanced at his father. He seemed to notice confusion in Peter’s look. The Tsar no longer smiled; his face had grown serious, almost wrathful, yet at the same time helpless and perplexed. Had he not a moment ago recognised the basis of heresy as being reasonable? Accepting the basis how can he regret the inferences? It is easy to forbid, but how refute? The Tsar is clever, yet is not his cleverness exceeded by that of the monk; was not the latter leading the Tsar, as an evil guide leads a blind man, straight towards a precipice?
Thus thought Alexis; and the subtle smile of Theodosius found reflection no longer on the father’s but on the son’s face. Now they too understood one another without words.
“There is nothing to be wondered at in Fomka and Dmitri,” said Avrámoff, breaking the awkward silence.
“‘The music sways the dance.’ The sheep do but follow the shepherd.” He steadily eyed Theodosius; the same took the hint and quivered with rage.
At this moment some immeasurable force hurled itself against the shutters, as if a thousand fists were beating at them. This something hissed, howled, wailed, and then died slowly away in the distance. Then the assailants seemed to return more and more formidably to the attack, and to be breaking into the house.
Devière ran out every ten minutes to learn about the rise of the water. The news was bad, the Mia and Fontanna were already in flood. The town was panic-stricken.
Devière lost his head; several times he approached the Tsar, trying to catch his eye and attract his notice, but Peter, engrossed in conversation, did not pay any attention to him. At last, no longer able to restrain himself, with desperate resolution he stooped and stuttered in the Tsar’s ear:—
“Your Majesty!—the water!”
Peter without a word of warning, with a quick, almost involuntary movement, gave him a slap in the face. Devière felt neither shame nor insult, nothing except the pain, so used was he to such treatment.
“It is a privilege,” said Peter’s eaglets “to be struck by a monarch whose blows are favours.”
Peter with a calm countenance, as though nothing whatever had happened, turned to Avrámoff and asked him the reason why the publication of the astronomer Huyghen’s work, Contemplation or Description of Heavenly and Earthly Bodies, had been delayed so long.
For a moment Avrámoff was taken aback, but he instantly recovered and looking straight into the Tsar’s eyes he said with firmness:—
“That book is exceedingly blasphemous; it has been written, not with ink but with hellish charcoal, and therefore it is only fit to be burnt.”
“What does the blasphemy consist of?”
“The rotation of the earth round the sun is asserted, as well as the existence of a plurality of worlds, and all those worlds are supposed to be like ours, with human beings, meadows, fields, woods, animals, and everything else just as we have it. And in this sly and subtle way the author tries to glorify and establish Nature (which means self-existent life), while a God-Creator is dispensed with.”
A discussion began: the Tsar began proving that Copernicus’ Chart of the universe explained in a natural and suitable way all the life of the planets.
Under the protection of the Tsar and Copernicus more and more daring thoughts were expressed.
“To-day all philosophy can be reduced to mechanics,” suddenly declared the naval councillor, Alexander Kikin. “The universe is believed to be a clock on a large scale; everything acts in it by fixed motions, which depend on a perfect arrangement of the automaton. The same mechanism pervades the whole——”
“A senseless atheistical philosophy, a corrupt and unstable basis of reasoning,” exclaimed the terrified Avrámoff; but nobody listened to him.
Each tried to outdo the other in learning.
“The ancient philosopher Dicaearchus taught that man’s being is in his body, and that the word ‘soul’ is only an accidental meaningless term,” added the vice-chancellor Shafiroff.
“The microscope has revealed in man’s seed animals very much like frogs or tadpoles,” said Monsieur George with such a mischievous smile, that it was obvious he meant to say there cannot be such a thing as a soul. After the manner of all Parisian dandies, he had his own “Petite Philosophie,” in expounding which he displayed the same polite frivolity as when singing the coiffeur’s song: ‘Tignonnez, tignonnez, bichonnez moi.’
“According to Leibnitz we are but thinking hydraulic machines: the oyster is far behind us in reasoning capacity.”
“Not far behind you,” somebody remarked; but Monsieur George continued imperturbably:
“The oyster is far behind us in reasoning capacity. Its life is, so to speak, limited to its shell, and hence it stands in no need of the five senses. It is possible that creatures in other worlds possessing ten or more senses are infinitely superior to us; that Newton and Leibnitz excite no more wonder among them than the ape or spider among us.”
The Tsarevitch was listening, and it seemed to him, that this conversation acted on his ideas, just as the Petersburg thaw on the snow in spring; everything was unraveling, drifting, melting, growing rotten; everything was changing into mud and mire under the influence of the baleful western wind. Doubt in all things, negation of all things, without regard, without reservation, rose like the Neva, which, swollen by the wind, was threatening an inundation.
“Enough of this idle talk,” concluded Peter rising. “He who denies God is either mad or a fool. He, who has eyes, ought to discern God in His creations. Deniers of God bring shame to the country and must not be tolerated, for they undermine the basis of law upon which rest vows and the oath of allegiance.”
“The cause of lawlessness,” interposed Theodosius, unwilling to miss an opportunity, “is rather to be sought in hypocritical zeal than in atheism; atheists themselves insist that God should be taught to the masses, else, say they, the people will revolt against authority.”
The whole building was now continuously shaking under the pressure of the storm. Yet nobody noticed the sounds, they had grown used to them; the Tsar’s face was calm, and his appearance reassured the others.
Somebody spread the report that the wind had changed round, and that there was hope that the waters would abate.
“You see,” said Peter, and his face grew bright, “there was no reason to get frightened. Never fear, the barometer will not lie!”
He went into the next room and joined the dancers.
When the Tsar was merry, he infected every one else with his merriment. In dancing he stamped, jumped and performed various feats with such enthusiasm that the most indolent were eager to join in.
In the English country dance the lady of each first pair invented a new figure. The Princess Tsherkassky kissed her partner Peter Tolstoi and pulled his wig over his nose, the rest of the ladies did likewise, while the gentlemen had to stand motionless as logs. A general scramble, laughing, all sorts of nonsense ensued, all were merry as school children and Peter was the merriest of all.
Only the old princes continued to sit in their corner listening to the howling of the wind. They whispered, sighed, and shook their heads.
One of them remembered a passage in the Holy Fathers against dancing; “The twirling dances of women alienate people from God and hurl them into the depths of Hell. Laughter will be turned into mourning; dancers will be hung up by their navels.”
The Tsar came up to the old men and invited them to join the dance. Vain were their refusals, the plea of their inability and of various ailments, rheumatism, asthma, gout; the Tsar would take no excuse.
A solemn, quaint “Grossvater” was played; the sprightliest young ladies were purposely chosen as partners for the old men, who at first hardly moved, stumbled, and muddled both themselves and others; yet when the Tsar threatened them with a glass of that terrible pepper brandy, they jumped about as lively as the younger ones; they paid for it, however, at the end of the dance, when they fell back on their seats half dead with fatigue, groaning, puffing, and sighing.
They had hardly time to recover when the Tsar began a new dance more intricate even than the first, known as the “Chain dance;” thirty pairs, all tied together with handkerchiefs followed a fiddler, a small hunchback who went skipping along in front of them.
The dancers first went round the two rooms of the wing, then across the gallery they entered the main building; all over the house, from room to room, from staircase to staircase the saraband swept along, shrieking and laughing. The hunchback led the way, fiddling and leaping frantically, making faces as though some evil spirit possessed him. He was followed by the Tsar and his partner, the rest following after; as though the Tsar were leading the captives while he himself, the giant, was led and twirled along by the caprices of the little demon.
On their way back to the pavilion they saw people running towards them across the gallery waving their hands in terror and crying:—
“The water, the water, the water!”
The couples in front stopped short, but they were crushed by those running up from behind; a general confusion ensued.
They were hurled against one another, knocked down, dragging and tearing at the handkerchiefs, which bound them to one another, to undo them. The men swore, the ladies screamed; the chain was broken. A larger number headed by the Tsar hurried back through the gallery into the main building. A smaller number, those who were in front and in consequence nearer the wing, tried to follow, but before they had time to reach even the middle of the gallery, the shutter at one of the windows cracked, quivered and fell, sending the window pane in shivers; a stream of turbulent water rushed in after it. At the same time imprisoned air in the cellar below pressing against the floor began raising and bulging, and finally burst the floor up with a crash and rumble like the firing of cannon.
Peter called out from the other end of the gallery to those who were cut off:—
“Go back to the pavilion! Don’t be afraid, I will send boats.”
The words did not reach them, yet they understood his signs, and stood still.
Only two went on running along the flooded floor of the corridor. Theodosius was one of them. He had nearly reached the end where Peter stood waiting for him, when suddenly a plank gave way. Theodosius the monk fell through and began to sink. The other, a fat woman, the wife of a Dutch captain, picking up her skirts jumped over the monk’s head, red stockings flashed above his black hood. The Tsar hurried to the rescue of Theodosius, seized him by the shoulder, pulled him out and carried him in his arms like a little child. Theodosius was shivering and dripping all over. The wide black sleeves of his mantle running with water made him look like a wet bat. The hunchback fiddler too, on reaching the middle of the gallery, had disappeared in the water; he came to the surface again, tried to swim, but at that moment the middle of the ceiling gave way, came down with a crash, and buried him.
Then the few who were left, numbering about ten, seeing they were entirely cut off by water from the main building, hurried back into the wing, their last refuge. But here, too, the water was fast gaining ground. The waves were beating just below the windows, the shutters creaked, cracked and threatened any moment to be torn off their hinges.
The water came in through the broken window panes and the cracks; it oozed, gushed and gurgled down the walls, forming pools, flooding the floor.
All lost their heads, save Tolstoi and Wilim Ivanovitch Mons, who with presence of mind searched for another exit; they discovered a small door hidden by hangings; it opened upon a staircase which led to the garret. All rushed towards it. Even the gallantest cavaliers, now that death stared them in the face, neglected, even jostled, the ladies; each thought only of himself.
It was dark in the garret. Groping their way among beams, planks, empty barrels and cases, they reached the furthermost corner partly protected from the wind by a prominent chimney, which was still warm; they huddled close to it and for some time remained in the dark, flurried and stupefied by fear. The ladies in ball-dresses had their teeth chattering with cold.
At last Mons decided to go down and find help.
Downstairs the grooms, up to their knees in water, were leading into the room their master’s horses, which they had just saved from drowning in the stables. The Assembly Room was changed into a stable, the mirrors reflected the heads of horses; rags of canvas painted with the journey to the “Isle of Love” were hanging down from the ceiling; the naked Cupids bulged in mortal anguish. Mons gave money to the grooms, and they procured him a lantern, a bottle of brandy and several sheepskins. They told him there was no way out of the wing; the gallery was shattered, the yard flooded, they themselves were obliged to seek refuge in the garret. The promised boats never arrived; it turned out afterwards that those sent by the Tsar were unable to get near the wing; the courtyard was surrounded by a high fence and the only gateway was filled up by the debris of a shattered building. Mons returned to his companions in the garret; the light of the lantern seemed to give them a little courage; the men drank some of the brandy, the women wrapped themselves in the sheepskins.
The night seemed endless; the whole house was trembling under the pressure of the waves, like a rotten vessel on the brink of destruction. Overhead the storm tore off the tiles from the roof; now rushing past with furious howls and stamping like a herd of wild beasts, now with piercing hiss and rustle like a flock of gigantic birds; at times it seemed as if the wind would tear off the roof itself and blow them all away. In the voice of the storm they seemed to hear the cries of the drowning; they expected the whole town would disappear at any moment.
One of the ladies, the wife of the Danish resident, who was with child, was suddenly seized by violent pains and screamed most piteously; a premature delivery was feared.
George Proskóurov kept praying: “Holy Father Nicholas, St. Sergius have mercy upon us!” It was difficult to recognise in him the free-thinker who had been expounding the non-existence of the soul. Michael Avrámoff was also quaking with fear, yet seemed to rejoice at the misfortune which had befallen them.
“How argue with God? His wrath is just. This town will be destroyed from the face of the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah: ‘And God looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon earth. And God said: The end of all flesh is come before me. And behold I will bring a flood of water on the earth and destroy all flesh wherein is breath of life from under heaven.’”
Listening to these prophecies the refugees felt a new, hitherto unexperienced terror, as if the end of the world, the day of judgment were at hand.
A glow of fire flashed in the black sky; the sound of a clashing bell was heard through the noise of the storm; it was the alarm bell: the grooms said that in the Admiralty dockyards close by, the workmen’s dwellings and the rope and cable stores were on fire. Notwithstanding the abundance of water the fire was especially dangerous in this high wind; burning logs were blown about, and the whole city threatened to blaze up any moment. Petersburg was perishing from these two elements: fire and water; the prophecies were being fulfilled, Petersburg was doomed.
Towards dawn the storm subsided; in the grey transparency of the dim light the gentlemen in wigs, covered with dust and cobwebs, the ladies in “robes-rondes” and hooped skirts after the Versailles fashion, wrapped in sheepskins, their faces blue with the cold, appeared like spectres to each other.
Mons looked out of the garret window and saw in place of a town, a limitless lake. This lake was agitated not only on the surface but seemed to boil, seethe, and bubble up from the very bottom like water in a kettle over a hot fire. This lake was the Neva, variegated like the skin of a serpent’s belly, yellow, purple, black, but patched with white foam; wearied, yet angry, under the terrible, low, leaden sky, grey as the expanse below. Wrecks of barges, overturned boats, logs, planks, roofs, the skeletons of complete houses, carcases of animals—all these were floating slowly past on its waves.
Melancholy were the traces of human life in the midst of this triumphant element; here and there above the water peered the towers, spires, domes and roofs of flooded houses.
Mons perceived at a distance, opposite to the Peter and Paul fortress, a number of rowing galleys and boyers; he took up a long pole, one of those used for scaring pigeons, fixed Nastenka’s red silk neckerchief to it, pushed it through the window and began to wave, making signs to attract attention. One of the boats left the rest and coming straight across the Neva, approached the Assembly Room pavilion.
Peter had worked without a break all the night through, rescuing people from water and flames like a common fireman; his hair was singed; he narrowly escaped being crushed by a beam; while helping to rescue the chattels of poor people, who lived in cellar dwellings, he stood up to his waist in water and was chilled to the bone; he suffered with all and cheered all; wherever the Tsar appeared the work was done so heartily that both water and flames receded. The Tsarevitch was in a boat with his father, but whenever he ventured to offer help, Peter refused as if in disdain.
When the fire was quenched and the water began to subside the Tsar remembered it was time to go home to his wife, who had probably spent the night in great anxiety about her husband. On his way back he could not resist the desire to go round by the Summer Garden, and see what damage the flood had done there.
The pavilion projecting over the Neva was partially ruined, but the statue of Venus had remained whole. The pedestal was submerged, so that the Goddess, the Foam-born, seemed to be again rising from the waves; not the blue, tender waves of old, but the lurid, dark, waves, heavy as though leaden, of the Styx.
At the foot of the statue a black speck was visible. Peter looked through the telescope and found it was a man. By order of the Tsar a sentinel watched night and day at this precious statue. Caught by the waters, not daring to leave his post, he had climbed up the pedestal of Venus and huddled himself close to her feet, embracing them; and thus he had probably spent the whole night, starved with cold, half dead with fatigue.
The Tsar hastened to his rescue. Standing at the rudder, he steered the boyer against current and wind. Suddenly an enormous wave seized the side of the boat, swept over them showering them with spray and making the craft heel over to such an extent that it threatened to capsize. But Peter was an experienced helmsman. Setting his feet against the stern, leaning with all his weight on the rudder, he overcame the danger, and steered steadily towards his goal.
The Tsarevitch glanced at his father and suddenly, for some reason or other, he remembered what his teacher Viasemski had once told him when drunk:—
“Theodosius is wont to sing with the choristers before your father: where God wills it the order of nature is conquered, and such like psalm verses. They sing them to flatter your father, and he rejoices to be compared unto God; forgetting that not only God but the devil also has power over the elements; there are such things as demon miracles.”
Clad in a plain sailor’s jacket, with high leather boots and waving hair—his hat had been carried off by the wind—the gigantic helmsman looked at the flooded city, his face, calm and firm, like sculptured stone, expressed neither confusion, fear, nor pity. There was something superhuman in this man. Like fate he held in his power men and elements. Men would bow before him, the wind would abate, the water would subside, and again the city would stand where he ordained it should be. “The order of nature is conquered, when he wills it.”
“Whose will,” the Tsarevitch asked himself, not daring to reply, “God’s, or the devil’s?”
A few days later, when the usual aspect of Petersburg had well nigh obliterated all traces of the flood, Peter wrote in a jovial letter to one of his eaglets:
“Last week, the west-south-west wind beat up such a flood, as, they say, had never happened before. In my apartments water stood twenty-one inches high, while in the garden and on the opposite shore it was high enough to boat on. It was very amusing to see people, men and women, perched on roofs and trees as on Ararat at the Great Flood. The water though high, didn’t do much damage.”
The letter was dated from “Paradise.”