CHAPTER III
“I have purchased a Venus,” wrote Beklemísheff to Peter from Italy. “She is highly prized in Rome. The statue differs in no wise from the celebrated Florentine Venus, and is even in better preservation. She was found by some workmen, who discovered her when digging the foundation for a new house; she had been over two thousand years in the ground. She has for a long time stood in the Papal Garden. I have had to conceal her for fear of eager purchasers. I am as yet uncertain whether they will let her go. However, she already belongs to your Majesty.”
Peter entered into communication with Clement XI. through his plenipotentiary Savva Ragousínsky and the Cardinal Ottobani, seeking permission to remove the statue to Russia. For a long time the Pope would not agree to this. The Tsar was even ready to carry the Venus off by stealth. At last, after many diplomatic negotiations and wirepullings, the permission was obtained.
“Captain,” wrote Peter to Jagushinski, “the superb statue of Venus must be taken from Leghorn to Innsbruck by land, and thence by water along the Danube to Vienna, under the care of a special guard. And have her addressed to yourself in Vienna. As the statue is of repute there also, it would be advisable to have a carriage stand made with springs on which she may be conveyed to Cracow, and thus avoid all risk of damage, from Cracow she might be sent on by water.”
Along seas and rivers, over hills and dales, through towns and deserts, and finally across the miserable settlements, dark forests and bogs of Russia, everywhere carefully watched, by Peter’s will, now rocked on the sea waves, now on carriage-springs in her dark box, as in a cradle or coffin, the goddess journeyed from the Eternal City to the newly-born town of Petersburg.
When she had safely arrived, the Tsar, much as he would have liked a look at the statue, which he had been expecting for so long, and about which he had heard so much, nevertheless overcame his impatience and resolved not to open the box until the first solemn appearance of Venus at the festival in the Summer Garden. Small boats, wherries, canoes, punts, and other new-fashioned river-craft came to the wooden steps which led straight down to the water, and moored at the iron rings of the poles which had been driven in close to the shore. The newly arrived guests came up the steps to the Central Pavilion; here, in the flare of numerous lights, an ever-increasing crowd, sumptuously arrayed, was moving to and fro. The men wore coloured velvet and silk coats, three-cornered hats, swords, stockings and buckled shoes with high heels; on their heads towered large wigs, arranged in magnificent but unnatural curls—black, fair, and occasionally powdered. The ladies wore large, wide-hooped skirts—robes rondes—after the latest Versailles fashion, with long trains, beauty spots and rouge on their faces, lace, feathers, and pearls in their hair. But in this resplendent throng there could be also seen military uniforms of plain coarse cloth, even the short jackets of sailors and skippers, and the tarry boats and leather caps of Dutch mariners.
The crowd separated to allow a strange procession to pass. Strong Royal Grenadiers were bending under the weight of a long, narrow packing-case, very much like a coffin, which they bore on their shoulders. Judged by the size of the coffin, the body was of superhuman height. They placed the case on the ground.
The Tsar without any help proceeded to open it, handling the joiners’ tools with great rapidity and skill. He was in a hurry, and pulled at the nails with such impatience that he severely scratched one hand. The people thronged round on tiptoe, trying to catch a glimpse over one another’s shoulders.
The Privy Councillor, Peter Tolstoi, who had lived for many years in Italy, a learned man and a poet—he was the first to translate Ovid’s Metamorphoses into Russian—was describing to the ladies around him, the ancient ruins of the Venus temple.
“On my way to Castello-di-Baia, near Naples (the town had fallen into ruins and its site was overgrown with wood) I saw a shrine dedicated to the goddess Venus. The temple was built in first-rate style, with tall pillars; the arches were decorated with representations of the pagan gods. I also saw there other shrines dedicated to Diana, Mercury, and Bacchus. The cursed tormentor Nero had sacrificed to them in those places, and he is now atoning in hell for his inordinate devotions.”
Peter Tolstoi opened his mother-of-pearl snuff-box—on its lid was represented three lambs, and a shepherd loosening the girdle of a sleeping shepherdess—offered the snuff-box to the pretty Princess Tsherkassky, took a pinch himself, and added with a languid sigh:
“During my stay in Naples (I remember it so well!), I was inamorato with a certain cittadina Francesca, celebrated for her beauty. She cost me over 4,000 roubles; and to this day I cannot free my heart from that tender recollection.”
He spoke Italian so well that he liked interspersing his native speech with Italian words: “inamorato” for in love; “cittadina” for citizen’s wife, and so on.
Tolstoi was seventy, yet did not look more than fifty, so strong, alert and fresh was he. The Tsar had often expressed the opinion that Tolstoi’s politeness towards ladies “could outdo that of any younger devotee of Venus.” A feline suppleness of gait, a low velvety voice, velvety amiable smile, velvety eyebrows, amazingly thick, black and possibly painted: “He is all velvet, yet not without spikes,” people used to say of him. Even Peter himself, as a rule so careless with regard to his “eaglets,” thought it wise “to keep a stone close at hand when dealing with Tolstoi.” There was many a dark, wicked, and even bloody stain on the conscience of this polite worthy, but he knew the secret of effacing all traces of his misdoings.
The last nails gave way, the wood cracked, the lid was lifted, and the case opened. At first something of a greyish yellow tint struck the eyes, something which suggested the dust of putrefied bones. These were pine shavings, chips, felt, and combings of wool which had been put there for soft packing. Peter with both hands was routing among them, and when at last he came to the marble body, he joyfully exclaimed:
“Here she is!”
The lead was already being melted for the soldering of the iron tie-rods which were to fix the foot of the statue to the pedestal. The architect Leblond busied himself in getting ready a kind of hoist with steps, ropes, and pulleys. But the statue had first to be raised by hand out of the case.
The servants were assisting Peter. When one of them clasped “the naked wench” in coarse joke, the Tsar rewarded him with such a ringing buffet on the ears, that every one present at once felt a certain respect for the goddess.
Flakes of wool were falling off the smooth marble, like grey clods of earth, while again, just as two hundred years ago in Florence, the risen goddess was emerging from her tomb.
The ropes tightened, the pulleys squeaked, she rose higher and higher. Peter stood on a ladder, and fixing the statue to the pedestal, he held her with both arms, as in an embrace.
“Venus in the embrace of Mars!” Leblond, the emotional lover of classics, could not help ejaculating.
“How beautiful they both are!” exclaimed a young maid of honour belonging to the Crown Princess Charlotte’s household. “Were I the Tsaritsa, I should be jealous.”
Peter was almost as tall as the statue, and his human face remained noble in the presence of this divine one: the man was worthy of the goddess.
A last tremor, a last vibration, and she stood immovably upright and firm on the pedestal.
It was the work of Praxiteles: Aphrodite Anadyomene, the Foam-born, and Urania the Heavenly, the ancient Phoenician Astarte, the Babylonian Mellita, the Mother of Life, the great foster mother, she who had scattered the seed of stars over the blue vault, and shed the Milky-way from her breast.
She was the same now, as on the hillside in Florence where Leonardo da Vinci’s pupil had looked at her with superstitious fear; or, yet earlier, when in the depths of Cappadocia, in the forsaken temple near the old castle of Macellum, her last true worshipper had prayed to her, that pale boy in monk’s attire, the future Emperor Julian the Apostate. She had remained the same innocent yet voluptuous goddess, naked and not ashamed. From that very day when she rose from her millennial tomb far away in Florence, she had progressed further and further, from age to age, from people to people, halting nowhere, till in her victorious march she had at last reached the limits of the earth, the Hyperborean Scythia, beyond which there remains nought but chaos and darkness. And having fixed herself on the pedestal she for the first time glanced with a look of surprised curiosity around this strange new land, these flat moss-covered bogs, this curious town, so like the settlements of nomads; at this sky, which was the same day and night, these black, drowsy, terrible waves so like the waves of the Styx. This land resembled but little her radiant Olympian home; it seemed as hopeless as the land of Oblivion, the dark Hades. Yet the goddess smiled as the sun would have smiled had he penetrated into Hades.
Peter Tolstoi, yielding to the entreaties of the ladies, declaimed some verses dedicated to Cupid, taken from Anacreon’s ancient hymn to Eros.
Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless archer, not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee!
The bee awak’d—with anger wild
The bee awak’d, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies!
“Oh, mother!—I am wounded though—
I die with pain—in sooth I do,
Stung by some little angry thing,
Some serpent on a tiny wing—
A bee it was—for once I know
I heard a rustic call it so.”
Thus he spoke, and she the while
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, “My infant, if so much
Thou feel the little wild bee’s touch,
How must the heart, ah Cupid! be,
The hapless heart that’s stung by thee!”
The ladies, who had never heard any poetry except sacred chants and psalms, were charmed.
It came very appropriately, for the next moment Peter himself, as the signal to begin the fireworks, lit and started a flying machine in the shape of Cupid bearing a burning torch. Along an invisible wire Cupid glided down from the gallery to a raft on the Neva, where screens had been erected for “fire diversions” in wicker work designs, and with his torch he set the first allegory on fire—two flaring red hearts on an altar of dazzling light. On one of them was traced in green light a Latin P, on the other a C—Petrus, Caterina. The two hearts merged into one, the inscription appeared: “Out of two I create one.” Venus and Cupid blessed the wedlock of Peter and Catherine.
Another configuration appeared, a transparent luminous picture with two designs; on the one side the god Neptune looking towards Cronstadt, the newly erected fortress in the sea, with the inscription “Videt et stupescit—He sees and is amazed.” On the other—Petersburg, the new town amidst marshes and woods, with the inscription “Urbs ubi sylva fuit.”
Peter, a great lover of fireworks, managing everything himself, explained the allegories to the audience.
With pealing hiss, in sheaves of fire, numerous rockets soared into the heavens, and there, in the vaulted darkness, dissolved into a rain of slowly dropping and fading red, blue, green and violet stars. The Neva reflected and multiplied them in her black mirror. Fiery wheels were set turning; fiery jets sprang forth; serpents began to hiss and twirl; water and air balls, bursting like bombs, crashed with a deafening noise. A fiery hall appeared with blazing pillars, flaming arches and staircases, and in its centre, dazzling as the sun, shone forth the last tableau: a sculptor—was it the Titan Prometheus?—standing before an unfinished statue, which he is hewing with chisel and hammer out of a block of marble. Above on a pediment was the All-seeing Eye in a glory, with the inscription, “Deo adjuvante.” The stone block represented ancient Russia. The statue, although unfinished, already bore the semblance of the goddess Venus—she was the new Russia. The sculptor was, in fact, Peter himself. This tableau did not quite succeed: the statue burnt down too quickly and crumbled at the sculptor’s feet. He seemed to beat the air; then the hammer too crumbled away, and the hand remained still. The All-seeing Eye grew dim; it leered suspiciously and gave an ominous wink.
No one, however, paid any attention to this; all were occupied by a new spectacle. In clouds of smoke, illumined by a rainbow of Bengal lights, there appeared a huge monster, neither horse nor dragon; with pointed wings and fins, and its tail covered with scales, it came swimming along the Neva from the fortress towards the Summer Garden, towed by a flotilla of rowing boats. In a gigantic shell on the monster’s back, sat Neptune, with a long white beard and a harpoon at his feet—sirens and tritons blowing trumpets: “The tritons of the Northern Neptune sound the fame of Russia’s Tsar wherever they go,” explained one of the onlookers, the chaplain of the fleet, Gabriel Boushínsky. The monster was dragging after it six pair of empty barrels tightly bunged, with the cardinals of the “most Foolish Conclave” sitting astride, one on each barrel, securely strapped so as to prevent their falling into the water; they swam in this procession, pair after pair, loudly blowing their cow horns. After this followed a raft made up entirely of such barrels; it carried a huge tub filled with beer on which the Kniaz-Pope, prelate of Bacchus, floated in a wooden ladle as in a boat; Bacchus himself sat on the edge of the tub. Accompanied by strains of solemn music, this huge water machine slowly approached the Summer Garden, stopped at the Central Pavilion, where the gods landed.
Neptune turned out to be the Tsar’s court jester, the old boyar Tourgenev; the sirens, with their long fish-tails dragging after them, like long trains, almost concealing their feet, were serf girls; the tritons, the stable-men of the Admiral Apraksin; the Satyr or Pan accompanying Bacchus was the French dancing master of Prince Ménshikoff; the adroit Frenchman executed such gambols, that one could believe he had goat’s legs like a real faun. In Bacchus, wearing a tiger’s skin and a wreath of artificial grapes, with a sausage in one hand and a brandy bottle in the other, they recognised Konon Kárpoff, the leader of the court choristers; he was exceptionally fat and had a ruddy face; to make him appear more real, he had for three whole days been pitilessly filled with brandy, so that, according to his companions, “he had grown like a ripe cranberry,” and thus become a veritable Bacchus.
The gods surrounded the statue of Venus. Bacchus, reverently supported by the cardinals and the mock-Pope, fell on his knees before the statue, bowed before her very low, and proclaimed in a thunderous bass voice, worthy of a cathedral precentor: “Most honourable mother Venus, thy humble servant Bacchus, born of Semele, the creator of wine and joy, petitions thee against thy son Eros. Do not allow him, that mad Eros, to hurt us thy people, to ruin our souls, to wound our hearts; may it please thee, Gracious Queen, to be merciful unto us.” The cardinals responded with “Amen.” Drunk as he was, by force of habit Kárpoff was just going to start a church hymn in response, but was checked in time.
Then the Kniaz-Pope, the Tsar’s aged tutor, a boyar and table-companion in Tsar Alexis’ time, Nikíta Zotoff, in a burlesque mantle of red velvet trimmed with ermine, on his head a threefold tiara crowned with the indecent figure of a naked Eros, placed before the statue, on a brazier made of kitchen turnspits, a round brass pan, such as was commonly used for preparing hot punch. Pouring some brandy into it, he lit it. On long poles, bending with the weight, the Tsar’s grenadiers brought in a tub of peppered brandy. Besides the clergy, who were present at this festival, as at all similar burlesques, all the guests, both cavaliers and dames and even young girls, were obliged to approach the tub one by one; they had to accept a large wooden spoonful of brandy, were expected to all but empty it, and pour the few remaining drops on the altar fire. Then the cavaliers kissed Venus; the older ones her foot, the younger ones her hand, while the ladies greeted her with ceremonious courtesy. The ceremonies, every detail of which had been thought out and arranged for by the Tsar, had to be punctiliously gone through under pain of severe punishment, even lashing. The old Tsaritsa Proscovy, Peter’s sister-in-law, his brother John’s widow, also drank brandy from the tub and curtsied before Venus. She, as a rule, tried to please Peter and yielded to all his new-fangled ideas; it was of no use trying to sail against the wind. Yet when the dignified old dame, dressed in her dark widow’s jerkin—Peter allowed her to wear the old style of dress—made the curtsey after the foreign manner before “the shameless naked wench,” she felt very uneasy at heart.
“I would rather be dead than see all this!” thought she. The Tsarevitch also humbly kissed the hand of Venus. Avrámoff tried to hide himself, but he was soon found out and brought back by force; although he quaked, and paled, and shuddered, and sweated, and almost swooned, when, kissing Satan’s image, he felt his lips touch the cold marble, yet he accurately performed the ceremony, watched by the keen eye of the Tsar whom he feared even more than the “white devils.”
The goddess seemed to look down upon these desecrations of the gods, this play of the barbarians, without the least wrath. They adored her involuntarily, even in this scoffing; the burlesque tripod became a real altar on which in the flickering bluish flame, thin as the serpent’s sting, burnt the soul of Dionysus, her brother god. And illumined by this flame the goddess smiled her subtle smile.
The banquet began. At the top end of the table, under a canopy made of hop foliage and whortleberries, which grew on the hillocks of the native marshes and took the place of the classic myrtle, sat Bacchus astride a barrel from which the Kniaz-Pope filled the glasses with wine.
Tolstoi, addressing himself to Bacchus, declaimed another poem by Anacreon.
When Bacchus, Jove’s immortal boy,
The rosy harbinger of joy,
Who, with the sunshine of the bowl,
Thaws the winter of our soul;
When to my inmost core he glides,
And bathes it with his ruby tides,
A flow of joy, a lively heat,
Fires my brain, and wings my feet!
’Tis surely something sweet, I think,
Nay, something heavenly sweet, to drink!
Sing, sing of love, let music’s breath
Softly beguile our rapturous death,
While, my young Venus, thou and I
To the voluptuous cadence die!
Then waking from our languid trance,
Again we’ll sport, again we’ll dance.
“It’s plain from the verses,” remarked Peter, “that Anacreon was a lordly drunkard and took life mighty easily.”
After the customary toasts for the welfare of the fleet, the Tsar and the Tsaritsa, the Archimandrite Theodosius Janovski stood up with solemn air, glass in hand. Notwithstanding the Polish expression of self-esteem on his face—he belonged to the minor Polish nobility—notwithstanding the blue decoration ribbon, and the diamond panagia with the Emperor’s likeness on one side and the crucifix on the other, with the diamonds more in number and larger on the former than the latter, notwithstanding all this, Theodosius, to quote Avrámoff’s account, “had the appearance of some monstrosity,” of a starveling or an abortion. He was small, thin and angular; in his tall mitre with its long folds of black crêpe, his very wide pall with wide open sleeves, he greatly resembled a bat. Yet when he joked and especially when he scoffed at sacred things, which usually happened when he was drunk, his sly eyes would sparkle with such wit, such impudent mirth, that the miserable face of the bat-like abortion became almost attractive.
“This will not be a flattering oration,” said Theodosius, turning to the Tsar, “but I speak the truth from my heart: by your Majesty’s actions we have been led from the darkness of ignorance into the lighted theatre of fame, from death into life, and have even joined the throng of civilised nations. Monarch! you have renewed and revived everything, and more yet, given new life to your subjects. What was Russia in olden times? What is she to-day? Let us consider the houses: old rough huts have been replaced by bright palaces; withered twigs by blooming gardens. Let us consider the fortifications: here have we things which prior to this we have not even beheld on charts!”
He went on talking for a long time “about laws, free learning, arts,” the fleet, these armed arks, the reformation and the new birth of the Church.
“And thou,” he exclaimed in conclusion, brandishing his arms in the heat of rhetoric, so that the wide sleeves, like black wings, made him still more like a bat, “And thou, City of Peter! young in thy supremacy! How great is the renown of thy founder! In a place where nobody even as much as dreamt of human habitation, in a short time a city has been erected worthy to hold the monarch’s throne. ‘Urbs ubi sylva fuit.’ A city in place of a wood. And who will not praise the position of this city? The district not only excels in beauty the rest of Russia, but even in other countries the like cannot be found! On a cheerful site art thou erected! Verily a metamorphosis, a change in Russia hast thou accomplished, O Majesty!”
Alexis listened, and looked at Theodosius attentively. When the later mentioned the “cheerful site” their eyes met for an instant, and the Tsarevitch seemed to discern a spark of mockery in the orator’s eyes. He remembered how Theodosius had often in his hearing, during his father’s absence, reviled this “cheerful site” and termed it a “devil’s bog,” “a devil’s haunt;” for some time already it seemed to the Tsarevitch that Theodosius was laughing at his father, almost in his very face, only disguised so cleverly and adroitly that no one save he, Alexis, noticed it; and every time on a similar occasion, Theodosius would exchange quick cunning looks with him, as if he saw in him an accomplice.
Peter, according to his custom, replied simply and concisely to the ceremonious oration:
“I am eager that the people should know how the Lord hath helped us hitherto. Yet we must not slacken our efforts; but taking up whatever burden God lays before us, work for the good and advantage of the community.”
And returning to ordinary conversation he gave in Dutch (so that the foreigners present could follow him) an exposition of the thought he had lately heard from the philosopher Leibnitz, and which had greatly struck him, “the rotation of sciences:” all science and art were born in the East and in Greece, thence they travelled to Italy, France, Germany, and lastly through Poland they came into Russia. “Now our turn has come; from us they will again return to Greece and to the East, their birthplace, completing a perfect circle in their wanderings. This Venus,” concluded Peter, lapsing into Russian, with a naïve declamatory eloquence, natural to him, “this Venus has come to us from there, from Greece. Our soil has been ploughed with the plough of Mars, and the seed has been scattered. We now await a good return which Thou, O Lord, vouchsafe unto us! May our harvest come soon and not like that of the date palm, whose fruit is never seen by those who plant it. May Venus the goddess of all that is loveable, domestic felicity, and national concord, ally herself to-day with Mars. May the union be for the glory of Russia.”
“Vivat, vivat, vivat, Peter the Great, the father of his country, the Emperor of all Russia!” shouted the guests raising their glasses of Hungarian wine. The Imperial title, announced publicly neither to Europe nor even to Russia, was accepted here in the circle of “Peter’s Eaglets.”
In the left wing of the gallery, the ladies’ pavilion, the tables had been pushed aside and dancing begun. The music of war trumpets, hautboys, and kettledrums of the Simeon and Preobrazhensky regiments, coming from behind the trees of the Summer Garden, softened by distance and perhaps by the charm of the goddess, sounded here at her feet, like the delicate flutes and violes d’amour of Cupid’s kingdom, where lambs graze on soft meadows and shepherds loosen the girdles of shepherdesses.
Peter Tolstoi, who was dancing in the minuet with Princess Tsherkassky, hummed in his mellow voice to the strains of the music:
’Tis time to cast thy bow away,
We all are, Cupid, in thy sway.
Thy golden love-awaking dart
Hath reached and wounded every heart.
And affectedly curtsying to the cavalier, as the rule of a minuet demanded, the pretty princess responded with the languid smile of a Chloe to the aged Daphnis. Meanwhile in the dark alleys, bowers, in all the secluded nooks of the Summer Garden, whispers, rustlings, kisses, sighs of love were heard; the goddess Venus had begun her reign in the Hyperborean Scythia.
In an oak grove, apart from the rest, so that none could overhear them, a group of servants and pages, belonging to the Tsar’s household, were discussing the love exploits of their friends, the court ladies or maidens, after the manner of true Scythians and Barbarians.
In the presence of women they were shy and bashful, but when by themselves they spoke about “women” with brutal shamelessness.
“The wench Hamilton spent a night with the master,” calmly announced one of them.
It was Mary Hamilton, the Tsaritsa’s lady in waiting.
“The master is gallant, he can’t live without mistresses,” remarked another.
“It is not her first either,” retorted a page, a boy of about fifteen, deliberately spitting and again puffing the pipe which made him sick: “Before the master’s time she had a child by Golitsin.”
“And how do they manage to get rid of the brats?” the first one queried in amazement.
“And the husband does not know what his wife is after!” giggled the lad. “I saw with my own eyes just now, from behind the shrubs, how Billy Mons made love to our mistress!”
Wilhelm Mons was the Tsaritsa’s Kammerjunker, a foreigner of low origin, yet very adroit and handsome.
Huddling closer together, they began to speak about the strange rumour, which said that, quite lately, when cleaning a stopped up pipe of one of the fountains in the royal garden, the body of an infant was found, wrapped in a palace napkin.
The Summer Garden possessed the inevitable “grotto,” met with in all French gardens; it was a square edifice on the banks of the river Fontanna, rather awkward from the outside, suggesting a Dutch church, while the inside resembled a cave, laid out with large shells, mother of pearl, corals and porous stones; numerous fountains and water jets flowed into marble basins with that abundance of water, too great for the damp city of Petersburg, yet so dear to the heart of Peter.
Here staid old men, senators, and dignitaries, were also conversing about love and women.
“In olden days true wedlock was sacred, whereas nowadays, lust is considered gallantry, even by the husbands themselves, who with a calm heart watch their wives make love to others and call us fools for staking our honour on so weak a spot. They have given women their freedom; just wait a bit, they will soon master every one of us,” grumbled the oldest among them.
A younger one remarked that “free intercourse between the sexes is agreeable natural to all men, not fossilised by ancient customs. The real love passion, unknown in barbarous ages, had begun to possess sensitive hearts;” that “nowadays marriage boorishly reaps in one day all the flowers love tenderly rears for years; and jealousy is the pest of love.”
“Fair women have always been facile,” decided a middle-aged man, “but no doubt the devils themselves have set up their abode inside the ribs of the present giddy generation. They will hear of nothing but love-making.”
“And little girls, stirred by this example, begin to flirt, and only can’t do it, poor things, because they are too innocent. Oh! how the desire to please dominates women!”
Here entered her Majesty Catherine, attended by the Kammerjunker Mons and Mary Hamilton, her lady in waiting, a proud Scotchwoman with the face of Diana. The least elderly of the two old men, aware that Catherine was listening to their conversation, began amiably to defend the ladies.
“Truth herself proves the dignified nature of womankind by the fact, that God, at the end of His work, on the last day created Adam’s wife, as if without her the world were incomplete. Woman’s body alone is composed of all that is most charming in the universe. Add to these advantages her beauty of mind, and how can we help wondering at her perfection, and what excuses can be given by him who does not show due deference to her? Should there be some weakness about women, it is right to remember, how delicately they are made.” The oldest of the speakers only shook his head. His face clearly expressed that he was not convinced, that in his opinion “woman was as far removed from a human being, as a crab was from a fish; a woman and the devil make a fine match.”
In the opening, between the cloven clouds, on the transparent melancholy sky bathed in golden-emerald, appeared the narrow sickle of the newborn moon; it cast a gentle beam into the depths of a dark alley, where near a fountain surrounded by the semicircle of a tall clipped hedge, on a wooden bench, at the foot of a marble Pomona, there sat a solitary girl of seventeen. She wore a wide dress of pink taffeta embroidered with small yellow florets; she had a slender waist and a fashionable head-dress; yet so Russian and simple was her face, that it was evident she had only recently left a calm country life, where she had grown up surrounded by nurses, under the thatched roof of an old house. Casting a timid look around her, she undid two or three buttons of her frock and swiftly pulled out a roll of paper, hid in her bosom and warm from the contact. It was a love missive from her nineteen year old cousin, who by the Tsar’s command had first been torn from the same peaceful spot, sent to Petersburg, then placed in the navy school connected with the admiralty, and a few days ago had been sent on a man-of-war with other gardes-marines, either to Cadiz or Lisbon—to quote his own expression “to the world’s end.” By the light of the white night and the moon the young girl read the note, written on ruled lines in large round childish characters:
“My heart’s treasure, my angel Nástia. I would like to know why you did not send me the last kiss. Cupid the thief has wounded my heart with his arrow. I suffer greatly, my heart’s blood is frozen.”
A heart was drawn with blood instead of ink between the lines, the same was pierced by two arrows; red spots stood for drops of blood.
Then followed verses probably copied from somewhere—
Remember Joy, our merry talk,
Sweet words during every walk,
How long is it since last I saw thee?
Come my fair dove, come fly to me.
Should my wish be not in vain,
Mad with joy I’d be again.
Having read the love letter, Nástia carefully rolled it up, hid it again in her bosom, hung her head and covered her face with a handkerchief, scented with “Cupid’s sighs.”
When she looked up again, a black cloud resembling a monster with gaping mouth had almost swallowed the narrow moon. His last beam reflected itself in the tear which hung on the young girl’s eye-lash. She watched the moon disappearing and hummed to herself the only love-song she knew—how it became known to her no one could say:—
Wherever I roam, and wherever I go,
My heart it feels heavy, my spirits are low,
And I, like a dove without wings, must make moan,
For what is in life when my dearest is gone?
Young am I and yet shedding tear after tear
For the sweetheart who left me in loneliness here....
Everything about her was strange and artificial, “after the manner of Versailles,” the fountain, Pomona, the espaliers, her dress of pink taffeta strewn with yellow florets, her hair arrangement “Budding pleasure,” and the scent “Cupid’s sighs.” Only she herself with her quiet grief and gentle song had remained simple, Russian, just as she had been under the thatched roof of her father’s country house.
Close to her, from the dark alleys, bowers and every possible nook of the Summer Garden, there continued to come whispers, rustles, kisses and love-sick sighs.
The sound of the minuet, wafted across like shepherds’ flutes and violes d’amour from Venus’ kingdom, with the languid melody:—
’Tis time to cast thy bow away,
Cupid, we all are in thy sway.
Thy gol’en love-awaking dart
Has reached and wounded every heart!
In the pavilion, round the Tsar’s table the conversation continued. Peter was talking with the monks about the origin of Hellenic Polytheism; he could not conceive how the ancient Greeks, who had displayed sufficient knowledge about natural laws and mathematical principles, could at the same time call their soulless idols gods, and believe in them.
Here Michael Avrámoff could no longer contain himself, he mounted his hobby and began to prove that the gods exist, that they are in reality evil spirits.
“You talk about them as if you yourself had seen them,” said Peter.
“Not I, but others have really seen them, your Majesty,—beheld them with their own eyes,” exclaimed Avrámoff triumphantly. He took out of his pocket a fat leather pocket book, found in it two old cuttings from the Dutch newspapers and began to read, translating them into Russian:—
“We are informed from Spain that a stranger has brought with him to Barcelona a Satyr, a man covered with wool as with bark, and having goat’s horns and hoofs. He eats bread and milk, does not speak, but only bleats like a goat. This deformity attracts many visitors.” The second: “In Jutland fishermen have caught a siren or mermaid. The monster has a human body with a fish’s tail. The skin is pale yellow, the eyes are closed, the hair on the head is black. A membrane connects the fingers just like a goose’s foot. The fishermen pulled their net to the shore with great difficulty, breaking it in many places. Then the people made a huge tub, filled it with salt water and put the mermaid into it; they did this in the hope of preserving her from putrefying. This is reported on account of the many rumours current concerning maritime wonders, not all trustworthy, but this one may be believed, because the astonishing sea-monster has been caught.—Rotterdam, April 27, 1714.”
Printed matter was as a rule believed in, especially foreign news, for if foreigners lie, where could truth be found at all? Many of the people present not only believed in ghosts, nymphs, were-wolfs, water, house, and wood spirits, but had also seen the like with their own eyes. If wood spirits exist, why should not Satyrs also exist, if nymphs exist why should not mermaids with fish tails also? And why should not other gods, even this very Venus, also have true being?
The company were hushed, silenced; something strange and terrifying seemed to pass through the air; all suddenly became conscious of doing something they ought not to do.
Lower and lower sank the sky shrouded in black clouds. Brighter and brighter grew the bluish flashes of thunderless lightning. And these sudden flashes of light in the dark vault seemed to reflect the bluish flame on the altar which continued to glow at the feet of the statue; or else in the vault, as in an overturned bowl of a gigantic altar, hid by a bank of clouds, black as charcoals, there glowed the Bacchantic flames, sallying forth from time to time in the shape of lightning. The fire of the sky and the flame on the altar, responding to one another, seemed to hold converse about some terrible mystery unrevealed to mankind, yet already enacting itself in earth and sky.
The Tsarevitch, who was sitting not very far from the statue, gazed intently at her, for the first time after the reading of the newspaper cuttings. The nude white body of the goddess seemed so familiar to him, he was almost sure he had seen it before now, and even more than seen it—these very dimples on the shoulders, this virginal curve of the back appeared to him in his most passionate, secret visions, visions he felt ashamed to confess even to himself. Suddenly he remembered to have seen this same curve, these same dimples on the shoulder of his mistress, the serf girl Afrossinia. He felt dizzy, probably from the wine, the heat, the close atmosphere, and all this monstrous festival, so like a nightmare. He glanced again at the statue, and suddenly the white nude body, in the double light of the red smoky illumination vessels and the bluish flame of the tripod, appeared so real, terrible and enticing to him, that he was obliged to cast down his eyes. Was it indeed possible that the goddess Venus should appear to him also, as she did to Avrámoff, in the guise of a were-wolf—the serf girl Afrossinia? He crossed himself in thought.
“Not the Hellenes are to be wondered at, who, ignorant of the Christian law, bowed before lifeless idols,” rejoined Theodosius, continuing the conversation interrupted by the reading, “but, rather we Christians, who, ignorant of true reverence for icons, worship them as idols!”
This started one of those conversations which Peter specially delighted in, about all sorts of false wonders and signs, the deceitfulness of monks, the possessed, nervous epileptic women, saintly madmen, old wives’ tales, and the superstition of Russian priests. Again Alexis had to listen to all these oft-repeated odious tales: about the shift of the Queen of heaven, which the monks had brought from Jerusalem, as a gift to Catherine, and which was supposed could neither burn nor rot. When the material was experimented on it turned out to be woven of a special fireproof fibre—amianth: about the incorruptible body of the Finnish girl von Grot, whose skin “was like prepared pigshide and when pressed returned like a ball to its shape”; and about other false relics made of ivory which Peter had ordered to be sent in to the Petersburg Kunstkammer as a memento of “superstition now being exterminated by the zeal of the clergy.”
“Yes, there is much deception in the Russian Church concerning miracles,” concluded Theodosius, in his tone of plaintive malignity. He mentioned the last false wonder on record. In a small church near Petersburg an image of the Virgin had appeared, which shed tears, prophesying as it were great mishaps, even the final destruction of the new city. Peter, informed of it by Theodosius, went himself to the church, examined the icon, and exposed the deception. This had happened quite recently. The icon had not yet been sent into the Kunstkammer, and it had meanwhile been kept in the Tsar’s Summer Palace, a small Dutch house, here in the garden, only at a distance of about two yards from the gallery, on the corner between the Fontanna and the Neva. The Tsar, desirous showing it to his guests, ordered one of his servants to fetch the icon. When the man returned Peter left the table and coming out in front of the statue, where there was more room, he, leaning with his back against the marble pedestal and holding the image in his hand, began to give a careful and elaborate explanation of the deceptive mechanism. The guests again thronged round him, crowding, rising on tiptoe, striving to catch a glimpse across one another’s shoulders and heads, just as at the beginning of the festival, when the case containing the statue was being opened. Theodosius was holding the candle.
The icon was an old one. The face was dark, almost black; only the large sorrowful eyes, swollen as with tears, seemed alive. Alexis had always loved and honoured this image of “God’s mother, the Joy of all the sorrowing.”
Peter removed the silver trimming set with priceless gems; it came off easily, having been already loosened during the first examination. He then unscrewed the brass screws, which fastened a small piece of new limewood to the back of the icon. In its centre was fixed a smaller piece; it moved easily on a spring, a pressure of the hand was sufficient to work it. Removing both boards Peter pointed to two little cavities hollowed out in the wood just against the eyes of the image. Two tiny sponges soaked with water were placed in them, the water oozed through the almost imperceptible holes bored in the eyes, forming drops which looked like tears.
Peter proved it by an experiment; he moistened the sponges, put them into their cavities, pressed the board and the tears began to flow.
“This is the source of these miraculous tears,” said Peter. His face was as calm as if he had just been describing a curious trick of nature, or some unusual object in the Kunstkammer.
“Yes, there is much deception,” repeated Theodosius with a quiet smile.
All were hushed. Somebody moaned in a low voice, probably a drunkard in his sleep. Someone else tittered so curiously and unexpectedly, that everybody turned round almost in terror. Alexis longed to go away. But some strange torpor held him, as in a nightmare, when the legs refuse to carry one or the voice to cry out. In this lethargy he stood and watched Theodosius holding the light, Peter nimbly and adroitly fingering the wood of the image, the tears trickling down the sorrowful face, and over all there towered the white, terrible alluring body of Venus. He looked on, and an anguish like mortal sickness seized his heart and almost choked him. And it seemed to him that this torture would never end,—that it always had been, and would be.
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of lightning; as if a fiery abyss had yawned above their heads. And through the glass cupola a burning light, painfully white, whiter than the sun, bathed the marble statue. Almost at the same instant a short, deafening peal of thunder was heard, as though heaven’s vault had been cloven and fallen into ruin. A darkness, black and impenetrable, followed the lightning. Suddenly a storm broke out, and moaned, and hissed, and rolled in the darkness; high wind together with pouring rain and hail; in the pavilion a general confusion ensued. The piercing shrieks of women were heard—one of them was laughing and crying in hysterics. The terrified people fled, from what, they knew not, knocking, falling and crushing one another. Somebody moaned in despair, “St. Nicholas! Holy Mother, have mercy upon us.” Peter, letting the icon drop, hurried away in search of Catherine. The flame from the overturned tripod, going out, flared up for the last time like the forked sting of a serpent, in the shape of an azure tongue, lighting up the face of the goddess. It alone had remained calm amid the storm, darkness and terror. Someone stepped on the icon. Alexis, stooping to lift it, heard the wood crack. The image had broken in two.