CHAPTER V
THE ORDER OF PROCEDURE AT THE TORTURE OF THOSE UNDER ACCUSATION
“The examination under torture of those accused of crime shall take place in a specially reserved spot termed Sasténok, surrounded by fences and covered with a roof. The judges shall be present at the proceedings with a secretary, and a clerk shall register the words of him undergoing torture.
“In this place a strappado shall be erected; which shall consist of three beams, two driven into the ground the third connecting them transversely at the top. At the appointed hour the administrator of the torture is to come in with his instruments—a wooden collar to which is attached a rope, a knout, and some strips of leather.
“On the arrival of the judges the torturer shall throw one end of the long rope across the transverse bar, and taking the accused shall draw his arms behind him and confine them in the collar; he and his assistants appointed for the task shall then throw their weight upon the rope in such a fashion that the victim cannot touch the ground, but shall remain suspended by his arms which are twisted behind him. Then his feet shall be strapped together, and fastened to a beam erected for the purpose in front of the strappado. The prisoner being thus pinioned and fully outstretched, the flogging shall commence and at the same time the interrogation of the accused, and the official registration of every word extracted shall take place.”
When on the morning of June 19 the Tsarevitch was brought into the torture chamber he was still ignorant of the sentence of the court.
The headsman Kondrashka Tioutioune came up to him and said:
“Undress.”
The Tsarevitch still did not understand.
Kondrashka laid his hand on his shoulder. Alexis looked at him and understood, but no fear took possession of him. His soul was devoid of all feeling. He felt as if he were asleep and in his ears rang the song of an old foreboding dream:—
Fierce fires are burning,
Cauldrons are steaming,
Blades of knives sharpened
All to butcher thee!
“Raise him!” said Peter to the headsman.
The Tsarevitch was suspended on the strappado. He received twenty-five blows with the knout.
Three days later Peter sent Tolstoi to his son.
“Go to-day after mass to the lodging of the Tsarevitch, question him on the following points and note down his replies:—
“(1) For what reason has he refused to act according to the least of my wishes? He knew such conduct was wholly indefensible; why then has he felt neither shame nor remorse?
“(2) Why was he then so boldly defiant of all the punishment which he knew would ensue?
“(3) Why has he sought to win his paternal inheritance by other means than obedience?”
When Tolstoi entered the dungeon of the Troubetzkoi bastion where the Tsarevitch was incarcerated, the latter was lying on his couch. Blumentrost was preparing a medical dressing; he was examining the scars on the back, exchanging old bandages for new ones soaked with some cooling fomentation. The court physician had been ordered to cure the Tsarevitch as quickly as possible so as to fit him for the next torture.
Alexis lay in a fever and was delirious:—
“Fédor Franzovitch! send her away for God’s sake, send her away. Don’t you see her there, mewing like a cat? the cursed thing, who caresses! Suddenly she will fly at my throat and tear my heart out with her claws——”
All at once he recovered consciousness and recognised Tolstoi.
“What do you want of me?”
“Your father sent me——”
“Again to torture me?”
“No, no, Tsarevitch! Fear nothing! It’s not for examination, only for information....”
“I know nothing more, nothing more,” groaned the Tsarevitch tossing on his couch. “Leave me alone! Kill me, only don’t torture me again! If you are afraid to kill me, give me poison or a razor, I will do it myself.—— Only be quick, be quick!”
“What are you talking about, Tsarevitch? Come, come, be quiet!” began Tolstoi in his gentle mellow voice, looking kindly at him. “If God be willing, all will come right. This world is full of strange events. Slow and sure. God Himself has suffered and we too must bear our share of suffering. Do you think I do not pity you, my poor fellow?”
He took out the inevitable snuff-box with the Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess, took a pinch and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Ah, I am sorry for you. I pity you with all my heart. I would give my life for you!——”
And leaning over him he added in a hurried whisper:—
“Whether you believe me or no, I have always wished you well, and to-day still——”
He stopped short, alarmed by the fixed gaze of the eyes of the Tsarevitch who was slowly endeavouring to rise:—
“Judas the Traitor! This for your good wishes!” He spat in his face, and then with a dull moan fell back upon the bed.
Blumentrost rushed up to him, crying to Tolstoi:—
“Go away at once; if not, I cannot be responsible for anything.”
The Tsarevitch had again fallen into delirium.
“There see how she lies in wait for me—— Her eyes are just like two blazing coals, her whiskers bristle like those of my father! Get away!——Fédor Franzovitch, for heaven’s sake drive her away I implore you!”
Blumentrost gave him some spirit to smell and laid some ice on his head.
At last he recovered consciousness and glanced at Tolstoi without the least anger, evidently oblivious of what had just happened.
“Peter Andreitch, I know you have a kind heart. Oblige me by an act of friendship. Heaven will recompense you. Beg my father to grant me permission to see Afrossinia——”
Tolstoi gently kissed the bandaged hand and said in a voice tremulous with sincere tears:
“I will obtain this permission! I will do all that is possible for you. Only we must first answer some little questions. There are but three.”
He read aloud the list of questions which the Tsar had drawn up.
The Tsarevitch closed his eyes in exhaustion.
“What further answer can I make? God is my witness I have already said all I had to say! I have neither words nor thoughts left. I have become quite idiotic.”
“Never mind, never mind, Tsarevitch,” rejoined Tolstoi hastily. He drew up a table and brought out paper, pen and ink.
“I will dictate, all you have to do is to write——”
“Will he be able to write?” Tolstoi suddenly inquired of the physician with a look in which the latter thought he saw the inexorable eyes of the Tsar.
Blumentrost shrugged his shoulders, and murmuring to himself “Barbarians!” he took the bandage off the patient’s right hand.
Tolstoi began to dictate. The Tsarevitch wrote with difficulty in trembling characters; several times he was obliged to stop; he almost fainted with weakness and the pen often slipped from his fingers. Blumentrost was obliged to give him some medicine to revive him. But Tolstoi’s words acted as an even greater stimulant:
“You shall see Afrossinia. Perhaps you will be pardoned, and even be allowed to marry her. Only write, write!”
And the Tsarevitch set himself again to the task.
“On June 22, 1718, I replied in the following terms to the questions which were laid before me by M. Tolstoi:—
“(1) My insubordination towards my father is explained by the fact that I have been brought up by ignorant women who sought only to amuse me: they made a fanatic of me, a state of mind towards which I was by temperament already disposed. My father, anxious for me to receive instruction worthy of a prince, desired me to apply myself to the study of German and the sciences, but such study was hateful to me. I worked most lazily, simply to while away the time. Since my father was often absent on campaigns of prolonged periods the people around me, observing that I took pleasure in talking to priests and monks and also that I had an inclination for wasting time in drinking, far from keeping me back, themselves encouraged me and took part in these visits and drinking bouts. Thus they estranged me more and more from my father, and, by degrees, not only his military and other exploits, but his very presence became utterly repugnant to me.
“(2) My reckless defiance of and contempt for all punishment are the outcome of my naturally bad disposition; of this I am fully aware. Though I feared my father, my fear was not of the kind which should be present in the relation of a son to a father.
“(3) I can easily explain why I sought to obtain power otherwise than by submission to my father. Since I had abandoned the right path and would not imitate my father in anything, I was compelled, in order to obtain power, to have recourse to foreign aid. And if events had brought it to pass that the Emperor had given me, in fulfilment of his promise, the support of his army to enable me to gain the Russian crown by conquest, then I, indifferent to everything else, would have acted as follows. Should the Emperor have asked of me in return Russian troops to help him against his own foes, or even a large sum of money, I should have done as he wished, as well as liberally rewarded his ministers and generals. And I would have taken upon myself to provide for his troops which he would have supplied me for the purpose of winning the Russian crown; in short I would have spared nothing to gain my end.
“Alexis.”
Only when he had signed the statement did he suddenly recover as if from a trance and realise what he had done. He would have cried out that it was all false and have snatched the paper away and destroyed it; but tongue and limbs refused to act, he was like those who have been buried alive and who hear and feel everything, yet cannot move in the lethargy of their death-like sleep. Speechless and motionless he watched Tolstoi fold the paper and put it in his pocket.
On the ground of this last confession, which was read in the Senate on June 24, the High Court made the following decree:—
“We the undersigned ministers, senators, officers of the crown, military and civil, after mature deliberation following the dictates of conscience and taking our stand upon the divine commandment embodied in the Old and New Testaments, in the Holy Gospels, in the Acts, canons and rules of assemblies of the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church, and in like manner also upon the statutes of the Roman, Greek and other Christian emperors, as well as upon the law of Russia, have unanimously and without contradiction agreed and passed sentence that the Tsarevitch Alexis, culpable of revolt against his father, the Tsar, whose Empire he coveted ever since his childhood and desired to grasp it with the help of rebels and foreign sovereigns and troops, which would have brought complete ruin upon the country,—is worthy of death.”