CHAPTER VI
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 unheard of 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 strong as 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 interview between 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 disappearance of 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.