To impress the people with the imminency of the peril, the priests displayed a sacred image from whose eyes flowed miraculous tears. It seemed to weep over the coming fate of the dwellers within the doomed city.
"Its hour is at hand," said the priests; "it will soon be swallowed up, with all its inhabitants, by a tremendous inundation."
When word of this seeming miracle and of the consternation which it had produced was brought to the czar, he hastened with his usual impetuosity to the spot, bent on exposing the dangerous fraud which his enemies were perpetrating. He found the weeping image surrounded by a multitude of superstitious citizens, who gazed with open-eyed wonder and reverence on the miraculous feat.
Their horror was intense when Peter boldly approached and examined the image. Petrified with terror, they looked to see him stricken dead by a bolt from heaven. But their feelings changed when the czar, breaking open the head of the image, explained to them the ingenious trick which the priests had devised. The head was found to contain a reservoir of congealed oil, which, as it was melted by the heat of lighted tapers beneath, flowed out drop by drop through artfully provided holes, and ran from the eyes like tears. On seeing this the dismay of the people turned to anger against the priests, and the building of the city went on.
The court fool was an institution born in barbarism, though it survived long into the age of civilization, having its latest survival in Russia, the last European state to emerge from barbarism. In the days of Peter the Great the fool was a fixed institution in Russia, though this element of court life had long vanished from Western Europe. In truth, the buffoon flourished in Russia like a green bay-tree. Peter was never satisfied with less than a dozen of these fun-making worthies, and a private family which could not afford at least one hired fool was thought to be in very straitened circumstances.
In the reign of the empress Anne the number of court buffoons was reduced to six, but three of the six were men of the highest birth. They had been degraded to this office for some fault, and if they refused to perform such fooleries as the queen and her courtiers desired they were whipped with rods.
Among those who suffered this indignity was no less a grandee than Prince Galitzin. He had changed his religion, and for this offence he was made court page, though he was over forty years of age, and buffoon, though his son was a lieutenant in the army, and his family one of the first in the realm. His name is here given in particular as he was made the subject of a cruel jest, which could have been perpetrated nowhere but in the Russian court at that period.
The winter of 1740, in which this event took place, was of unusual severity. Prince Galitzin's wife having died, the empress forced him to marry a girl of the lowest birth, agreeing to defray the cost of the wedding, which proved to be by no means small.
As a preliminary a house was built wholly of ice, and all its furniture, tables, seats, ornaments, and even the nuptial bedstead, were made of the same frigid material. In front of the house were placed four cannons and two mortars of ice, so solid in construction that they were fired several times without bursting. To make up the wedding procession persons of all the nations subject to Russia, and of both sexes, were brought from the several provinces, dressed in their national costumes.