“Is that possible? Poor child! did no one ever tell thee that story, so glorious for thee and thine? Know, then, that about two hundred years ago the Poles conquered holy Russia. The whole country was at their feet, in great misery and trouble, and no man dared resist them. Prince Pojarsky lay on his bed in his own castle, sick as it seemed unto death. But God put it into the heart of a poor man working at his trade in Moscow, a butcher named Minim, to save his country. He first went to all the great people of the city and of the surrounding country, and got them to promise men and money. Then he went to Prince Pojarsky, and stood before him like a messenger from God. ‘Rise,’ he said; ‘go forth and conquer the Poles. God will strengthen thee.’ ‘But soldiers are needed, and arms,’ said the prince. ‘All are ready,’ answered the courageous citizen. The prince arose from his bed of sickness, and, trusting in God, put himself at the head of the men of Moscow. He gained a glorious victory, and the sword of the Poles was broken for ever in Muscovy. That is the man whose name you bear, and whose blood is flowing in your veins, Prince Ivan Pojarsky!”
“He was splendid!” said Ivan with kindling eyes; “I am proud to bear his name.”
Petrovitch felt shocked by the disclosure of Ivan’s ignorance of the history of his native country, that country which was to himself the object of proud and passionate love.
“Can it be,” he said to him the next day—“can it be that no one has ever even told you about the great Czar Peter?”
“I have heard of the Czar Peter,” said Ivan: “he ordered all the mujiks to cut off their beards, threatening to cut off their heads if they refused. ‘God will make your beards grow again,’ he said; ‘but will he do the same for your heads?’”
Petrovitch built a long and interesting narrative upon this very meagre foundation of historical knowledge. He had little Feodor for a listener as well as Ivan, and the intelligent questions of the boys drew out the information he loved to impart. Especially graphic was his account of the Swedish defeat at Pultowa, and the horrors of the retreat that followed—horrors that seem to have prefigured those of a yet more awful retribution near at hand, though still wrapped in the mysterious veil of the future.
“File after file the stormy showers benumb,
Freeze every standard sheet, and hush the drum;
Yet ere he sank in nature’s last repose,
Ere life’s warm torrent to the fountain froze,
The dying man to Sweden turned his eye,
Thought of his home, and closed it with a sigh:
Imperial pride looked sullen on his plight,
And Charles beheld, nor shuddered at the sight.”
Then, gradually bringing down the narrative to more recent times, he told of the great Czarina Catherine—of the splendours of her court and the triumphs of her arms—especially of the conquest of Poland, in his partial eyes only a just retribution for the past wrongs, and a glorious achievement of the prowess of holy Russia. At last, though with some reserve, he spoke of the short, sad reign of the Czar Paul. “God sent him for our sins,” he said.
This reserve only piqued the curiosity of the boys.
“It is true he wrought much evil,” he admitted, in answer to their questions; “but still his heart was good. It was his head that went astray. Oh, my children, there are sorrows in the world darker than you have ever dreamed of! Seems it sad to you to sit as I do now, and see the beautiful light of God’s world fading from me day by day? What is that to the desolation, the anguish, when God lays his hand upon the immortal light within and turns it into darkness? The Czar Paul was not himself when he sent half his nobles to Siberia, shut up his own son in prison and threatened his life—ay, even the life of the Empress. His true self fought long against the demon that possessed him. Many a time did he listen to his son, though he never loved him, when he dared bravely to plead for and shelter the victims of his wrath. More than once he said regretfully, after some unusual outburst of violence, ‘I wish I had consulted the Grand Duke Alexander.’ But such a state of things could not go on. The end came.”