Devière lost his head; several times he approached the Tsar, trying to catch his eye and attract his notice, but Peter, engrossed in conversation, did not pay any attention to him. At last, no longer able to restrain himself, with desperate resolution he stooped and stuttered in the Tsar’s ear:—
“Your Majesty!—the water!”
Peter without a word of warning, with a quick, almost involuntary movement, gave him a slap in the face. Devière felt neither shame nor insult, nothing except the pain, so used was he to such treatment.
“It is a privilege,” said Peter’s eaglets “to be struck by a monarch whose blows are favours.”
Peter with a calm countenance, as though nothing whatever had happened, turned to Avrámoff and asked him the reason why the publication of the astronomer Huyghen’s work, Contemplation or Description of Heavenly and Earthly Bodies, had been delayed so long.
For a moment Avrámoff was taken aback, but he instantly recovered and looking straight into the Tsar’s eyes he said with firmness:—
“That book is exceedingly blasphemous; it has been written, not with ink but with hellish charcoal, and therefore it is only fit to be burnt.”
“What does the blasphemy consist of?”
“The rotation of the earth round the sun is asserted, as well as the existence of a plurality of worlds, and all those worlds are supposed to be like ours, with human beings, meadows, fields, woods, animals, and everything else just as we have it. And in this sly and subtle way the author tries to glorify and establish Nature (which means self-existent life), while a God-Creator is dispensed with.”