“You speak wildly, Tsarevitch,” the latter interposed with severity, “it ill becomes you to cast reproaches at us, your unworthy intercessors with God——”
“Oh! we know your prayers,” interrupted Alexis, “You seek pardon and in the same breath pray for God’s blessing on your knavery. My father, the Tsar Peter, may God grant him long life! did well to clip your wings! You deserve to be treated much worse than this, you Pharisees, hypocrites, serpent brood.”
Father James got up from the table, came up to the Tsarevitch and asked in a solemn voice:—
“Of whom do you speak, my Lord. Is it myself?”
At this minute Father James resembled the holy Father, the patriarch Nikon, but Peter’s son no longer resembled the gentle Tsar Alexis Michailovitch.
“You too are included,” answered the Tsarevitch, standing up and continuing to look at Father James. “You too, Father, cannot be exempt from the general rule; you too have sold your soul to the devil; and have become a priest from motives of self interest. Why do you assume such pride? You want the Patriarchate, no doubt? If so, you are a long way off it. Wait, the Lord will soon cast you down from the pride of place which your Church assumes, and you will fall into the mud, mud, mud!”
He added a ribald expression; all laughed. Father James lost control over himself, he too was drunk, though not so much with wine as with anger. “Hold your tongue, Alexis,” he cried. “Be quiet, you puppy.”
“If I am a puppy, you, Father, are a dog!”
Father James’ face became purple, he trembled all over, raised both his hands over the head of the Tsarevitch, and with the voice in which he was wont to pronounce the anathema against all heretics and apostates, he now called out:
“I will curse you with the power given to us by the Lord Himself, through the Apostle Peter——”