“Spare your breath,” retorted Alexis with a malignant smile. “Don’t invoke Peter the Apostle, but Peter Anfimoff the clerk, the thief, your beloved son-in-law, it’s he, Peter the vile, Peter the evil one, who possesses you and cries within you!”
Father James dropped one hand and struck Alexis on the cheek: “Closing the mouth of the evil one.”
The Tsarevitch fell upon him, with one hand he seized him, the other was searching for a knife on the table. Distorted by anger, pale, with flashing eyes, the face of Alexis bore a momentary, mysterious likeness to his father Peter. It was one of those fits of fury which from time to time the Tsarevitch was subject to, and while it lasted he was capable of any crime.
The others started up and rushed to separate them; they seized the combatants by hands and feet, and, after considerable effort, succeeded in parting them.
This quarrel, like all similar quarrels, had no result: a drunkard is not responsible for his deeds; it is a usual thing to drink, fight, sleep it off and be friends again. They too made it up; but the old love did not return. The priest had lost his authority over the grandson as he had done over the grandfather.
Father James was the intermediary between the Tsarevitch and a whole secret confederacy, almost a conspiracy, against Peter and his new town. This society had for its centre the disgraced Tsaritsa Eudoxia, the first wife of Peter, who had been banished to Sousdal. When the news spread of the Tsar’s supposed fatal illness, Father James hurried to Petersburg, bearing a message from Sousdal, where great things were expected when Alexis should become Tsar. But things had taken a new turn by the time the priest had arrived. The Tsar grew better so rapidly that his recovery seemed almost miraculous, or else his illness had been feigned. Kikin’s prophecy had been fulfilled: the cat which was supposed to be dead had leapt up, and there was an end to the mice’s merry-making; all dispersed and hid themselves. Peter had gained his end, and had learnt what his son’s strength would be, should he, the Tsar, really die.
Rumours had reached Alexis that his father was very wroth with him. One of the spies, was it Theodosius himself? had whispered, it was said, to Peter, that the Tsarevitch was cheerful at the time of his father’s illness and that his face was bright and joyous.
Again all forsook the Tsarevitch, avoided him as a leper. After having dreamt of the throne he saw himself nigh to the scaffold, and he knew that he should find no mercy. Daily he dreaded an interview with his father. Yet hatred and revolt stifled fear. This deception, this dissimulation, this feline slyness, this sacrilegious trifling with death seemed vile to him. He could not help remembering another dissimulation of his father’s. The letter threatening disinheritance, “a declaration to my son,” which the Tsarevitch received on the day of his wife’s funeral, October 22, 1715, had been dated October 11, the eve of his son’s, young Peter Alexeyevitch’s, birth. At the time he had not noticed the antedating; but now he saw the reason for this subterfuge. When a son was born to him, Alexis, the Tsar could not very well have ignored the same in his “declaration”; nor could he threaten absolute disinheritance when a new heir had appeared. The substitution of dates leant an appearance of legitimacy to what was in reality unlawful.
The Tsarevitch smiled bitterly, when he remembered how his father always liked to pose as artless and straightforward.
He could forgive his father everything, all the great wrongs and ill-doings, but he could not get over this petty cunning.