Nevertheless a bashful joy flushed his face; his heart throbbed with mad hope. He muttered something in a low, halting tone, about “always glad to give my father pleasure,” and stooped again to kiss his hand. But Peter raised his head with both his hands. For one instant Alexis saw the familiar face, so terrible yet so dear to him, with its full round cheeks, the curly moustache, and the charming smile which flitted across the curved, almost femininely tender lips, he saw the large, dark, lucid eyes, which so fascinated him that he used to dream about them, as a love-sick youth would dream about the eyes of a beautiful woman. He recognised the odour familiar from his childhood: a mixture of strong tobacco, brandy, sweat, and something else, not disagreeable, a smell of soldiers’ barracks, which usually filled his father’s working room, “the office.” He felt the touch, familiar also to him from his earliest years, of the hard, slightly bristly chin with the dimple in the centre, which seemed strangely out of place on this formidable face. He remembered, or was it only a dream, kissing this odd dimple, saying with delight: “It is just like Granny’s,” when as a child his father used to take him on his knees.
Peter, kissing his son on the forehead, said in his broken Dutch speech:
“Good beware ú!”
This slightly stiff Dutch “you” in place of “thou” sounded to Alexis charmingly amiable.
He seemed to have felt and seen all this in a flash of lightning. The lightning faded away and all disappeared. Peter had already passed a good way on, his head thrown back as was his wont, slightly twitching his shoulder, waving his right hand in a soldierly manner, walking at his usual rapid pace, which was so quick that those who accompanied him were obliged to keep up by running.
Alexis went in the opposite direction following the same narrow path of the dark maze. Avrámoff kept close behind; he again began talking, but now about the Archimandrite of the Alexander Monastery, the Tsar’s chaplain Theodosius Janovski, whom Peter had appointed “Administrator of Religious Affairs,” and had thus raised above the first prelate, the aged occupant of the Patriarchal throne,—Stephen Javorsky. Theodosius was suspected of leanings towards Lutheranism, of secretly plotting to abolish the worship of icons, relics, the keeping of fasts, monasteries, the Patriarchate and other ancient statutes and customs of the Orthodox Church. Others surmised that Theodosius was dreaming of himself becoming Patriarch.
“This Theodosius is a veritable atheist and a most insolent pagan,” Avrámoff continued. “He has wormed his way into the hard-worked monarch’s holy confidence and enthralled him. He boldly destroys Christian laws and traditions, and introduces an ambitious, luxurious, epicurean, almost swinish way of living. He, this mad heresiarch, tore the crown off the wonder-working Kazan icon of the Virgin; ‘Sexton, a knife!’ he cried, cut the wire, tore off the embossed golden ornament, and put the spoil in his pocket, barefacedly, before the eyes of all; and those who saw it were amazed and bewailed such impudence. Meanwhile he, the unclean vessel, the obscene one, turned away from God, made a compact with Satan, and, mad goat that he is, even wanted to spit and trample on the Life-giving Cross, the Saviour’s image!”
The Tsarevitch gave no heed to Avrámoff’s prattle. He was musing over and trying by arguments to choke this unreasonable, and as it now seemed, childish joy. What was he expecting? What was he hoping for? A reconciliation with his father? Was it possible? Did he himself really wish for one? Had not something taken place, which could never be forgotten or forgiven? He remembered hiding himself in cowardly fear a moment ago; he remembered Dokoukin and his “denunciatory petition against Peter,” and many other far more terrible, unanswerable denunciations. It was not for his own sake merely that he had rebelled against his father. And yet, a few kind words, one smile, had sufficed to melt and soften his heart. He is again willing to fall at his father’s feet, forget and forgive everything and himself implore for pardon, as if he alone were the guilty one. He is ready, for another such caress, another such smile, to surrender his soul to him anew. “Is it possible,” he thought almost terrified, “that I love him so much?” Avrámoff continued talking like a gnat humming in one’s ear. The Tsarevitch caught his last words: “When St. Mitrofane of Voronesh saw Bacchus, Venus and other gods standing on the roof of the Tsar’s palace, he said: ‘I cannot enter the house until the Tsar orders these idols, which mislead the people, to be taken down.’ And the Tsar, honouring the holy man, had them all removed. That’s how it was in the past; but to-day, who dares speak the truth to the Tsar? Not Theodosius the unclean one, who turns icons into idols. Woe unto us! It has come to such a pass that, this very day, at this very hour the Virgin’s holy picture will be replaced by a devilish, mischievous image of Venus! And the monarch your father——”
“Leave me alone, you fool,” the Tsarevitch exclaimed wrathfully. “All of you leave me alone! What are you always at me for? Damnation!” and he used some ribald expressions. “What have I to do with you? I neither know nor desire to know anything. Go and complain to my father: he will see to your rights—”
They were approaching the Skipper’s square near the fountain in the middle alley. A crowd had gathered there. They soon attracted attention and many an ear tried to catch their conversation. Avrámoff had paled, he seemed to have shrunk and grown shorter, and eyed Alexis with a furtive look, the look of a child frightened in his sleep, who at any moment might be taken by a fit of convulsions. Alexis felt sorry for him.