Cauldrons are steaming,
Knives are being sharpened,
All to butcher thee.
Before his eyes rises the vision of a lonely street of thawing snow, a row of bleak log huts, the leaden cupolas of the old church of St. Nicholas. It is an early, gloomy dawn; more like evening. On the horizon a comet; a huge star with a tail red as blood. Fat, black pigs, spotted with pink, are drawing a mock sleigh. On the sleigh stands an open coffin; in the coffin lies something black stained with blood in the red glow of the comet. The thin ice on the spring pools cracks under the weight of the sleighs, and the black mud splashes like blood. Stillness reigns in the air, as at the end of the world before the archangel’s trumpet sounds; only the pigs grunt, and somebody’s voice, very much like the voice of that old man in the green faded pall, St. Demetrius of Rostov, whom Alexis remembered to have seen in his childhood, whispers in his ear: “The Lord abhors a bloody and deceitful man,” and the Tsarevitch knows that the bloody man is Peter himself.
He awoke from this dream as usual, in a tremor. A nearly dark gloomy morn was visible through the window. The air was hushed as at the approach of the Judgment day. Suddenly he heard a knock at the door and the sleepy, grumpy voice of Afanássieff:
“Get up, get up, Tsarevitch, it’s time to go to your father.”
He tried to shout aloud and jump up; but his limbs seemed paralysed. He felt as if his body was not his own; he lay as if dead. The dream was continuing, and he had wakened up in his dream. At the same time he heard a knock at the door, and the voice of Afanássieff saying:—
“It’s time to go to your father!”
And his grandmother’s voice, old and feeble, like the bleating of a goat, was singing to him in a low voice that terrible song:
Alioshenka, Alioshenka,