Peter turned round, he saw the calm, almost cheerful face of his wife, and at once he regained control of himself; his raised hands dropped limp at his side, and his huge, heavy body sank into a chair; fell like a full grown tree cut at the root.
Alexis continuing to look at his father from under his eyelashes, stooped bristling up like an enraged animal and slowly receded towards the door; only on the threshold did he turn round; then he opened the door and hurriedly left the room.
Meanwhile Catherine sat down on the arm of the chair, took Peter’s head and pressed it against her large soft bosom, soft as the bosom of a foster-mother. Next to the yellow, withered, almost old face of her husband, Catherine looked quite young. She had a high colour and her cheeks were covered with small downy moles which looked like beauty spots, pleasing dimples, dark arched eyebrows, carefully curled rings of black dyed hair on her low forehead, large protruding eyes and a continuous smile, such as ever adorns the portraits of royalty. On the whole, however, she less resembled a Tsaritsa than a German waitress, or else the simple wife of a soldier, a laundress, as the Tsar himself called her, who accompanied her husband on all his campaigns, washing and sewing for him, and when he was ill made warm poultices for him, rubbed his stomach with ointment, supplied by Blumentrost, and gave him medicine.
Nobody save Catherine knew how to tame these fits of fury, which were dreaded by all around him.
Holding his head with one hand, she fondled his hair with the other, repeating again and again the same words: “Peter, Peter, my dear one, my heart’s treasure!” She was like a mother rocking her sick child, or like a tamer of lions fondling her beast. Under the influence of this gentle continuous caress the Tsar always grew calm, as it were fell into a dose. The convulsions in his body abated, only his motionless face, now almost quite rigid, with the eyes closed, continued to twitch from time to time, as if grimacing.
A little monkey had followed Catherine into the room; it was a present given to their youngest daughter Elizabeth by a Dutch captain. The mischievous monkey, following the Tsaritsa like a page, was trying to catch hold of the bottom of her dress. Noticing Lisette, it grew frightened, jumped first on the table, then on a sphere which represented the course of celestial bodies after the system of Copernicus, the thin brass arcs bent under the weight of the little animal, the globe of the universe gently tinkled, then higher still on to the very top of the upright English clock which stood in a glazed box of red mahogany. The last ray of sunlight caught the clock, and the moving pendulum flashed like lightning. The monkey had not seen the sun for a long while. As though trying to recall something, it looked with wistful amazement at the foreign, pale, wintry sun and screwed up its eyes and made grotesque faces, as if mocking the convulsions of Peter’s face, and the resemblance between the grimaces of the little animal and those of the great Tsar was terrible.
Alexis returned home.
He felt as one whose leg or arm had been amputated; recovering consciousness he tries to feel for the missing limb and finds it gone. In the same way the Tsarevitch felt in his soul, once filled with love for his father, a void. He remembered his father’s words “I will sever you—I will lop you off like a gangrenous limb,” and it seemed to him that everything had gone when he lost the love of his father. He felt a void, neither hope, nor fear, nor sorrow, nor joy, but a light terrible void.
He was amazed how swiftly and easily his wish had been fulfilled: for him his father was dead.