The father sees his son, they smile at one another and Alexis’ heart beats with joy. The Tsar approaches the carriage doors, opens them, and takes his son almost by force from the grandmother’s arms, amid the exclamations of the nurses—he embraces and kisses him tenderly, more tenderly than a mother, then lifting him high in his hands, he shows him to the army and the people, and finally placing him on his shoulders, he bears him aloft above the regiments. At first quite near, then further and further away, across the sea of heads, like a peal of thunder rolled the joyful cry from thousands of voices:
“Vivat, vivat, vivat! Long live the Tsar and Tsarevitch!”
Alexis feels that they all look at him, that all love him. He feels frightened and yet happy. He holds tightly to his father’s neck, and nestles closer to him; his father carries him so carefully that there is no fear he will drop him. And it seems to him that his father’s movements are his, his father’s strength his too, and that he and his father are one. He is ready to laugh and cry, so joyful are the shouts of the people, the roar of cannon, the chiming of bells, the golden cupolas, the blue sky, and the sun. His head goes round and round, he is short of breath, he seems to fly straight up into the sky, towards the sun!
He sees his grandmother’s head leaning out of the carriage window, her kind old wrinkled face looks so droll and yet so dear to him. She beckons with her hand and calls out, beseeching almost in tears:
“Peter, Peter, dear, don’t tire Alexis!”
And again his nurses put him to bed, and cover him with a golden damask quilt, lined with the softest sable; they fondle and caress him and gently stroke his feet, to make him sleep the sweeter. They tuck him in securely against the slightest breeze. As one guards the apple of the eye, so they watched over him, the Tsar’s own babe. He is secluded, like a fair maiden, behind the inevitable curtains which, when he goes to church, surround him on all sides so that no one should see the Tsarevitch, until he is “proclaimed,” according to an ancient custom, and after his proclamation people will flock from distant parts to have a look at him, as at some prodigy.
It is close in the low terem rooms; the doors, shutters, windows, stoppers, all are carefully nailed round with felt to exclude the least draught. The floor is also covered with felt for “warmth and quiet.” The glazed stoves are overheated. The air is saturated with spirit of yarrow and calamus, which is added to the fuel “for scent.” The daylight, penetrating through the slanting mica panes, changes to a yellow-amber. Little lamps glimmer everywhere before the images. Alexis feels languid, but at the same time happy and snug; he seems to be ever dozing and cannot wake. He dozes listening to the monotonous conversations about the ordering of a godly household: everything should be kept in its place, clean, swept, secured from all damage lest it might rot or go mouldy; everything should be kept locked up, and not open to theft or waste; the good should receive honour; and severity should be the lot of the evil doers; and how to be careful with the scraps, how to twine bast round split and dried fish, how to preserve different sorts of soaked mushrooms in tubs, and how to maintain an ardent faith in the undivided Trinity. He dozes while listening to the wailing sounds of stringed instruments played by blind bards who are chanting old legends, and to the narratives of old men whose tales had once amused his grandfather, Tsar Alexis Michailovitch. He slumbers—and the tales of pilgrims and mendicants bring him vivid visions, of Mount Athos, pointed like a fir-cone, on its summit above the clouds, stand the Holy Virgin spreading her cloak about it; of Simeon Stylites who allowed his body to rot till it was alive with worms; of the place where the earthly Paradise stood, which Moïsláv of Novgorod had seen afar off from his ship, and of many another divine wonder and diabolic suggestion. When he feels dull, by order of his grandmother all sorts of jesters, orphan girls, Kalmuck women, blackamoors dance before him, fight, roll on the floor, pull at one another’s hair, and scratch one another. Or again his grandmother would take him on her lap, and begin to play with his fingers, touching them one after another, starting from the thumb, repeating the little nursery rhyme, “A magpie crow, having boiled some gruel, hopped to the door and invited his guests. She gave to this and she gave to that and none was left to feed the last.” And then she would tickle him, and he would laugh and try to shield himself. She overfeeds him with rich pancakes, onion patties, “levashnik,” sour apple fritters fried in nut oil, gruel boiled in poppyseed milk, white gruel, pears and burrels in syrup.
“Eat! Alexis, eat, it’s good for you, my treasure!”
And when Alexis suffered from stomach-ache a wise woman would be summoned, whose incantations were supposed to benefit the tender young. She knew herbs which cure internal ailments and epileptic fits. Whenever Alexis sneezed or coughed, they at once would give him raspberry tea, rub him with camphorated wine-spirit or make him sweat in a bath prepared with althea.
Only on the hottest days is he taken out for a walk in the beautiful “Upper Garden,” laid out on a wooden platform inside the Kremlin. This imitation of the hanging gardens is a continuation of the Terem. Here everything is artificial: hothouse flowers in boxes, tiny ponds in tubs, and tame birds in cages. He looks down and forth on Moscow which lies spread at his feet; he sees streets he had never been in, roofs, towers, belfries, the distant town beyond the Moscow stream, the bluish outlines of the Sparrow hills, and over all the airy gilded clouds. And he feels weary; he longs to get out of the Terem, out of the toy garden away to real forests, fields and rivers, away into the unknown distance; he is eager to run, to fly like the swallows whose flight he envies. It is very close and heavy. The hothouse flowers, and medicinal herbs, marjoram, thyme, savory, hyssop, tansy, fill the air with a spicy and sickly perfume. A cloud of leaden hue creeps slowly up, fast thronging shadows fall around him, a fresh breeze sweeps past and it begins to rain. He stretches out his face and hands and greedily tries to catch the drops, while his nurses in great agitation are already searching for him.