“What? What did you say, puppet?”
Alexis turned round and, looking him straight in the face, said in a loud voice:—
“I said, ‘Rapscallion!’ A rascal’s look is worse than defilement!”
At the same moment his father’s face, contorted, flashed before him. He struck his son so hard in the face that the blood gushed from mouth and nose; then he caught him by the throat, threw him on the ground and began to strangle him. The senior nobles, Romodanovsky, Sheremetieff, Dolgorúki, who were authorized by the Tsar himself to restrain him in his attacks of madness, fell upon Peter, seized him, and dragged him away from his son, lest he should murder him.
“In order to give satisfaction” to Ménshikoff, the Tsarevitch was sent from the hall and placed on sentry duty at the doors like a naughty schoolboy who is sent into the corner. It was a cold winter’s night, frosty and snowing; he had only his kaftan on, and no fur coat. Tears and blood froze on his face. The wind moaned and whirled round and round, like a drunkard dancing and singing. And behind the lighted windows, in the room he had left, that old buffoon, the drunken princess-abbess Rjévskaya was also dancing and singing. The wild moans of the storm mingled with the wild strains of the song:—
My mother bore me while she danced,
She christened me in the Tsar’s tavern,
And bathed me in the headiest wine.
Such anguish filled Alexis that he felt like braining himself against the wall.
Suddenly some one crept up to him in the dark and, throwing a fur-lined coat round his shoulder, fell on his knees before Alexis and began to kiss his hands like some affectionate dog; it was an old soldier of the Preobrazhensky regiment, who happened to be on the same watch—a secret Raskolnik.