The courier Saphnov brought this letter to Roshdestveno, where Alexis had returned on leaving Moscow. The Tsarevitch sent his father word that he was coming to him at once, but in reality decided nothing. To him the two alternatives, either to become a monk or to prepare himself for the duties of the throne, were but a double trap. To become a monk with the idea that the hood was not “nailed to the head” would mean to lose his soul before God by a false vow. And as to fitting himself for the duties of a future monarch in the sense his father demanded, it was like asking him to enter his mother’s womb and be born anew.
The letter neither frightened nor grieved Alexis. It found him in that senseless, listless torpor which had of late repeatedly laid hold of him. When in that condition he spoke and did everything as in a dream, never knowing a moment beforehand what he would say or do next. His heart was light and empty; whether from reckless cowardice or despairing insolence, it was difficult to say.
He went to Petersburg and put up at his house near the church dedicated to the Virgin of all the Sorrowing. He ordered his valet, Ivan Afanássieff, to pack what he needed for the journey like the last time he went abroad.
“Are you going to join your father?”
“I am going, the Lord knows best, either to him or somewhere else,” Alexis said drowsily.
“Tsarevitch! How somewhere else?” The valet was frightened, or else feigned to be so.
“I should like to see Venice,” began Alexis smiling, but in the next moment he added in a mournful voice, as if to himself, “I only do this to save myself. Yet, mind you keep silence. There is no one else besides you and Kikin who know anything about it.”
“I will keep your secret,” answered the old man in his usual gruff manner, though at this moment his eyes lit up with devotion. “Only we’ll have a rough time of it when you have left. Bethink yourself what you intend doing——”
“I did not expect any message from my father,” continued the Tsarevitch in the same drowsy tone, “and it never came to my mind; but now I see it is God who guides me. I dreamt last night that I was building churches, which means I have a journey to take——”
He yawned.