He was convinced that the third Rome, as Moscow was occasionally termed, was as far off the first, real Rome, as Petersburg was from the real Europe.
“At a time when Moscow was not even thought of,” declared Æsop, “there were many empires in the west older and greater than Moscow.”
The words with which he concluded a description of the Venetian Carnival remained in the Tsarevitch’s memory.
“Thus they all amuse themselves and think no evil of one another, neither do they fear anybody. Everyone does as best pleases him. And such freedom is always maintained in Venice, and the Venetians live in peace, without fear of insult, and without heavy taxation.”
The implication was clear; their life is very different from ours in Russia, where no one dares even so much as hint at freedom.
“In all European nations one course of action is especially commendable,” remarked Æsop one day, “and that is with regard to education. The children are not treated brutally either by parents or teachers; but with the help of kindly or else sharp rebuke alone, which have been found more effective than blows, they are brought up in the spirit of freedom and courage. And being aware of this, Moscow people would not send their children to be educated in foreign parts, afraid lest, once acquainted with the faith and customs and beneficent freedom of other countries, they should change their religion and neither desire nor think of returning home. They do send them nowadays, but what’s the good of it? For as the bird can’t live without air, knowledge can’t prosper without freedom; and with us they try to teach new things in the old way. The stick, though dumb, is still expected to impart knowledge.”
Thus both of them, the fugitive naval apprentice and the fugitive Tsarevitch, confusedly felt, that the Europeanism which Peter was introducing into Russia—calculation, navigation, fortifications—was not the whole of Europe, nor even European in its essential characteristic; the real Europe possessed a higher truth, not yet revealed to the Tsar. And without this truth, in spite of all knowledge, the old Moscow barbarism would only be supplanted by a new Petersburg vulgarity. To this blessed mysterious liberty it was that the Tsarevitch addressed himself in summoning Europe to judge between him and his father.
One day Æsop told the “history of the Russian sailor Basil Koriotsky and the beautiful Florentine Princess Irakli.”
To the listeners, and perhaps to the narrator himself, the meaning of the story was obscure and yet mysteriously suggestive. The marriage of a Russian sailor with a Princess of Florence—of the land where the Renaissance had its springtime, the most beautiful flower of European liberty—was a prophetic vision of the unknown, yet approaching, union of Russia with Europe.
The Tsarevitch in listening to the story thought of a picture his father had brought from Holland: the Tsar in a sailor suit embracing a buxom Dutch wench. Alexis could not help smiling at the thought that this red-faced girl was as remote from the Florentine Princess, “who was bright as the unveiled sun,” as new Russia was from what she ought to be.