“Alexis.”
Book VII
PETER THE GREAT
CHAPTER I
Peter had got up early. “The very devils haven’t had time to snore,” grumbled the sleepy orderly who had to light the stoves. A gloomy November morning was looking in through the window. By the light of a tallow candle end, in a night cap, dressing gown, and craftsman’s leather apron, the Tsar was sitting at his lathe turning a candelabrum of ivory for the Church of St. Peter and Paul, in gratitude for the benefit he had derived from the Martial water during his illness. Then he started carving out of birch-wood a little Bacchus with grapes for the lid of a goblet. He worked with as much zeal as if his livelihood depended upon it.
At 4.30 a.m. in came his private secretary, Makaroff. The Tsar took his place at a walnut-wood desk—so high that the chin of a man of medium height was but level with it, and began to dictate decrees to the different Colleges or Departments, which were being established in Russia on the advice of Leibnitz, “following the example and precedent of other civilised Empires.”
“As in a clock, one wheel sets the other in motion,” said the philosopher to the Tsar, “so in the great administrative machine one college ought to work another, and if everything is harmoniously organised in exact proportions, then the hands of the state clock will invariably point to happy hours for your whole country.”