CHAPTER V
Peter was a light sleeper. Walking or driving past the palace at night was forbidden. As it was impossible to avoid all noise in the house during the day he slept on his yacht.
To-day when he lay down, he felt wretchedly tired. Possibly he had got up too early and worn himself out at the Dockyards. He yawned, stretched himself, closed his eyes, and was already beginning to fall asleep, when he started as if from sudden pain. It was the thought of his son Alexis. It never quite left him; but when he was quiet and by himself it began to assert itself with renewed vigour like a probed wound.
He tried to sleep, yet sleep would not come. Thoughts surged through his brain.
He had received a few days ago Tolstoi’s letter informing him that Alexis would on no consideration return. Would he really be driven to go to Italy himself, and begin a war with the Emperor and England, perhaps with the whole of Europe, now when he ought to be thinking of nothing save the termination of the war with Sweden and the establishment of peace? Why should the Lord punish him with such a son?
“Oh, heart of Absalom! who hatest all thy father’s work and wishest thine own father’s death,” he moaned pressing his head against his hands.
He remembered how his son had described him before the Emperor and the whole world as a malefactor, a tyrant, an atheist. How his son’s friends, the long-bearded priests and monks, called him Peter the Antichrist.
“Fools!” he thought with calm contempt. How could he have accomplished all he had without God’s help? And how could he help believing in God when God had always been with him, from his youngest days until this hour? Questioning his conscience as if he were his own confessor, he recalled his life.