Captain Skorniakoff-Pissareff and two sergeants led before the Tsar a small, frail old man.
The old man handed a paper to the Tsar; it was a printed copy of the oath of allegiance to the new heir.
At the bottom, on the space left for the signature, something was written in a compact, florid clerk’s handwriting.
Peter glanced at the paper, then at the old man and asked:
“Who are you?”
“Larion Dokoukin, late clerk in the arsenal.”
The Tsarevitch, who stood close by, at once recognised him; it was the same Dokoukin whom he had met at Petersburg in the spring of 1715 at St. Simon’s Church, and who had been to his house the day of the Venus Festival in the Summer Garden.
He had remained the same common clerk, one of those who are termed “inky souls,” pettifoggers, hard, fossilized, dull and colourless, like the papers over which he had pored in his office for thirty years, at the end of which he had been dismissed for accepting bribes. And in his eyes there gleamed, just as three years ago, his fixed idea.
Dokoukin in his turn glanced stealthily at Alexis. The expression which flitted across the man’s hard features, reminded the Tsarevitch of their interview; how Dokoukin had begged him “zealously to work for the Christian Faith,” how he had wept, embraced his knees and called him, “Russia’s hope.”
“Do you refuse to swear allegiance?” said Peter calmly, as if surprised.