“It is impossible to sail against the wind.”
“Old man! You are always whining,” retorted the Tsar, shrugging his shoulders in vexation; “what do you want? Out with it!”
Stephen looked at the Tsar and seemed to shrink within himself. His whole bearing expressed humility, without a shade of the rebellious spirit. He began to speak in a hurried eager voice, as though afraid the Tsar would not hear all he had to say:—
“Most gracious Sovereign! Give me leave to retire in peace and quietness! My services are known to God, partly also to your Majesty, and I have spent on them my strength, my health, and I might say my life. My eyesight is growing dim, my limbs weak; gout has wrung my fingers, and I suffer from other maladies. Your Majesty’s favour and fatherly protection have hitherto sustained me in the hours of trial, and thereby all sorrow seemed to lose its bitterness. Yet now I see your face turned away from me, and your graciousness is withdrawn. Sire, whence comes this change?”
Peter had long before this ceased to listen to him. He was absorbed in the performance of the princess-abbess Rjévskaya, who kept bending almost to her knees and then darting forward one foot after the other to the accompaniment of many drunken voices:—
Come beat a livelier strain!
Blow loudly now my pipe!
“Give me leave to retire to the Donskoi monastery or wherever your Majesty chooses to permit,” continued Stephen in a plaintive tone, “and should you have doubts as to my motives, I pray that God’s means of grace may serve only for my undoing, if I harbour any evil designs. Whether it be at Petersburg, at Moscow, or at Riazan, I shall still remain in your sovereign power, from which I should neither be able to escape, nor have cause for desiring to do so.”
Meanwhile the singing continued in full swing:—
Come beat a livelier strain!