The day was fresh and sunny as in spring. The wind carried a scent of water and grass. Under the window, among the cracks of the prison wall, dandelions were flowering.
Alexis looked for a long while out of the window. Swallows darted past it with joyous twitter. The sky had never appeared to him so blue and deep as now, when viewed through the iron bars of the prison window.
Towards evening the sun caught the white wall at the head of the couch. Alexis imagined he saw the white-haired old man with the young face, the gentle smile, holding a chalice radiant as the sun.
He fell asleep with this vision; it was a long time since he had slept so peacefully.
On the morrow, Thursday, June 26, at eight in the morning, Ménshikoff, Tolstoi, Dolgorúki, Shafiroff, Apraksin and other ministers assembled in the torture chamber. The Tsarevitch was so weak, that he had to be carried from his cell.
Again he was questioned: “What more have you to say? Have you concealed anything, or kept any names back?” He did not reply.
He was raised upon the strappado. Nobody knew how many blows he received, nobody counted them.
After the first blows he suddenly grew quiet, neither groaned nor moaned; his body became rigid. He did not lose consciousness; his gaze remained bright, his face calm; yet there was something about him which terrified even those men so used to the sight of suffering.
“He must not be beaten any more, your Majesty,” whispered Blumentrost to the Tsar. “He may die of it. Besides, it is quite useless; he can feel nothing, he is in a state of catalepsy——”
“What?” asked the Tsar in astonishment.