In future all pedants and schoolchildren will certainly know that Tsar Peter darned his own stockings, mended his boots for economy’s sake. But it is doubtful whether they will ever be acquainted with a fact told me lately by a Russian timber merchant.
He said that a huge amount of unused oak timber was lying near Lake Ládoga, covered over with sand and rotting disused. And meanwhile men are lashed and hung for the offence of cutting down and stealing oak. Human life and blood are cheaper than oak wood. I might add, cheaper than torn stockings.
“C’est un grand poseur”—some one had said about him. One ought to watch him kiss the Prince Caesar’s hand when he has broken some buffoon’s regulation,—“Forgive, sovereign, forgive! We rough sailors are not well versed in ceremony.”
One can hardly trust one’s eyes; it is impossible to distinguish where the Tsar ends and the fool begins.
He has surrounded himself with masks. The Tsar Carpenter! ’tis a masquerade after the Dutch fashion?
And is not this new Tsar in his simplesse, in his carpenter’s disguise, really further removed from the common people, than were the ancient Tsars of Muscovy in their cloth of gold?
“Nowadays life is very hard,” complained the same merchant to me, “nobody is allowed to say anything; the truth never reaches the Tsar. It used to be much simpler in the old days.” I once heard the chaplain Theodosius praise him to his face for the dissimulation which, it appears, political teachers are supposed to lay down as the first duty of sovereigns.
I do not judge him; I only repeat what I hear and see. All see the hero, few the man. And even if I gossip it will be forgiven me, for I am a woman. Some one has said: “This man is very good and very bad;” as for me, I must once more repeat: “I know not whether he is better or worse than other men, but it sometimes seems to me that he is not quite human.”
The Tsar is pious. He reads the Acts, and sings with as much confidence as the priests themselves, seeing he knows the lauds and liturgies by heart. He composes prayers for the soldiers.