“He maintains a prudent silence, sire, and respects the treaty he dare not break.”
“A couple of dogs, of spiritless dogs!” said Peter fiercely. “But I, my friend, do not need either of them. The issue lies between Sweden and me.”
He paused, and fixed his dark powerful glance on the slight, energetic figure and resolute face of his general.
“Do you think,” he asked, in a quieter tone, “that this man’s work is to be compared to mine? I construct—he destroys. Is it easier to knock down a house with cannon or to build it up, carefully, brick by brick, with your own proper hands? And which is the more useful to mankind? I make Russia and Karl destroys Sweden.”
“But these conquests will enrich—as did those of the great Gustavus.”
“Nay, he does not fight for trade, for liberty, for the advancement of his people—for forts or markets, but for the empty fame of armies; he drains Sweden of men and money—to the point of exhaustion—for what? That he may make Europe stare at barren conquests.”
Peter, roused, as was his capricious manner, suddenly from a gloomy indifference to a deep enthusiasm—from melancholia, almost despair, to firm self-reliance and confidence—spoke with a power and a force that encouraged as it impressed Patkul, who hailed the man of genius and the great ruler in this young man in the peasant’s blouse who paced amid the litter of a workman’s shed; would to God, he thought, the Czar could always have his faith in himself, this clear outlook, this patience and calm judgment.
“All these lands will belong to Holy Russia,” continued the Czar. “Aye, and Poland too; his glory shall vanish, leaving but a name for children’s tales. I shall leave a power that will fight the world.”
He smiled, mournfully, almost tenderly, at Patkul.
“Are you dismayed at the progress of this Swede?” he asked, “and at my inaction? Do you think I show poorly beside his glory?”