The two men, the Czar in his workman’s apparel and Patkul in the splendid uniform of a Russian soldier, entered the little house called Marli.
In the room on the ground floor a meal was laid, roughly, yet many of the articles were of carved gold and beaten silver.
By the window where the late lilacs hung their blossoms from their thicket of close-packed leaves against the casement, Patkul saw his country-woman, now no longer Marpha, but baptized into the Orthodox Church by the name of Katherina.
She wore a handsome Russian dress of green velvet and orange-colored silk, both embroidered with gold; a long white gauze veil with a pearl edging hung from her stiff satin head-dress.
She was seated in a clumsy attitude, eating sweetmeats; neither her hands nor her face were clean, and already prosperity, idleness, and good-living were coarsening and spoiling her opulent beauty.
Patkul, looking at her, marveled at Peter; he was used to the refined loveliness of women like Aurora von Königsmarck, and to a court where women such as the Livonian would not have been tolerated as chambermaids.
Prince Mentchikoff entered, very splendid in European clothes, with a great curling peruke and a star on his breast, and looking very much like a courtier of King Louis.
Peter eyed him with satisfaction.
“My Lord Carmarthen had such a coat as that,” he said, fingering the skirts of heavy gray silk. “Do you remember, Danilovitch, what a fine gentleman he was? I should like to see him again—and his boat—that was a fine boat, Danilovitch.”
“When the war is over we will go again to England,” replied Mentchikoff. “They are the most sensible people in the world, and live in the most comfortable fashion.”