“Sweden blocks me,” said Peter to Mentchikoff. “He must go, or all we have done is in vain. He stops my progress, Danilovitch; he wants to pull down, I to build. What am I to do—it seems that he is invincible.”
He spoke without malice or hate now, only with a sadness that was wistful in its sincerity.
“And Patkul!” he added. “Patkul will be broken, Danilovitch.”
“I would we could break Augustus,” said the Prince.
“With my own hands,” remarked the Czar, “I would put him to the torture. That little thing came from Dresden to ask me to save Patkul—and I can do nothing!”
It was the bitterest mortification to which he had ever been subject in a life full of vicissitudes; Mentchikoff knew it and scowled; he could not endure to glance at the cruel position in which his adored master found himself; his own whole being was absorbed in a deep hatred of Augustus and the Swede.
But he had a greater faith in Peter than Peter had himself; the Czar might be torn with doubts and fears, but the subject was certain of the ultimate downfall of the Swede.
Peter, with an effort, it seemed, to shake off the gloom that was settling on him, asked Mentchikoff for a certain Pole who had been employed as a spy in the camp at Altranstadt, and who had lately returned to Lithuania.
“I would like to see him,” said the Czar somberly.
“But he knows nothing,” replied Mentchikoff; “nothing—I have already examined him.”