“Have you ever had such pretty playthings?” he asked.
Marpha glanced at him without either greed or envy in her expression.
“I would rather have an ivory comb,” she said simply, and rose with the crowns in a half-circle at her feet.
“You shall have,” answered Peter tenderly, “as many ivory combs as there are hairs in your head.”
He crossed over to her and embraced her, resting his head, with a little sigh, on her bosom; she looked down at him calmly and with a certain indulgence.
“Marpha,” he asked, “will you come to the war with me?”
“Still thinking of the war?” she replied gaily. “Have you had your supper? Will you eat here with me instead of with your boyars to-night? I have the kvas ready.”
Peter lifted his head and looked at her; the atmosphere of the room was close and foul, the air full of flies and mosquitoes; both the room and the woman were dirty; her gown was soiled, her face and hands sticky with perspiration and sugar; the taint of brandy was in her breath, and her expressionless beauty was clouded by her slovenliness. But the Czar saw none of these things; he felt as happy as he had ever felt in his life as he flung himself into one of the camp chairs, and she hastened to bring him his drink; the native spirit and fine French wine in equal parts.
He drank this, glass after glass, as the woman went into the inner room and prepared the rude supper, singing in a sweet voice and thinking of nothing much but the good, plentiful food and the fine, plentiful drink and the gay dresses and lazy days now within her reach.
And Peter, as he became inflamed with the spirit, imagined himself crushing the Swedes as he had crushed the rebellious Strelitz, and he nodded at the pale-faced ikon between the scarlet pillars, promising it an egg-shaped emerald when he should have taken Narva.