"Your Majesty's life is in danger."
"Not for the first time. He who protected me yesterday will not fail me to-day. Be a Christian, and do not treat me like a child who lets himself be frightened by old women's tales. Remain at your post; I go to mine."
Araktseieff knew the Czar, and that opposition only made him more obstinate; so stood deferentially aside as the Czar strode past him.
The Czar passed, alone, down the long corridor hung with pictures of the battles he had fought. At the end of it a little negro groom stood waiting with a note, which he handed in silence. It was the Czarina's page, a birthday present to her of long ago. The Czar hurriedly broke open the note and ran it over, then looked down meditatively. Without a word he went back to his apartment and took off his cloak.
The note was from the Czarina: "I am afraid to be alone in the palace. Please do not leave me now!"
The words were a command; one which even the Ruler of All the Russias had no choice but to obey. His wife was afraid!
Now he is condemned to remain within the palace, like any imprisoned criminal.
For the first time for fourteen years his wife had made a request to him. How could he refuse it? Not only his sense of duty as emperor impelled him to repair to scenes of distress and danger, but also he was urged by that mysterious impulse from within, which ever drove him from one end of his empire to the other, leaving him no rest by night, until he would rise, get into his carriage, and drive from street to street. To stay in one place was torture to him. He had but returned this very week from a journey which led him as far as to the Kirghiz steppes. And now was he to sit idly at home? His wife had asked it. It is not much she asks. She does not beg him to come to her in her apartments, to stay with her, to cheer and comfort her; she only asks him to remain under the same roof.
Now he has leisure to pace from one end to the other of his room, to hearken to the pealing of bells, the roar of the wind, and the splash of the waves, whose surf dashes up to his windows. Suddenly he utters a cry—"Where are you, Sophie?" It is well that no one hears him, that he is alone. In spirit, he is in that solitary house, surrounded by the waves. His eyes search round the empty rooms where wind and weather sport unchecked, and, not finding her, he cries, "Sophie! where are you?" The vision he had called up was even more terrible than the awful reality of raging nature without. He could better bear to look upon that. Rushing to the balcony of the palace, he tore open the glass doors, and gazed down upon the ghastly devastation. The sight was awful indeed!
Wide as an ocean bay, the giant river was rolling back its waves upon Lake Ladoga. Ever and anon from out the misty distance loomed visions reflected in the surface of the madly rushing waters.