Peter was no less fond of Peterhof than he was of his “Paradise.” He went
there each summer, and personally supervised the laying out of pleasure
gardens, vegetable beds, ornamental cascades of fountains. He ordered
that one cascade was to be broken and rough with foam, another, on the
contrary, was to fall with a surface smooth as glass; a pyramid of water
was to be designed by means of a series of small cascades. In front of
the one which formed the apex the legend of Hercules contending with the
seven-headed Hydra was to be represented; from the seven heads jets of
water were to shoot; while further down the car of Neptune was to appear,
drawn by four sea-horses which also gave forth sprays of water. Forming
the border of this central group were Tritons blowing their conchs from
which jets played in different directions. Designs were to be prepared
for the arrangement of each fountain and of the landscape which was to
surround it; and the latter were to resemble French and Roman gardens.
A pale May night lay over Peterhof. The sea was as calm as a mirror.
Against a green sky shot with pink mother-of-pearl hues, were outlined
the dark firs and the yellow walls of the palace. The dim windows,
like blind eyes, reflected the light of the coming dawn. In this light
everything looked pale and faded, the green of the grass and of the trees
was ashen grey, the flowers were as things dead, and all was still in
the empty gardens. The fountains slept. Only from the mossy banks of the
cascades, and from the porous stones, which formed the walls of grottos,
drops fell from time to time like tears.
A mist was rising, and in it gleamed like phantoms countless marble gods,
a complete Olympus of risen deities. Here on the very verge of the
world, near to the Hyperborean sea, in this pale night, which resembled
the twilight of Hades, the dim shadows of dead Hellas wore an aspect of
infinite sadness; as though, having risen they were dying a second death
from which there should be no awakening.
Overlooking the close-clipt garden close to the sea, stood a small Dutch
house, roofed with tiles, the Tsar’s palace Monplaisir. Here too all
was quiet and empty. One window only was lighted, and that by a single
candle, which was burning in the Tsar’s office.
At the writing table sat Peter and Alexis facing one another in the
double light of candle and dawn. Their faces, in harmony with all their
surroundings, were pale and spectre-like.
For the first time since his return to Petersburg the Tsar was
questioning his son. The Tsarevitch answered in a calm voice; he no
longer dreaded his father, but only felt weary and dejected.
“Who among the clergy or laity knew anything of your revolutionary
designs, and what words passed between you on this subject?”
“I know nothing beyond what I have already admitted,” replied Alexis, for
the hundredth time.
“Have you never said, ‘I spit upon them all, provided the mob are staunch
to me.’”
“Perhaps I did say that. I was drunk. I cannot remember everything. When
drunk I always speak without thought and with an absolutely unbridled
tongue; therefore it is quite possible that I spoke defiantly in company,
and gave vent to some such expression. You know yourself, Father, that a
drunken man is no longer a human being—— But what does it matter!”
He looked at his father with so strange a smile that the father felt a
shudder pass over him, as though a madman were sitting opposite to him.
Having searched among some papers, Peter pulled one out and showed it to
the Tsarevitch.
“Is this your handwriting?”
“It is.”
It was the rough draft of the letter which he had written in Naples to
the Prelates and Senators, beseeching them not to abandon him.
“Did you write this of your own free will?”
“No, I was forced to write it by Count Schönborn’s secretary, Kühl,
‘because,’ said he, ‘it is rumoured that you are dead: if you refuse to
write, the Emperor, in his turn, will refuse to keep you;’ and he did not
leave me until I had written it.”
Peter pointed with his finger to the following passage in the letter:—
“I beseech you _now_ not to abandon me _now_.” The word _now_ had been
repeated and both times had been crossed out.
“Why have you written ‘now’ and why have you drawn your pen through the
word?”
“I can no longer remember,” answered Alexis, growing yet more pale.
He knew that this crossed out _now_ was the sole key to his most secret
thoughts with regard to the rebellion, his father’s death, and his
possible murder.
“Has this been really written under pressure?”
“Yes, certainly.”
Peter rose, went into the next room, called an orderly, gave him some
order, then returned to his table and began to write down his son’s
depositions.
Footsteps were heard outside the door. It opened, and Alexis gave a
feeble cry as though he were about to faint: on the threshold stood
Afrossinia.
He had not seen her since he left Naples. No longer with child, she had
probably been delivered in the fortress where, as James Dolgorúki had
told him, she had been incarcerated on her arrival in Petersburg. “Where
is the child?” thought the Tsarevitch. He trembled from head to foot. His
first impulse was to rush towards her, but his father’s steadfast gaze
checked him, and he remained rooted to the spot. Only his eyes sought to
meet hers, but she seemed unconscious of his presence.
Peter addressed her in a kind voice:—
“Is it true, Afrossinia, as the Tsarevitch tells me, that he was
compelled by the Emperor to write this letter to the Bishops and
Senators?”
“It is false,” she replied, in a calm voice; “no stranger was present, I
alone was in the room with the Tsarevitch at the time. He told me he was
writing some letters which were to be distributed secretly in Petersburg,
while others were to be sent to the Bishops and Senates.”
“Afrossinia! Afrossinia! What are you saying!” stammered Alexis in terror.
“She knows nothing, she has forgotten, or mixed it all up,” said he to
his father, with that strange sinister smile of his. “I was then sending
to the Viceroy’s secretary the plan of the Belgorod attack, and not this
letter.”
“This very same, Tsarevitch; you wrote and sealed it in my presence. Have
you forgotten! I saw it,” she continued in the same calm tone. Then all
at once she darted at him that very glance with which she had confronted
him, when, three years ago, in Viasemski’s house with a knife in his hand
and drunk, he had threatened her with violence.
This look told him that she had betrayed him.
“My son,” said Peter, “you yourself must see that this is a matter of
grave importance. If these letters were written of your own free will, it
is clear that your projects for revolutionary measures were not vague and
undefined, but that you counted on being able to put them into execution.
In the avowals which you have made you have passed over this fact not
through forgetfulness, but of set purpose, in order that you might
continue to work for the realization of your schemes. However, I do not
wish to bear an uneasy conscience and to accept accusations without full
enquiry. For the last time I ask you, Did you write it of your own free
will?”
The Tsarevitch remained silent.
“I regret the necessity, Afrossinia,” said Peter, “I cannot help it, but
you must be handed over to official interrogation.”
Alexis glanced at his father, and then at Afrossinia, and fully realized
that if he persisted in maintaining silence she would be delivered up to
torture.
“I confess it,” he said in a voice scarcely audible, but the next moment
all his fear departed and he felt quite indifferent to all things.
Peter’s eyes flashed with undisguised joy.
“For what purpose did you write the word ‘now?’”
“In order that the people might take my side, in the belief that the
reports of military risings in Mecklenburg were true. And then thinking
that this was wrong I crossed out the word.”
“Which means that you rejoiced to hear of these risings?”
The Tsarevitch did not reply.
“And if you were glad,” continued Peter, as though he had heard an
answer, “you intended to join the revolutionists?”
“If they had sent for me I would have joined them. I expected a summons
after your death, because——”
He stopped, grew yet more pale, and finished with obvious difficulty:—
“Because they wished to assassinate you, but I did not think that there
was any design for depriving you of the empire during your lifetime.”
“But if there had been such a design?” asked Peter quietly, with a side
glance at his son.
“If I had had the people with me in sufficient force, even during your
lifetime I should have laid claim to the empire,” answered Alexis in the
same low tone.
“Declare all you know,” ordered Peter, turning to Afrossinia.
“The Tsarevitch has always ardently desired to rule,” she began, in a
quick decisive tone as though repeating something which she had learnt
by heart. “He ran away because your Majesty was supposed to be trying to
kill him by some means or other. When he learnt that your youngest son,
the Tsarevitch Peter Petrovitch, was ill, he said, to me: ‘You see my
father takes his own course, while God wills another.’ He also counted
upon the Senators: ‘I will turn out all the old ones and replace them
by new ones, of my own choice! And whenever he heard tell of prophetic
visions, or read in the journals that all was quiet in Petersburg, he
used to say that these visions and this tranquillity were significant:
‘Either my father will die, or a rebellion will break out——’.” She
continued to speak for some length of time; she repeated expressions of
his which he no longer remembered to have used, and she laid bare his
innermost thoughts, thoughts which he had not even dared to confess to
himself. “When Tolstoi arrived in Naples, the Tsarevitch wished to give
up the Emperor and place himself under the protection of the Pope. It was
I who kept him back from doing so,” concluded Afrossinia.
“Is all this true?” Peter asked his son.
“It is,” answered the Tsarevitch.
“You may go now, Afrossinia. Thank you!”
The Tsar gave her his hand: she kissed it, and turned away to leave the
room.
“Afrossinia! Afrossinia!” stammered the Tsarevitch, with a convulsive
movement of his whole body towards her, and as if unconscious of what he
was saying “Farewell, Afrossinia! Perhaps we shall never meet again. The
Lord be with you!”
She neither answered nor gave him a look.
“Why do you treat me like this?” he added in a very low tone. There was
no reproach in his voice, only infinite astonishment. He buried his face
in his hands, and heard the door close behind her.
Peter made a pretence of reading some papers, but he glanced furtively
from time to time at his son. He seemed slightly moved and expectant.
It was the calmest hour of the night, and the calm seemed all the more
intense, for it was as light as day.
Suddenly the Tsarevitch removed his hands from his face, and the
expression upon it was dreadful.
“Where is the child? Where has it been taken to?” he demanded, fixing a
feverish gaze upon his father. “What has happened to it?”
“What child?” asked Peter, not understanding him all at once.
The Tsarevitch pointed to the door through which Afrossinia had
disappeared.
“It is dead,” answered Peter, avoiding his son’s glance. “It never lived.”
“That is a lie,” exclaimed Alexis, raising his fists as though
threatening his father. “It has been killed! Strangled, or else drowned
like a whelp! Why has this been done to him, innocent babe as he was?—It
was a boy?”
“Yes.”
“If God had granted to me to rule over this country,” continued Alexis
thoughtfully, as though speaking to himself, “I would have made him my
heir—— I meant to call him Ivan—Tsar Ivan Alexeyevitch. The body—where is
it? What has been done with it—— Speak!”
Peter remained silent.
Alexis clutched his head with his hands; his face became convulsed and
purple. He remembered the Tsar’s custom of laying stillborn children in
spirits of wine, and preserving them along with other curiosities in his
museum.
“You have sealed him up in a glass jar, a glass jar with spirits of
wine!—— The heir of the Tsars of Russia swimming in spirits of wine, like
a frog!” He burst out into such wild laughter that Peter shuddered all
over. “A madman,” he again thought, and he felt that intense loathing
for his son which the sight of spiders, cockroaches and reptiles always
roused in him.
But this feeling soon gave place to the blindest rage. His son was
holding him in derision, and was purposely playing the madman so as to
escape any further inquiry into his past deeds.
“What else have you to confess?” he asked; thus renewing the
interrogation without deigning to notice the condition of Alexis.
The laughter of the latter ceased as suddenly as it had burst forth. He
threw back his head until it rested on the back of the arm-chair, and
turned pale as death. He remained silent, but his blank gaze was fastened
upon his father.
“If you were reckoning upon the support of the people,” continued Peter,
raising his voice and forcing himself to appear calm, “did you not send
envoys to prepare them for the rising? or perhaps you had learnt that
they were already prepared?”
Alexis remained silent.
“Speak!” cried Peter, and his face became convulsed with rage.
The face of Alexis quivered. He opened his lips with difficulty, and
said:—
“I have told you everything. I shall say no more.”
Peter struck the table with his fist and bounded to his feet:—
“How dare you?”
The Tsarevitch too had risen and was looking steadfastly at his father.
There was a strange and momentary resemblance between these two faces.
“Why use threats, Father?” said Alexis in a low voice. “I am not afraid
of you. I fear nothing. You have taken everything from me; you have
destroyed everything in me, body and soul. Nothing else remains. You can
kill me. Do so. I am quite indifferent.”
His lips moved with a slight smile, in which Peter read only supreme
contempt. His fury burst all bounds, and roaring like a wounded beast, he
threw himself upon his son, seized him by the throat, and, hurling him to
the ground, began to kick him and to beat him with his stick, giving vent
the while to the same inhuman roar.
In the palace, people woke in terror from their sleep, and hurried to the
quarter whence these sounds came. But no one dared to enter the room of
the Tsar. With blanched face, each one crossed himself as he approached
the door and heard that sinister sound: there behind the closed door a
wild beast might be tearing in pieces a human being.
The Tsaritsa was sleeping on an upper story of the palace; she was
hastily roused by attendants and came down half dressed: but she no more
than the rest could summon sufficient courage to enter. Only when silence
at length reigned in the room did she half open the door, look within,
and glide on tiptoe behind her husband.
The Tsarevitch lay on the floor in a dead faint. The Tsar had sunk back
into a chair, almost in a state of unconsciousness himself.
The Court physician, Blumentrost, was sent for. He reassured Catherine,
who feared that the Tsar had killed his son. The Tsarevitch had been
sorely beaten, but no serious wounds nor fractures were discovered. He
soon regained consciousness and seemed calm.
The Tsar was in a worse condition than his son. When he had been brought,
almost carried, into his bedchamber, he was seized with such violent
convulsions that Blumentrost feared paralysis.
In the morning he felt better. Towards evening he got up, and
notwithstanding Catherine’s entreaties and the physician’s advice he
ordered a boat and went to Petersburg. The Tsarevitch followed in a
closed boat at the same time.
The next day, on May 14, a second manifesto concerning the Tsarevitch was
published, in which it was declared that the Tsar had promised to grant
his son a pardon on the understanding that he sincerely repented and made
a full confession of his misdeeds; but since Alexis, in contempt of this
proffered favour, had concealed his plot for making himself master of the
empire with the aid of foreigners or Russian revolutionists, the pardon
thus offered was hereby annulled and cancelled.
On the same day it was decided that the Tsarevitch should be tried in the
High Court as a traitor to the state.
A month later, on June 14, he was conducted to the fortress of Peter and
Paul, and lodged as a prisoner in the Troubetzkoi wing of it.