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There was silence for some moments. The last words referred to the Delicate topic of Alexis, Peter’s son by his first marriage, who was now a prisoner awaiting his death-sentence in the Peter-Paul Fortress. He was accused of having endeavoured to hinder his father’s work in the civilisation of Russia, and was suspected of having taken part in plots of rebellion. The Czar’s first divorced wife Eudoxia was confined in the convent of Suzdal.

Katharina naturally did not love Alexis, since he stood in the way of her children, and she would have been glad of his death, but did not wish to incur the guilt of it. Since Peter also did not wish to take the responsibility for it, he had appointed a court of a hundred and twenty-seven persons to try his son.

The topic therefore was an unwelcome one, and, with his extraordinary facility for quick changes of thought and feeling, Peter broke the silence with the prosaic question, “Where is the brandy?”

“You will get no brandy so early, my boy.”

“Kathrina!” said Peter in a peculiar tone, while his face began to twitch.

“Be quiet, Lion!” answered his wife, and stroked his black mane, which had begun to bristle. She took a bottle and a glass out of a basket.

The Lion cheered up, swallowed the strong drink, smiled, and stroked his spouse’s expansive bust.

“Will you see the children?” asked Katherine, in order to bring him into a milder mood.

“No, not to-day! Yesterday I beat them, and they would think I was running after them. Keep them at a distance. Keep them under, or they will get the better of you!”

Katherine had taken the last letter, as though absent-mindedly, and began to read it. Then she coloured, and tore it in two. “You must not write to actresses. That is too great an honour for them, and can only disgrace us.”

The Czar smiled, and was not angry. He had not intended to send the letter, but only scribbled it in order to excite his wife, perhaps also to show off.

There was a sound of approaching footsteps underneath.

“See! there is my friend, the scoundrel!”

“Hush!” said Katherine, “Menshikoff is your friend.”

“A fine friend! Already once I have condemned him to death as a thief and deceiver; but he lives still, thanks to your friendship.”

“Hush!”

Menshikoff (he was a great soldier, an able statesman, an indispensable favourite, enormously rich) came hurrying up the wooden stairs. It was in his house that the Czar had found his Katherine. He was handsome, looked like a Frenchman, dressed well, and had polished manners. He greeted the Czar ceremoniously, and kissed Katherine’s hand.

“Now they are there again,” he commenced.

“The Strelitzil? [Footnote: a Russian body-guard first established by Ivan the Terrible.] Have I not rooted them out?”

They grow like the dragon’s seed, and now they want to deliver Alexis.”

“Have you any more exact information?”

“The conspirators meet this evening at five o’clock.”

“Where?”

“Number fourteen the Strandlinje, at an apparently harmless meal.”

“Strand–14,” wrote the Czar on his tablets. “Any more?”

“To-night at two o’clock they fire the city.”

“At two o’clock?” The Czar shook his head, and his face twitched.

“I build up, and they pull down. But now I will extirpate them root and branch. What do they say?”

“They look back to Holy Moscow, and regard the building of Petersburg as a piece of godlessness or malice. The workmen die, like flies, of marsh fever, and they regard your Majesty’s building in the midst of a marsh as an act of bravado a la Louis Quatorze, who built Versailles on the site of a swamp.”

“Asses! My town is to command the mouth of the river, and to be the Key to the sea, therefore it must be there. The marsh shall be drained off into canals, which will carry boats like those of Amsterdam. But so it is when monkeys judge!”

He rang; a servant appeared; “Put the horses to the cabriolet”; he called down, “and now, goodbye, Katherine; I shall not be home till to-morrow. It will be a hot day. But don’t forget the letters. Alexander can help you.”