Peter and Alexis
The Romance of Peter the Great
9781465637871
188 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Antichrist is coming. He, the last of devils, has not yet come himself; but the world is teeming with his progeny. The children are preparing the way for their father. They twist everything to suit the designs of Antichrist. He will appear in his own due time, when everywhere all is prepared and the way smoothed. He is already at the door. Soon will he enter!” Thus spake an old man of fifty, a clerk, judging by his clothes, to a young man, who, wrapped in a nankeen dressing gown, with slippers on his bare feet, was seated at a table. “And how do you know all this?” asked the young man. “Of that day it is written: Neither the Son, nor the angels know; but you seem to know.” He yawned, and then after a moment’s silence asked: “Do you belong to the heretics—the Raskolniks?” “No, I am an Orthodox.” “Why did you come to Petersburg?” “I have been brought here from Moscow, together with my account books. An informer reported me for taking bribes.” “Did you take them?” “I did. I was not compelled to, neither did I do it for the sake of extortion, but in all fairness, and with a clean conscience, being satisfied with whatever was freely given me for the clerk-work I did.” He said it so simply that it was evident he did not consider bribe-taking necessarily a fault. “The informer could add nothing to the proof of my guilt, which was disclosed by the entries made in certain agents’ books, showing that they had for years been wont to give me trifling sums, amounting in all to two hundred and fifteen roubles; and I have nothing wherewith to repay the sum. I am poor, old, sad, wretched, disabled, destitute; and unable any longer to do my work, I beg to be discharged of it. Most merciful Highness! open your bowels of compassion unto me, and protect a defenceless old man; cause me to be exempted from this unjust payment! Have mercy upon me, I beseech you, Tsarevitch Alexis Petrovitch!” Alexis had met this old man some months ago in Petersburg, at St. Simeon and St. Anne’s Church. Noticing him because of his unshaven, grizzled beard—so unusual for clerks—and his zealous reading of the Psalms in the choir, the Tsarevitch had asked him his name, position, and whence he came. The old man had introduced himself, as a clerk of the Moscow Arsenal, Larion Dokoukin by name. He had come from Moscow and was now staying in the house belonging to the woman who made the consecrated bread at St. Simeon’s; he had mentioned his poverty, the informer’s disclosure, and also, almost in his first words, had referred to Antichrist. The Tsarevitch had been touched by the pitiable condition of the old man and told him to come to his house, promising to help him with money and advice. Now that he stood before him in his torn coat he looked the very image of a beggar. He was one of those poor ordinary clerks, nicknamed in Russia “inky souls,” “pettifoggers.” Hard were his wrinkles as though fossilized, hard the cold look in the small dim eyes, hard his neglected grizzled beard, his face colourless and dull as the papers which he had been copying and had pored over may be for thirty years in his office. He had accepted bribes from agents “in all fairness”; he may have even been guilty of roguery, and this was the conclusion he had suddenly arrived at: Antichrist is coming!
