Читать книгу Peter and Alexis. The Romance of Peter the Great онлайн

111 страница из 156

She imagined herself to be living in the Moscow Kremlin, in the old Terems, and that looking through the window, she would see the high Ivan Tower and the Church of the Annunciation. Yet she never did look out of her window, afraid to dispel her dream, afraid of the daylight. Continual darkness reigned in her apartments; the windows were draped. She lived by candle-light. The curtains and screens of ancient tradition hid the last Russian Tsaritsa from the people’s sight. The solemn, pompous ceremony of a Tsar’s Court was strictly observed here. The servants were not allowed to enter further than the hall. Here time stood still, here nothing had changed since the days of the gentle Tsar Alexis. Her crazy mind was possessed of one idea: she believed her husband, the Tsar Fédor, was alive; that he was now at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem praying for Russia, which was being invaded by Antichrist, accompanied by countless armies of Poles and pagan foreigners. There is, she thinks, no Tsar in Russia; he, who calls himself Tsar, not being the true one. He is a pretender, a were-wolf, a Gregory Otriópieff, a runaway artillery man, an alien. But the Lord has not finally forsaken his faithful Orthodox. At the consummation of time, he, Fédor, the only true Tsar of Russia, “the fair sun,” will return with a terrible luminous host, and the foreign troops will flee before him as night fleeth; he will sit with his Tsaritsa on the ancestral throne and re-establish truth and justice. All the people will come and bow before him, and Antichrist, together with all his foreigners, will be overthrown. Soon thereafter will be the second coming of Christ, the end of the world. All this is drawing nigh, is at the door.