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

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He sighed with relief on entering the light, airy corner room where his Aunt Marya Alexeyevna was expecting him. The windows looked out upon the blue sunny space of the Neva with its vessels and barges. The walls were bare and the logs of which they were built showed as in a village hut. The sole ornaments were the icons and the lamps which glimmered before them. Wooden seats ran along the walls. His aunt rose from the table at which she was sitting, and tenderly embraced the Tsarevitch. She was dressed after the old fashion in a head-dress and a jerkin of dark, quiet colour with brown spots. Her face was ugly, pale, slightly bloated, like that of an old nun. Yet in the ill-tempered lips, the clever, sharp, piercing eyes, there was something which suggested the Tsarevna Sophia—the evil brood of the Miloslavskis. Like Sophia, she too hated her brother and all he did; she loved the old times. Peter had spared her; he called her “old crow,” because she was always cawing evil to him.

Maria gave Alexis a letter from his mother. It was an answer to the son’s recent note, all too short and laconic: “Mother, farewell! Please do not forget me in your prayers.” Alexis’ heart throbbed, as he began to decipher the lines of the familiar writing, scrawled in awkward, childish characters.