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

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The flies seemed quite to distract him. A hot slanting ray of the red setting sun, coming through the window, just caught his eyes.

At last he altered the position of his arm-chair, turned his back to the window, and fixed his eyes on the stove. It was a huge stove, built of Russian glazed tiles imitated from the Dutch, clamped together at the corners with brass. It was decorated with carved pillars, flowered recesses, and sockets. Various curious animals, birds, human beings, and plants were represented on a white ground in thick red, green, and dark violet colours; under each design there was an inscription in Slavonic characters. The colours glowed with unusual brightness in the glare of the setting sun, and for the hundredth time Alexis looked at these designs with drowsy curiosity and read over the inscriptions: under a man with a musical instrument the legend: “I make melody;” under a man sitting in an arm-chair with a book, “Improving the mind;” under a full blown tulip the words: “My scent is sweet;” under an old man kneeling before a beauty the words: “No love for an old man!” under a couple sitting under a tree the words: “Taking good counsel together;” a birch elf, French comedians, a Japanese priest, the goddess Diana and the legendary bird Malkothea.