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

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He started up as if really intending to act upon his impulse—to do something irrevocable; as he stood there, indecisive, his heart sank with foreboding.

The slow melodious brass chime of the clock rang out through the stillness. It struck nine. When the last stroke had died away, the door was gently pushed open, and a head peered into the room; it was his valet, the aged Ivan Afanássieff.

“It is time to be going. Would you not like to get ready?” He muttered it in his usual grumpy voice, as if he were chiding Alexis.

“No thank you, I am not going,” said Alexis.

“As you please. The order was for everyone to be present; your father will again be wrathful.”

“Go, go.” Alexis was going to turn him out of the room, when looking at this ruffled, unkempt, unshaven, unwashed, sleepy face, he suddenly remembered, that it was this man he had pulled by the hair on the previous night.

Alexis fixed on him a long perplexed gaze, as if he had only at this moment fully awakened.

From the window the last ray of sunlight had died away; immediately the room lost all its brightness, and grew dreary; it seemed as if some monstrous grey cobweb, which up to that moment had been lurking in the dirty ceiling, was now gradually descending, filling the space with a dense net of dinginess.