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

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“Is he not simply an impostor?” surmised the Tsarevitch, looking steadily at him. There was nothing deceitful or sly in this face, but rather something artless and helpless, sombre and stubborn, as with people who are possessed by an idée fixe.

“There was yet another reason for my coming here,” added the old man, and then stopped short, unable to continue; the idée fixe was slowly working its way through his hard features. He cast down his eyes, fumbled with one hand in his breast pocket, pulled out some papers, which had apparently slipped into the lining through the pocket-hole, and gave them to the Tsarevitch.

They consisted of two thin, greasy, quarto booklets, filled with the large legible handwriting of a clerk.

Alexis began to read them carelessly, but gradually became more and more absorbed.

At the beginning came passages from the Holy Fathers, the prophets, and the Apocalypse, with reference to Antichrist and the end of the world. Then followed an appeal to the chief clergy of great Russia, and of the world, together with a prayer that they would forgive him, Dokoukin, his impudence and rudeness for thus writing this without their fatherly blessing, prompted as he had been solely by much suffering, sorrow and zeal for the Church, and with a further prayer that they would also intercede on his behalf with the Tsar and entreat him to show mercy unto himself, and vouchsafe him a hearing. Then followed what was evidently Dokoukin’s main idea, “God has ordained man to be master of himself (to exercise self-will, to be autonomous,)” and at the end came an accusation against the Tsar Peter: