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

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No one, however, paid any attention to this; all were occupied by a new spectacle. In clouds of smoke, illumined by a rainbow of Bengal lights, there appeared a huge monster, neither horse nor dragon; with pointed wings and fins, and its tail covered with scales, it came swimming along the Neva from the fortress towards the Summer Garden, towed by a flotilla of rowing boats. In a gigantic shell on the monster’s back, sat Neptune, with a long white beard and a harpoon at his feet—sirens and tritons blowing trumpets: “The tritons of the Northern Neptune sound the fame of Russia’s Tsar wherever they go,” explained one of the onlookers, the chaplain of the fleet, Gabriel Boushínsky. The monster was dragging after it six pair of empty barrels tightly bunged, with the cardinals of the “most Foolish Conclave” sitting astride, one on each barrel, securely strapped so as to prevent their falling into the water; they swam in this procession, pair after pair, loudly blowing their cow horns. After this followed a raft made up entirely of such barrels; it carried a huge tub filled with beer on which the Kniaz-Pope, prelate of Bacchus, floated in a wooden ladle as in a boat; Bacchus himself sat on the edge of the tub. Accompanied by strains of solemn music, this huge water machine slowly approached the Summer Garden, stopped at the Central Pavilion, where the gods landed.