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

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A coffin of pinewood tree

Stands ready prepared for me;

Within its narrow wall

I’ll await the trumpet call.

This was the song of certain heretics, the raskolniks called—“The Coffin-liers.” “Seven thousand years after the creation of the world,” said they, “the second coming of Christ will take place; and should it not happen we will burn the Gospels themselves; as for the other books it is not worth believing them.” And they left their houses, lands, goods, and cattle, and every night went out into the fields and woods, put on clean shirts and shrouds, laid themselves in coffins hollowed out of tree trunks, and saying mass waited, expecting at every moment the trumpet call of the Judgment. Such was their idea of “meeting Christ.”

Opposite the headland formed by the Neva and the lesser Neva, in the widest part of the river, close to Gagarin’s hemp warehouse, among the rafts, barges, and cargo boats, stood the oak-rafts belonging to Tsarevitch Alexis. They had come from Nishigorod to Petersburg for the Admiralty dockyard.