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

94 страница из 156

At the age of sixteen, he was compelled, together with other children belonging to the nobility, to attend the school of “Mathematical, Nautical, that is Maritime, and cunning Arts.” The school was located in the Súkharev tower, where James Bruce was engaged on astronomical observations. The astronomer was considered to be a sorcerer and magician: a squinting woman, who sold soaked apples in a street close by, had seen Bruce one winter’s night flying from the tower straight to the moon, astride of a telescope. Nothing in this world would have induced Pahómitch to send the child to this cursed place, but the boys were taken there by force.

Minors,ssss1 who had been in hiding on their estates, some even married, babes of thirty or forty years of age, had been brought hither by compulsion, and now sat next to children on the same bench. They learnt from the same book, which had a picture representing a teacher beating with rods a schoolboy laid across a bench. Below ran the inscription, “Let every boy learn in quiet.” All the primers were well supplied with verses about the rod: