“This is a more difficult task than punishing the Strelitz or subduing the Cossacks,” he said, with glittering eyes. “Surely it is more pleasure, Danilovitch, to overthrow free men than to put one’s feet on the neck of serfs.”
“The Cossacks will join Karl,” remarked Mentchikoff, kindling eagerly at the Czar’s fire.
“To-morrow we return to Moscow,” said Peter, and his face was as fierce as it had been in the days after his return from his travels, when the streets of the capital had run red with the blood of the old Moscovite army, which had revolted against his foreign reforms.
He pushed back his tangled hair with his wine-stained hand.
“Send for that Livonian woman,” he said, “she amuses me.”
Peter held his councils in the Kremlin surrounded by the pomp of the old world and the new; the reforms that he had introduced with so fierce and imperious a violence had not as yet greatly affected the nation, but the nobility who came directly under the influence of the Czar had been largely forced to adopt European ways, much as they might hate them and the men like Gordon and Lefort, who, mainly because they were foreigners, had so great an influence over Peter; these were both lately dead, but their inspiration remained. The Czar gathered his boyars together in the Golden Hall of the Sign Manual where his predecessors had sat on a silver throne under the gilded vaults, clad in robes stiff and blinding with jewels, and holding a rich orb as symbol of the universe they commanded; there Peter himself had sat in splendid pomp as a child with his idiot brother enthroned beside him. Peter was not magnificent to-day; in his plain green uniform and short hair he looked like a European foot soldier and utterly out of place in this great hall hung with scarlet, carpeted with Eastern tapestries, and decorated with jasper and silver, malachite and lacquer. The silver throne stood on a dais under a crimson canopy, and on the steps of it sat Peter, his hands clasped round his knees. The boyars had gone with their breastplates and caftans, robes, and caps, and there remained only the Duke of Croy, the German who commanded the army, and Mentchikoff.
All these were in the habit of Europe, Mentchikoff gorgeous in laced coat, star, cravat, and a flowing French peruke which heavily framed his long, harsh face.