Peter sighed, with a long shiver of relief; his very muscles seemed to relax; his was the panting satisfaction of one who is fevered, and, after much delay in heat and pain, finds a cup of cool fragrant water at his lips.
The air was of a keen freshness and ocean salt; it seemed to be wafted, pure and strong, from the distant shores of some dreamland beyond the verge of the pale confining sea; the perfect silence seemed charged with a sense of vitality, of the joy of life, of nature; the song of the hidden bird, that now and then sharply broke the stillness, was like a chant of calm triumph in the eternal majesty of nature’s solitudes and untouched places; there was now no melancholy in this loneliness; a tender magic filled the marvelous hour of the twilight and something more than mortal was abroad in the gathering dusk.
The young Czar felt his lassitude fall from him; new energy shot through him like a flame touching his heart; once again all seemed possible; the grandeur of his manhood, the splendor of his rulership, again became palpable things; the nightmares fled leaving a sane world about him; the Swede no longer seemed a thing to so greatly fear or envy.
He was Czar of All the Russias, and a strong man in his youth.
With a laugh he pressed his friend’s arm, and Mentchikoff laughed also, knowing his master cured for a while.
“Shall we trouble for that Northern boy, we who are Peter?” demanded the Czar, holding up his head and staring at the sea; he spoke thickly, for his tongue had swollen where he had bitten it, but the unhealthy pallor had left his face and his eyes had the calm of a healthy man.
“Come and have supper, now that your melancholy is over,” said Mentchikoff, in a happy voice, “and I will show you a gay creature who will make you glad.”
“Until it is dark I will stay under the trees,” replied Peter, “and I shall not drink to-night.”
When the last glow of the sun had faded, the air of desolation, of vast gray spaces isolated from the world, returned.
The nightingale had ceased to sing and there was no other living creature abroad; the swamps beyond the wood were devoid of life, the night sky had the lead-colored look of the North, and there was no moon; there was no sense of summer now that the moon was gone.