This abuse of the law of nations passed without a murmur in Europe, so powerful was Sweden, as did also Karl’s demand that their ancient privileges be restored to the Protestants of Silesia.
Joseph humbled himself as Augustus had done, and the court of Vienna was as humble as that of Saxony.
“If the King of Sweden had asked me to turn Lutheran I should have been obliged to do it,” said the Austrian, in reply to the papal nuncio’s protests.
Peter heard these things with outbursts of fury, but continued to accept the German officers secretly sent him by the feeble Emperor.
He was in Lithuania, occupying his days with training and hardening his troops, endeavoring to rouse Europe to save Patkul, and watching the increasing splendor of his terrible enemy, when Hélène D’Einsiedel, who had made her way from Dresden amid incredible difficulties, forced her way into the Czar’s presence and besought him, in the accents of a creature distracted, to rescue her lover.
“I am helpless,” said Peter, with a dreadful look at the livid face of the wretched girl.
“He will be executed--in the most horrible way,” whispered Hélène. “We were to have been married this autumn.”
“Child,” said the Czar kindly, “I have done what I could. I do not need a woman to urge me to this duty.” He looked away from where she knelt, huddled on the dirty floor at his feet, in her dusty traveling dress, all grace and beauty crushed out of her. “I will break Sweden,” he added.
“What is that to me,” cried Hélène, “if Patkul dies?”
“Would it not be something,” asked Peter, “to have revenge?”
She appeared not to hear him; her distraught mind was concentrated on one thing only that was stronger than her fatigue or her despair--the effort to save Patkul.
“Cannot you, who are an Emperor, do this?” she implored.
“Take away this woman,” he said, “I cannot endure it.”
The shuddering creature staggered to her feet before the officers could touch her, and flung out her poor, feeble hands with a shriek.
“They will break him on the wheel!” she wailed. “Oh, let me die first!”
Peter had looked on many frantic women before, and heard similar words often enough. The wives, mothers and sisters of the Strelitz executed in the Red Square, many of them by Peter’s own hand, had comported themselves in similar fashion, mad with grief and horror, and he had given them never a glance, yet the anguish of this fond creature, who had traveled so far and through such perils that she was half-crazed with terror and fatigue, to demand a protection it was out of his power to bestow, moved him terribly; he could not bear to look on her, and she was forced from his presence and given to the charge of the servants who had come with her on this desperate journey.