“Pardon me, Peter,” said his wife, “but is it right that you should apply to the Swedish Government about the Dutch ships?”
“I don’t understand it. Our Russians fired by mistake at friendly Dutch vessels, and you demand indemnity from the Swedes because the mischance occurred in Swedish waters.”
“Yes, according to Roman law, the injury must be made good in the land where it happened....”
“It is all the same anyhow: he who can pay, pays; I cannot, and the Dutch will not, therefore the Swedes must! Do you understand?”
“The Swedes have incited the Turks against me; they must pay for that.”
“May be! But why do you write so harshly to the Dutch Government since you like the Dutch?”
“Why! Because since the Peace of Utrecht, Holland is on the decline. It is all over with Holland; on to the rubbish-heap with it! I hold on to England, since France is also declining.”
“Should one abandon one’s old friends?...”
“Certainly, when they are no more good. Moreover, there is no friendship in love and in politics. Do you think I like this wretched August of Poland? No! I am sure you don’t. But I must go with him through thick and thin, for my country, for Russia. He who cannot sacrifice his little humours and passions for his country is a Don Quixote, like Charles the Twelfth. This fool, with his mad hatred against August and myself, has worked for Sweden’s overthrow and Russia’s future. But that this Christian dog should incite the Turks against us was a crime against Europe, for Europe needs Russia as a bulwark against Asia. Did not the Mongol sit for two hundred years on our frontier and threaten us? And when our ancestors had at last driven him away, there comes a fellow like this and brings the heathen from Constantinople upon us. The Mongols were once in Silesia, and would have destroyed Western Europe if we Russians had not saved it. Charles XII is dead, but I curse his memory, and I curse everyone who seeks to hinder me in my laudable endeavour to raise Russia from a Western Asiatic power to an Eastern European one. I shall beat everyone down, whoever he may be, who interferes with my work, even though it were my own son.”
There was silence for some moments. The last words referred to the Delicate topic of Alexis, Peter’s son by his first marriage, who was now a prisoner awaiting his death-sentence in the Peter-Paul Fortress. He was accused of having endeavoured to hinder his father’s work in the civilisation of Russia, and was suspected of having taken part in plots of rebellion. The Czar’s first divorced wife Eudoxia was confined in the convent of Suzdal.