I raised myself again as well as I could.
“Your health, czar!” I shouted, “for you are assuredly born to command.”
“Why,” he asked, “should the soldiers present arms and salute me if any other was worthier to command? Where is there anything more pitiful than an incompetent ruler? The day I find my own son unworthy to inherit my great, beloved realm, that day shall he die. Your first truth, Wooden Leg, requires no bowl.”
The pistols cracked, and all drank but the czar.
Then I gathered the fragments of my understanding as a miser his coins, for I believed that, if I could catch the czar in a gracious and mild humour, I might perhaps save my Feodosova.
“Well, then, Imperial Majesty,” I continued, therefore, lifting one of the bowls on high “this is Astrakan ale, brewed of mead and brandy with pepper and tobacco. It burns much before it delights, and when it delights it puts one to sleep.”
With that I threw the bowl to the ground so that it broke in a thousand pieces. Then I lifted the next bowl.
“This is Hungarian wine. ‘Drink no more only water,’ writes the Apostle Paul to Timothy, ‘but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and because thou art so often sick.’ So speaks a holy one to weakly men and stay-at-homes. But go out on the battle-field amid frost and wailing and tell me: To how many of the groaning would this bowl of sweetish wine give relief from pain and a softer death?”
Therewith I threw that bowl also to the ground so that it broke. Then I lifted the third bowl.
“This is brandy. It is despised by the fortunate and the rich, because they thirst not after refreshment as the desert for coolness, but would only gibe at the pleasure it gives. But brandy assumes power in the very moment it swims over the tongue, like a despot in the moment he steps across a threshold, and the bleeding and dying draw comfort from a few drops.”
“Right, right!” acclaimed the czar, and took the bowl and drank it, at the same time that he handed me two gold-pieces, while the pistols cracked. “You shall have a pass and a horse to go your way, and wherever you come, you shall tell about Poltava.”
Then I knelt yet again in the straw and stammered: “Imperial Majesty--in my pettiness and weakness--beside you sits a--a pure and good woman.”