CHAPTER II

Europe, absorbed in the war of the Spanish Succession, paid no heed to the Czar’s bitter protests against Saxony and Sweden, and Patkul was sent to Kazimicry.

Peter, with an army of 60,000 trained men, officered by Germans, obtained secretly from the Emperor of Austria, who was alarmed by the near approach of the terrible Swede, marched into Poland.

General Lewenhaupt was not able to guard the entries into this country which was neither fortified nor united, and the Czar took Lublin which had been left without a Swedish garrison, and there convoked a Diet on the model of that of Varsovia, thereby further distracting an already thrice distracted country.

Augustus was now as hateful as Stanislaus in the eyes of Peter, and his project was to give all that the Elector had renounced by the peace of Altranstadt to a third king; he had in his mind Racoczy, Prince of Transylvania.

Russian gold and Russian promises soon gained a powerful faction in Poland; Peter exerted himself to please.

His portrait, enriched with diamonds, was presented to the officers who had fought at Kalisz, and gold and silver medals to the soldiers; it was the Czar’s great pride to mention that these records of his first victory had been struck in his new capital.

The Diet at Lublin, however, distracted by faction and intrigue, fearful of Sweden and suspicious of the Czar, made little progress towards any settlement of the affairs of Poland; it would recognize neither Augustus nor Stanislaus, but was by no means agreed as to the man to put in the place of these monarchs. Peter, with a slowness that led his enemy into despising him, remained at Lublin watching these intrigues and training his army, his sole encounters with the enemy being skirmishes between wandering parties of Muscovites and detachments of Lewenhaupt’s Swedes in Livonia and Lithuania; a kind of warfare which ruined the wretched country without giving any advantage to either side. Meanwhile the Sapieha and Oginski, again commenced pillaging and burning, marauding friend and foe alike, causing Karl to send Stanislaus with General Rehnsköld to Poland to endeavor to reduce these disorders.

Peter, finding it impossible to maintain an army any longer in a country so ruined and desolate, and pursuing his waiting policy, left the Diet of Lublin to their deliberations and fell back on his base in Lithuania, daily strengthening his forces and filling the courts of Europe with his plaints against Karl and his demands for the return of Patkul.

This left Stanislaus sole master of Poland, and the power of Karl was at its height; his camp at Altranstadt held envoys from all the princes of Europe, seeking his favor, endeavoring to discover his plans and to gain his alliance.

In this moment Karl gave little thought to Peter, save to issue scornful orders for the suppression of his predatory bands of Tartars and Cossacks.

Karl now turned his attention to the Empire, and in revenge for a slight he thought he had received at the hands of the Emperor’s chamberlain, he demanded reparation from Joseph in the haughtiest terms, insisting not only on the banishment of the offending Count Tobar, but on that nobleman’s delivery into his own hands, and the surrender of the Muscovite refugees that had escaped over the frontier into Austria.

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.

Peter turned fiercely to Mentchikoff.

“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.

“Let Katherina go to her,” muttered the Czar. “Katherina has a gentle mind and a soothing tongue.”

For himself he sought Mentchikoff, that firm and tireless friend.

Throwing an old mantle about his shoulders, for this autumn was unusually chill, even for the North, he mounted his great, rough horse and rode to the quarters of the Prince that were far more comfortable than his own.

He was humiliated and struck to the heart; with an impatience and gloomy bitterness he eyed his huge encampment; what use was it to train these men who fled at the very name of the King of Sweden? What good his pains, his example, his rewards, his punishments, to mold a nation uncivilized in every art and science?

The reactionary party was still at work; there were eager hands ready to undo his every reform; his heir, son of the repudiated Eudoxia, was a weakling, none of the children of Katherina, his chosen woman, had lived.

Almost his task seemed too great for the Russian; the war had been long and entirely disastrous; if it had taught him the art of war, it had done so in lessons rude and bitter.

His allies had fallen away from him; his enemy was in every way triumphant, had eclipsed his glory, dimmed his rising renown, made him and his attempts at greatness a laughing-stock.

Europe would not even listen to him when he complained of Karl’s breach of international law and demanded his ambassador; instead they sent their representatives to do homage to the conqueror in his camp. The Emperor of Austria cringed, Europe was at the feet of this young man--in truth a second Alexander, who had but to decide in which direction his further glory should lie; and no one troubled about Muscovy and its passionate ruler, so fiercely trying to educate his country into some semblance of his ambitious dreams.

“Sweden blocks me,” said Peter to Mentchikoff. “He must go, or all we have done is in vain. He stops my progress, Danilovitch; he wants to pull down, I to build. What am I to do--it seems that he is invincible.”

He spoke without malice or hate now, only with a sadness that was wistful in its sincerity.

“And Patkul!” he added. “Patkul will be broken, Danilovitch.”

“I would we could break Augustus,” said the Prince.

“With my own hands,” remarked the Czar, “I would put him to the torture. That little thing came from Dresden to ask me to save Patkul--and I can do nothing!”

It was the bitterest mortification to which he had ever been subject in a life full of vicissitudes; Mentchikoff knew it and scowled; he could not endure to glance at the cruel position in which his adored master found himself; his own whole being was absorbed in a deep hatred of Augustus and the Swede.

But he had a greater faith in Peter than Peter had himself; the Czar might be torn with doubts and fears, but the subject was certain of the ultimate downfall of the Swede.

Peter, with an effort, it seemed, to shake off the gloom that was settling on him, asked Mentchikoff for a certain Pole who had been employed as a spy in the camp at Altranstadt, and who had lately returned to Lithuania.

“I would like to see him,” said the Czar somberly.

“But he knows nothing,” replied Mentchikoff; “nothing--I have already examined him.”

“He knows,” returned Peter, “something of the life of the King of Sweden--bring him here, Danilovitch.”

Mentchikoff was reluctant to do this; he felt that it was morbid for Peter to be so interested in the habits of his rival and a certain slight to his own dignity, but he did not dare refuse, and the Pole, a tall, thin fellow with red eyes and sandy hair, was brought before the Emperor. Peter eyed him gloomily.

“Prince Mentchikoff tells me that you discovered nothing at Altranstadt,” he said.

“Sire,” replied the Pole, with a movement as if he would prostrate himself before the Czar, “how can one discover the secrets of a King who has no confidants?”

“I think he has no secrets either,” remarked Peter, “his design is clear enough. He wishes to dethrone me.”

“Yet that is not clear, sire,” answered the spy earnestly. “All the princes of Europe have envoys at his camp trying to find out his plans, each begging for his favor and alliance. And he is dumb to all.”

The Czar glanced at his friend.

“A proud position, Danilovitch!” he said. “A proud position!”

“They wonder,” resumed the spy, eager to show that he had not been altogether useless, “why he lingers so long in Saxony--there are many comments as to that. He cannot,” added the Pole, who knew that he might safely speak of the humiliation of Augustus to Peter, “further lower the Elector who has even written a letter of congratulation to Stanislaus Leczinski.”

“May every ill overtake him for it!” exclaimed Peter in a loud voice, and with a suffused face.

“He has even, sire, had the mortification of having to deliver his favorite, General Fleming, to the King of Sweden who claims him as his subject, and only the entreaties of Stanislaus Leczinski stayed Karl from putting him to death.”

Peter was not interested in General Fleming, and was impatient of hearing of what he considered further vileness on the part of the Elector, whom he regarded as one dead and damned--no longer to be taken into account, and only to be remembered to have his memory cursed.

“Tell me how the King of Sweden lives,” he demanded, fixing his soft, dark, bloodshot eyes on the ferret-like face of the spy.

“Sire--as he has always done--he is the worst housed, the worst served and fed in his army. He never touches wine, and his food is plain and scanty, his bed a straw pallet. It is his pleasure to inure himself to every kind of fatigue and hardship. He rides out three times a day, and has no amusements or diversions of any kind.”

Peter looked at Mentchikoff, regardless of the presence of the Pole.

“Think what a man I could be, Danilovitch!” he cried enviously, “could I so control myself!”

“Peter Alexievitch,” replied the Prince hotly, “do you seek to compare yourself with this hard, heartless automaton?”

“It is a wonderful thing,” insisted the Czar, “for a man to be so master of himself.”

“It is their manner in Scandinavia,” said Mentchikoff. “They have few passions and dull appetites. But Karl boasts himself too soon if he would be above humanity--he takes his revenge on Patkul!”

The spy glanced furtively at the two Russians, not himself daring to enter on ground so delicate.

“Where is he better than us wretched mortals in that?” added the hot-hearted Prince.

“Indeed,” said the Pole, “he is quite hard in these things. He has never been known to grant mercy to those who offend him. There was a Livonian officer captured and sent to Sweden, sire, and there in Stockholm judged and condemned to death. The King would not listen to any entreaties, but this soldier persuaded the Swedes that he knew the secret of the philosopher’s stone, and the Queen-Mother sent to the camp to know if she might offer pardon to the man in exchange for his secret. But the King replied that he could not do for interest what he had refused to do for compassion. And the officer was beheaded.”

Peter had listened intently, his eyes full of a dark fire.

“Did the King believe that the man knew how to make gold?” he asked keenly.

“Sire, it is said that he did,” replied the Pole, “for a pure bar of gold was sent him that the prisoner had made in his cell before the Swedish councilors.”

“Then,” exclaimed the Czar, “this action shows a certain grandeur in him!”

But Mentchikoff was quick to seize on another aspect of the tale.

“Did you say this fellow was beheaded?”

“Yes, excellency.”

“And Patkul is to be broken on the wheel--and his crime is equal to that of this man. Where is the grandeur in that, Peter Alexievitch? Not the offense but the man is punished by this cruel sentence.”

At this mention of his unfortunate general, Peter’s brow darkened again.

“Whether such a man as this is to be respected or not, I cannot say--but he is to be feared, Danilovitch!”

The Czar then turned abruptly to the spy.

“Is there no whisper in Altranstadt as to Sweden’s future designs?” he asked.

“Sire, there are many whispers. He has sent envoys into Persia and India. The Sultan has sent an ambassador to him returning the Swedish prisoners who fled into Turkey; his officers have always boasting stories on their lips of what he will accomplish.”

“And they are right!” exclaimed Peter. “What may not this man, twenty-five, hardy, fearless, never defeated, and whose feats of arms have astonished the world, expect to achieve?”

“Nothing that you cannot thwart him in,” replied Mentchikoff, who did not like his master’s attitude of admiration for his enemy.

The Czar took no notice of this remark but continued to question the spy.

“He never looks at women, this Swede? There is no one who influences him?”

“No one, sire. For him it seems as if women did not exist. When he is forced to meet them he treats them with a freezing coldness--and avoids them when he can. They say he favored one woman when he was in Stockholm, but she died soon after he left for the war.”

“Indeed,” said the Emperor, who could hardly conceive of a life of such austerity, “if he has never been drunk or in love or in a passion, he is hardly human--and the more dangerous.”

“He is neither invulnerable nor invincible,” remarked Mentchikoff.

Peter suddenly flashed him a warm smile.

“You are jealous for my dignity, Danilovitch,” he said. “I love you for it. And it is true that I am not defeated yet, nor old nor sick, and I have still to try conclusions with the Swede. Twenty times has he driven me out of Poland--and twenty times have I returned.”

But his heart was not as brave as his words; despite himself his continued ill-success had induced in him a conviction of the invincibility of Karl whom he admired for possessing all the qualities he would have wished for in his own character, and whose glory, now at its most dazzling height, a little blinded the eyes of Peter. He alone knew the magnitude of the task that he had undertaken, the chaos of his armies, and the factions in his court and among his people.

Not even Mentchikoff could gauge the difficulties on which Peter labored on that long hard road, unenlivened by any success or encouragement, which he had set himself to travel.