In a veritable fairyland of avenues, of yoke-elms and flower-beds in geometric designs, of enormous baskets filled with the choicest flowers, of straight canals, of ponds, of islets, of magnificent fountains, such a fairyland as Watteau would have dreamed of, there is a Venetian fete with all sorts of fire-works and illuminations; small crafts, adorned with flags, are filled with men in golden garments, girded with swords, and wearing three-cornered hats and buckled shoes; and the women are dressed in velvet and covered with jewels. The Tsar himself opens the case, and helps in placing the goddess on her pedestal. Again, as two hundred years before in Florence, the resurrected goddess, Aphrodite, emerges from the grave. The cords stretch, the pulleys creak; she rises higher and higher. Peter is almost of the same superhuman height as the statue. And his face, close to that of Aphrodite, remains noble: the man is worthy of the goddess.... "The Immortal One--Aphrodite--was still the same that she was on the hillside in Florence; she had progressed further and further, from age to age, from people to people, halting nowhere, till in her victorious march she had reached the very ends of the earth, the Hyperborean Scythia, beyond which there is naught but darkness and death...." But what miseries this magnificent facade conceals! Not far off, on an island in the river, one can see people who are watching the fete and who think that they are present at one of the spectacles forerunning doomsday. Among the crowd are seen the "raskolnik" Cornelius, old Vitalya of the "runners," deserters, the merchant Ivanov, the clerk Dokounine ... and several others. In the few remarks that they exchange, we can see that, for them, Peter the Great is the Antichrist, "the beast announced by the Gospel."