“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. Katharina naturally did not love Alexis, since he stood in the way of her children, and she would have been glad of his death, but did not wish to incur the guilt of it. Since Peter also did not wish to take the responsibility for it, he had appointed a court of a hundred and twenty-seven persons to try his son. The topic therefore was an unwelcome one, and, with his extraordinary facility for quick changes of thought and feeling, Peter broke the silence with the prosaic question, “Where is the brandy?” “You will get no brandy so early, my boy.” “Kathrina!” said Peter in a peculiar tone, while his face began to twitch. “Be quiet, Lion!” answered his wife, and stroked his black mane, which had begun to bristle. She took a bottle and a glass out of a basket. The Lion cheered up, swallowed the strong drink, smiled, and stroked his spouse’s expansive bust. “Will you see the children?” asked Katherine, in order to bring him into a milder mood. “No, not to-day! Yesterday I beat them, and they would think I was running after them. Keep them at a distance. Keep them under, or they will get the better of you!”