_Peter._ He dismissed thee at my order. If I had demanded from him his daughter, to be the bedfellow of a Kalmuc, he would have given her, and praised God. _Alexis._ O father! is his baseness my crime? _Peter._ No; thine is greater. Thy intention, I know, is to subvert the institutions it has been the labour of my lifetime to establish. Thou hast never rejoiced at my victories. _Alexis._ I have rejoiced at your happiness and your safety. _Peter._ Liar! coward! traitor! when the Polanders and Swedes fell before me, didst thou from thy soul congratulate me? Didst thou get drunk at home or abroad, or praise the Lord of Hosts and Saint Nicholas? Wert thou not silent and civil and low-spirited? _Alexis._ I lamented the irretrievable loss of human life; I lamented that the bravest and noblest were swept away the first; that the gentlest and most domestic were the earliest mourners; that frugality was supplanted by intemperance; that order was succeeded by confusion; and that your Majesty was destroying the glorious plans you alone were capable of devising. _Peter._ I destroy them! how? Of what plans art thou speaking? _Alexis._ Of civilizing the Muscovites. The Polanders in part were civilized: the Swedes, more than any other nation on the Continent; and so excellently versed were they in military science, and so courageous, that every man you killed cost you seven or eight. _Peter._ Thou liest; nor six. And civilized, forsooth? Why, the robes of the metropolitan, him at Upsal, are not worth three ducats, between Jew and Livornese. I have no notion that Poland and Sweden shall be the only countries that produce great princes. What right have they to such as Gustavus and Sobieski? Europe ought to look to this before discontents become general, and the people do to us what we have the privilege of doing to the people. I am wasting my words: there is no arguing with positive fools like thee. So thou wouldst have desired me to let the Polanders and Swedes lie still and quiet! Two such powerful nations! _Alexis._ For that reason and others I would have gladly seen them rest, until our own people had increased in numbers and prosperity. _Peter._ And thus thou disputest my right, before my face, to the exercise of the supreme power. _Alexis._ Sir! God forbid! _Peter._ God forbid, indeed! What care such villains as thou art what God forbids! He forbids the son to be disobedient to the father; He forbids--He forbids--twenty things. I do not wish, and will not have, a successor who dreams of dead people. _Alexis._ My father! I have dreamed of none such.