By DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI =THE DEATH OF THE GODS.= Authorized English Version by HERBERT TRENCH. 12o =THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE FORERUNNER.= (The Resurrection of the Gods.) Authorized English Version from the Russian. 12o. With 8 Illustrations —— Artist’s Edition, with 64 illustrations. 2 vols., 8o =PETER AND ALEXIS.= Authorized English Version from the Russian. 12o G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS New York London PETER AND ALEXIS THE ROMANCE OF PETER THE GREAT BY DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI AUTHOR OF “THE DEATH OF THE GODS” (THE EMPEROR JULIAN) AND “THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI” _Sole Authorised Translation from the Russian_ G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press PREFATORY NOTE This remarkable novel, the first by Merejkowski on a purely Russian theme, completes the already famous historical Trilogy, of which _The Death of the Gods_, and _The Forerunner_, or Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, were the two former instalments. For some account of the author, and of the main idea underlying the Trilogy, the reader is referred to the English preface to _The Death of the Gods_. These novels, which may be read independently of each other, have been very successfully translated into all the principal European languages; and the exclusively authorized English translations of them, published in England by Messrs. Archibald Constable, and in the United States by Messrs. Putnam, are being again issued in new editions respectively in both countries. The present translation, although it is feared much like Heine’s “stuffed moonbeam,” has been made direct from the Russian original, and pains have not been spared to render it exact. Thanks are due to Mr. W. R. Morfill, Reader in Russian to the University of Oxford, for his kind assistance on one or two difficult points. A word of explanation is due to the English and American public with regard to the purpose of the present work. No one who knows Merejkowski personally, no one who reads his story with a fair mind, will imagine for a moment that it is written to please or to amuse the “young person.” It is intended for men and women. It is a simple and earnest psychological study of the most moving episode in the life of the greatest of the Romanoff princes. It is a sketch, vivid and true, of classes and conditions,—of court and society,—of peasants and wild religious beliefs—in Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century. As regards the bulk of her population she has not materially changed.