That rule was, however, now threatened by Peter himself. During these years the boy had grown up sturdily, with his mother, in a village a few miles from Moscow. On important occasions he would be driven into Moscow, to sit beside his goggle-eyed half-brother on the golden throne, but he detested the Kreml and loved the free, open-air life of the village. His mother, Natalia, seems to have belied entirely the excellence of her early years and scandalously neglected his education. He learned to read, and he read a great and confusing assortment of books of history and adventure. He learned to write, but the lesson stopped at so rudimentary a stage that he always had great difficulty in spelling. His days were spent amongst grooms, servants, and any boys with whom he pleased to associate. He became a creature of impulse, and in that world in which he grew up the impulses one followed were neither gentle nor decent. The theory that Peter the Great profited by his rude education in contact with nature and real human beings, instead of being reared in the artificial atmosphere of the imperial terem, may point with some pride to his energy, his promptness, his scorn of conventions; but it must embrace also those impulsive outbursts of ferocity and those unchecked debauches which kept his character throughout life little above the level of a savage. Peter had lately passed his seventeenth birthday when, in 1689, Gallitzin returned from his second failure. The one imperial idea which grew amidst his vices was the thought that he would some day command the military forces of Russia, and his play constantly turned upon soldiering. He formed companies out of his servants and associates. He had a fort built at the village of Preobrajenshote, which he made his chief centre, and a kind of rough, informal court grew up about him. Nobles and boyars joined his military games, his mimic regiments; and they joined also in his nightly revels. He must have heard much disdainful talk about the campaigns of Prince Gallitzin, and no doubt there were ambitious men who urged him to act. The city, he would know, now openly complained. One day a paper was found in one of the squares telling the finder that a valuable paper was hidden behind a picture of the Virgin in a certain church. A crowd sought the miraculous communication, and found a lampoon on the Regent Sophia. [IMAGE: img108.jpg View of Destroyed Tower of Nicholas, Arsenal, etc., in the Kremlin, A.D. 1812 From a Contemporary Drawing] Hence when Sophia would prepare a triumphal return for her lover, and grant honours to the defeated soldiers, Peter refused his imperial consent. When Gallitzin thought it prudent to visit Preobrajenshote, after Sophia had acted on her own account, Peter refused to see him. The two camps began to glower at each other; and men began to pass from the Kreml to the village.