he did.

_Alexis._ Derision, O my father! is not the fate I merit.

_Peter._ True, true! it was not intended.

_Alexis._ Kind father! punish me then as you will.

_Peter._ Villain! wouldst thou kiss my hand, too? Art thou ignorant
that the Austrian threw thee away from him, with the same indifference
as he would the outermost leaf of a sandy sunburnt lettuce?

_Alexis._ Alas! I am not ignorant of this.

_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!