The picture of the Renaissance that Merezhkovsky paints for us is
very full, very rich, at times even a little overburdened with
episodes and people. One constantly rubs shoulders with Leonardo da
Vinci, the duchess Beatrice of Este, regent of Milan, the favorite
Lucrecia Crivelli, the mysterious Gioconda, Charles VIII, Louis XII
and Francis I, kings of France, and also with Caesar Borgia; we find
here the preaching of Savonarola, the death of the pope Alexander
VI (Borgia), Marshal Trivulce, the triumphal entry of the French
into Milan, the diplomacy of Niccolo Machiavelli. In fact, as has
been said above, there are too many events and characters.

* * * * *

Two centuries go by and now we come to the third novel, "Peter and
Alexis." The scene is in Russia, and the hero is Peter the Great,
whom Merezhkovsky represents as a worshipper of things Olympian. He
gives a magnificent description of the orgies held by the emperor in
honor of Bacchus and Venus, especially the latter, whose statue he
expressly ordered from Rome and installed in the Summer Garden at
St. Petersburg.

In a veritable fairyland of avenues, of yoke-elms and flower-beds in
geometric designs, of enormous baskets filled with the choicest
flowers, of straight canals, of ponds, of islets, of magnificent
fountains, such a fairyland as Watteau would have dreamed of, there
is a Venetian fete with all sorts of fire-works and illuminations;
small crafts, adorned with flags, are filled with men in golden
garments, girded with swords, and wearing three-cornered hats and
buckled shoes; and the women are dressed in velvet and covered with
jewels.

The Tsar himself opens the case, and helps in placing the goddess on
her pedestal. Again, as two hundred years before in Florence, the
resurrected goddess, Aphrodite, emerges from the grave. The cords
stretch, the pulleys creak; she rises higher and higher. Peter is
almost of the same superhuman height as the statue. And his face,
close to that of Aphrodite, remains noble: the man is worthy of the
goddess....

"The Immortal One--Aphrodite--was still the same that she was on the
hillside in Florence; she had progressed further and further, from
age to age, from people to people, halting nowhere, till in her
victorious march she had reached the very ends of the earth, the
Hyperborean Scythia, beyond which there is naught but darkness and
death...."

But what miseries this magnificent f