Explore "Peter and Alexis" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"It was the will of God, Your Highness, that a great fire should visit Moscow in 1701, while the Tsar was at Voronesh building ships. In this fire the whole of the Tsar's residence in the Kremlin was burnt: the wooden buildings, the inner parts of those built of stone; churches, together with their crosses, roofs, screens and the holy images themselves-all were ablaze. The belfry of the Great John Tower caught fire, and the bell, weighing 8,000 poods, fell to the ground and broke. So did that in the Cathedral of the Assumption and sundry other bells. And in places the earth itself was burning."
Thus spake to the Tsarevitch Alexis the sacristan of the Annunciation Church, an old man of seventy.