Peter and Alexis

He is six years old. They are watching the procession from an ancient gilded coach with mica windows, which is as clumsy and jolting as a farmer's cart. The inside is hung with clove-coloured velvet and brocade curtains. Here he sits on his grandmother's knee amidst downy cushions, with his nurses, and maids, plump as pillows. His mother, the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, is there too, dressed in a stomacher and a pearl-embroidered gown. Her round white countenance, like the eager face of a child, wore a look of continuous surprise.

Through the curtain and the open window of the coach, he witnesses the triumphal procession of the troops on their return from the Azov campaign. He is delighted with the regular lines of the regiments as they march past, the brass guns flashing in the sunshine, and the shields with their roughly drawn allegories. He remembers two of them. One pictured a pair of Turks chained together, bearing the inscription: -