Explore "Peter and Alexis" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Alexis had his eyes fixed on the door through which Peter was expected to enter.
The yellow February sun flooded the small reception room of the Preobrazhensky Palace, a house almost as white and plain as the Tsar's house in Petersburg. The windows opened on a landscape familiar to Alexis from earliest childhood; a snow-covered field dotted with black crows, grey walls of barracks, prison buildings, earth ramparts with pyramids of cannon balls, sentry houses and motionless sentinels outlined against the transparent emerald sky. Sparrows were chirping on the window-sill, just as in spring; clear drops fell like tears from stalactites of ice. It was nearing midday, an odour betrayed the cooking of a cabbage pie. The monotonous ticking of a clock's pendulum alone broke the silence.