In your customary laziness.--peter."

When we consider that Alexis was at this time a man nearly thirty years

of age, and himself the father of a family, we can easily imagine that

language like this was more adapted to exasperate him and make him

worse than to win him to his duty. He was, in fact, driven to a

species of desperation by it, and he so far aroused himself from his

usual indolence and stupidity as to form a plan, in connection with

some of his evil advisers, to make his escape from his father's control

entirely by secretly absconding from the country, and seeking a retreat

under the protection of some foreign power. The manner in which he

executed this scheme, and the consequences which finally resulted from

it, will be related in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FLIGHT OF ALEXIS.

1717

Alexis resolves to escape--Alexis makes arrangements for

flight--Secrecy--Alexis deceives Afrosinia--How Alexis obtained the

money--Alexander Kikin--Alexis sets out on his journey--Meets

Kikin--Arrangements--Plans matured--Kikin's cunning contrivances--False

letters--Kikin and Alexis concert their plans--Possibility of being

intercepted--More prevarications--Arrival at Vienna--The Czar sends for

Alexis--Interview with the envoys--Threats of Alexis--He returns to

Naples--St. Elmo--Long negotiations--Alexis resolves at last to

return--His letter to his father--Alexis delivers himself up

When Alexis received the letter from his father at Copenhagen, ordering

him to proceed at once to that city and join his father there, or else

to come to a definite and final conclusion in respect to the convent

that he would join, he at once determined, as intimated in the last

chapter, that he would avail himself of the opportunity to escape from

his father's control altogether. Under pretense of obeying his

father's orders that he should go to Copenhagen, he could make all the

necessary preparations for leaving the country without suspicion, and

then, when once across the frontier, he could go where he pleased. He

determined to make his escape to a foreign court, with a view of

putting himself under the protection there of some prince or potentate

who, from feelings of rivalry toward his father, or from some other

motive, might be disposed, he thought, to espouse his cause.

He immediately began to make arrangements for his flight. What the

exact truth is in respect to the arrangements which he made could never

be fully ascertained, for the chief source of information in respect to

them is from confessions which Alexis made himself after he was brought

back. But in these confessions he made such confusion, first

confessing a little, then a little more, then contradicting himself,

then admitting, when the thing had been proved against him, what he had

before denied, that it was almost impossible to disentangle the truth

from his confused and contradictory declarations. The substance of the

case was, however, as follows: