who from his earliest years had a passion for reading, was absorbed in a book, when his father, in ungovernable fury, seized a hatchet and hurled it at the boy’s head.  Luckily, the missile missed its mark, and Alexis escaped, to find refuge in the house of a friendly priest, who not only gave him shelter and protection, but taught him to write, and, above all, to sing—­little dreaming that he was thus paving the way which was to lead the drunken shepherd’s lad to the dizziest heights in Russia.  For the boy had a beautiful voice.  When he joined the choir of his village church, people flocked from far and near to listen to the sweet notes that soared, pure and liquid as a nightingale’s song, above the rest.  “It was,” all declared, “the voice of an angel—­and the face of an angel,” for Alexis was as beautiful in those days as any child of picture or of dreams.

One day a splendidly dressed stranger chanced to enter the Lemesh church during Mass—­none other than Colonel Vishnevsky, a great Court official, who was on his way back to Moscow from a diplomatic mission; and he listened entranced to a voice sweeter than any he had ever heard.  The service over, he made the acquaintance of the young chorister, interviewed his guardian, the “good Samaritan” priest, and persuaded him to allow the boy to accompany him to the capital.  Thus the shepherd’s son took weeping farewell of the good priest, of his mother, and of his brothers and sisters; and a few weeks later the Empress and her ladies were listening enchanted to his voice in the Imperial choir at Moscow—­but none with more delight than the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, to whom Alexis’ beauty appealed even more strongly than his sweet singing.

Elizabeth, true daughter of her father, had already, young as she was, counted her lovers by the score—­lovers chosen indiscriminately, from Royal princes to grooms and common soldiers.  She was already sated with the licence of the most dissolute Court of Europe, and to her the young Cossack of the beautiful face and voice, and rustic innocence, opened a new and seductive vista of pleasure.  She lost her heart to him, had him transferred to her own Court as her favourite singer, and, within a few years, gave him charge of her purse and her properties.

The shepherd’s son was now not only lover-elect, but principal “minister” to the daughter of an Emperor, who was herself to wear the Imperial crown.  And while Alexis was thus luxuriating amid the splendour of a Court, he by no means forgot the humble relatives he had left behind in his native village.  His father was dead; his mother was reduced for a time to such a depth of destitution that she had to beg her bread from door to door.  His sisters had found husbands for themselves in their own rank; and the favourite of an Imperial Princess had for brothers-in-law a tailor, a weaver, and a shepherd.  When news came to Alexis of his mother’s destitution he had sent her a sum of money sufficient to install her in comfort as an innkeeper:  the first of many kindnesses which were to work a startling transformation in the fortunes of the Razoum family.