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