dies and perform the duties
which his father required of him was mainly due to his continual
drunkenness, which kept him all the time in a sort of brutal stupor.

Nor was the fault wholly on his side. His father was very harsh and
severe in his treatment of him, and perhaps, in the beginning, made too
little allowance for the feebleness of his constitution. Neither of
the two were sincere in what they said about Alexis becoming a monk.
Peter, in threatening to send him to a monastery, only meant to
frighten him; and Alexis, in saying that he wished to go, intended only
to circumvent his father, and save himself from being molested by him
any more. He knew very well that his becoming a monk would be the last
thing that his father would really desire.

Besides, Alexis was surrounded by a number of companions and advisers,
most of them lewd and dissolute fellows like himself, but among them
were some much more cunning and far-sighted than he, and it was under
their advice that he acted in all the measures that he took, and in
every thing that he said and did in the course of this quarrel with his
father. Among these men were several priests, who, like the rest,
though priests, were vile and dissolute men. These priests, and
Alexis's other advisers, told him that he was perfectly safe in
pretending to accede to his father's plan to send him to a monastery,
for his father would never think of such a thing as putting the threat
in execution. Besides, if he did, it would do no harm; for the vows
that he would take, though so utterly irrevocable in the case of common
men, would all cease to be of force in his case, in the event of his
father's death, and his succeeding to the throne. And, in the mean
time, he could go on, they said, taking his ease and pleasure, and
living as he had always done.

Many of the persons who thus took sides with Alexis, and encouraged him
in his opposition to his father, had very deep designs in so doing.
They were of the party who opposed the improvements and innovations
which Peter had introduced, and who had in former times made the
Princess Sophia their head and rallying-point in their opposition to
Peter's policy. It almost always happens thus, that when, in a
monarchical country, there is a party opposed to the policy which the
sovereign pursues, the disaffected persons endeavor, if possible, to
find a head, or leader, in some member of the royal family itself, and
if they can gain