But if Peter was tolerant of indiscretion, he was implacable in criminal matters. Prenatal abortion or the murder of an unwanted infant after birth was punishable by death. The most dramatic example of the Tsar's unwavering stand on this issue came with the case of Marie Hamilton. This young woman, one of the Tsaritsa Catherine's favorite maids of honor, was, in the language of the day, "much addicted to gallantry." In consequence, she bore three illegitimate children. The first two were murdered in such secrecy that no one at court suspected, but the third dead infant was discovered and the mother arrested. In prison, she confessed that this was the third time this mournful event had occurred. To her surprise, for she believed that the friendship and favor of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa would win her a pardon, she was sentenced to death. On the day of the execution, the prisoner appeared on the scaffold in a white silk gown trimmed with black ribbons. Peter climbed the structure to stand beside her and spoke quietly into her ear. The condemned woman and most of the spectators assumed that this would be her last-minute reprieve. Instead, the Tsar gave her a kiss and said sadly, "I cannot violate the laws to save your life. Support your punishment with courage, and, in the hope that God may forgive you your sins, address your prayers to him with a heart full of faith and contrition." Miss Hamilton knelt and prayed, the Tsar turned away and the headsman struck.
During the final years of his reign, Peter turned his attention to bringing to St. Petersburg some of the institutional refinements of civilized society: museums, an art gallery, a library and even a zoo. Like almost everything new in Russia created by the Tsar's effort, these institutions strongly reflected his own taste. He had little inclination for theater (his preference ran to the crude masquery of his Mock-Synod) and none whatsoever for instrumental music. The only theatrical performances to which Russian society had access were those arranged by Peter's sister Princess Natalya, who established a small theater of her own, taking a large empty house and fitting it out with a stage, pit and boxes. Weber, who attended a performance, was not enthusiastic. "The actors and actresses, ten in number, were all native Russians who had never been abroad, so that it is easy to imagine their ability," he wrote. The play he saw, a tragedy written by the Princess herself and performed in Russian, was a moralistic tale of rebellion in Russia and the horrors proceeding from that unhappy event. And if Weber found the actors bad, he found the orchestra worse. "The orchestra was composed of sixteen musicians, all Russians," he wrote. "They are taught music as well as other sciences with the help of batogs. If a general pitches upon some spare fellow in a regiment who he decides should learn music, notwithstanding the soldier has not the least notion of it nor any talent that way, he is sent out to a master who gives him a certain time for learning his task; first, learning the handling of the instrument, then to play some Lutheran hymns or some minuet and so on. If the scholar has not learned his lesson during the term prefixed, the batogs are applied and repeated till such time as he is master of the tune."
Even this small theater disappeared in 1716 when Princess Natalya died. Later, in Moscow, the Duchess of Mecklenburg established a small theater at Ismailovo with herself as director, ladies of her court as actresses and the male roles being taken mostly by servants. Despite the distance from Moscow, many people came to see these performances, although some in the audience may have attended for mixed motives. Bergholz grumbled that on his first visit he was robbed of his snuffbox and that on another occasion the pockets of many Holstein gentlemen were picked of their silk handkerchiefs. In time, Peter made arrangements for a professional theatrical company to come from Hamburg, but it never arrived. For two or three years, a small, wretched theater existed in St. Petersburg on the banks of the Moika Canal, doing bad imitations of French plays and poor translations of German farces. But with the Tsar uninterested, his subjects also showed little interest. Like Peter himself, they preferred more popular spectacles, such as juggling and rope dancing. A special favorite of the Tsar's was the celebrated German strongman Samson, who arrived in Russia in 1719. Irritated by those, especially among the clergy, who said that Samson performed his feats by magic, witchcraft or trickery rather than by strength, the Tsar stood beside Samson and called some of the principal clergymen upon the stage to witness the performance at close range. Samson lay down across two chairs supported only under his head and feet; Peter placed an anvil on his chest, and then broke several large pieces of iron upon the anvil with a sledgehammer. Samson next placed a stick between his teeth, which the Tsar tried with both hands to pull out; he failed not only to move the stick but even to move Samson from his place. The strongman's power, Peter triumphantly announced to everyone present, lay solely in his sheer physical strength.
On his second visit to the West in 1716-1717, Peter went earnestly and regularly to see scientific collections and public and private collections of paintings, and brought many paintings home with him. Hoping that one day not all the paintings in Russia would be the work of foreigners, Peter sent a number of young Russian artists to Holland and Italy to study. The Tsar was even prouder of his new scientific collections. In 1717, he had purchased the entire collection of the celebrated Dutch anatomist Professor Ruysch, whose lecture hall and dissecting room the Tsar often had visited on his first trip twenty years before. The collection, which had been forty years in forming, came with an illustrated catalog titled Thesaurus Anatomicus. Peter also purchased the collection of the Dutch apothecary Seba, consisting of all known land and sea animals, birds, reptiles and insects of the East Indies. These two celebrated collections were the foundation of the Museum of the
Academy of Science, which Peter established in a large stone building on Vasilevsky Island across from the Admiralty. It was his custom to go to the museum at dawn two or three times a week to study the exhibits before he went to the Admiralty. He enjoyed being there so much that on one occasion he decided to hold an audience with the Austrian ambassador in the museum. The Chancellor asked whether the Summer Palace would not be more appropriate. "The ambassador is accredited to me, not to one of my palaces," Peter replied, and he received the ambassador at the museum at five a.m. on a subsequent morning.
At Peter's insistence, the museum was open to the public and guides were provided to explain the exhibits. When Yaguzhinsky suggested that a rouble be charged for admission to defray expenses, Peter objected that this would keep people away. Instead, he said that the museum should not only be free, but that people should be tempted to come by offering in the Tsar's name a dish of coffee or a glass of wine as refreshment. These expenses were paid from Peter's pocket.
To the collections purchased abroad were added curios such as elephants' teeth found near Voronezh which Peter speculated were relics of the passage of Alexander the Great, and antiquities found among the ruins of a pagan temple near the Caspian Sea—images, vessels and several parchments in an unknown language. Similarly, while digging for gold near Samarkand, prospectors had found a number of ancient brass figures, which were sent to Prince Gagarin, the Governor of Siberia, and by him to the Tsar. They included brass idols, minotaurs, oxen, geese, deformed old men and young women. The mouths of the idols were hinged so that they could move; Peter, ever wary of religious superstitions, speculated that "it is likely the priests made use of this to impose on the people by speaking through them."