heard a mule with bells to its harness."--Poor little Czarina; shifty
nutbrown fellow-creature, strangely chased about from the bottom to the
top of this world; it is evident she does not succeed at Queen Sophie
Dorothee's Court!--

"The Czar, on the other hand, was very tall, and might be called
handsome," continues Wilhelmina: "his countenance was beautiful, but
had something of savage in it which put you in fear." Partly a kind of
Milton's-Devil physiognomy? The Portraits give it rather so. Archangel
not quite ruined, yet in sadly ruinous condition; its heroism so
bemired,--with a turn for strong drink, too, at times! A physiognomy
to make one reflect. "His dress was of sailor fashion, coat, altogether
plain."

"The Czarina, who spoke German very ill herself, and did not understand
well what the Queen said, beckoned to her Fool to come near,"--a poor
female creature, who had once been a Princess Galitzin, but having got
into mischief, had been excused to the Czar by her high relations as
mad, and saved from death or Siberia, into her present strange harbor of
refuge. With her the Czarina talked in unknown Russ, evidently "laughing
much and loud," till Supper was announced.

"At table," continues Wilhelmina, "the Czar placed himself beside the
Queen. It is understood this Prince was attempted with poison in his
youth, and that something of it had settled on his nerves ever after.
One thing is certain, there took him very often a sort of convulsion,
like Tic or St.-Vitus, which it was beyond his power to control. That
happened at table now. He got into contortions, gesticulations; and as
the knife was in his hand, and went dancing about within arm's-length
of the Queen, it frightened her, and she motioned several times to rise.
The Czar begged her not to mind, for he would do her no ill; at the same
time he took her by the hand, which he grasped with such violence that
the Queen was forced to shriek out. This set him heartily laughing;
saying she had not bones of so hard a texture as his Catherine's. Supper
done, a grand Ball had been got ready; but the Czar escaped at once, and
walked home by himself to Monbijou, leaving the others to dance."

Wilhelmina's story of the Cabinet of Antiques; of the Indecent little
Statue there, and of the orders Catherine got to kiss it, with a "KOPF
AB (Head off, if you won't)!" from the bantering Czar, whom she had to
obey,--is not incredible, after what we have seen. It seems, he