d been born in Africa," with his black, close-curling hair, his
bold, imperious eyes, his powerful, well-knit frame--"the muscles and
stature of a Goliath"--a kingly figure, with majesty in every movement.

We see him, too, wilfully discarding the kingliness with which nature
had so liberally dowered him--now receiving ambassadors "in a short
dressing-gown, below which his bare legs were exposed, a thick nightcap,
lined with linen, on his head, his stockings dropped down over his
slippers"--now walking through the Copenhagen streets grotesque in a
green cap, a brown overcoat with horn buttons, worsted stockings full of
darns, and dirty, cobbled shoes; and again carousing, red of face and
loud of voice, with his meanest subjects in some low tavern.

As the mood seizes him he plays the role of fireman for hours together;
goes carol-singing in his sledge, and reaps his harvest of coppers from
the houses of his subjects; rides a hobby-horse at a village fair, and
shrieks with laughter until he falls off; or plies saw and plane in a
shipbuilding yard, sharing the meals and drinking bouts of his
fellow-workmen.

The French Ambassador, Campredon, wrote of him in 1725:--"It is utterly
impossible at the present moment to approach the Tsar on serious
subjects; he is altogether given up to his amusements, which consist in
going every day to the principal houses in the town with a suite of 200
persons, musicians and so forth, who sing songs on every sort of
subject, and amuse themselves by eating and drinking at the expense of
the persons they visit." "He never passed a single day without being
the worse for drink," Baron Poellnitz tells us; and his drinking
companions were usually chosen from the most degraded of his subjects,
of both sexes, with whom he consorted on the most familiar terms.

When his muddled brain occasionally awoke to the knowledge that he was a
King, he would bully and hector his boon-comrades like any drunken
trooper. On one occasion, when a young Jewess refused to drain a goblet
of neat brandy which he thrust into her hand, he promptly administered
two resounding boxes on her ears, shouting, "Vile Hebrew spawn! I'll
teach thee to obey."

There was in him, too, a vein of savage cruelty which took remarkable
forms. A favourite pastime was to visit the torture-chamber and gloat
over the sufferings of the victims of the knout and the strappado; or to
attend (and frequently to officiate at) public executions.