ition by slaughtering men, she spent in
loving them:

"For, though she would widow all
Nations, she liked man as an individual."

She never dismissed an old admirer until she had secured several new
ones, and generally consoled those who had served her by a present of
twenty or thirty thousand serfs. On the death of Lanskoi, it is
recorded of her that "she gave herself up to the most poignant grief,
and remained three months without going out of her palace of Czarsko
Selo," thus perpetrating a very curious practical satire upon the
holiest of human affections. Her grenadier lover Potemkin, according
to the character given of him by the Count Segur, was little better
than a gigantic and savage buffoon--licentious and superstitious, bold
and timid by turns--sometimes desiring to be King of Poland, at others
a bishop or a monk. Of him we read that "he put out an eye to free it
from a blemish which diminished his beauty. Banished by his rival, he
ran to meet death in battle, and returned with glory." Another
pleasant little jest was that perpetrated by Suwarrow, who, after the
bloody battle of Tourtourskaya, announced the result to his mistress
in an epigram of two doggerel lines. This was the terrible warrior who
used to sleep almost naked in a room of suffocating heat, and rush out
to review his troops in a linen jacket, with the thermometer of
Reaumur ten degrees below freezing point. Of the Emperor Paul, the son
of Catharine, we read that he issued a ukase against the use of
shoe-strings and round hats; caused all the watch-boxes, gates, and
bridges throughout the empire to be painted in the most glaring and
fantastic colors, and passed a considerable portion of his time riding
on a wooden rocking-horse--a degenerate practice for a scion of the
bold Catharine, who used to dress herself in men's clothes, and ride
a-straddle on the back of a live horse to review her troops. Alexander
I., in his ukase of September, 1827, perpetrated a very fine piece of
Russian humor. The period of military service for serfs is fixed at
twenty years in the Imperial Guard, and twenty-two in other branches
of the service. It is stated in express terms that the moment a serf
becomes enrolled in the ranks of the army he is free! But he must not
desert, for if he does he becomes a slave again. This idea of freedom
is really refreshing. Only twenty or twenty-two years of the gentle
restraints of Russian military discipline to be en