as in one of the wards of Bedlam. The grossest
contradictions followed each other in constant succession. Today he
would caress his wife, to-morrow place her under military arrest. At
one hour he would load his children with favors, and the next endeavor
to expose them publicly to shame.

Though Paul severely blamed his mother for the vast sums she lavished
upon her court, these complaints did not prevent him from surpassing
her in extravagance. The innumerable palaces she had reared and
embellished with more than oriental splendor, were not sufficient for
him. Neither the Winter palace, nor the Summer palace, nor the palace
of Anitschkoff, nor the Marble palace, nor the Hermitage, whose
fairy-like gorgeousness amazed all beholders, nor a crowd of other
royal residences, too numerous to mention, and nearly all
world-renowned, were deemed worthy of the residence of the new
monarch. Pretending that he had received a celestial injunction to
construct a new palace, he built, reckless of expense, the chateau of
St. Michael.

The crown of Catharine was the wonder of Europe, but it was not rich
enough for the brow of Paul. A new one was constructed, and his
coronation at Moscow was attended with freaks of expenditure which
impoverished provinces. Boundless gifts were lavished upon his
favorites. But that he might enrich a single noble, ten thousand
peasants were robbed. The crown peasants were vassals, enjoying very
considerable freedom and many privileges. The peasantry of the nobles
were slaves, nearly as much so as those on a Cuban plantation, with
the single exception that custom prevented their being sold except
with the land. Like the buildings, the oaks and the elms, they were
inseparably attached to the soil. The emperor, at his coronation, gave
away eighty thousand families to his favorites. Their labor
henceforth, for life, was all to go to enrich their masters. These
courtiers, reveling in boundless luxury, surrendered their slaves to
overseers, whose reputation depended upon extorting as much as
possible from the miserable boors.

The extravagance of Catharine II. had rendered it necessary for her to
triple the capitation, or, as we should call it, the poll-tax, imposed
upon the peasants. Paul now doubled this tax, which his mother had
already tripled. The King of Prussia had issued a decree that no
subject should fall upon his knees before him, but that every man
should maintain in his presence and in that of