“What a wag your Excellency is,” laughed Roumiantzev, showing two rows of white, even teeth, “Grey hair in the beard, but a devil of a fellow inside!” Tolstoi replied by another ditty:—
“The women tell me every day
That all my bloom has passed away.
“Behold,” the pretty wantons cry,
“Behold this mirror with a sigh;
The locks upon thy brow are few,
And, like the rest, they are withering too!”
Whether decline has thinn’d my hair,
I’m sure I neither know nor care;
But this I know, and this I feel,