He spoke to his two generals, Mentchikoff and Alexis Golowin, as he took his ease after dinner in the fortress of Poltava.
“Sweden is insane,” said Mentchikoff calmly. “No man in his senses would have come so far from his base.”
“Nor turned into the Ukraine without guides or provisions,” added Golowin.
Peter made no reply; leaning against the frame of the open window he stared out into the sunny, dusty courtyard.
He was now thirty-six years of age and had lost all the bloom of youth; he was getting stout and his excesses had left their mark on his face, which, though still soft and handsome, was lined and swollen and an unhealthy color.
The thick locks were tinged with gray and his eyebrows and lips twitched with incipient disease.
He was now unbuttoned because of the heat; his green coat was grease-stained, his linen soiled.
In his right hand, coarsened by manual labor, he held a glass full of some sweet liquid round which the flies buzzed.
A star of the purest brilliants hung by a common ribbon from one of his buttonholes, which gleamed as his breast rose and fell with his heavy breathing.
The two generals were magnificent in satin coats, perukes, stars, and laces, but neither had clean hands or linen.