[18] Zhukoff is a very coarse, Russian-grown tobacco.
IV
The wonderful flea, of burnished English steel, remained in Alexander Pavlovitch's casket beneath the fish's bone until he died in Taganrog, he having given it to Priest Feodot to transmit to the Empress later, when she should have grown calm. The Empress Alexandra Alexyevna looked at the flea's variations, and burst out laughing, but she did not occupy herself with it.
"My state is now that of a widow," said she, "and no sort of amusement is seductive to me;" and on her return to Petrograd, she gave this marvel and all the other treasures in the inheritance to the new Emperor.
The Emperor Nikolai Pavlovitch also paid no heed to the flea at first, because there was a disturbance at his accession to the throne. But later on, one day, he began to inspect the casket which had come to him from his brother, and from it he drew forth the snuff-box, and from the snuff-box the diamond as big as a walnut, and in it he found the steel flea, which had not been wound up for a long time, and therefore did not work, but lay as though petrified.
The Emperor gazed at it and marvelled. "What sort of a nonsensical trifle is this? and why did my brother preserve it so carefully?"
The courtiers wanted to fling it away, but the Emperor said: "No, this has some meaning."
They summoned a chemist from the apothecary's shop at the Anitchkoff Bridge, who was accustomed to weigh out poisons on the tiniest of scales, and showed it to him; and he immediately took the flea, and placed it on his tongue, and said: "I feel a chill, as from some strong metal." And then he bit it gently with his teeth, and announced: "You may say what you please, this is not a real flea, but a nymfozoria, and 'tis made of metal, and the work is not ours, not Russian."
The Emperor ordered that they should instantly find out whence came this thing, and what was the meaning of it.