"Make another attempt, and perhaps you will discover my real position."
"His Imperial Majesty!" exclaimed the officer, trembling with apprehension, and dropping the pipe upon the ground, which was broken into twenty pieces.
"The same, at your service," replied the emperor, laughing.
The poor lieutenant-colonel dropped upon his knees, uttering the words in a pitiful tone, "Ah! sire, pardon me."
"What pardon do you require?" replied the emperor. "I asked my way of you, and you pointed it out, and I thank you for that service.—Good day."
The good-tempered prince then took the road to the right, leaving the surly lieutenant-colonel ashamed and astonished at the colloquy he had held with his sovereign.
He gave a proof of intrepidity and presence of mind during a tempest which befell him on a lake near Archangel, when, perceiving the pilot overwhelmed with the responsibility his imperial rank laid upon him, he said, "My friend, more than eighteen hundred years have elapsed, since a Roman general, placed in similar circumstances, said to his pilot, 'Fear not, for thou hast with thee Cæsar and his fortunes.' I am, however, less bold than Cæsar; I therefore charge thee to think no more of the emperor than of thyself or any other man, and do thy best to save us both." The pilot took courage, and relieved from his burden by the wisdom of his sovereign, guided the helm with a firm hand, and brought the tempest-tossed skiff safely to the shore.
The Emperor Alexander was not always so fortunate. He met with several dangerous accidents, and his last journey to the provinces of the Don nearly cost him his life. A fall from his droski hurt his leg, and left him incurably lame. This misfortune was aggravated by his disregarding the advice of his medical attendant, who prescribed rest for some days; but Alexander, who was a strict disciplinarian, did not choose to delay his return to St. Petersburg an hour beyond the time he had fixed. Erysipelas attacked the limb, and the emperor was confined to his bed for many weeks, and never recovered his lameness. The sight of his wife, pale and melancholy, whom his infidelity had injured, increased his mental despondency. That princess watched over him with the conjugal tenderness which no neglect could extinguish, but her fair face had forever lost the smile which once lighted up, like a sunbeam, every beautiful feature, and he felt himself the cause of that secret sorrow which had banished the bloom from her cheek and the smile from her lips. Elizabeth had borne him two daughters, but her children had not survived their fifth and seventh years. A childless mother and forsaken wife, Elizabeth the Empress resembled no longer the bright Louisa of Baden, the object of Alexander's first love, the princess who had shed tears of happiness when the joyful start and impassioned look of her lover had assured the Empress Catharine how willingly he accepted the hand of the princess she had destined for him. The heart of the wife had never swerved from her devotion; her love had increased with time, but she knew not how to share his affections with a rival.
Alexander was solitary in his habits; repose was necessary to a man who loved privacy, and hated those prestiges of power which had surrounded him from infancy. He had inherited his imperial grandmother's love for Tzarsko Zelo, a palace situated between three and four leagues from St. Petersburg. This palace stood upon the site of a cottage formerly belonging to an old Dutch-woman named Sarah, a person well known to Peter the Great, with whom that mighty prince was accustomed to chat and drink milk.
The fruitful plains covered with grass and waving corn, lately redeemed by the plow from their native sterility, pleased the legislator who was an habitué at the abode of Sarah, and at the death of the old woman, he presented the cottage to the Empress Catharine, with the surrounding lands, as a suitable situation for a farm-house. Catharine, as simple in her tastes as her imperial consort, gave her architect proper directions respecting this grange. He, however, thought fit to build her a fine mansion. Her daughter, the Empress Elizabeth, found this house too costly for a farm-house, and too mean for an imperial residence. She pulled it down and built a magnificent palace after the design of Count Rastreti. This Russian had the barbarous taste to gild the building within and without. The bas-reliefs, statues, caryatides, roof and basement, glittered with a waste of this precious metal. The count wished to make this palace surpass Versailles, and so it did in wealth undoubtedly. The Empress Elizabeth invited the French embassador to the fête she gave at the inauguration of her golden house, which outshone even the celebrated one built by Nero. The palace of Tzarsko Zelo, was considered by the whole court the eighth wonder of the world.