“I think thee was a great deal better off in the gardens of Maria Edgeworth,” said Mrs. Crowder, “for there thee could come and go as thee pleased, and it almost makes my flesh creep when I think of thee living in company with the bloody tyrants of the past.  And always in poverty and suffering, as if thee had been one of the common people, and not the superior of every man around thee!  I don’t want to hear anything more about the wicked Nebuchadnezzar.  How long did thee stay with Maria Edgeworth?”

“About four years,” he replied; “and I might have remained much longer, for in that quiet life the advance of one’s years was not likely to be noticed.  I am sure Miss Edgeworth looked no older to me when I left her than when I first saw her.  But she was obliged to go into England to nurse her sick stepmother, and after her departure the place had no attractions for me, and I left Ireland.”

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Crowder, a little maliciously, “that thee did not marry her.”

Her husband laughed.

“Englishwomen of her rank in society do not marry their gardeners, and, besides, in any case, she would not have suited me for a wife.  For one reason, she was too homely.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, and she might have said more, but her husband did not give her a chance.

“I know I have talked a great deal about my days of poverty and misery, and now I will tell you something different.  For a time I was the ruler of all the Russias.”

“Ruler!” exclaimed Mrs. Crowder and I, almost in the same breath.

“Yes,” said he, “absolute ruler.  And this was the way of it: 

“I was in Russia in the latter part of the seventeenth century, at a time when there was great excitement in royal and political circles.  The young czar Feodor had recently died, and he had named as his successor his half-brother Peter, a boy ten years of age, who afterward became Peter the Great.  The late czar’s young brother Ivan should have succeeded him, but he was almost an idiot.  In this complicated state of things, the half-sister of Peter, the Princess Sophia, a young woman of wonderful ambition and really great abilities, rose to the occasion.  She fomented a revolution; there was fighting, with all sorts of cruelties and horrors, and when affairs had quieted down she was princess regent, while the two boys, Ivan and Peter, were waiting to see what would happen next.

“She was really a woman admirably adapted to her position.  She was well educated, wrote poetry, and knew how to play her part in public affairs.  She presided in the councils, and her authority was without control; but she was just as bloody-minded and cruel as anybody else in Russia.

“Now, it so happened when the Princess Sophia was at the height of her power, that I was her secretary.  For five or six years I had been a teacher of languages in Moscow, and at one time I had given lessons to the princess.  In this way she had become well acquainted with me, and having frequently called upon me for information of one sort or another, she concluded to make me her secretary.  Thus I was established at the court of Russia.  I had charge of all Sophia’s public papers, and I often had a good deal to do with her private correspondence, but she signed and sealed all papers of importance.