“Hard work deserves good food,” the Russian said, in reply to a remark of Charlie’s as to the excellence both of the food and wine.  “Your Charles does not think so, I hear, and lives on the roughest of food.  What will be the consequence?  He will wear himself out.  His restless activity will exhaust his powers, and weaken his judgment.  I can eat rough food if I can get no better, but I take the best, when opportunity offers.

“What have you been doing ever since you left Plescow?  I inquired after you the other day, when our troops broke up Schlippenbach’s force on the Embach.  I found you were not among the prisoners, and I wondered if you were among the killed.”

“I was not in Livonia at the time.  I was with the king’s army at Warsaw.  Three regiments were sent off, the day after the battle of Clissow, by boats down the Vistula, and then by ship to Revel.  Mine was one of them, but we arrived a fortnight too late.”

“Then you were present at Charles’ third victory?  How that young fellow handles his troops, and what wonderful troops they are!  Now we will get into our easy chairs again, and you shall tell me something about what you have been doing, since we last met.”

Charlie gave a sketch of his adventures.

“So you fought at the Dwina, too?  You have had luck in going through three battles without a wound.”

When Charlie stated that he had gone to Warsaw on a private mission, whose nature was immaterial to the story, the doctor broke in: 

“You need not tell me what it was, it was of course something to do with Augustus.  The way Charles is hunting down that unfortunate king is shocking, it is downright malignity.  Why, he has wasted fifteen months over it already, and it has cost him Ingria.  He could have made any terms with Poland he liked, after his victory on the Dwina, and would then have been free to use all his forces against us.  As it is, he has wasted two summers, and is likely to waste another, and that not for any material advantage, but simply to gratify his hatred against Augustus; and he has left us to take Ingria almost without a blow, and to gain what Russia has wanted for the last hundred years, a foothold on the Baltic.  He may be a great general, but he is no politician.  No real statesman would throw away solid advantages in order to gratify personal pique.”

“He considers Augustus the author of this league against him,” Charlie said.  “He and the czar had no grounds at all of quarrel against him.”

“We talked over that, the last time we met,” the doctor said with a laugh, “and I told you then that a foothold on the Baltic was so necessary to Russia, that she would have accepted the alliance of the Prince of Darkness himself to get it.  As to Augustus, I don’t defend him.  He was ambitious, as I suppose most of us are.  He thought he saw an opportunity of gaining territory.  He has found that he has made a mistake, and will of course lose a province.  But Charles’ persecution of him goes beyond all bounds.  Never before did a sovereign insist upon a nation consenting to dethrone its king at his dictation.