One day, when he was so drunk as to be unable to attend on me, I began to scold him, and threatened him with the stick if he did not mend his ways.  As soon as he saw my cane lifted, he ran at me and got hold of it; and if I had not knocked him down immediately, he would doubtless have beaten me.  I dismissed him on the spot.  There is not a better servant in the world than a Russian.  He works without ceasing, sleeps in front of the door of his master’s bedroom to be always ready to fulfil his orders, never answering his reproaches, incapable of theft.  But after drinking a little too much brandy he becomes a perfect monster; and drunkenness is the vice of the whole nation.

A coachman knows no other way of resisting the bitter cold to which he is exposed, than by drinking rye brandy.  It sometimes happens that he drinks till he falls asleep, and then there is no awaking for him in this world.  Unless one is very careful, it is easy to lose an ear, the nose, a cheek, or a lip by frost bites.  One day as I was walking out on a bitterly cold day, a Russian noticed that one of my ears was frozen.  He ran up to me and rubbed the affected part with a handful of snow till the circulation was restored.  I asked him how he had noticed my state, and he said he had remarked the livid whiteness of my ear, and this, he said, was always a sign that the frost had taken it.  What surprised me most of all is that sometimes the part grows again after it has dropped off.  Prince Charles of Courland assured me that he had cost his nose in Siberia, and that it had grown again the next summer.  I have been assured of the truth of this by several Russians.

About this time the empress made the architect Rinaldi, who had been fifty years in St. Petersburg, build her an enormous wooden amphitheatre so large as to cover the whole of the space in front of the palace.  It would contain a hundred thousand spectators, and in it Catherine intended to give a vast tournament to all the knights of her empire.  There were to be four parties of a hundred knights each, and all the cavaliers were to be clad in the national costume of the nations they represented.  All the Russians were informed of this great festival, which was to be given at the expense of the sovereign, and the princes, counts, and barons were already arriving with their chargers from the most remote parts of the empire.  Prince Charles of Courland wrote informing me of his intention to be present.

It had been ordained, that the tournament should take place on the first fine day, and this precaution was a very wise one; for, excepting in the season of the hard frosts, a day without rain, or snow, or wind, is a marvel.  In Italy, Spain, and France, one can reckon on fine weather, and bad weather is the exception, but it is quite the contrary in Russia.  Ever since I have known this home of frost and the cold north wind, I laugh when I hear travelling Russians talking of the fine climate of their native country.