In the costly ornamentation of that palace, Razumowski had spent a considerable part of his fortune: it was even said that his fortune had been impaired by it. That wealth, which was enormous, came to him from his father, Cyril Razumowski, the field-marshal, and the brother of that famous Alexis who was the favourite and subsequently the husband of Empress Elizabeth, who secretly married him at Perowo, near Moscow. The vagaries of luck, which has played so important a part in the history of Russia, were for Cyril what they were for the brother of Catherine I. When the erewhile chorister-lad of the imperial chapel, Alexis Razumowski, had sprouted into the lover and minister of Empress Elizabeth, it all at once recurred to him that he had a brother. Alexis decided upon having him sent for, in order to give him a share of some of the good things that had come to himself. The brother herded flocks somewhere in Little Russia, and had no presentiment of the marvellous destiny in store for him. On the contrary, he was inclined to look upon the imperial emissaries who had come in search of him as so many recruiting-sergeants bent on converting him into a soldier. In his opinion, the wallet in which he carried his bread while tending his flock was a thousand times preferable to the grenadier’s knapsack; hence, at the approach of the men in quest of him, he escaped, and hid himself in the woods. As a matter of course, they were on his track in a few days, and after a most obstinate resistance, he was bound and laden with fetters, and in that condition he made his first appearance at the Imperial Palace, whence he issued very soon, laden with wealth and favours, a field-marshal, and invested with the restored commandership of the Cossacks, a rank abolished by Peter the Great in consequence of the Mazeppa conspiracy. In addition to the most extensive powers, the latter office conferred upon him the right of levying tithes upon all the revenues of the provinces of his government; and this naturally became the source of one of the most enormous fortunes of Europe.