Wilfrid, who had seen not a few kings in his day, thought that the being now advancing towards him was the sorriest specimen of sovereignty he had ever met with—a very Caliban of royalty. He could scarcely bring himself to believe that the grotesque creature to whom all were kneeling as to a god could really be the crowned head of a vast empire. He beheld a man, short of stature, bald and wrinkled, with a leaden complexion and large, glaring, dark eyes. The countenance was of the true Kalmuck type, so frightfully ugly that, if history speak truly, its owner shrank from looking into a mirror. (His wife, it is said, fainted at the first sight of him.) Certain it is that, differing from his predecessors, he forbade his likeness to be stamped on the coinage, with the result that since his time the Czar’s head has not figured on the Russian currency. As if he were some character in a comic opera, whose part it was to burlesque royalty, he wore a shabby old military surtout reaching down to his heels, jack-boots with immense spurs, and an enormous cocked hat carried beneath his arm. No matter how many degrees of frost the thermometer might register, that hat was never seen upon his head. It seemed as if he had set himself to contradict the current opinion that St. Petersburg is the coldest capital in Europe. Cold? when a man can walk about in the open air without furs and without a hat! Pooh, don’t talk such stuff as that, sir! Thus arrayed he was accustomed to play at soldiering by parading through the streets at the head of a regiment of footguards, flourishing a baton, marching on tip-toe with mincing air, and looking so like a little bantam that if he had flapped his arms and cried, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” one would have felt little surprise. The regiment that accompanied him was the famous Paulovski Guards, a creation of his own and worthy of him. The face of every soldier, like that of his Imperial master, carried the ornament of a snub, upturned nose; and, as if to render the face still more grotesque, the moustaches were brushed upwards to the ears. Not only did Wilfrid’s erect attitude give displeasure, but his six feet of handsome and athletic manhood was likewise an affront to a ruler, who, on account of his diminutive and ugly appearance, had been so sneered at by his mother’s tall and shapely courtiers that he had come at last to hate the sight of a well-favoured person, and was jealous even of his own son’s stature and beauty. Directing a terrible glance at Wilfrid, the Czar spoke, and by that act, Wilfrid, did he but know it, had become a very illustrious character. “There are but two great men in Russia,” Paul had once said, “myself, and he to whom I happen to be speaking at the moment.” “Why,” demanded the Czar—and though Wilfrid had never before seen or heard him, there seemed something oddly familiar, both in his face and voice—“why do you refuse to us the homage of the knee?”