But what he has not realized is this, that a man of genius can make bricks without straw. The Czar has proved it. He has built St. Petersburg on a marsh. He has built a fleet and organized an army. He has made palaces, schools, academies, factories, and dockyards, and he has inspired others with his fever for work. Like all great workers he never gives one an impression of hurry. He seems always to have leisure to see whom he wants, to have his say out, and to indulge in recreation when he feels so inclined. He rises every morning at four o’clock. From eleven to twelve he receives petitions from all ranks of his subjects, who have access to him during that hour. He dines at twelve o’clock. At one he sleeps for an hour; the afternoon and evening he spends in diversions, and at ten he goes to bed. He seems to delight in finding out a project which appears to be impossible, and in achieving it forthwith. No scheme is too large for him to devise, and no detail of it too small for him to attend to. He has the gift of discovering any useful scrap of knowledge either in men or books. At his balls and entertainments, which he now gives at the Summer Palace or, on extraordinary occasions, at the Senate House, all degrees of persons are invited. Different tables are arranged in separate rooms for the clergy, the officers of the Army, those of the Navy, the merchants, the ship-builders, the foreign skippers. After dinner the Czar goes from room to room and talks to everybody, especially with the masters of foreign trading vessels. The Dutch and English skippers treat him with familiarity, and call him by no other name than Skipper Peter, which delights him, and the whole time he marks down any points which interest him in a note-book. In conversing with these men, various in rank and condition, he never appears to be courting popularity or to be ingeniously fencing with subjects of which he is ignorant. On the contrary, he makes it manifest that he is talking on a subject because it interests him and because he is thoroughly acquainted with it. And any man who is an expert at any trade or profession cannot converse with him for a few moments without realizing that he knows what he is talking about and that his knowledge is the result of practical experience. He has a hatred of baseless theory, a contempt for convention, and an insatiable passion for fact and reality. He has no respect for inherited rank or for the glory of lineage; merit is to him the only rank. He will at a moment’s notice, should he think it necessary, degrade a nobleman into a peasant or make a pastry-cook into a Minister. Indeed he has done this in the case of Prince Menzikoff.