At last, however, I found that the secret attraction was what the Czar termed the philosophical channel into which our conferences flowed. I never saw a man so partial to moral problems and metaphysical inquiries, especially to those connected with what ought to be the beginning or the end of all moral sciences,--politics. Sometimes we would wander out in disguise, and select some object from the customs or things around us, as the theme of reflection and discussion; nor in these moments would the Czar ever allow me to yield to his rank what I might not feel disposed to concede to his arguments. One day, I remember that he arrested me in the streets, and made me accompany him to look upon two men undergoing the fearful punishment of the battaog;* one was a German, the other a Russian: the former shrieked violently, struggled in the hands of his punishers, and, with the utmost difficulty, was subjected to his penalty; the latter bore it patiently and in silence; he only spoke once, and it was to say, "God bless the Czar!" * A terrible kind of flogging, but less severe than the knout. "Can your Majesty hear the man," said I, warmly, when the Czar interpreted these words to me, "and not pardon him?" Peter frowned, but I was not silenced. "You don't know the Russians!" said he, sharply, and turned aside. The punishment was now over. "Ask the German," said the Czar to an officer, "what was his offence?" The German, who was writhing and howling horribly, uttered some violent words against the disgrace of the punishment, and the pettiness of his fault; what the fault was I forget. "Now ask the Russian," said Peter. "My punishment was just!" said the Russian, coolly, putting on his clothes as if nothing had happened; "God and the Czar were angry with me!" "Come away, Count," said the Czar; "and now solve me a problem. I know both those men, and the German, in a battle, would be the braver of the two. How comes it that he weeps and writhes like a girl, while the Russian bears the same pain without a murmur?" "Will your Majesty forgive me," said I, "but I cannot help wishing that the Russian had complained more bitterly; insensibility to punishment is the sign of a brute, not a hero. Do you not see that the German felt the indignity, the Russian did not? and do you not see that that very pride which betrays agony under the disgrace of the battaog is exactly the very feeling that would have produced courage in the glory of the battle? A sense of honour makes better soldiers and better men than indifference to pain." "But had I ordered the Russian to death, he would have gone with the same apathy and the same speech, 'It is just! I have offended God and the Czar!'"