Alexander was solitary in his habits; repose was necessary to a man who loved privacy, and hated those prestiges of power which had surrounded him from infancy. He had inherited his imperial grandmother's love for Tzarsko Zelo, a palace situated between three and four leagues from St. Petersburg. This palace stood upon the site of a cottage formerly belonging to an old Dutch-woman named Sarah, a person well known to Peter the Great, with whom that mighty prince was accustomed to chat and drink milk. The fruitful plains covered with grass and waving corn, lately redeemed by the plow from their native sterility, pleased the legislator who was an _habitué_ at the abode of Sarah, and at the death of the old woman, he presented the cottage to the Empress Catharine, with the surrounding lands, as a suitable situation for a farm-house. Catharine, as simple in her tastes as her imperial consort, gave her architect proper directions respecting this grange. He, however, thought fit to build her a fine mansion. Her daughter, the Empress Elizabeth, found this house too costly for a farm-house, and too mean for an imperial residence. She pulled it down and built a magnificent palace after the design of Count Rastreti. This Russian had the barbarous taste to gild the building within and without. The bas-reliefs, statues, caryatides, roof and basement, glittered with a waste of this precious metal. The count wished to make this palace surpass Versailles, and so it did in wealth undoubtedly. The Empress Elizabeth invited the French embassador to the fête she gave at the inauguration of her golden house, which outshone even the celebrated one built by Nero. The palace of Tzarsko Zelo, was considered by the whole court the eighth wonder of the world. The silence of the Marquis de Chetardie surprised her majesty, who with some pique requested his opinion, adding, he appeared to think something was wanting. "I am seeking for the case of this jewel, Madam," dryly replied the embassador; a _bon mot_ which ought to have gained him a sitting in the academy of St. Petersburg, where wit was a surer passport than learning. The golden roof of Tzarsko Zelo was ill-calculated to stand the rigor of a Russian winter. The noble architect had built it for summer. Cold had been forgotten in his calculation. The expensive repairs every spring brought in its course, compelled Catharine the Great to sacrifice the gilding. She had scarcely issued her orders, before a customer appeared for the article she was excluding from her palace, for which a speculator offered her an immense sum. The empress thanked him for a liberal offer none but a Russian sovereign would have declined, assuring him with a smile, "that she never sold her old chattels."