One or two anecdotes of this part of his life will best illustrate his temper. Travelling through a forest, with marsh on each side of the road, he recollected some reason for going back, and ordered the driver to turn. He did not do so instantly, and Paul repeated the order. “In a moment,” the man replied; “here the road is too narrow.” Paul flew into a passion, jumped out of the carriage, and called to an equerry to stop the driver and chastise him. The equerry endeavoured to allay the storm by assurances that the carriage would turn as soon as possible. “You are a scoundrel as well as he,” was the reply; “he shall turn even though he break my neck: at all hazards he shall do as I bid, the moment I give the order.” Meanwhile the coachman had done so, but too late to save himself from a sound beating. He ordered a horse that stumbled under him to be starved. On the eighth day word was brought him of the animal’s death; to which he merely answered, “Good.” The same accident happened after his accession in the streets of St. Petersburgh, on which he got off, made his equerries hold a court–martial, and sentenced the offending beast to receive a hundred blows with a stick, which were immediately inflicted in presence of the Czar and the people. Worse anecdotes might be found. His passion for the strict observance of military minutiæ has been mentioned. One day, as he exercised his regiment of cuirassiers, an officer’s horse fell. Paul ran to the spot in a fury: “Get up, you rascal!” “I cannot, Sire—my leg is broken.” Paul spit upon him, and walked away swearing. Catherine, as before said, appointed Alexander her successor by will. She had intrusted this important document to Zoubow, her last favourite, who hastened immediately upon her death, in the year 1796, to place it in Paul’s hands. It is due to the late emperor to say, that he never took any part in the measures adopted for excluding his father, who succeeded to the vacant throne without opposition. The Czar’s conduct towards his family, on this occasion, does him honour: the more, that under similar circumstances, few of his predecessors would have hesitated to establish their power by the imprisonment or death even of an involuntary rival. Instead of using severity, he gave an affectionate reception to his sons, who had been separated from him since childhood, increased their revenues, and assured them and the empress, to whom he had been a harsh and capricious husband, of his love and protection; and at the same time, with prudence commendable on his son’s account no less than on his own, he provided employment for Alexander which kept the prince near his person till the critical time was over.