In addition to his dogs, his Majesty took great interest in his horses, one of his favourites being “the long Mollwitz Grey” which had belonged to his father, on which he retreated from the battlefield, and which he never afterwards rode, but kept till its death. Then there was Cæsar, a roan, that walked freely about in the garden of the palace of Potsdam, and was so accustomed to Frederick that it followed him to the parade, where his Majesty would occasionally order a different movement rather than disturb his old steed. Another pet horse was Condé, which was almost daily brought out before the King, who fed it with melons, sugar, and figs; other favourites being Choiseul, Kaunitz, Brühl, and Pitt. Another very fine horse, writes Vehse in his “Memoirs of the Court of Prussia,” was Lord Bute, and when the English minister had discontinued the subsidies, revenge was taken on the horse, which had to help the mules in drawing orange trees. Peter the Great had a favourite monkey, which was allowed to take all kinds of liberties. During his Majesty’s stay in this country, William III. “made the Czar a visit to his lodgings in York Buildings, in which an odd incident happened. The Czar had his monkey, which sat upon the back of his chair,” writes Lord Dartmouth, and “as soon as the King was sat down the monkey jumped upon him in some wrath, which discomposed the whole ceremonial, and most of the time was spent afterwards in apologies for the monkey’s behaviour.”[114] Alexander III. was much attached to animals, and would tramp for miles through forest and marsh with his favourite setters--Spot and Juno--for sole companions. The imperial kennels and stables were models of order and propriety. After children, dogs and animals in general were a great delight to Catherine II. of Russia, in connection with which many anecdotes have been recorded. In 1785, we are told how she took a fancy to a white squirrel, of which she made a pet, and about the same time she became possessed of a monkey of whose cleverness she would often boast. “You should have seen,” she writes to Grimm, “the amazement of Prince Henry one day when Prince Potenkin let loose a monkey in the room, with which I began to play. He opened his eyes, but he could not resist the tricks of the monkey.” Her Majesty also had a favourite cat, which seems to have been a wonderful animal--“the most tomcat of all tomcats, gay, witty, not obstinate.” In one of her letters she writes: “You will excuse me if all the preceding page is very badly written. I am extremely hampered at the moment by a certain young and fair Zemire, who of all the Thomassins is the one who will come closest to me, and who pushes her pretensions to the point of having her paws on my paper.”