Almost every morning we were hearing news of the discomfiture of the Allies, the destruction of at least a part of the fleet, and so on. One day I went to call on a lady, and an elderly gentleman there present informed her, as a piece of pleasing intelligence, that _four more_ of the ships in the Baltic had been sunk. As this was about the tenth time that reliable information had been received of a similar event, upon a fair calculation there were already forty of them put _hors de combat_. In speaking of Sir Charles Napier one evening, I was informed, “He is the most savage monster breathing; he never shows mercy to any one, because he really does not know what the word means; and as the parliament has ordered him to spare nothing that is Russian, God knows who would live to speak of the scenes we shall witness when he comes to St. Petersburg.” Notwithstanding the terror which was universal, they still affected to laugh at the idea of a naval invasion. “Look at Odessa; what did the fleet do except making themselves ridiculous, and what is that place compared to Cronstadt and our other forts?” We were much amused once by the account an old gentleman gave a whole company concerning the manœuvres of the Allied fleets near Denmark. According to him, the splendid “men” of war now floating on the Russian seas were constructed somewhat in the fashion of hens and chickens; for he gravely told us that the hulls were made to open, and a whole progeny of little gunboats made their sudden appearance, which, after having fired off the cannon and done all the mischief they could, ran back like lightning to the shelter of their great parent’s wing, the hull of which opened and closed by means of machinery, and were thus enabled to place all the young fry in safety! Instead of the Russians being the aggressors and the cause of the war, the English were always accused of it, and, according to the people in St. Petersburg, our Queen would have declared war long before she did so had our government been sure of the co-operation of the French. “Vous prenez la France par la manche, because if you do not guide her she may turn against you.” At another time we were told that the chief object for which the English made war was that of obtaining possession of the gold-mines in Siberia. In England people would scarcely credit that anything so absurd could be believed even in Russia, yet it undoubtedly was so. I remember when Mr. Pim, the naval lieutenant, came to St. Petersburg, proposing to cross overland to the north of Siberia in search of Sir John Franklin, all the Russians were convinced that he was sent merely as a spy to look out for the gold-mines,[23] whilst some went so far as to say that his designs were to corrupt the nomads of Asia, only they forgot to add what we intended to do with them when we had them.