I landed at Ancona. From there I started for Bologna, which I had heard the commander had chosen for his headquarters. The Count Alexis Orloff, although the hero of Chesma, hated the sea from the bottom of his heart, and having given over the command of the squadron to his vice-admiral, the first flag-officer, Vice-Admiral Samuel Greig, he spent most of his time on land. To those beneath him he was ever amiable and good. He was very fond of simple jokes, and surrounded as he was by almost Imperial luxury, was always attentive and easy of access. The life of the count at Moscow, before the campaign in the Greek waters, which had covered his name with glory, had remained graven on my mind. The Orloffs were no strangers to our family. My late father in days gone by had been their companion-in-arms, and I, in going backwards and forwards from the naval schools to my birthplace, used very often to spend long holidays in their Muscovite house. The Count Alexis especially was a favourite of bright Moscow; the gigantic and splendid figure of Count Alexana, as all Moscow called him, full of robust health, his fine Grecian eyes, his gay and careless manners, his enormous wealth, all tended to attract to his hospitable halls all that Moscow could boast of as regards aristocracy, nobility, and also almost all other classes. The house of the Count Alexis, as I well remember it now, stood not far from the gates of Moscow, and not far from the “Crimean Ford,” and very near to his property in the environs of Moscow, the village Niaskouchnavo (the “not gloomy” village). The Muscovites could admire in the house of the count the splendid gobelin tapestries on the walls; the marvellous, graceful Dutch-tile stoves on gilt pedestals; the magnificent collection of old arms and armour. His town garden was ornamented with ponds, lakes, arbours, cascades, a menagerie, and an aviary. At the princely gates, in one of the windows of the lodge-keeper’s cottage, hung a golden cage with a parrot in it, who would scream at the idlers, “Long live our little Mother Empress!” At the fabulous feasts of the Count Alexis, very often under the costly lemon and orange trees, brought from his hothouses, tables would be spread, at which more than 300 people would sit down. A true Russian at heart, the count used to like giving his guests the pleasure of looking on at boxings, wrestlings, minstrelsies, himself often not disdaining to take part in them. With his hand he could bend a horseshoe, tie a poker in a knot, or catch a bull by the horns and throw him down; and to these sights he would sometimes invite all Moscow.