On one occasion, to have a good laugh at the rising passion of the fops for _pince-nez_ and spectacles, on the 1st of May he sent on the public promenade at Sokolnika one of his attendants, dressed in a riding costume, and leading amongst the crowd of young dandies a poor, crippled, and half-blind cur, with great _tin_ spectacles on his nose, and a card hung round his neck with the following sentence in large letters, “And look, he’s only three years old!” But it was his splendidly arranged hunting meets and horse races which made him a centre of attraction to all classes of society. Not one horse in all Moscow could be compared to his “Rissak,”[22] a mixed breed of Arabian, English, and Frisian horses. At the races held in front of the house at the “Crimean Ford” I can even now remember how the Count Alexano, in the winter in his tiny sleighs, and in summer in his racing _droskies_ would lead with his own hands his spotlessly white horse “Smitanka,” or her rival, the dapple-grey “Amazonka.” Crowds would be running after the count when he, gathering the reins in his hand in his _romanovski touloup_,[23] or his damask coat, would appear at the gates on his snorting, white-maned beauty, calling out to his three Simeons--to his first jockey, Sainka the White, to arrange the bit; to his second, Sainka the Black, to tighten the stirrups; to his third, Sainka the Dresdenite, to moisten the horse’s mane with _kvas_. The count was also playful in his correspondence. Who does not know the letter he wrote to his brother Gregory after the celebrated victory of Chesma? “Sir, my brother, good day! We marched on the enemy, we went up to him, we caught him, we felled him, we broke him, we conquered him, we drowned him, we burnt him, and turned him into ashes. And I, your humble servant, am in good health.--ALEXIS ORLOFF.”