Zotoff died a few years later, and it was necessary to proceed to the election of an “Archbishop of St. Petersburg in the diocese of drunkards, gluttons, and madmen.” The Conclave was held in a mock nunnery, presided over by a lady of noble birth and dissolute habits; and the “cardinals” kissed her breasts as they took the ballot-balls (eggs) from her hands. Later still, within a few years of his death, Peter decided that his new Patriarch must marry Zotoff’s widow. After ceremonies which could only partly be described the couple were married, thoroughly intoxicated, and put to bed in a monument in the public square where the populace could enjoy the spectacle in its own indelicate way. In fine, only two years before the Tsar’s death, the Patriarch died, and it was necessary to elect another. Peter’s idea on this occasion, which was carried out, was to enclose the “cardinals” for twenty-four hours, saturating them all the time with wine and brandy, and then let them choose a spiritual head. It is not “history” delicately to suppress these things, or merely hint that Peter sought relief from his colossal labours in somewhat boisterous jokes, and then enumerate the deeds by which he earned the title of “the great.” These, and his ferocious bursts of rage--his brutal attacks on a man or woman who offended, and his truculent torture and murder of graver offenders--are part of his normal character. He had no feeling of decency or morals; indeed his whole life was a mockery of it. He was wholly devoid of any kind of fine or tender sentiment. Occasionally, with a dull air of generosity, he pardoned an offender; and he set up many philanthropic institutions at Moscow and St. Petersburg. Habitually he was coarse and unrestrained in the last degree. He would in public play with the breasts of noble ladies of the court, and many of his private acts and expressions cannot be described. I am not stressing the fact that Peter was immoral, which is not inconsistent with greatness, even of character. He was, in these and a thousand other things, little, petty, shallow, uncivilised. It would, however, be not less unjust to dwell upon these matters to the exclusion of those services to his country which have, it is generally understood, made Peter the one great monarch of the Romanoff dynasty. These must be duly considered. They fall naturally into two categories: the reforms by which he at least broke some of the ice which locked Russia in its rigid mediævalism, and the wars by which he lessened the power of its hereditary enemies and profitably extended its boundaries.