During the reign of the Empress Catharine, he was detained in Schlusselburg "under the denomination of a _Person Unknown_, and it was given out that his senses were impaired, though it is pretty well understood that this is without foundation." "His fate has been particularly lamentable," continues a newspaper of the period; "torn from the bosom of his family, he has now passed twenty-three years in close captivity. The late Empress Elizabeth, towards the latter end of her life, seemed disposed to treat this noble captive with clemency and favour, either from sentiments of justice and compassion, or to render two great personages more circumspect and submissive." These personages were her successors, the unfortunate Peter III. and Catharine II. Ivan's mother is said to have died of grief; but Duke Anthony Ulric and his four other children were all confined for life in a house at Horsens, a town of Jutland, at the extremity of the Baltic, where they had a precinct of a mile English; but it was surrounded by high palisades, beyond which they dared not venture under pain of death; and there the Duke, old and blind, passed the last years of his melancholy life. His youngest daughter, Elizabeth, "was a woman of high spirit and elegant manners," according to Coxe, the traveller, who visited her; "she possessed portraits of her father and mother, and even contrived to procure a rouble of her brother Ivan, struck during his short reign. It is difficult to conjecture how she could obtain a coin, the possession of which was more than once punished by the Empress Elizabeth as high-treason, and it is still more difficult to imagine how she could secret it from the knowledge of her guards during her long imprisonment." Confinement had rendered Ivan's features unnaturally pale and delicate; and, by years of systematic constraint and oppression, his fine, clear, and very beautiful dark eyes had a soft, subdued, and chastened expression, that was singularly touching and winning. The tone of his voice was also gentle and alluring. "Hospodeen," said he, presenting his hand to Balgonie, "I rejoice to meet you, if one who leads a life so strange as mine can be said to rejoice; but you are one to whom I may talk a little without danger--eh, Father Chrysostom? And he has told me, Hospodeen, that you are not a Russian, but a native of some island that is far away in the sea. What are you? A Tartar--a Tcherkesse? Oh no, you cannot be either. I know them; for they guard me," he added, with a little shudder.