She quizzed me a little about the small dimensions of the island in which we dwelt, an island where the people elbowed each other for lack of room; she asked me if it were really true that our soldiers were sailors; and if it was also true that our Admiral in the Baltic always carried a little sword under one arm, and a great fish under the other, alluding to a popular Moscow caricature of Sir Charles Napier. It was impossible not to laugh with her, for her charming tricks of foreign manner, the arch smiles of her occasionally half-closed eyes, and her pretty ways of gesticulation with the loveliest of white hands, from which she had now drawn the gloves, were all very seductive; moreover the Russians have a natural mode of imbuing with heartiness every phrase and expression, however simple or merely polite. She always spoke of the Czar with more profound awe and respect than even Catholics do of the Pope, or Mahometans do of the Sultan; but it should be borne in mind that in Russia, as Golovine says, "next to the King of Heaven, the Czar is the object of adoration. He is, in the estimation of the Russian, the representative and the elect of God; so he is the head of his church, the source of all the beatitudes, and the first cause of all fear. His hand distributes as bounteously as his arm strikes heavily. Love, fear, and humble respect are blended in this deification of the monarch, which serves most frequently only to task the cupidity of some, and the pusillanimity of others. The Czar is the centre of all rays, the focus to which every eye is directed; he is the 'Red Sun' of the Russians, for thus they designate him. The Czar is the father of the whole nation; no one has any relation that can be named in the same day with the Emperor; and when his interest speaks, every other voice is hushed!"