Prince N. was governor in one of the eastern provinces, and had gained imiversal respect and love in the course of his administration ; but finding at length the climate under 53'^ north latitude insupportably warm, he returned to a private station and took up his abode in St. Petersburg. Even in the severest winter in that cold land, where according to Herodotus, men, at certain seasons, are changed into wolves, bears, and other beasts, he never wore any fur, and under 15° cold (of Reaumur) he was often seen in the streets, without hat or coat, in his shirt-sleeves. So at war was he with warmth that he would never suffer the wing of his house, where his own apartments were situated, to be heated, and generally kept the window open, so that mountains of snow had to be swept out of his cabinet. A person Hving on sucli familiar terms with Boreas and his court, could of course keep up but little intercourse with warmblooded human beings, without a special provision for their comfort. In a well heated forehouse, the piince caused a number of warm pelisses of all forms and sizes to be kept, and in these his servants packed up his visiters before they entered the chambers of the winter prince. In a large assembly of Herodotus's bears, wolves, and foxes, the ordy undisgniised man must have looked singular enough. His love of cold was not the only peculiarity of the pnnce. He had a tenderness for the Tartar and Kirguisan kitchen, and all his food was prepared in their fashion. This fancy was by no means agreeable to the friends and relations who could not avoid meeting round his table once or twice a week, and they were therefore under the necessity on these occasions of smugghng in two or three European dishes made by their o\mi cooks, under the pretence that they were some new discoveries of the French cuisine that he must taste.
His inclination to the heathen Kirguises went, however, no further than their kitchen ; in other respects he was a pious Greek Christian — heaixl mass dally in his private chapel, and In his walks knelt down conscientiously in the dirt before every church to cross himself and say a prayer. A multitude of sacred pictures hung in his apartments and in his piivate cabinet, and the walls were covered with saints from top to bottom. None were well received by him who did not cross themselves and bow down before every picture in every room. If his little grandchildren ran through the rooms to greet him without performing this ceremony they were always sent back again with a sharp reprimand, to salute the saints before they were allowed to kiss his hand.
A more praiseworthy quality was his great benevolence, which was displayed at times in a rather peculiar fashion. Bread he frequently distnbuted in his courtyard or in the streets with his own hands. Once he was dri'ing through the " Sinnoi ploshtshad''' (victualling market) at Michaelmas, and hearing a prodigious cackling of geese, it came into his head to treat all the poor of his quarter to roast goose. Hereupon he pm'chased the whole stock of three or four hundred geese, and ordered his own elegant servants to drive them home ; but seeing they did not get on very well with the business, he got out of his carriage, borrowed a stick from a peasant, and, followed by his splendid coach-and-four and an army of gaping rabble, played the gooseherd from one end of the town to the other. Having reached his palace, he caused all the hungry stomachs round to be assembled in his courtyard, and with a liberal hand divided the cackling rotis among them. In the midst of the diversion, his wife, one of the greatest dames in the city, who did not live in his house, although he was on the best terms with her, drove into the courtyard. The prince, who could not resist the opportunity of teasing her, flung a number of the screaming brood into the gay carriage, and then set on a pack of beggarboys to go and pluck them from among the silken robes of his frightened consort.
A little while before his death he had the pleasure of winning a lawsuit against the chief of the police, whom he had long solicited in vain for permission to drive in the streets of the capital in a troika with three horses abreast, more than two horses abreast being prohibited in the city. He had spent a great sum of money, and set his whole very considerable body of friends to work to obtain this mighty privilege. It was granted at last as a special favour to him only, and he drove about in St. Petersburg a while in triumph, till one day he was honoured with six abreast, and lodged where neither heat nor police could vex him more — in the Newsky churchyard.