The death of this man was yet more singular than his life. Like most Russians, he was passionately attached to the emperor. This feelinowas the stronger in his case because he had been loaded with benefits by his imperial master. He one day heard the news of Alexander's death while walking on the prospekt. The shock was so powerful that he could scarcely reach his home. On entering, he uttered with a deep sigh the words " Gossudar umer" (The emperor is dead), and fell senseless to the ground. He was raised, but breathed his last shortly afterwards in the arms of his family.
He was said to be no solitary example of a broken heart for the loss of Alexander. Many were mentioned both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow ; and a Russian assured me that he would venture any wager, that if all the deaths from this cause throughout the empire were reckoned together, they would amount to above a hundred. Perhaps this is the strongest instance on record of attachment to the head of the state.
In Moscow, whither so many retreat who cannot or will not fall in with the reigning tone in St. Petersburg, persons of eccentric character swarm more than elsewhere. I heard, among others, of a wealthy man, whose property would maintain hundreds in comfort, who has so great a disgust to food as to eat only three times a week, and justifies this barbarous treatment of his stomach simply by the observation, that it is a more than brutal custom to eat as people generally do. The whole business of eating is so offensive to him, that none of his dependants dare practise it in his presence, and he cannot be of a dinner-party any where, -without jesting at and mocking at more plentiful feeders.
Some time ago, there lived in Moscow a lady who swam against the stream in a very odd manner, although women in general are much less subjected to those whims than men. This lady. Countess Z , had a quarrel with the sun himself, and made it the whole business of her Hfe to avoid him From one year's end to another, as soon as the sun rose, and others began their day's employment, she went to bed and made her reappearance with the stars. At seven or eight in the evening she breakfasted, and then traversed the dark streets attended by her servants bearing lanterns, and paid visits, which in St. Petersburg and in Moscow at that time did well enough, as few parties of any kind began before eleven. At one in the morning she dined, either at home or in company, where the supper of others was to her the noontide meal. After that she read and wrote in her cabinet till the day became too unbearably active and noisy, and drove her to take refuge in the world of dreams. No one could ever guess the motive of her abhorrence of what all nature loves so well. If fame did not bear witness that the countess had been endowed with beauty as well as with eccentricity, one might have thought that she dreaded the all-seeing eye of Helios. It is rather singidar that she has founded no sect of day-slee)ers in St. Petersburg at least, where she passed the latter years of her llfe^ and where the winter days are so very detestable, while the nights of summer are so very agreeable. However, she died, the only votary of her own habits — of paper-chewing. She liad contracted the evil habit of seizing on all the paper-cuttings that lay iu her way, and eating them. In defiance of all medical warning she indulged this proj)ensity till she entirely destroyed her health. After her death, her physician, according to a long standing compact, piercrd licr through tlie heart. She had always been haunted by the fear that she 8h(»uld be buried alive, and had bestowed a high rcconipence on the J^hysician, and obliged him to swear that he woukl do her this service when ehe should be dead according to the best of liis knowledge and behef.