He laughed greatly at this idea; made peace, and talked a long time with me.

I had got my lesson: I spoke of his fleet and his conquests;--which charmed him so much, that he said more than once to the Czarina, 'If he could have a child like me, he would willingly give one of his Provinces in exchange.' The Czarina also caressed me a good deal.

The Queen [Mamma] and she placed themselves under the dais, each in an arm-chair" of proper dignity; "I was at the Queen's side, and the Princesses of the Blood," Margravines above spoken of, "were opposite to her,"-- all in a standing posture, as is proper.
"The Czarina was a little stumpy body, very brown, and had neither air nor grace: you needed only look at her, to guess her low extraction." It is no secret, she had been a kitchen-wench in her Lithuanian native country; afterwards a female of the kind called unfortunate, under several figures: however, she saved the Czar once, by her ready-wit and courage, from a devouring Turkish Difficulty, and he made her fortunate and a Czarina, to sit under the dais as now.

"With her huddle of clothes, she looked for all the world like a German Play-actress; her dress, you would have said, had been bought at a second-hand shop; all was out of fashion, all was loaded with silver and greasy dirt.

The front of her bodice she had ornamented with jewels in a very singular pattern: A double-eagle in embroidery, and the plumes of it set with poor little diamonds, of the smallest possible carat, and very ill mounted.