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Peter Tolstoi opened his mother-of-pearl snuff-box—on its lid was represented three lambs, and a shepherd loosening the girdle of a sleeping shepherdess—offered the snuff-box to the pretty Princess Tsherkassky, took a pinch himself, and added with a languid sigh:

“During my stay in Naples (I remember it so well!), I was inamorato with a certain cittadina Francesca, celebrated for her beauty. She cost me over 4,000 roubles; and to this day I cannot free my heart from that tender recollection.”

He spoke Italian so well that he liked interspersing his native speech with Italian words: “inamorato” for in love; “cittadina” for citizen’s wife, and so on.

Tolstoi was seventy, yet did not look more than fifty, so strong, alert and fresh was he. The Tsar had often expressed the opinion that Tolstoi’s politeness towards ladies “could outdo that of any younger devotee of Venus.” A feline suppleness of gait, a low velvety voice, velvety amiable smile, velvety eyebrows, amazingly thick, black and possibly painted: “He is all velvet, yet not without spikes,” people used to say of him. Even Peter himself, as a rule so careless with regard to his “eaglets,” thought it wise “to keep a stone close at hand when dealing with Tolstoi.” There was many a dark, wicked, and even bloody stain on the conscience of this polite worthy, but he knew the secret of effacing all traces of his misdoings.