Habits of the Czar.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 234, 24 December 1887, Page 3

Habits of the Czar.

A correspondent, writing from St. Petersburg to an American paper, says :—: — ' ' Strenuous efforts have been made to keep the terrible weakness of Alexander 111. for liquor from the public, but it has been extensively whispered ever since he had his first fit of delirium tremens. Alexander 111., shortly after the assassination of his father, had recourse to stimulants in order to nerve himself sufficiently to meet the real and imaginary dangers which beset him, and the habit rapidly became one of necessity rather than choice. From this point began what would have been to a man in private life his downward career, but the divinity that erects and maintains a well kept and evergreen hedge around a sovereign also dulls the senses of his subject to indifference as to whether he is a drunkard or not. "This, however, the Czar of Russia is : A hopeless and oft times helpless sot. Among those nearest to him it is well known, but never mentioned except in whispers, that he had several times suffered from that most frightful of all specie 3 of insanity, delirium tremens, and, the narrator alleges, his cruelty to those who were so unfortunate as to come under his hand upon these occasions would have appealed to the finer sensibilities of the King of Dahomey, and caused the fiendish monarch to shed tears of compassion. In his lucid intervals he is «yen sagacious j but when under the influence of champagne or brandy, which two liquors are most delightful to the imperial palate, not even his Ministers, and, least of all, his wife and children, can restrain his tendency to imperil his personal safety^ by exposing himself to the attacks of his secret foes in his ungovernable Recklessness. It is told of this imperial manaic fchafc, on one occasion, M. de Uiers was driven from the Czar's presence with language unfit to be heard in the loweafc haunts of infamy, after having been summoned by his sovereign to report upon some matter affecting Russia's foreign policy, and ti^t the Czar's conduct so outraged him that' v« was only induced to retain his office at \jfje earnest entreaty of friends and upon the Czar's subsequent' apology.