“Hold,” said he, “your question is subtle, and requires some serious just distinctions to give it a sincere answer; and I’ll give it you from the bottom of my heart.  Nothing that I know of in this world would move me to deliver myself from the state of banishment, except these two:  first, the enjoyment of my relations; and secondly, a little warmer climate.  But I protest to you, that to go back to the pomp of the court, the glory, the power, the hurry of a minister of state; the wealth, the gaiety, and the pleasures, that is to say, follies of a courtier; if my master should send me word this moment, that he restores me to all he banished me from, I protest, if I know myself at all, I would not leave this wilderness, these deserts, and these frozen lakes, for the palace of Moscow.”

“But, my lord,” said I, “perhaps you not only are banished from the pleasures of the court, and from the power, and authority, and wealth, you enjoyed before, but you may be absent too from some of the conveniencies of life; your estate, perhaps, confiscated, and your effects plundered; and the supplies left you here may not be suitable to the ordinary demands of life.”

“Ay,” said he, “that is, as you suppose me to be a lord, or a prince, &c.  So indeed I am; but you are now to consider me only as a man, a human creature, not at all distinguished from another; and so I can suffer no want, unless I should be visited with sickness and distempers.  However, to put the question out of dispute; you see our manner; we are in this place five persons of rank; we live perfectly retired; as suited to a state of banishment; we have something rescued from the shipwreck of our fortunes, which keeps us from the mere necessity of hunting for our food; but the poor soldiers who are here, without that help, live in as much plenty as we.  They go into the woods, and catch sables and foxes; the labour of a month will maintain them a year; and as the way of living is not expensive, so it is not hard to get sufficient to ourselves:  so that objection is out of doors.”

I have no room to give a full account of the most agreeable conversation I had with this truly great man; in all which he shewed, that his mind was so inspired with a superior knowledge of things, so supported by religion, as well as by a vast share of wisdom, that his contempt of the world was really as much as he had expressed, and that he was always the same to the last, as will appear in the story I am going to tell.

I had been here eight months, and a dark dreadful winter I thought it to be.  The cold was so intense, that I could not so much as look abroad without being wrapt in furs, and a mask of fur before my face, or rather a hood, with only a hole for breath, and two for sight.  The little daylight we had, as we reckoned, for three months, not above five hours a day, or six at most; only that the snow lying on the ground continually, and the weather being clear, it was never quite dark.  Our horses were kept (or rather starved) under ground; and as for our servants, (for we hired servants here to look after our horses and ourselves) we had every now and then their fingers and toes to thaw, and take care of, lest they should mortify and fall off.