Born to Command

We were shown in another room the saddles of Catherine II.  We had seen in another room a portrait of this singular woman, in her favorite manner of appearing before her guards, mounted and dressed as a man, and really she looked as if she were born to command.  Her saddles were completely covered with jewels and certainly very rich, but do not now seem so much so, since I have seen the magnificent ones presented by the father to the Emperor.  Below we were shown several old state carriages & sleighs made at different times and in different countries, driven in things they [covered], almost like a parlor with sofas, mirrors &c within, and requiring some two dozen horses to draw them.  In still another room we were shown the model of a building which Catherine II intended once to have [43] enclosed the whole of the Kremlin with—which project however she abandoned as man others of the same kind, well, perhaps for her purse, as it certainly was for the beauty of Moscow.  It was a great piece of work and if carried out according to the model must have cost an immense amount of money.