567. The Great Northern War: Murder in Moscow (Part 4)

Dinner was prepared in a spacious hall. Several small tables were placed in the middle of the hall for the new married couple and the rest of the dwarfs, who were all splendidly dressed after the German fashion. After dinner, the dwarfs began to dance after the Russian way. which lasted till eleven at night. It is easy to imagine how much the Tsar and the rest of the company were delighted at the comical capers, strange grimaces, and odd postures of that medley of pygmies, most of whom were so short

so that their size alone had people in fits of laughter. One had a high hunch on his back and very short legs, another was remarkable by a monstrous big belly. A third came waddling along on a little pair of crooked legs like a badger. a fourth had head of prodigious size, some had wry mouths and long ears, little pig eyes and chubby cheeks, and there were many more such comical figures. When these diversions were ended, the newly married couple were carried to the Tsar's house

and bedded in his own bedchamber. So that was Friedrich Christian Weber, who was the ambassador of Hanover, the German state, to the court of Peter the Great, and he is struggling to cope I guess, Dominic, with the fondness for grotesquery that has been a marker of Peter's court right from the very beginning. Yes. And Weber there is describing a wedding feast that was held in St.

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