who understood poetry ... grand things are done by great means." Herzen's memoirs provide a number of anecdotes about Miloradovich the administrator (none of which could have been witnessed by the narrator). In 1820 Miloradovich interrogated Alexander Pushkin on suspicion of political propaganda. Pushkin's name had already become a blanket cover for all kinds of incendiary pamphlets and he was desperate to clear himself of dangerous misattributions. Pushkin said that he burned his "contraband poems" and recited some from memory. Miloradovich said "Ah, c'est chevaleresque", dismissed the charges and sent Pushkin on a well-paid tour of the south. Vladimir Nabokov noted that all of Pushkin's influential friends could not have saved him had it not been for Miloradovich's "amiable conduct of the whole affair". There was a rumor that Pushkin was flogged on orders of Miloradovich, who fought a duel with at least one person who repeated it. Author and publisher Nikolai Grech recounted another, less inspiring episode: in 1824 Miloradovich vigorously investigated an alleged breach of censorship rules at a printshop owned by Grech and Bezacque. Fifteen years earlier, when Miloradovich and Pyotr Bagration had a feud, Bezacque was Bagration's secretary and apparently became a lifelong enemy of Miloradovich. Grech easily refuted "factual evidence" and could have escaped unharmed, but Miloradovich brought his belated revenge down on Grech, inflicting on him a full police and court inquiry that dragged on until 1828. Miloradovich probably did not realise that the whole case was set up by Aleksey Arakcheyev and Mikhail Magnitsky to unseat . The lifestyle of the "bizarre administrator" was just as bizarre. Miloradovich lived alone in a luxurious apartment "in complete disarray coupled with the most exquisite taste", without a single bedroom; "I spend the night where I feel like", he used to say. Family fortune and rewards from the tsar could not match his spending, and he sold off most of his lands and serfs. Posthumous sale of his remaining estate barely covered his debts. Theatre and sexuality In 1821, theatre managers Apollon Maikov and Prince Alexander Shakhovskoy allegedly tried to manipulate Miloradovich to overthrow the stern and frugal director of imperial theatres, Prince Tyufyakin. Miloradovich lent them support and then himself "grabbed both the power and the purse strings"; Miloradovich, Maikov and Shakhovskoy became a "committee of three formidable officials" that governed the everyday life of the imperial theatres. The change coincided with rumours of Shakhovskoy's