"She could not too much give her approbation
Unto an Empress, who preferred young men
Whose age, and what was better still, whose nation
And climate, stopped all scandal (now and then);—
At home it might have given her some vexation;
But where thermometers sink down to ten,
Or five, or one, or zero, she could never
Believe that Virtue thawed before the river."[KB]