Peter I used to call the city he founded in the Neva's estuary Paradiz.

 

For Van, Eric Veen's Villa Venus is a paradise: As he was dressing, a messenger brought him a note from Lord C. (he was a cousin of one of Van's Riverlane schoolmates), in which generous Dick proposed to substitute for his debt an introduction to the Venus Villa Club to which his whole clan belonged. Such a bounty no boy of eighteen could hope to obtain. It was a ticket to paradise. (1.28) I have frequented bordels since my sixteenth year, but although some of the better ones, especially in France and Ireland, rated a triple red symbol in Nugg's guidebook, nothing about them pre-announced the luxury and mollitude of my first Villa Venus. It was the difference between a den and an Eden. (2.3)

 

Dick C.who offers Van an introduction to the Venus Villa Club seems to be a cousin of Cheshire, Van's schoolmate at Riverlane whose name hints at the Cheshire-Cat in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (known on Antiterra as "Palace in Wonderland", 1.8).

 

While Merezhkovski in his "Peter and Alexey" compares Peter I to an aquatic bird, Alexey Tolstoy in his "Peter I" compares the tsar to a cat. (One also remembers the well-known lubok painting "How the Mice Buried the Cat".)