This was all very fine for the people who were lucky enough to be “in society”--in Louis’s court. But the poor people of France, those not in his court, were the ones who had to pay Louis’s expenses and those of his court. They were the ones who had to pay for his parties and balls and feasts and for all sorts of presents which he gave his friends. So we shall see presently what happened. The poor people would not stand that sort of thing forever. “The worm will turn,” we say. [Illustration] 69 A Self-Made Man Who was the Father of His Country? I know what you will say: “George Washington.” But there was another man called “The Father of His Country” before Washington was born, and he was not an American. In the east of Europe there is a great country as large as our own, and its name is Russia. Very little had been heard of Russia before the Year 1700, for although it was the largest country in Europe, its people were only about half civilized. The Russians were a branch of the great Aryan family called Slavs, but although they were white people, they were living so close to the yellow people in China that they had become much like them in many of their ways. Then, too, the terrible Genghis Khan and his yellow Mongols had conquered Russia in the thirteenth century and ruled over the land. So although the Russians were Christians, they were in every other way more like the people of the East than like Europeans. The men had long beards and wore long coats. The women wore veils like those the Turkish women wore. The people counted with balls strung on wires as the Chinese did. Well, just before 1700 there was born a Russian prince named Peter. When a small boy, Peter was very much afraid of the water. But he felt so ashamed that he, a prince, should fear anything that he forced himself to get used to the water. He would go to it and play in it and sail boats on it, although all the time he was almost scared to death. And so at last he not only got over this great fear but he came to like the water and boats more than any other playthings. When Peter grew up the thing he wanted more than anything else in the world was to make his country important in Europe, for before this time it had not been. It was big but not great. And his people had to be civilized. But before he could teach his own people, who were most of them very poor and ignorant, he had to learn himself. As there was no one in Russia who could teach him what he wanted to know, he disguised himself as a common laborer and went to the little country of Holland. Here he got a job in a shipbuilding yard and worked for several months, cooking his own food and mending his own clothes. While he was doing this, however, he learned all about building ships and studied many other things besides, such as blacksmithing, cobbling shoes, and even pulling teeth.