_October 29, 1764._--Having dressed himself, his Highness sat down to study. Then he went incognito to his drawing-room to get a look at the Turkish ambassador, who was having an audience with his Excellency Nikíta Ivánovich. He was received in the same manner as the first time. But when I arrived, his Highness did not receive me so kindly as to make me satisfied with him. I do not wish now to enter into any especial discussion of the cause of it, but will only remark that his Highness is frequently greatly influenced by the remarks made in regard to absent persons which he happens to overhear. I have repeatedly noticed that if anything favourable or laudatory is said in his hearing of someone, his Highness later shows himself kindly disposed to him; if, on the contrary, something unfavourable and deprecatory is said of anyone, especially when the remark is not made directly to his Highness, but as if by accident, he, seeing him, appears to be cold to him. We seated ourselves at the table. His Excellency Nikíta Ivánovich did not dine with us. Of outsiders there was only Count Alexander Sergyéich Stroganóv. I have suffered terrible anguish to-day at table. How could one help suffering, considering what had taken place? We were talking about Peter the Great. Someone, passing in silence all the great qualities of that monarch, deemed it proper to dwell only on the fact that the Tsar used often to get drunk, and that he beat his ministers with his cane. Another person, incautiously emulating this conversation, which ought in no way be tolerated in the presence of his Highness, added that when the Tsar was at one time beating with his cane one of his generals who was a German, the latter later repeated from the Bible: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, etc.” The first person continued, saying that history knew only of two royal wallopers, Peter I. and the late King of Prussia, the father of the present King. Later he began to praise Charles XII., the King of Sweden; I told him that Voltaire had written that Charles XII. deserved to be the first soldier in Peter the Great’s army. Upon this his Highness asked whether it was really so. The speaker answered his Highness that it was very likely written that way, but that it was nothing but mere flattery. When I later spoke of the Emperor’s letters, which he had written from abroad to his ministers, and remarked that for the correct understanding of his time it was necessary to have these letters, and that I possessed many of them, and so forth, the first speaker did not deign to make any other remarks thereupon except that these letters were very funny because the Emperor often addressed them to “Min Her Admiral,” and signed them “Piter.” I found it difficult to dissemble my dissatisfaction, and to subdue my excitement.