“Yes, when it springs from mental reasonings, not physical indifference. But your Majesty has already put in action one vast spring of a system which will ultimately open to your subjects so many paths of existence that they will preserve contempt for its proper objects, and not lavish it solely, as they do now, on the degradation which sullies life and the axe that ends it. You have already begun the conquest of another and a most vital error in the philosophy of the ancients,--that philosophy taught that man should have few wants, and made it a crime to increase and a virtue to reduce them. A legislator should teach, on the contrary, that man should have many wants: for wants are not only the sources of enjoyment,--they are the sources of improvement; and that nation will be the most enlightened among whose populace they are found the most numerous. You, Sire, by circulating the arts, the graces, create a vast herd of moral wants hitherto unknown, and in those wants will hereafter be found the prosperity of your people, the fountain of your resources, and the strength of your empire.” In conversation on these topics we often passed hours together, and from such conferences the Czar passed only to those on other topics more immediately useful to him. No man, perhaps, had a larger share of the mere human frailties than Peter the Great; yet I do confess that when I saw the nobleness of mind with which he flung aside his rank as a robe, and repaired from man to man, the humblest or the highest, the artisan or the prince,--the prosperity of his subjects his only object, and the acquisition of knowledge his only means to obtain it,--I do confess that my mental sight refused even to perceive his frailties, and that I could almost have bent the knee in worship to a being whose benevolence was so pervading a spirit, and whose power was so glorious a minister to utility. Towards the end of January, I completed my mission, and took my leave of the court of Russia. “Tell the Regent,” said Peter, “that I shall visit him in France soon, and shall expect to see his drawings if I show him my models.” In effect, the next month (February 16), the Czar commenced his second course of travels. He was pleased to testify some regard for me on my departure. “If ever you quit the service of the French court, and your own does not require you, I implore you to come to me; I will give you _carte blanche_ as to the nature and appointments of your office.”