Peter, on the contrary, parting with the selfishness of state in order to watch the more keenly over the interests of his people, only omitting to preside in order to examine, and affecting the subject only to learn the better the duties of the prince. Had I leisure, I might here pause to point out a notable contrast, not between the Czar and the Regent, but between Peter the Great and Louis le Grand: both creators of a new era,--both associated with a vast change in the condition of two mighty empires. There ceases the likeness and begins the contrast: the blunt simplicity of Peter, the gorgeous magnificence of Louis; the sternness of a legislator for barbarians, the clemency of an idol of courtiers. One the victorious defender of his country,--a victory solid, durable, and just; the other the conquering devastator of a neighbouring people,--a victory, glittering, evanescent, and dishonourable. The one, in peace, rejecting parade, pomp, individual honours, and transforming a wilderness into an empire: the other involved in ceremony, and throned on pomp; and exhausting the produce of millions to pamper the bloated vanity of an individual. The one a fire that burns, without enlightening beyond a most narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by what it ruins, and fed by what it consumes; the other a luminary, whose light, not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is noted, not for what it destroys, but for what it vivifies and creates. I cannot say that it was much to my credit that, while I thought the Regent's condescension towards me natural enough, I was a little surprised by the favour shown me by the Czar. At Paris, I had /seemed/ to be the man of pleasure: that alone was enough to charm Philip of Orleans. But in Russia, what could I seem in any way calculated to charm the Czar? I could neither make ships nor could sail them when they were made; I neither knew, nor, what was worse, cared to know, the stern from the rudder. Mechanics were a mystery to me; road-making was an incomprehensible science. Brandy I could not endure; a blunt bearing and familiar manner I could not assume. What was it, then, that made the Czar call upon me, at least twice a week in private, shut himself up with me by the hour together, and endeavour to make me drunk with Tokay, in order (as he very incautiously let out one night), "to learn the secrets of my heart"? I thought, at first, that the nature of my mission was enough to solve the riddle: but we talked so little about it that, with all my diplomatic vanities fresh about me, I could not help feeling I owed the honour I received less to my qualities as a minister than to those as an individual.