About the Earl’s first years in the company of the great Frederick little is known or likely to be known. _Deus nobis hæc otia fecit_, he may have murmured to himself while he refused the Prince’s insistent prayers for his service, and put his Royal Highness off in a truly Royal way, with his miniature in a snuff-box of mother-of-pearl. The old humourist may have reflected that men had given lands and gear for the cause, and now, like the representative of Lochgarry, have nothing material to show for their loyalty, save an inexpensive snuff-box of agate and gold. No, the Earl would not travel from Venice in 1749 to meet the Prince. His name occurs in brief notes of Voltaire, then residing with Frederick, and quarrelling with his Royal host. Voltaire kept borrowing books from the Scottish exile, books chiefly on historical subjects. If we may believe Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, then at Berlin, the celebrated Livonian mistress of Keith caused quarrels between him and his brother, and even obliged them to live separately.[24] The Earl gave much good advice to Henry Goring, the Prince’s envoy at that time, and if he was indeed on bad terms with his brother (these bad terms cannot have lasted long), he may have been all the better pleased to go as Frederick’s ambassador to Versailles in August 1751. Thither he took his pretty Turkish captive, and all his household of Pagans, Mussulmans, Buddhists, and so forth. I have elsewhere described the Earl’s relations with Prince Charles, then lurking in or near Paris; his furtive meetings with Goring at lace shops and in gardens, his familiarity with Young Glengarry, who easily outwitted the Earl, and his unprejudiced tolerance of a perfectly Fenian plot—the Elibank Plot—for kidnapping George II., Prince Fecky, and the rest of the Royal Family. The Earl merely looked on. He gave no advice. His ancient memories could not enlighten him as to how the Guards were now posted. ‘What opinion, Mr. Pickle,’ he said to Glengarry, ‘can I entertain of people that proposed I should abandon my Embassy and embark headlong with them?’ The Earl had found a haven at last in Frederick’s favour. He was willing to help the cause diplomatically, to send Jemmy Dawkins to Berlin, to sound Frederick, and suggest that, in a quarrel with England, the Jacobites might be useful. He was ready enough to dine with the exiles on St. Andrew’s Day, but not to go further. When Charles broke with the faithful Goring in the spring of 1754, the Earl broke with _him_, rebuked him severely, and never forgave him. He had never loved Charles; he now regarded him as impossible, even treacherous, and ceased to be a Jacobite.