He met Frederick the Great when he was travelling in Germany in 1769; and Frederick, forgetting his grievance that Grimm would not turn the ‘Correspondence’ into a scandalous society newspaper, fell under the spell of his fellow-countryman’s encyclopædical knowledge and dignified affability. Grimm, said Meister, had the rare talent of living with great people without losing any of the freedom and independence of his character. When he was nearly fifty years old, in 1771, he resumed an employment of his youth, and, at a very large salary, consented to be tutor to the Hereditary Prince of Hesse, a boy about nineteen. The pair went to England and were well received at its ultra-German Court. Grimm was delighted with ‘the simplicity, the naturalness, and the good sense’ of the English character. The Landgravine, young Hesse’s mother, sold her diamonds that her son might prolong his visit in so delightful a country. And then Grimm brought him back to Paris and formed his mind and manners in the society of d’Holbach and Diderot, of Madame Necker and Madame Geoffrin. In 1773, tutor and pupil went to St. Petersburg to attend the marriage of Wilhelmina, the Prince of Hesse’s sister, with the Czarevitch Paul. In a very short time the skilful Grimm had gained the great Catherine’s interest and consideration. Even Diderot’s warm heart and glowing genius (he was staying at the Russian Court when Grimm arrived there) did not win her so well as the German’s delicate tact and keen perceptions. Herself before all things a great statesman, how should she not respect the shrewd judgment, the strength, and the determination of a Grimm? It is so rare to be clever and wise! It was most rare in the eighteenth century. Two or three times a week Grimm dined with her Majesty _en petit comité_--those dinners at which all men were equal, and at which no servants appeared to hamper the conversation. Afterwards she talked alone with him by the hour together. He told Madame Geoffrin how, when he left her, he would pace his room all night with the splendid ideas she had suggested coursing through his sleepless brain: ‘The winter of 1773-74 passed for me,’ he said, ‘_en ivresse continuelle_.’ But when Catherine would have permanently attached him to her service, his stern good sense helped him to refuse. There is no such dead-weight on genius as a post at Court--be it the Court of a Catherine or a Frederick--and Grimm knew it. ‘I have never seen you hesitate about anything,’ Madame d’Épinay had once written to him; ‘when you have once decided with your just, strong mind, it is for ever.’