Thus the Czar made fools of various members of his household, and different officers of his court, but he had one official court fool whom he favoured above all others, and whom he carried abroad with him to foreign courts,--among others to those of England and France. At the latter court the buffoon produced almost as much effect as his master. The period of Peter’s sudden arrival in Paris, was that of the boyhood of Louis XV. He had travelled so swiftly from Holland, that his appearance in the French capital was the first intimation received by the authorities there of his having left the “pays de canaux, canards, et canaille,” as Voltaire flippantly designated the Dutch territory. Peter was accompanied by the Princes Kourakin and Dolgorouki, by Baron Schaffirofy, and by his ambassador, Tolstoi. But, distinguished above these was Sotoff, the buffoon. He had originally been employed by Peter to instruct him in the art of writing. In one respect, all the followers of the Czar were on an equality, for there was not one of them who had not, in his turn, suffered exile, imprisonment, or the knout. There was no opportunity, therefore, for any one to reproach his fellows. How Peter looked, and walked, and talked, and danced, and tossed the little King in his arms, and sneered at the Regent Duke of Orleans, and uttered much nonsense, and drank bottles of beer in his box at the opera; all these matters are chronicled by Saint-Simon and Cardinal Dubois, according to the point of view of the individual chronicler. The Cardinal seems to have been more particularly struck with the buffoon. The court of France no longer possessed official jesters, and Sotoff was a marvel and a novelty to the Cardinal. The latter, or the writer who drew up the autobiographical memoirs, from the notes and papers of Dubois, speaks with evident surprise of the presence and duties of Sotoff, who was not only privileged but commanded to give expression to every form of folly, without being in fear of any application of the knout. What jests he uttered were incomprehensible to Dubois and the French court, for Sotoff could only speak his native Russian; and in that language he uttered comments on all around him which raised the hilarity of the Muscovites, and excited the surprise, curiosity, and perhaps the vexation of the French courtiers. Sotoff, too, was singular in his appearance. He was at this time an aged dwarf, with long snowy hair flowing over his shoulders. He was so ugly and so deformed, that, according to the Cardinal, the very sight of him was almost insupportable to the refined and handsome nobles and ladies of the French court. Dubois compares the sound of his voice to the harsh croaking of frogs. In spite of all this, his wit and humour were very much to the taste of Peter, who could listen to a comedy of Molière’s without once smiling, but who could never hear a remark from Sotoff, the court fool, without growing weak from mere excess of laughter.