Not long after this event he departed from Constantinople, honoured with distinguished marks of respect both by the sultan and the grand vizier, and sincerely regretted by his brother ambassadors, and all the French established in the Levant. Being unable to return to France, he retired to Russia, where Catherine, who, as I have already had frequent occasion to observe, was an excellent judge of men, received him in the most flattering manner, and afforded him the most honourable protection. Paul I., on his accession to the throne, distinguished him by new favours, nominated him privy counsellor, director of the academy of arts and of all the imperial libraries, and also gave him many other solid proofs of his esteem. The favour of a madman, however, was necessarily liable to change. The Comte de Cobentzel, with whom Choiseul-Gouffier had lived on very intimate terms, falling into disgrace, he was uncourtly enough to continue the connexion; which so displeased Paul, that our traveller considered it unsafe to remain at court, and retired. No longer seeing his old favourite about him, the imperial lunatic commanded him to return, and upon his approach remarked, in a friendly tone, “M. le Count, there are stormy cloudy days in which it rains misunderstandings; we have experienced one of these; but as we are men of understanding, we have shaken it off, and are only upon the better footing.” Our traveller, who no doubt saw clearly enough the state of the emperor’s head, and dreaded his relapse into ill-humour, very quickly determined to return to France; where he at length arrived in 1802, stripped of his titles and fortune, and reduced to rely upon his literary rank for distinction. He, however, sought for no office or employment. All his thoughts were now directed towards the completion of his work on his beloved Greece, and during seven years he laboured assiduously at this agreeable undertaking. Other travellers had in the mean while visited and described the same countries; his ideas and views were regarded as antiquated; the interest inspired by his first volume, published twenty-seven years before, had in a great measure ceased; and, more than all this, he himself, worn down by misfortunes, sobered by long adversity, and somewhat unaccustomed to the art of composition, was no longer the same _naïve_, lively author that he had been. He now gave himself up to geographical disquisitions, learned dissertations, and geological remarks. Homer himself, though still his favourite, had undergone a transformation in his eyes. Losing sight of the poet, the matchless painter of human nature, he was satisfied with admiring him as an historian and geographer.