From the many accounts of Peter’s behaviour on that occasion one seems bound to conclude that he lost his new courage, and fell into a state of maudlin despair. It seems also to be a myth that his Catherine roused and saved him. His generals fortunately knew the venality of Turkish commanders, and a very heavy bribe--including, apparently, Catherine’s jewels--passed to the Grand Vizier’s camp. The terms, one would think, were hardly worth so large a bribe. Peter was to evacuate Azoff and all the territory in the south that he had taken from the Turk: he was to give up the Baltic provinces to Sweden, except the district at the mouth of the Neva, for which he passionately pleaded; and he was to pay a very large indemnity. He swaggered back to Moscow and endeavoured to brazen it out. Again he settled down to stern exertions, to prepare an army and navy and seek allies. In 1717 he went to Paris in search of aid, carefully leaving Catherine behind, though (as we shall see) he had now married her. His conduct was more sober than on the earlier journey, though it was eccentric enough and gave Paris food for talk for many years. When they had at length found Peter a lodging more or less to his taste, he declared that the young king, Louis XV, must come to see him; and, eager as he was to see the sights of Paris, he kept his hotel three days and nights in the hope of forcing the visit. But we need not again enlarge upon his eccentricities. He came away without hope of alliance, and France played with him to the end of his life. Two years later he proposed to marry his daughter Elizabeth to Louis XV, having failed to get the grandson of George I. When that project was at last very firmly declined, he asked at least for a prince of the blood, and he was humoured with negotiations until he died. As we shall see, Elizabeth was the illegitimate daughter (legitimised by later marriage) of Peter and a peasant-woman who had been for a time almost common camp-property. In brief, to make an end of wars, Peter took Finland and beat the Swedes on the Baltic, but he brought the terrible English fleet upon his new vessels. A peace was arranged at Nystadt in 1721, and, for a payment of two million crowns, Peter was suffered to keep his gains on the Baltic. There was a stupendous flow of beer and wine and brandy at St. Petersburg. Peter lit the fireworks with his own hand, and, although the Senate now gravely nominated him “Father of his Country” and “Emperor of all the Russias,” he mingled with the crowd, wore a fancy dress, and danced and sang and leaped on to tables like a school-boy.