disembarking on the eastern edge of the city and returning directly to the Hotel Lesdiguieres, he ordered the boatmen to continue downstream so that he could float under all the five bridges of Paris.
On June 3, Peter returned to Versailles to sleep in the Trianon and to spend several nights at Marly, the country pavilion which Louis XIV had built to escape the ponderous etiquette of Versailles. While staying there, Peter drove to St. Cyr to visit Louis XIV's widow, Madame de Maintenon, in the convent she had established, and to which she had retired after the King's death. Everyone was surprised when the Tsar expressed a wish to see her. 'She has much merit,' he explained. 'She has rendered great service to the King and nation.'
Not surprisingly, the elderly woman was enormously flattered at the prospect of a visit from the man about whom all Paris was talking. 'The Tsar . . . seems to me a very great man since he has inquired about me,' she wrote before his visit. To conceal her age and put on her best appearance, she received the Tsar at twilight, sitting in her bed with all the curtains drawn except one which let in a single shaft of light. When Peter entered, he went straight to the windows and dramatically opened the curtains to let in the light. Then, he pulled back the curtains around her canopy bed, sat down at the end of the bed and silently looked at her. According to Saint-Simon (who was not present), the silence continued with neither saying a word until Peter rose and left. 'I know that she must have been greatly astonished and even more humiliated, but the Sun King is no more,' Saint-Simon wrote. From a sister to the convent, there is a kinder version, according to which Peter asked Madame what her illness was. 'Old age,' she replied. She then asked him why he had come to see her. 'I came to see everything of note that France contains,' he answered. At this, it was reported, a ray of her former beauty lighted up her face.
It was not until the very end of Peter's visit to Paris that Saint-Simon met the Tsar in person:
I entered the garden where the Tsar was walking. The Marshal de Tess6, who saw me from afar, came to me, expecting to present me to the Tsar. I begged him not to do it and not to notice me in his presence because I wished to observe him at my leisure . . . and get a good look at him, which I would not be able to do if I was known. . . . With this precaution, I satisfied my curiosity completely at my leisure. 1 found him rather affable, but behaving always as if he were everywhere the master. He walked into an office where D'Antin showed him different maps and several documents on which he asked several questions. It was there that I saw the tic of which I have spoken. I asked Tess6 if this happened often; he said several times a day, especially when he did not take care to control it.
After six weeks in Paris, the visit was now coming to a close. He revisited the Observatory, climbed the tower of Notre Dame and went to a hospital to watch a cataract operation. In the Champs-Elysees, he sat on horseback and reviewed two regiments of the elite Maison du Roi, both cavalry and musketeers, but the heat and dust and enormous crowd were so great that Peter, who loved soldiers, scarcely looked at them and left the review early.
There was a round of farewell cards. On Friday, June 18, the Regent came early to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to bid the Tsar goodbye. Once again, he spoke privately to Peter with only Kurakin present to interpret. The Tsar returned for a third visit to the Tuileries to take his leave of Louis XV. The visit was informal, as Peter had insisted it be. Once again, Saint-Simon was charmed: 'One could not show more spirit, more grace and tenderness for the King than the Tsar displayed on all these occasions, and the next day when the King went to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to wish the Tsar a good trip, once again everything passed with great charm and gentleness.'
On all sides, the visit was now acclaimed a triumph. Saint-Simon, who had seen the Sun King on his throne, described the lasting impression the Tsar had made:
This was a monarch who compelled admiration for his extreme curiosity about everything that had any bearing on his views of government, commerce, education, police methods, etc. His interests embraced each detail capable of practical application and disdained nothing. His intelligence was most marked; in his appreciation of merit, he showed great perception and a most lively understanding, everywhere displaying extensive knowledge and a lively flow of ideas. In character, he was an extraordinary combination: he assumed majesty at its most regal, most proud, most unbending; yet, once his supremacy had been granted, his demeanor was infinitely gracious and full of discriminating courtesy. Everywhere and at all times he was the master, but with degrees of familiarity according to a person's rank. He had a friendly approach which one associated with freedom, but he was not exempt from a strong imprint of his country's past. Thus his manners were abrupt, even violent, his wishes unpredictable, brooking no delay and no opposition. His table manners were crude, and those of his staff still less elegant. He was determined to be free and independent in all that he wished to do or see. . . .
One might go on forever describing this truly great man with his remarkable character and rare variety of extraordinary talents. They will make him a monarch worthy of profound admiration for countless years, despite the large flaws in his own education and his country's lack of culture and civilization. Such was the reputation he gained everywhere in France, where he was considered a veritable prodigy.
On Sunday afternoon, June 20, Peter left Paris quietly and unescorted. Traveling eastward through France, he stopped at Rheims, where he visited the cathedral and was shown the missal on which for centuries the kings of France had sworn their coronation oaths. To the astonishment of the French priests present, Peter was able to read to them the mysterious characters with which the missal was inscribed. The language was old church Slavonic; in all probability, the missal had been brought to France in the eleventh century by the Kievan princess Anna Yaroslavna, who married King Louis I and became Queen of France.*
Although Peter left Shafirov, Dolgoruky and Tolstoy behind in Paris to negotiate with the French, the visit bore no diplomatic fruit beyond a meaningless treaty of friendship. The Regent was interested in the Tsar's proposal of an alliance between France and Russia, but the Abbe Dubois remained actively hostile to the idea. By now, the antagonism between King George I of England and Tsar Peter was too great to permit a treaty with both; Dubois chose England over Russia. Indeed, the hopelessness of Peter's case was later confirmed by Tesse, who revealed that throughout the negotiations with the Russians, Dubois had secretly disclosed everything to the English. 'The government,' Tesse later admitted, 'had no intention other than to amuse the Tsar as long as he stayed without concluding anything.' With the idea of an alliance discarded, the marriage which was to have been its seal was also dropped. Peter's daughter Elizabeth remained in Russia to rule as empress for twenty years, and Louis XV eventually married the daughter of Charles XII's puppet King of Poland, Stanislaus Leszezynski.
As he traveled again through the French countryside, Peter remarked, as he had on his way to Paris, on the poverty of the French peasants. The comparison between the luxury he found in the capital and what he saw outside surprised him and he wondered aloud to his friends how long this system could last.
From Rheims, Peter went slowly down the Meuse by boat, first to Namur and Liege and then to the health resort of Spa. This region, now part of Belgium, was then divided between Holland and the Hapsburg Empire, and along the route both Dutch and imperial officials in the river towns competed to pay him honor. Peter remained at Spa for five weeks, drinking the waters and taking a cure. Catherine still waited for him in Amsterdam, and his letters to her suggest his impatience and fatigue:
Yesterday, I received your letter of the 11th in which you write of the illness of our daughters [Anne and Elizabeth both had smallpox] and that the first, thank God, is getting better while the other has taken to her bed. about which Alexander Danilovich also writes
* It required some sacrifice for a princess of Kiev to leave her native city, then at the height of its civilization, to marry into the cruder culture of France. The relative levels of their cultures are suggested by the fact that Anna could read and write and signed her name to the marriage document, whereas Louis I could only scrawl an X.
me. But your changed style has made me very sad, as the bringer of this letter will tell you. For your letter was very differently written from usual. God grant we can hear the same about Anushka as about Lisenka. When you write for me to come quickly and that you are very lonesome, I believe you. The bringer of this will tell you how lonely I am without you and I can say that except those days when I was in Versailles and Marly twelve days ago, I have had no great pleasure. But here I must stay some days and when I finish drinking the water I will start that very day, for there are only seven hours by land and five days by water. God grant to see you in joy which I wish from all my heart.
P.S. I received this morning the glad news that Anushka is better and therefore began to drink the water more joyously.
Soon after, he wrote again:
I congratulate you on this triumphal day of the Russian resurrection [it was the anniversary of Poltava], only I am sorry that we celebrate apart, as well as tomorrow's day of the Holy Apostle, the name day of your old man [Peter himself] and the boy [their son Peter Petrovich]. God grant that these days pass quickly and that I can be with you sooner. The water, thank God, acts well and I hope to finish the cure in a week from St. Peter's day. Today
