kind foresight. I could not have chosen better for myself than his
Highness has chosen for me: my only regret on quitting France is at
leaving a prince so affable as Philip and a courtier so virtuous as St.
Simon."

Though the good Duc went every year to the Abbey de la Trappe for the
purpose of mortifying his sins and preserving his religion in so impious
an atmosphere as the Palais Royal, he was not above flattery; and he
expressed himself towards me with particular kindness after my speech.

At court, one becomes a sort of human ant-bear, and learns to catch
one's prey by one's tongue.

After we had eased ourselves a little by abusing Dubois, the Duc took
his leave in order to allow me time to prepare for my "journey," as he
politely called it. Before he left, he, however, asked me whither my
course would be bent? I told him that I should take my chance with the
Czar Peter, and see if his czarship thought the same esteem was due to
the disgraced courtier as to the favoured diplomatist.

That night I received a letter from St. Simon, enclosing one addressed
with all due form to the Czar. "You will consider the enclosed," wrote
St. Simon, "a fresh proof of the Regent's kindness to you; it is a most
flattering testimonial in your favour, and cannot fail to make the Czar
anxious to secure your services."

I was not a little touched by a kindness so unusual in princes to their
discarded courtiers, and this entirely reconciled me to a change of
scene which, indeed, under any other circumstances, my somewhat morbid
love for action and variety would have induced me rather to relish than