distance, and wish for the happiness of knowing you."

At this compliment the king rubbed his hands with a smile, which he
always did when he was satisfied, and then said,

"There is not in the hearts of foreign potentates the same affection
towards my person as you feel. It is not me but France they wish to see.
I remember that when very young I received a visit from the czar Peter
the Great, Peter the First I mean to say. He was not deficient in sense,
but yet behaved like a boor: he passed his time in running over the
academies, libraries, and manufactories: I never saw such an ill-bred
man. Imagine him embracing me at our first interview, and carrying me in
his arms as one of my valets would have done. He was dirty, coarse,
and ill-dressed. Well, all the Frenchmen ran after him; one would
have supposed by their eagerness that they had never seen a regal
countenance."

"Yet there was no occasion to run very far to see the handsome face of a
king."

"Hold your tongue, madame la baronne de Pamklek, you are a flatterer.
There is a crowned head which for thirty years has desired to visit
France, but I have always turned a deaf ear, and will resist it as long
as possible."

"Who, sire, is the king so unfortunate as to banished by you from your
majesty's presence?"

"Who? The king of philosophers, the rival of Voltaire, my brother of
Prussia. Ah, my dear baronne, he is a bad fellow; he detests me, and I
have no love for him. A king does wisely, certainly, to submit his works
to the judgment of a Freron! It would be outrageous scandal if he came
here. Great and small would crowd around him, and there would not be
twenty persons in my train."

"Ah! sire, do you think so?"

"I am sure of it. The French now-a-days do not care for their kings,
and _la Fronde_ will be renewed at an early day. After all, philosophers
believe that Frederick II protects them: the honest man laughs both at
them and me."

"At you, sire? Impossible."

"No, no; I know the impertinences he is guilty of towards me: but let
him. I prefer making my court to the pretty women of my kingdom instead
of to my pages. You may depend upon it that if he came to Versailles he
would debauch some of them."

The king, charmed at having said this malicious speech, rubbed his hands
again.

"Really, sire," I replied, "I am astonished that this prince, having
such disgusting inclinations, can have much _eclat_ attached to his
name."

"Ah, that is because