take its stand behind contemporaries in the church of Voltaire's
foundation, while the archpriest of Ferney prostrates himself with
iterated formula, "_Te Cathariniam laudamus, te Dominam confitemur_."
For St. Catharine was an interested reader of that correspondence of
Diderot's with her sculptor Falconet, whose theme is the solidity of
posthumous fame. Rulihiere had already written an account of the events
of 1762, of which he had been an eye-witness; she had tried first to buy
him, and then to have him thrown into the Bastille. She will search
Venice for a pliable historian; and her own letter on the _coup-d'etat_,
together with her memoirs, shows how strong in her was that "_besoin de
parolier_" analyzed by the great Pascal a century before. Catharine, be
quite certain of it, is no earnest seeker after truth; rather "the plain
man," with something of the acuteness as well as the insensibility of
common-sense. The _Philosophes_ were the interest of the cultivated "as
scholars had been in one century, painters in another, theologians in a
third." They had the ear of Europe, who rest now in Mr. Morley's bosom.
But Catharine confessed years after: "Your learned men in '_ist_' bored
me to extinction. There was only my good protector Voltaire. Do you know
it was he who made me the mode?"

With what a quaint inconsequence her truer self appeared at the
Revolution! She, who will foresee Napoleon, was rudely shocked by the
fall of the Bastille. The Revolution touched her in her tenderest point.
With every year, in spite of her sentiments and cosmopolitan culture,
this Princess of Zerbst became more and more fervently autocratic and
Russian. She had jestingly asked her doctor to bleed away the last drop
of her German blood. No one ever had a more fanatical hero-worship for
the Russian himself, or a deeper enthusiasm for the greatness in his
history. It was in the political sphere that her convictions play, and
she had a vague but passionate belief in what she and Russia might do
together. Yet here were these declaimers threatening to overrun Europe,
and "Equality setting peoples at the throats of kings!" The cant about
fraternity, the catch-words and sentiments, vanish like smoke. No
anathemas on the Revolution were fiercer than those of the "_Ame
Republicaine_," who had burned to restore the ancient institutions of
Athens. The hostess of Diderot breathed fiery indignation against "these
Western atheists"; and the nationalizat