ion of church property, the very
first of her own reforms, becomes, in the men of '89, an "organized
brigandage." "There is an economy of truth," said Burke. "Semiramis,"
like Romeo, "hung up philosophy," and the bust of her "preceptor,"
Voltaire, accompanied Fox to the basement!

"_Enfin tout philosophe est banni de ceans,
Et nous ne vivons plus qu'avec les honnetes gens._"

The advantage of women in affairs of this sort is, that they are natural
opportunists, and care nothing for the tyranny of your system. There is
a wise inconsequence in their ideas, for the logic of the universe is
not professed from an academic chair. "_Moi_," she says, "_je ne suis
qu'un compose de batons rompus!_" Voltaire had learned from Bayle, and
Catharine tells us she had learned from Voltaire, to distrust "the men
of a system." "_Stulti sunt innumerabiles_," said Erasmus, and theirs
was but an ingenious foolishness. Diderot, on that adventurous visit of
his, was bursting with eagerness to take Russia off the wall, and put it
"in the kettle of magicians." Never before now had such projects been
seen in a government office! He gesticulated by the hour: she was
delighted to listen. He drew up scores of schemes; they were as well
ordered, as regular, as his own meals. But presently he realized that no
one had taken him seriously! Catharine once remarked herself that she
wrote on "sensitive skins, while his material was foolscap." And
finally, like Mercier de la Riviere, he departed wiser, and a little
hurt. "A wonderful man," she said afterward to Segur, "but a little too
old--and a little too young!" His _Plan of a University for Russia_,
which had an appreciable influence on education elsewhere, "has never to
this day," says Waliszewski, "been translated into Russian."

How natural again, and with what vivid abandon, she presents herself in
her correspondence with Grimm! He lives in Paris, factotum and
confidant, passes his life in executing her commissions. To him she
talks, rather than writes, as she talks to her intimates, in
overwhelming voluble fashion, gossiping, punning, often playing the
buffoon, as she does with that little set of hers at her retreat of the
"Hermitage." Persons, even places, have their nicknames. St. Petersburg
is the "Duck-pond"; Grimm himself the "Fag," "Souffredouleur," George
Dandin, "M. le Baron de Thunder-ten-Tronck." Frederick the Great appears
as "Herod" (a palpable hit that!), the diplomats as "Wi