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 dislike.
Within thirty-six hours from the time of dismissal, I had turned my back upon the French capital.
CHAPTER VI.
A LONG INTERVAL OF YEARS.—A CHANGE OF MIND AND ITS CAUSES.
THE last accounts received of the Czar reported him to be at Dantzic. He had, however, quitted that place when I arrived there. I lost no time in following him, and presented myself to his Majesty one day after his dinner, when he was sitting with one leg in the Czarina's lap and a bottle of the best /eau de vie/ before him. I had chosen my time well; he received me most graciously, read my letter from the Regent—about which, remembering the fate of Bellerophon, I had had certain apprehensions, but which proved to be in the highest degree complimentary—and then declared himself extremely happy to see me again. However parsimonious Peter generally was towards foreigners, I never had ground for personal complaint on that score. The very next day I was appointed to a post of honour and profit about the royal person; from this I was transferred to a military station, in which I rose with great rapidity; and I was only occasionally called from my warlike duties to be intrusted with diplomatic missions of the highest confidence and importance.
It is this portion of my life—a portion of nine years to the time of the Czar's death—that I shall, in this history, the most concentrate and condense. In truth, were I to dwell upon it at length, I should make little more than a mere record of political events; differing, in some respects, it is true, from the received histories of the time, but containing nothing to compensate in utility for the want of interest. That this was the exact age for adventurers, Alberoni and Dubois are sufficient proofs. Never was there a more stirring, active, restless period; never one in which the genius of intrigue was so pervadingly at work. I was not less fortunate than my brethren. Although scarcely four and twenty when I entered the Czar's service, my habits of intimacy with men much older; my customary gravity, reserve, and thought; my freedom, since Isora's death, from youthful levity or excess; my early entrance into the world; and a countenance prematurely marked with the lines of reflection and sobered by its hue,—made me appear considerably older than I was. I kept my own counsel, and affected to be so: youth is a great enemy to one's success; and more esteem is often bestowed upon a wrinkled brow than a plodding brain.