e Regent through Prince
Kourakin, his ambassador at Paris, that he was going to quit the Low
Countries, and come and see the King.

There was nothing for it but to appear very pleased, although the Regent
would gladly have dispensed with this visit. The expenses to be defrayed
were great; the trouble would be not less great with a prince so powerful
and so clear-sighted, but full of whims, with a remnant of barbarous
manners, and a grand suite of people, of behaviour very different from
that common in these countries, full of caprices and of strange fashions,
and both they and their master very touchy and very positive upon what
they claimed to be due or permitted to them.

Moreover the Czar was at daggers drawn with the King of England, the
enmity between them passing all decent limits, and being the more bitter
because personal. This troubled not a little the Regent, whose intimacy
with the King of England was public, the private interest of Dubois
carrying it even to dependence. The dominant passion of the Czar was to
render his territories flourishing by commerce; he had made a number of
canals in order to facilitate it; there was one for which he needed the
concurrence of the King of England, because it traversed a little corner
of his German dominions. From jealousy George would not consent to it.
Peter, engaged in the war with Poland, then in that of the North, in
which George was also engaged, negotiated in vain. He was all the more
irritated, because he was in no condition to employ force; and this
canal, much advanced, could not be continued. Such was the source of
that hatred which lasted all the lives of these monarchs, and with the
utmost bitterness.

Kourakin was of a branch of that ancient family of the Jagellons, which
had long worn the crowns of Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He was
a tall, well-made man, who felt all the grandeur of his origin; had much
intelligence, knowledge of the way of managing men, and instruction. He
spoke French and several languages very fairly; he had travelled much,
served in war, then been employed in different courts. He was Russian to
the backbone, and his extreme avarice much damaged his talents. The Czar
and he had married two sisters, and each had a son. The Czarina had been
repudiated and put into a convent near Moscow; Kourakin in no way
suffered from this disgrace; he perfectly knew his master, with whom he
kept on very free terms, and by whom he