d at the age of sixty to undertake no less formidable
a journey than to the remote capital on the shores of the Neva. It had
come into his head, or perhaps others had put it into his head, that he
owed a visit to his imperial benefactress whose bounty had rendered life
easier to him. He had recently made the acquaintance of two Russian
personages of consideration. One of them was the Princess Dashkow, who
was believed to have taken a prominent part in that confused conspiracy
of 1762, which ended in the murder of Peter III. by Alexis Orloff, and
the elevation of Catherine II. to the throne. Her services at that
critical moment had not prevented her disgrace, if indeed they were not
its cause, and in 1770 the Princess set out on her travels. Horace
Walpole has described the curiosity of the London world to see the
Muscovite Alecto, the accomplice of the northern Athaliah, the amazon
who had taken part in a revolution when she was only nineteen. In
England she made a pleasant impression, in spite of eyes of "a very
Catiline fierceness." She was equally delighted with England, and when
she went on from London to Paris, she took very little trouble to make
friends in the capital of the rival nation. Diderot seems to have been
her only intimate. The Princess (1770) called nearly every afternoon at
his door, carried him off to dinner, and kept him talking and declaiming
until the early hours of the next morning. The "hurricanes of his
enthusiastic nature" delighted her, and she remembered for years
afterwards how on one occasion she excited him to such a pitch that he
sprang from his chair as if by machinery, strode rapidly up and down the
room, and spat upon the floor with passion.[66]

[66] _Memoirs of Princess Dashkoff_ (vol. ii.). By Mrs. Bradford, an
English companion and friend of the Princess. (London, 1840.) See
Diderot's account of her, _Oeuv._, xvii. 487. Compare Horace
Walpole's _Letters_, v. 266.

The Prince Galitzin was a Russian friend of greater importance. Prince
Galitzin was one of those foreigners, like Holbach, Grimm, Galiani, who
found themselves more at home in Paris than anywhere else in the world.
Living mostly among artists and men of letters, he became an established
favourite. With Diderot's assistance (1767) he acquired for the Empress
many of the pictures that adorn the great gallery at St. Petersburg,
and Diderot praises his knowledge of the fine arts, the reason being
that he has