feeble, and the French government can
have known little of the Empress, if they thought that Diderot was the
man to affect her strong and positive mind. She told Segur in later
years what success Diderot had with her as a politician.

"I talked much and frequently with him," said Catherine, "but with more
curiosity than profit. If I had believed him, everything would have been
turned upside down in my kingdom; legislation, administration,
finances--all to be turned topsy-turvy to make room for impracticable
theories. Yet as I listened more than I talked, any witness who happened
to be present, would have taken him for a severe pedagogue, and me for
his humble scholar. Probably he thought so himself, for after some time,
seeing that none of these great innovations were made which he had
recommended, he showed surprise and a haughty kind of dissatisfaction.
Then speaking openly, I said to him: _Mr. Diderot, I have listened with
the greatest pleasure to all that your brilliant intelligence has
inspired; and with all your great principles, which I understand very
well, one would make fine books, but very bad business. You forget in
all your plans of reform the difference in our positions; you only work
on paper, which endures all things; it opposes no obstacle either to
your imagination or to your pen. But I, poor Empress as I am, work on
the human skin, which is irritable and ticklish to a very different
degree._ I am persuaded that from this moment he pitied me as a narrow
and vulgar spirit. For the future he only talked about literature, and
politics vanished from our conversation."[85]

[85] Segur, iii. 34.

Catherine was mistaken, as we shall see, in supposing that Diderot ever
thought her less than the greatest of men. Cathcart, the English
ambassador, writes in a sour strain: "All his letters are filled with
panegyrics of the Empress, whom he depicts as above humanity. His
flatteries of the Grand Duke have been no less gross, but be it said to
the young prince's honour, he has shown as much contempt for such
flatteries as for the mischievous principles of this pretended
philosopher."

Frederick tells D'Alembert that though the Empress overwhelms Diderot
with favours, people at St. Petersburg find him tiresome and
disputatious, and "talking the same rigmarole over and over again." In
her letters to Voltaire, Catherine lets nothing of this be seen. She
finds Diderot's imagination inexhaustible, and ranks him am