of
it is the voice of the bewildered courtier, it might be hard to decide.
But the rays of the imperial sun did not so far blind his prudence, as
to make him accept a pressing invitation to remain permanently in
Catherine's service. When Diderot quitted St. Petersburg, Grimm went to
Italy. After an interlude there, he returned to Russia and was at once
restored to high favour. When the time came for him to leave her, the
Empress gave him a yearly pension of two thousand roubles, or about ten
thousand livres, and with a minute considerateness that is said not to
be common among the great, she presently ordered that it should be paid
in such a form that he should not lose on the exchange between France
and Russia. Whether she had a special object in keeping Grimm in good
humour, we hardly know. What is certain is that from 1776 until the fall
of the French monarchy she kept up a voluminous correspondence with him,
and that he acted as an unofficial intermediary between her and the
ministers at Versailles. Every day she wrote down what she wished to say
to Grimm, and at the end of every three months these daily sheets were
made into a bulky packet and despatched to Paris by a special courier,
who returned with a similar packet from Grimm. This intercourse went on
until the very height of the Revolution, when Grimm at last, in
February, 1792, fled from Paris. The Empress's helpful friendship
continued to the end of her life (1796).[87]

[87] _Memoire Historique_, printed in vol. i. of the new edition
(1877) of the Correspondence of Grimm and Diderot, by M. Maurice
Tourneux.

Diderot arrived at the Hague on his return from Russia in the first week
of April (1774), after making a rapid journey of seven hundred leagues
in three weeks and a day. D'Alembert had been anxious that Frederick of
Prussia should invite Diderot to visit him at Berlin. Frederick had told
him that, intrepid reader as he was, he could not endure to read
Diderot's books. "There reigns in them a tone of self-sufficiency and
an arrogance which revolt the instinct of my freedom. It was not in such
a style that Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Gassendi, Bayle, and
Newton wrote." D'Alembert replied that the king would judge more
favourably of the philosopher's person than of his works; that he would
find in Diderot, along with much fecundity, imagination, and knowledge,
a gentle heat and a great deal of amenity.[88] Frederick, however, did
not se