d sent for that purpose to Rome a man of no mark, but capable of well
fulfilling his mission, who remained there five or six months, and who
brought back no very satisfactory report. Later he opened his heart in
Holland to King William, who dissuaded him from his design, and who
counselled him even to imitate England, and to make himself the chief of
his religion, without which he would never be really master in his own
country. This counsel pleased the Czar all the more, because it was by
the wealth and by the authority of the patriarchs of Moscow, his
grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, that his father had attained the
crown, although only of ordinary rank among the Russian nobility.

These patriarchs were dependent upon those of the Greek rite of
Constantinople but very slightly. They had obtained such great power,
and such prodigious rank, that at their entry into Moscow the Czar held
their stirrups, and, on foot, led their horse by the bridle: Since the
grandfather of Peter, there had been no patriarch at Moscow. Peter I.,
who had reigned some time with his elder brother, incapable of affairs,
long since dead, leaving no son, had, like his father, never consented to
have a patriarch there. The archbishops of Novgorod supplied their place
in certain things, as occupying the chief see after that of Moscow, but
with scarcely any authority that the Czar did not entirely usurp, and
more carefully still after King William had given him the counsel before
alluded to; so that by degrees he had become the real religious chief of
his vast dominions.

Nevertheless, the passionate desire he had to give to his posterity the
privilege of marrying with Catholic princes, the wish he had, above all,
for the honour of alliances with the house of France, and that of
Austria, made him return to his first project. He tried to persuade
himself that the man whom he had secretly sent to Rome had not been well
informed, or had ill understood; he resolved, therefore, to fathom his
doubts, so that he should no longer have any as to the course he ought to
adopt.

It was with this design that he chose Prince Kourakin, whose knowledge
and intelligence were known to him, and sent him to Rome under pretence
of curiosity, feeling that a nobleman of his rank would find the best,
the most important, and the most distinguished society there ready to
receive him; and that by remaining there, under pretext of liking the
life he led, and of wi