Villeroy, writing to Madame de Maintenon, had the same impression: "I cannot express to you the dignity, the grace and the politeness with which the King received the visit of the Tsar. But I must tell you that this Prince, said to be barbarous, is not so at all. He displayed sentiments of grandeur and generosity which we never expected."
That night, Peter drove to Versailles, where the royal apartments had been prepared for him. His Russian companions, given rooms nearby, had brought from Paris a collection of young women, who were installed in the former chambers of the puritanical Madame de Maintenon. Reported Saint-Simon: "Blouin, Governor of Versailles, was extremely scandalized to see thus profaned this temple of prudery."
In the morning, the Tsar rose early. His escort at Versailles, the Due d'Antin, going to find him, discovered that the Tsar had already walked among the clipped hedges and stylized flower beds of the palace gardens and was at that moment rowing a boat on the Grand Canal. That day, Peter inspected all of Versailles, including the great fountains which had been the Sun King's special pride, and the pink marble Trianon. Regarding the great palace itself with its small central chateau of Louis XIII and the monumental wings added by Louis XIV, Peter declared that it seemed to him "a pigeon with the wings of an eagle." Leaving Versailles, he returned to Paris in time to see the Whitsunday procession the following morning. Tesse took him to Notre Dame, where, beneath the great rose windows of the cathedral, Peter observed a mass being celebrated by Cardinal de Noailles.
A visit to Fontainebleau, the other majestic royal chateau outside Paris, was less successful. The Tsar's host, the Comte de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's legitimized bastards by Madame de Montespan, urged him to go on a stag hunt, and Peter agreed. For Frenchmen of blood, the chase was the noblest of outdoor sports. They swept through the forests with sword or spear in hand, their horses hurtling fallen trees and streams at a mad gallop, following the sounds of the baying dogs and hunting horns, until the pursued stag or wolf or wild boar turned at bay and was pulled down in a bloody melee among the moss and ferns of the virgin forest. Peter had no stomach for this kind of thing, and, unused to be breakneck pace of the riders, he nearly fell off. He returned to the chateau angry and humiliated, swearing that he did not understand the sport, did not like it and found it too violent. He refused to dine with the Count, instead eating only with three members of his Russian suite. Soon after, he left Fontainebleau.
Returning to Paris by boat down the Seine, he glided past the lovely chateau of Choisy and asked to visit it. By chance, he met its owner, the Princesse de Conti, one of the Princesses of the Blood whom etiquette had barred from meeting him before. Arriving in Paris, Peter was so pleased to be once more on the water that, instead of disembarking on the eastern edge of the city and returning directly to the Hotel Lesdiguieres, he ordered the boatmen to continue downstream so that he could float under all the five bridges of Paris.
On June 3, Peter returned to Versailles to sleep in the Trianon and to spend several nights at Marly, the country pavilion which Louis XIV had built to escape the ponderous etiquette of Versailles. While staying there, Peter drove to St. Cyr to visit Louis XIV's widow, Madame de Maintenon, in the convent she had established, and to which she had retired after the King's death. Everyone was surprised when the Tsar expressed a wish to see her. "She has much merit," he explained. "She has rendered great service to the King and nation."
Not surprisingly, the elderly woman was enormously flattered at the prospect of a visit from the man about whom all Paris was talking. "The Tsar . . . seems to me a very great man since he has inquired about me," she wrote before his visit. To conceal her age and put on her best appearance, she received the Tsar at twilight, sitting in her bed with all the curtains drawn except one which let in a single shaft of light. When Peter entered, he went straight to the windows and dramatically opened the curtains to let in the light. Then, he pulled back the curtains around her canopy bed, sat down at the end of the bed and silently looked at her. According to Saint-Simon (who was not present), the silence continued with neither saying a word until Peter rose and left. "I know that she must have been greatly astonished and even more humiliated, but the Sun King is no more," Saint-Simon wrote. From a sister to the convent, there is a kinder version, according to which Peter asked Madame what her illness was. "Old age," she replied. She then asked him why he had come to see her. "I came to see everything of note that France contains," he answered. At this, it was reported, a ray of her former beauty lighted up her face.
It was not until the very end of Peter's visit to Paris that Saint-Simon met the Tsar in person:
I entered the garden where the Tsar was walking. The Marshal de Tess6, who saw me from afar, came to me, expecting to present me to the Tsar. I begged him not to do it and not to notice me in his presence because I wished to observe him at my leisure . . . and get a good look at him, which I would not be able to do if I was known. . . . With this precaution, I satisfied my curiosity completely at my leisure. 1 found him rather affable, but behaving always as if he were everywhere the master. He walked into an office where D'Antin showed him different maps and several documents on which he asked several questions. It was there that I saw the tic of which I have spoken. I asked Tess6 if this happened often; he said several times a day, especially when he did not take care to control it.
After six weeks in Paris, the visit was now coming to a close. He revisited the Observatory, climbed the tower of Notre Dame and went to a hospital to watch a cataract operation. In the Champs-Elysees, he sat on horseback and reviewed two regiments of the elite Maison du Roi, both cavalry and musketeers, but the heat and dust and enormous crowd were so great that Peter, who loved soldiers, scarcely looked at them and left the review early.
There was a round of farewell cards. On Friday, June 18, the Regent came early to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to bid the Tsar goodbye. Once again, he spoke privately to Peter with only Kurakin present to interpret. The Tsar returned for a third visit to the Tuileries to take his leave of Louis XV. The visit was informal, as Peter had insisted it be. Once again, Saint-Simon was charmed: "One could not show more spirit, more grace and tenderness for the King than the Tsar displayed on all these occasions, and the next day when the King went to the Hotel Lesdiguieres to wish the Tsar a good trip, once again everything passed with great charm and gentleness."
On all sides, the visit was now acclaimed a triumph. Saint-Simon, who had seen the Sun King on his throne, described the lasting impression the Tsar had made:
This was a monarch who compelled admiration for his extreme curiosity about everything that had any bearing on his views of government, commerce, education, police methods, etc. His interests embraced each detail capable of practical application and disdained nothing. His intelligence was most marked; in his appreciation of merit, he showed great perception and a most lively understanding, everywhere displaying extensive knowledge and a lively flow of ideas. In character, he was an extraordinary combination: he assumed majesty at its most regal, most proud, most unbending; yet, once his supremacy had been granted, his demeanor was infinitely gracious and full of discriminating courtesy. Everywhere and at all times he was the master, but with degrees of familiarity according to a person's rank. He had a friendly approach which one associated with freedom, but he was not exempt from a strong imprint of his country's past. Thus his manners were abrupt, even violent, his wishes unpredictable, brooking no delay and no opposition. His table manners were crude, and those of his staff still less elegant. He was determined to be free and independent in all that he wished to do or see. . . .