This is his last, and by far his greatest, appearance in Berlin.
Such a transit, of the Barbaric semi-fabulous Sovereignties, could not but be wonderful to everybody there.

It evidently struck Wilhelmina's fancy, now in her ninth year, very much.

What her little Brother did in it, or thought of it, I nowhere find hinted; conclude only that it would remain in his head too, visible occasionally to the end of his life.
Wilhelmina's Narrative, very loose, dateless or misdated, plainly wrong in various particulars, has still its value for us: human eyes, even a child's, are worth something, in comparison to human want-of-eyes, which is too frequent in History-books and elsewhere!--Czar Peter is now forty-five, his Czarina Catherine about thirty-one.

It was in 1698 that he first passed this way, going towards Saardam and practical Ship-building: within which twenty years what a spell of work done! Victory of Pultawa is eight years behind him; [27th June, 1709.] victories in many kinds are behind him: by this time he is to be reckoned a triumphant Czar; and is certainly the strangest mixture of heroic virtue and brutish Samoeidic savagery the world at any time had.
It was Sunday, 19th September, 1717, when the Czar arrived in Berlin.
Being already sated with scenic parades, he had begged to be spared all ceremony; begged to be lodged in Monbijou, the Queen's little Garden-Palace with river and trees round it, where he hoped to be quietest.

Monbijou has been set apart accordingly; the Queen, not in the benignest humor, sweeping all her crystals and brittle things away; knowing the manners of the Muscovites.