Nor in the way of ceremony was there much: King and Queen drove out to meet him; rampart-guns gave three big salvos, as the Czarish Majesty stept forth.

"I am glad to see you, my Brother Friedrich," said Peter, in German, his only intelligible language; shaking hands with the Brother Majesty, in a cordial human manner.

The Queen he, still more cordially, "would have kissed;" but this she evaded, in some graceful effective way.

As to the Czarina,--who, for OBSTETRIC and other reasons, of no moment to us, had stayed in Wesel all the time he was in France,--she followed him now at two days' distance; not along with him, as Wilhelmina has it.

Wilhelmina says, she kissed the Queen's hand, and again and again kissed it; begged to present her Ladies,--"about four hundred so-called Ladies, who were of her Suite."-- Surely not so many as four hundred, you too witty Princess?
"Mere German serving-maids for the most part," says the witty Princess; "Ladies when there is occasion, then acting as chambermaids, cooks, washerwomen, when that is over." Queen Sophie was averse to salute these creatures; but the Czarina Catherine making reprisals upon our Margravines, and the King looking painfully earnest in it, she prevailed upon herself.