At the moment when the signature was being put to the treaty of the triple alliance, the sovereign of most distinction in Europe, owing to the eccentric renown belonging to his personal merit, the czar Peter the Great, had just made flattering advances to France.  He had some time before wished to take a trip to Paris, but Louis XIV. was old, melancholy, and vanquished, and had declined the czar’s visit.  The Regent could not do the same thing, when, being at the Hague in 1717, Peter I. repeated the expression of his desire.  Marshal Cosse was sent to meet him, and the honors due to the king himself were everywhere paid to him on the road.  A singular mixture of military and barbaric roughness with the natural grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an empire, the czar mightily excited the curiosity of the Parisians.  “Sometimes, feeling bored by the confluence of spectators,” says Duclos, “but never disconcerted, he would dismiss them with a word, a gesture, or would go away without ceremony, to stroll whither his fancy impelled him.  He was a mighty tall man, very well made, rather lean, face rather round in shape, a high forehead, fine eyebrows, complexion reddish and brown, fine black eyes, large, lively, piercing; well-opened; a glance majestic and gracious when he cared for it, otherwise stern and fierce, with a tic that did not recur often, but that affected his eyes and his whole countenance, and struck terror.  It lasted an instant, with a glance wild and terrible, and immediately passed away.  His whole air indicated his intellect, his reflection, his grandeur, and did not lack a certain grace.  In all his visits he combined a majesty the loftiest, the proudest, the most delicate, the most sustained, at the same time the least embarrassing when he had once established it, with a politeness which savored of it, always and in all cases; masterlike everywhere, but with degrees according to persons.  He had a sort of familiarity which came of frankness, but he was not exempt from a strong impress of that barbarism of his country which rendered all his ways prompt and sudden, and his wishes uncertain, without bearing to be contradicted in any.”  Eating and drinking freely, getting drunk sometimes, rushing about the streets in hired coach, or cab, or the carriage of people who came to see him, of which he took possession unceremoniously, he testified towards the Regent a familiar good grace mingled with a certain superiority; at the play, to which they went together, the czar asked for beer; the Regent rose, took the goblet which was brought and handed it to Peter, who drank, and, without moving, put the glass back on the tray which the Regent held all the while, with a slight inclination of the head, which, however, surprised the public.  At his first interview with the little king, he took up the child in his arms, and kissed him over and over again, “with an air of tenderness and politeness which was full of nature, and nevertheless intermixed