Though I did not know what employ I could ask for in that disagreeable country, I was glad to hear that I could have easy access to the Court.  With that idea I walked in the garden every day, and here follows my second conversation with the empress She saw me at a distance and sent an officer to fetch me into her presence.  As everybody was talking of the tournament, which had to be postponed on account of the bad weather, she asked me if this kind of entertainment could be given at Venice.  I told her some amusing stories on the subject of shows and spectacles, and in this relation I remarked that the Venetian climate was more pleasant than the Russian, for at Venice fine days were the rule, while at St. Petersburg they were the exception, though the year is younger there than anywhere else.

“Yes,” she said, “in your country it is eleven days older.”

“Would it not be worthy of your majesty to put Russia on an equality with the rest of the world in this respect, by adopting the Gregorian calendar?  All the Protestants have done so, and England, who adopted it fourteen years ago, has already gained several millions.  All Europe is astonished that the old style should be suffered to exist in a country where the sovereign is the head of the Church, and whose capital contains an academy of science.  It is thought that Peter the Great, who made the year begin in January, would have also abolished the old style if he had not been afraid of offending England, which then kept trade and commerce alive throughout your vast empire.”  “You know,” she replied, with a sly smile, “that Peter the Great was not exactly a learned man.”

“He was more than a man of learning, the immortal Peter was a genius of the first order.  Instinct supplied the place of science with him; his judgment was always in the right.  His vast genius, his firm resolve, prevented him from making mistakes, and helped him to destroy all those abuses which threatened to oppose his great designs.”

Her majesty seemed to have heard me with great interest, and was about to reply when she noticed two ladies whom she summoned to her presence.  To me she said,—­

“I shall be delighted to reply to you at another time,” and then turned towards the ladies.

The time came in eight or ten days, when I was beginning to think she had had enough of me, for she had seen me without summoning me to speak to her.

She began by saying what I desired should be done was done already.  “All the letters sent to foreign countries and all the important State records are marked with both dates.”

“But I must point out to your majesty that by the end of the century the difference will be of twelve days, not eleven.”