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" At one dinner, Peter was telling the company that in Vienna he had been getting fat, but on his return the nature of the fare in Poland had made him quite slender again. The Polish ambassador, a man of great girth, disputed this, saying that he had been brought up in Poland and owed amplitude to the Polish diet. Peter shot back, “It was not in Poland, but here in Moscow that you crammed yourself”—the Pole, like all ambassadors, was provided with his food and expenses by the host government. The Pole, wisely, let the matter drop. "

Robert K. Massie , Peter the Great: His Life and World


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Robert K. Massie quote : At one dinner, Peter was telling the company that in Vienna he had been getting fat, but on his return the nature of the fare in Poland had made him quite slender again. The Polish ambassador, a man of great girth, disputed this, saying that he had been brought up in Poland and owed amplitude to the Polish diet. Peter shot back, “It was not in Poland, but here in Moscow that you crammed yourself”—the Pole, like all ambassadors, was provided with his food and expenses by the host government. The Pole, wisely, let the matter drop.