THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT 
 
 From the Library of 
 
 Henry Goldman, Ph.D. 
 
 1886-1972
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS
 
 PoKTKAIT OK ('.\TIIKHINK II OK RfSSIA
 
 THE 
 
 ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS 
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 K. WALISZEWSKI 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 1895 
 
 [A II righ ts reserved ]
 
 First Edition, 2 Voh. t November 1893.
 
 no 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 ' THIS is a romance/ says the writer in his 
 preface, ' in which fiction finds no place. Even 
 legend enters into it no more than it must needs 
 enter into every faithful evocation of the past. 
 The reader's curiosity, however, and his taste 
 for adventure, if he has it, will lose nothing, all 
 the same.' Materials, it seems, for an exact and 
 minute study of Catherine have only of recent 
 years been forthcoming ; now, out of the seventy- 
 two volumes of documents already published by 
 the Russian Imperial Historical Society, scarcely 
 twenty can be found which are not directly con- 
 cerned with the history of her reign. And there 
 are other materials, scattered in obscure Russian 
 periodicals, other documents, contained in the 
 State Archives in Russia and in France, which 
 have never been consulted, and which are quite 
 out of ordinary reach. Such, M. Waliszewski 
 tells us, are the main foundations of this 
 ' Romance of an Empress,' in which he has 
 endeavoured to present, without fear or favour,
 
 vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 the results of a thorough and impartial in- 
 vestigation. One consequence, which is both 
 interesting and significant, is that the book has 
 been forbidden to be circulated in Russia. 
 
 It may be as well to state that the original 
 book is not written in Parisian French ; it has 
 the colloquialisms of a foreigner, wishing to' be 
 more native than the natives. The translator 
 has not attempted to remove, or even to atten- 
 uate, this Russian accent, so to speak. He 
 has endeavoured merely to make his rendering 
 as close as possible to the original.
 
 CONTENTS 
 PART ITHE GRAND DUCHESS 
 
 BOOK I FROM STETTIN TO MOSCOW 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD, 3 
 
 II. ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE, 1 6 
 
 III. THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE, ... 66 
 
 BOOK II IN PURSUIT OF POWER 
 
 I. THE YOUNG COURT, . 97 
 
 II. THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE, 143 
 
 III. THE VICTORY, . . .176 
 
 FART \\-THE EMPRESS 
 
 BOOK I THE WOMAN 
 
 I. APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT, . . 205 
 
 II. IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES, 241 
 
 BOOK II THE SOVEREIGN 
 
 I. THE ART OF RULING, . 262 
 
 II. HOME POLICY, 284 
 
 III. FOREIGN POLICY, 320
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK III THE FRIEND OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 CHAP. I'AGE 
 
 I. LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, ... 330 
 
 II. CATHERINE A3 A WRITER, 353 
 
 III. CATHERINE AND EDUCATION, 361 
 
 BOOK IV INNER ASPECTS 
 
 I. HOME LIFE. 371 
 
 II. FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL, . . . 397 
 
 III. PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM, 419
 
 PART I 
 THE GRAND DUCHESS
 
 BOOK I 
 
 FROM STETTIN TO MOSCOW 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 FIFTY years ago there was consternation in a 
 little German town : a railway was to be brought 
 through it, removing, after the manner of rail- 
 ways, old landmarks, cutting through old dwell- 
 ings, levelling old promenades, where generation 
 after generation had taken the air. Among the 
 objects thus menaced by impious engineers, to 
 the utter despair of the people in the neighbour- 
 hood, one tree, a venerable lime-tree, seemed to 
 be held in special reverence. In spite of all, the 
 railway was brought through. The lime-tree 
 was not, however, cut down ; it was taken up 
 by the roots and transplanted elsewhere. As a 
 special distinction it was set up opposite the new 
 railway station, where it showed its insensibility 
 to the honour by withering away. Then it was 
 made into two tables : one of them was presented 
 to Queen Elizabeth of Prussia, the other to 
 Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia. 
 The inhabitants of Stettin gave to this tree the 
 name of Kaiserlinde, imperial lime-tree, and,
 
 4 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 according to their account, it had been planted 
 by a German princess, then known as Sophia of 
 Anhalt-Zerbst (or, more familiarly, Figchen), who 
 had been wont to play with the townspeople's 
 children in the market-place, and who had since 
 become, they knew not how, Empress of Russia, 
 under the name of Catherine the Great. 
 
 Catherine had indeed passed a part of her child- 
 hood in the old Pomeranian city. Was she born 
 there? It is not often that the old dispute over 
 the birthplace of Homer comes to be renewed 
 over the birthplaces of the great personages of 
 modern history. This uncertainty in the case of 
 Catherine is one of the special peculiarities of her 
 career. No register of any parish in Stettin has 
 kept a trace of her name. In the similar case of 
 the Princess of Wiirtemberg, wife of Paul I., the 
 explanation is easy : the child was no doubt bap- 
 tized by a clergyman of the Protestant church, not 
 attached to a parish. But a note has been dis- 
 covered apparently authentic indicating Dorn- 
 burg as the place where Catherine was born and 
 baptized ; and grave historians have founded on 
 this datum the strangest suppositions. Dornburg 
 was the family seat of the family of Anhalt-Zerbst 
 zu Dornburg that is to say, of Catherine's family. 
 Had not her mother stayed there about 1729, 
 and had she not frequent occasions of seeing a 
 young prince, barely sixteen years of age, who 
 was enduring, not far from there, a tedious 
 existence with a disagreeable father? This 
 young prince, afterwards known as Frederick the 
 Great, has been designated by a German his- 
 torian, Sugenheim, as the 'father incognito' of 
 Catherine.
 
 CHILDHOOD 5 
 
 A letter of Prince Christian-August of Anhalt- 
 Zerbst, the official father of the future Empress, 
 seems to take away all appearance of truth from 
 this hazardous conjecture. It is dated from 
 Stettin, May 2, 1729, and states that on that 
 very day, at half-past two in the morning, a 
 daughter had been born to him in that town. 
 This daughter can be no other than Catherine. 
 Christian-August ought at least to have known 
 where his children were born, even if he were 
 a little uncertain as to how they came into the 
 world. And further, there is no proof whatever 
 that Dornburg had received within its walls the 
 mother of Catherine, not long before the birth of the 
 latter: indeed, the contrary seems well established. 
 It is far enough from Dornburg and from Stettin, 
 it is at Paris that the Princess of Zerbst appears 
 to have passed a part at least of the year 1728. 
 Frederick, as is well known, never went there, 
 though indeed he nearly lost his head in trying 
 to go. But the imagination of German historians 
 is inexhaustible. In default of Frederick, there 
 was at Paris in 1728, in the Russian embassy, a 
 young man, the bastard of an illustrious family, 
 who certainly must have associated with the 
 Princess of Zerbst. Behold us on the trail of 
 another romance, another anonymous paternity ! 
 The young man was called Betzky, and became 
 afterwards a personage of importance. He died 
 in St. Petersburg at an advanced age, and it was 
 reported that Catherine, who showered kindly 
 and gracious attentions upon the old man, was 
 accustomed, when she visited him, to bend over 
 his arm-chair and kiss his hand. This was 
 enough for the German translator of the memoirs
 
 6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of Masson, whose conviction we should find it 
 hard to share. At this rate we might indulge 
 in similar suppositions in regard to every 
 illustrious birth in the history of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Catherine, then, who was later to be called 
 Catherine the Great, was born, according to all 
 appearances, at Stettin, and her parents, by law 
 as by nature, so far as we know, were called 
 Prince Christian- August of Zerbst-Dornburg, and 
 Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth of Holstein, his legiti- 
 mate wife. A time was to come, as we shall see, 
 when the least actions of this child, so obscurely 
 brought into the world, were to be traced day 
 by day, and almost hour by hour. It was her 
 revenge upon destiny. 
 
 But what, in 1729, would be signified by the 
 birth of a little Princess of Zerbst? The princely 
 house so named, one of those with which the 
 Germany of the period was swarming, formed 
 one of the eight branches of the house of Anhalt. 
 Up to the time when an unexpected chance 
 brought unexampled fame, none of these branches 
 had attained any particular distinction, and within 
 a short time the final extinction of the whole line 
 had cut short this dawn of notoriety. Without 
 history up to 1729, the house of Anhalt-Zerbst 
 had ceased to exist in 1793. 
 
 II 
 
 The parents of Catherine did not live at 
 Dornburg. Her father had something else to do : 
 he had. in fact, to make his way in the world. 
 Born in 1690, he had entered the Prussian army,
 
 CHILDHOOD 7 
 
 and had seen active service in Holland, in Italy, 
 and in Pomerania, fighting against the French 
 and against the Swiss. At thirty-one he had won 
 his epaulettes as Major-General. At thirty-seven 
 he married the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth of 
 Holstein-Gottorp, younger sister of that Prince 
 Karl-August who had already all but sat on 
 the throne of Russia by the side of Elizabeth. 
 Appointed commandant of the Anhalt-Zerbst 
 regiment of infantry, Christian-August had to 
 betake himself to his regiment, and to the garrison 
 life, at Stettin. 
 
 As husband and father, Christian-August was 
 a model. He adored his children, but when 
 Catherine came into the world he had been 
 expecting a son, and his dissatisfaction saddened 
 the early years of Catherine's childhood. When 
 this period of her life came to be inquired into 
 and a time came when it was zealously inquired 
 into the memory of those who had witnessed 
 it was already fading. She herself was by no 
 means willing to revive the recollection, and she 
 replied to questionings on the subject with a 
 reserve which was, for her, unusual. ' I see 
 nothing interesting in it,' she wrote to Grimm, the 
 most intrepid of questioners. Nor were her own 
 recollections very exact. ' I was born/ she said, 
 ' in Greifenheim House, on the Marien Kir- 
 chenhof.' There is not, and there never was, a 
 house of that name at Stettin. The commandant 
 of the 8th regiment of infantry lived at 791 
 Dom Strasse, the house of the president of the 
 Chamber of Commerce of Stettin, von Ascher- 
 leben. The quarter in which this street was 
 situated was called Greifenhagen. The house has
 
 8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 changed owner and number : it belongs to-day 
 to the Councillor of State Dewitz, and is No. i. 
 On a piece of the whitewashed wall there is 
 to be seen a black patch, the sole trace left by 
 the sojourn of a great empress : a little smoke 
 caused by a chafing-dish lighted the 2nd May 
 1729 before the cradle of Catherine. The cradle 
 is gone : it is at Weimar. 
 
 Baptized under the names of Sophia Augusta 
 Frederika, in honour of three of her aunts, 
 Catherine was generally known as Figchen, or 
 Fichchen, according to the orthography of her 
 mother apparently a diminutive of Sophia 
 (Sophiechen). Not long after her birth her 
 parents moved into the chateau of Stettin, where 
 they occupied the left wing, close to the church. 
 Figchen had for herself three rooms, of which 
 the one in which she slept was next to the bell- 
 tower. Thus was she enabled to prepare her 
 ears for the task of hearing, in time to come, 
 the deafening carillon of the orthodox temples, 
 without too much disturbance a providential 
 arrangement, perhaps. It was there that she was 
 brought up, very simply. Often did the streets 
 of Stettin see her playing with the neighbours' 
 children, none of whom, most assuredly, ever 
 thought of calling her Your Highness. When 
 the mothers of these children paid a visit to the 
 chateau, Figchen went before them and respect- 
 fully kissed the hem of their robe. So it was 
 ordained by her mother, who had wise notions 
 on the subject a rare occurrence with her. 
 
 Figchen had, nevertheless, a great many 
 masters to look after her education, besides a 
 governess, who, of course, was French. French
 
 CHILDHOOD 9 
 
 teachers and governesses were at that time to 
 be found in all the German houses of any im- 
 portance ; one of the indirect consequences of 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They 
 taught the French language, the French manners, 
 and the French gallantry. They taught what 
 they knew, and most of them knew nothing 
 else. Thus Figchen had Mile. Cardel. She had 
 also a French chaplain, Peraud, and a writing- 
 master, also French, called Laurent. Some 
 native masters completed this well-furnished 
 collection of pedagogues. A certain Wagner 
 taught Figchen her maternal language. For 
 music she had another German, named Roellig. 
 In later days it often pleased Catherine to call 
 up the recollection of these first instructors of 
 her youth, half tenderly, half with a sort of 
 wicked childish wit. She gave a place apart 
 to Mile. Cardel, ' who knew almost everything 
 without having learnt anything, very much like 
 her scholar ' ; who told her that she had ' an 
 awkward disposition ' ; and who was always 
 telling her to keep back her chin. ' She con- 
 sidered it excessively sharp,' Catherine tells us, 
 ' and she said that by sticking it out I knocked 
 against everybody I came across.' The good 
 Mile. Cardel had probably little thought of the 
 encounters to which her pupil was destined. 
 But she did more than setting up her mind and 
 getting her chin into line. She made her read 
 Racine, Corneille, and Moliere. She contested 
 her with the German Wagner, with his Teutonic 
 pedantry, his Pomeranian dulness, the insipidity 
 of his Priifungen, of which Catherine always 
 kept a painful recollection. Certainly she com-
 
 io CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 municated to her something of her own tempera- 
 ment, the Parisian temperament, we should say 
 nowadays quick, alert, ready-witted. And 
 must we admit it ? she rendered her a still 
 greater service, to all appearance, in saving 
 her from her mother, and not only from the 
 blows that she was wont to shower down for 
 a yes or a no ' out of ill-temper, never for any 
 reason' but especially from that quite other 
 temperament that belonged, as we shall see 
 later, to the wife of Christian-August : a tem- 
 perament made up of intrigue, of deception, of 
 low instincts and petty ambitions, in which 
 was reflected the whole soul of many genera- 
 tions of Germanic princelings. After all, Mile. 
 Cardel really deserved the furs that her pupil 
 hastened to send her on arriving at St. Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 An important part of the education thus or- 
 ganised was made by Figchen's frequent journeys 
 in the company of her parents. Residence at 
 Stettin had no particular attractions for a young 
 woman bent on pleasure and a young military 
 commandant who had been through half Europe. 
 Chances of change were thus welcome, and with a 
 large family connection such chances were never 
 wanting. There were Zerbst, Hamburg, Bruns- 
 wick, Eutin, everywhere relations, everywhere 
 hospitality, not very sumptuous as a rule, but 
 cordial. It was at Eutin, in 1739, that the Prin- 
 cess Sophia saw for the first time the man whom 
 she was to deprive of a throne after having 
 received it from him. Peter Ulric of Holstein, son 
 of a cousin-german of her mother, was then eleven 
 years of age. She herself was ten. This first
 
 CHILDHOOD ir 
 
 meeting, which, at the time, passed unnoticed, 
 did not give her a favourable impression at least 
 so she declared later, when she came to write her 
 memoirs. The child seemed to her a weakling. 
 She was told that he had a bad disposition, and, 
 what appears incredible, that he had already a 
 taste for drink. Another excursion left in her 
 young imagination a much more profound trace. 
 In 1742 or 1743, at Brunswick, at the house of 
 the Dowager- Duchess who had brought up her 
 mother, a canon of the church, expert in chiro- 
 mancy, bethought himself to see in her hand no 
 less than three crowns, though he could see 
 none in the hand of the pretty Princess of Bevern, 
 for whom they were seeking just then a high 
 marriage. To find a crown along with a husband 
 that was the common dream of all these Ger- 
 man princesses. 
 
 At Berlin Figchen saw Frederick, but without 
 his paying her more attention than was natural, 
 or her caring greatly what he thought of her. 
 He was a great king on the threshold of a mag- 
 nificent career ; she was but a little girl, destined, 
 to all appearance, to be the ornament of some 
 infinitesimal court lost in the depths of the 
 empire. 
 
 All this was but the common life and education 
 of all the German princesses of the time. Later 
 on Catherine attempted, by a sort of coquetry, to 
 bridge over the gaps and insufficiencies of this edu- 
 cation. ' What would you have ? ' she said ; ' I 
 was brought up with the idea of marrying some 
 little neighbouring prince, and I was taught as 
 much as that demanded. Mile. Cardel and I 
 had no thought of thisV The Baroness von
 
 12 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Printzen, maid of honour to the Princess of Zerbst, 
 did not hesitate to declare that, on her part, with 
 the closest opportunities of observing the studies 
 and progress of the future empress, she had never 
 seen in her any exceptional qualities or faculties. 
 She expected her to turn out ' an ordinary woman.' 
 Mile. Cardel was equally far from thinking, to all 
 appearance, that in looking after the behaviour of 
 her pupil she was (as the enthusiastic Diderot was 
 one day to declare) ' the candlestick bearing the 
 light of the age.' 
 
 in 
 
 There was something, nevertheless, in this 
 mediocre existence that might already remind the 
 Princess Sophia of her future destiny. She was 
 but a little German Princess, brought up in a 
 little German town, with a desolate sandy waste 
 for horizon. But on this region lay the mighty 
 shadow of a neighbouring power. This very 
 province, not so long before, had seen a strange 
 uniform in its towns, had felt the growing pres- 
 tige of a power, newly come into Europe, and 
 already terrifying and astonishing the nations, 
 awakening infinite hopes and fears. At Stettin 
 even, the details of the siege held against the 
 armies of the great White Czar were fresh in 
 all memories. In the family of Figchen, Russia, 
 the great and mysterious Russia, her innumerable 
 soldiers, her exhaustless riches, her absolute 
 sovereigns, furnished a favourite theme for dis- 
 cussion, into which, perhaps, there came some 
 vague longings, some obscure presentiments. 
 Why not? With the marriages which had united
 
 CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 a daughter of Peter I. to a Duke of Holstein, a 
 grand-daughter of Ivan, the brother of Peter, to 
 a Duke of Brunswick, a whole network of alli- 
 ances, affinities, and reciprocal attractions had 
 been established between the great monarchy of 
 the North and the vast tribe of meagre German 
 sovereignties bordering on the immense empire. 
 And the family of Figchen was brought into 
 particular association with all this. When, in 
 1729, Figchen met her cousin Peter Ulric at 
 Eutin, she knew that his mother had been a 
 Russian Czarevna, a daughter of Peter the Great. 
 She knew, too, the story of that other daughter 
 of Peter the Great, Elizabeth, who had so nearly 
 been her mother's sister-in-law. 
 
 And now, all unexpectedly, came the news of 
 the accession to the crown of Russia of this very 
 Princess, the sorrowing fiancee of Prince Karl- 
 August of Holstein. On December 9, 1741, by 
 one of those coups de theatre which were so fre- 
 quent in the history of the Northern court, 
 Elizabeth had put an end to the reign of the 
 little Ivan of Brunswick and to the regency of 
 his mother. How the echo of this event must 
 have sounded in the ears of Catherine and her 
 family! Separated by the cruelty of fate from 
 the husband of her choice, the new Empress, it 
 was known, kept a tender feeling, not only for 
 the person of the young Prince, but for all his 
 family. She had but lately asked for the por- 
 traits of his surviving brothers : she was not 
 likely to forget his sister. The predictions of the 
 palmist canon must have come back to the mind 
 of Figchen's mother. Certainly she did not fail 
 to write at once to her cousin, and to send her
 
 14 CA THERINE //. OF RUSSIA 
 
 congratulations. The reply was quite encour- 
 aging. Amiable, affectionate even, Elizabeth 
 showed herself grateful for all these kind atten- 
 tions, and demanded yet another portrait that 
 of her sister, the Princess of Holstein, mother of 
 Prince Peter Ulric. Evidently she was making 
 a collection of them. What was all the mystery 
 about ? 
 
 The mystery was soon unveiled. In January 
 1742 Prince Peter Ulric, 'the little devil,' as the 
 Czarina Anna Ivanovna was accustomed to call 
 him, rendered uneasy by his too close relation- 
 ship with the reigning house of Russia the little 
 cousin whom Figchen had one day met dis- 
 appeared suddenly from Kiel, where he usually 
 lived, and reappeared a few weeks later at St. 
 Petersburg. Elizabeth had sent for him in order 
 to proclaim him solemnly as her heir. 
 
 Here, at all events, was an occurrence of no 
 uncertain significance. It was the Holstein 
 blood Figchen's mother's that triumphed in 
 Russia to the exclusion of that of Brunswick. 
 Holstein or Brunswick, the posterity of Peter the 
 Great or that of his elder brother Ivan, both 
 deceased without direct male heirs : the whole 
 history of the house of Russia since 1725 had 
 been implicated in this dilemma ; now Holstein 
 had got the upper hand, and the fortune of the 
 new Prince Imperial, as yet scarcely established, 
 began to reflect itself upon his obscure German 
 relations. It extended even to Stettin. In the 
 month of July 1742 the father of Figchen was 
 raised by Frederick to the grade of Field- Marshal 
 a politeness evidently intended for Elizabeth 
 and her nephew. In September a Secretary of
 
 CHILDHOOD 15 
 
 the Russian Embassy at Berlin brought to the 
 Princess of Zerbst the portrait of the Czarina in 
 a frame of magnificent diamonds. At the end of 
 the year Figchen accompanied her mother to 
 Berlin, where the celebrated painter Pesne was 
 intrusted with the painting of her portrait. 
 Figchen knew that the portrait was to be sent 
 to St. Petersburg, where, no doubt, Elizabeth 
 would not be the only one to admire it. 
 
 A year passed without bringing anything de- 
 cisive. At the end of 1743 the whole family 
 was found at Zerbst : the extinction of the eldest 
 branch had recently caused the succession of 
 Christian- August's brother to the principality of 
 that name. Christmas was gaily kept. There 
 was this new good luck, there were doubtless 
 some happy hopes for the future, dreams, per- 
 haps, more audacious still. The new year was be- 
 ginning gaily, when an express courier, who had 
 ridden post-haste from Berlin, brought startling 
 news to the petulant Jeanne-Elizabeth and her 
 graver spouse. This time the oracles gave open 
 voice, and palmistry won a clear triumph. The 
 courier brought a letter from Brummer, Master of 
 the Household of the Grand Duke Peter, for- 
 merly Peter Ulric of Holstein, and this letter 
 was addressed to the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth, 
 inviting her to come at once, with her daughter, 
 to the Imperial Court of Russia.
 
 1 6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 
 
 BR()MMER was an old acquaintance of the Princess 
 Jeanne-Elizabeth. He had been the tutor of the 
 Grand Duke, and had doubtless accompanied 
 his pupil to Eutin. His letter was long, and 
 filled with minute directions. The Princess was 
 to lose as little time as possible in preparing for 
 the journey, and she was to reduce her suite to 
 the bare necessary a maid of honour, two maids, 
 an officer, a cook, three or four lackeys. At 
 Riga she would find a suitable escort, which 
 would conduct her to the place of residence of 
 the court. It was expressly stipulated that her 
 husband was not to accompany her. She was 
 to keep absolute silence as to the purpose of 
 her journey. If she were questioned, she was 
 to answer that she was going to see the Empress 
 in order to thank her for all the kindness she 
 had shown her. She might, however, confide in 
 Frederick II., who was in the secret A bill of 
 exchange on a Berlin banker, to cover the ex- 
 penses of the journey, accompanied the letter. 
 The sum was modest 10,000 roubles, but it 
 was important, Briimmer explained, not to attract 
 attention by sending a large sum. Once in 
 Russia, the Princess should want for nothing. 
 
 It was evidently in the name of the Empress 
 that Briimmer sent this invitation, so much like
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 17 
 
 an order, and these peremptory instructions. 
 But he gave no further explanation as to the 
 intentions of the Czarina. Another explained it 
 for him. Two hours after the arrival of the first 
 courier, a second followed, bearing a letter from 
 the King of Prussia. Frederick dotted all the 
 i's, and he did not fail to take to himself all the 
 credit of Elizabeth's choice of the young Princess 
 of Zerbst to be the companion of his nephew and 
 successor. He had in truth had something to 
 do with it, and in this manner. 
 
 Naturally, there had been no few matrimonial 
 competitions in regard to 'the little devil,' now 
 heir to so splendid a crown. Soon every notable 
 person at court, the most intriguing court in 
 Europe from the ex-tutor of the Grand Duke, 
 the German Briimmer, to the physician-in- 
 ordinary of Elizabeth, the Frenchman Lestocq, 
 had a candidate of his own, and a following for 
 his candidate. Now it was a French Princess, 
 now a Saxon Princess, daughter of the King of 
 Poland, now a sister of the King of Prussia. 
 Backed by Bestoujef, the all-powerful Chancellor 
 of the empire, the Saxon project had at one 
 moment the greatest chances of success. ' The 
 court of Saxony, rampant slave of Russia,' 
 wrote Frederick later, ' desired the success of 
 Marianne, second daughter of the King of 
 Poland, for the increase of its own credit. . . . 
 The Russian ministers, whose venality would, 
 I think, have put the Empress herself up to 
 auction, sold a premature contract of marriage ; 
 they received large sums of money, and the King 
 of Poland nothing but words.' 
 
 Sixteen years of age, pretty, well brought up, 
 r,
 
 1 8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 the Princess of Saxony was not merely a suitable 
 match ; the alliance would serve as basis of a 
 vast combination, destined, so Bestoujef thought, 
 to reunite Russia, Saxony, Austria, Holland, 
 and England, three-quarters of Europe, against 
 Prussia and France. The combination fell 
 through, and Frederick did his best to aid its 
 fall. He refused, however, to checkmate it by 
 putting forward his sister, the Princess Ulrica, 
 who would have suited Elizabeth. ' Nothing 
 would be more barbarous,' he said, 'than to 
 sacrifice the Princess.' For a time he left his 
 envoy Mardefeldt to his own resources, which were 
 small, and to those of his French colleague, La 
 Chetardie, which, for the moment, were no better. 
 Mardefeldt had been in disgrace for some time, 
 and Elizabeth had been on the point of demand- 
 ing his recall. As for La Chetardie, after having 
 played so important a role at the accession of the 
 new Czarina, he was foolish enough to let slip a 
 position for which he had fought so hard. He 
 had left his post, and, on his return, had not met 
 with the same favour. His court did nothing on 
 his behalf, and obliged him to be always asking 
 for instructions. He would inquire 'if the king 
 had still the same repugnance that he had shown 
 at the accession of the Czarina to the marriage 
 of the Grand Duke with one of the Princesses 
 (avec une des Madame s)! 
 
 But Frederick was on the watch. It was he 
 who had had the idea of sending to St. Peters- 
 burg the portrait painted by Pesne at Berlin. 
 A surviving brother of the mother of Figchen, 
 Prince August of Holstein, had been commis- 
 sioned to present it to the Czarina. Pesne was
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 19 
 
 getting old, and the portrait, it appears, was not 
 good. It had nevertheless the good fortune to 
 please the Empress and her nephew. At the 
 decisive moment, in November 1743, Mardefeldt 
 received orders to put resolutely forward the 
 Princess of Zerbst, or, if she would not do, 
 one of the Princesses of Hesse- Darmstadt. In 
 default of personal influence, the Prussian agent 
 and his French colleague succeeded in winning 
 over Briimmer and Lestocq, and victory (so 
 La Chetardie testifies) was the price of this 
 alliance. ' They have impressed upon the 
 Czarina that a Princess of an important house 
 would be less docile. . . . They have adroitly 
 made use of some priest to insinuate to her 
 Majesty that, seeing the small difference between 
 the two religions, a Catholic Princess would be 
 more dangerous.' Perhaps in the same order 
 of ideas they dwelt on the agreeable insignifi- 
 cance of the Prince of Zerbst, ' a good fellow 
 in his way, but of a quite unusual stupidity,' 
 says La Chetardie. In short, at the beginning 
 of December, Elizabeth charged Briimmer to 
 write the letter which, a few weeks later, revolu- 
 tionised the peaceful court in which Catherine 
 had grown up under the benevolent eye of 
 Mile. Cardel. 
 
 n 
 
 The preparations of the Princess Jeanne- 
 Elizabeth and her daughter were as brief as 
 Briimmer could have desired. Figchen did not 
 even wait for a new outfit. ' Two or three 
 dresses, a dozen chemises, the same amount of
 
 20 CATHERINE If. OF RUSSIA 
 
 stockings and handkerchiefs ' that was all that 
 she took with her. Since they were to want for 
 nothing, haste and away ! ' She only lacks wings 
 to go quicker,' wrote Brummer to Elizabeth. 
 There is no evidence that the Princess took 
 much trouble to give any sort of tclat to her 
 daughter's first appearance in Russia. In follow- 
 ing the correspondence which she carried on at 
 the time with Frederick, one is surprised to see 
 how small a place was taken in her plans by 
 the future Grand Duchess. Was it really on 
 account of Figchen's chances of marriage that 
 she was taking the journey to Russia? It might 
 well be doubted : she scarcely makes the slightest 
 allusion to it. It is of herself that she thinks 
 chiefly, the vast projects that swarm in her 
 brain, and that she is in hopes of developing on 
 a stage worthy of her ; the services that she 
 professes to render to her royal protector, and 
 for which she seems to claim a decent recom- 
 pense in advance. So we shall see her act at 
 St. Petersburg and at Moscow. 
 
 Did Figchen know what was in the air, and 
 for what reason, good or bad, she had been told 
 to pack up her things ? The point is contested. 
 She must have been aware that it was some- 
 thing more than a simple excursion like those 
 she had made to Hamburg and to Eutin. The 
 extent and the vigour of the debates between 
 her father and mother before leaving, the un- 
 usual solemnity of the leave-taking with her 
 uncle, the reigning Prince, Jean Louis, and the 
 not less exceptional magnificence of the present 
 a beautiful blue stuff embroidered with silver 
 wire with which he accompanied his last
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 21 
 
 effusions : all that betokened something extra- 
 ordinary. 
 
 The departure took place on the loth or I2th 
 of January 1744, and was without incident. 
 There is still shown at the Rathhaus of Zerbst 
 the cup in which the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth 
 drank the health of the notabilities of the town, 
 gathered together with great ceremony to bid 
 her farewell. This is probably only a legend. 
 One incident, however, occurred at the moment 
 of departure. After having tenderly embraced 
 his daughter, Prince Christian-August put in her 
 hands a large book which he bade her preserve 
 with care, adding, mysteriously enough, that she 
 might soon have occasion to consult it. At the 
 same time he confided to his wife a manuscript in 
 his handwriting, which she was to pass on to her 
 daughter, after having absorbed and meditated 
 upon its contents. The book was the treatise of 
 Heineccius on the Greek religion. The manu- 
 script fruit of Christian- August's recent watches 
 and meditations was entitled Pro Memoria, and 
 dealt chiefly with the question whether Figchen 
 could not, 'by some arrangement or other,' 
 become Grand Duchess without changing her 
 religion. This was the great concern of Chris- 
 tian-August, and the conjugal controversy which 
 had accompanied the preparations for departure, 
 and which had awakened the attention of 
 Figchen, had but this one object ; Christian 
 August showing himself intractable on the 
 subject, and Jeanne-Elizabeth much more dis- 
 posed to admit the necessities imposed by the 
 new destiny of her daughter. It was for this 
 reason that Figchen's father had resolved to
 
 22 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 arm his daughter against the temptations that 
 might fall in her way. The treatise of Heinec- 
 cius was to serve this purpose. It was the 
 heavy artillery of the fortress. In the Pro 
 Memoria followed considerations and recom- 
 mendations of another order, in which the 
 German practical spirit had its share ; not 
 without some reflection of the petty ways of a 
 court like that of Zerbst or Stettin. The future 
 Grand Duchess was advised to show the greatest 
 respect and the most entire obedience towards 
 those on whom her future would depend. She 
 would place the good pleasure of the Prince 
 her husband above that of all the world. She 
 would avoid too intimate relations with no 
 matter whom of her associates. She would 
 speak to no one in asides in a public assembly. 
 She would keep her pocket-money to herself, 
 so as not to come under the dependence of a 
 maitresse de cour. Finally, she would take 
 care to meddle with none of the affairs of 
 government. All this was expressed in a jargon 
 which gives a curious specimen of the current 
 anguage of the time, the German that 
 Frederick professed to despise not without 
 reason. ' Nicht in Familiarite oder Badinage 
 zu entriren, sondern allezeit einigen Egard sich 
 moglichst conserviren. In keine Regierungs- 
 sachen zu entriren um den Senat nicht aigriren;' 
 and so forth. 
 
 Two months later Figchen thanked her father 
 with effusion for his ' gracious instructions.' We 
 shall soon see how much she profited by them. 
 
 At Berlin, where the two princesses stayed for 
 some days, the future Empress saw Frederick
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 23 
 
 the Great for the last time in her life. At 
 Schwedt, on the Oder, she said good-bye for 
 ever to her father, who had accompanied the 
 travellers thus far. He returned to Stettin ; 
 Jeanne- Elizabeth set out for Riga, by way of 
 Stargard and Memel. The journey, especially at 
 this time of the year, was anything but agreeable. 
 There was no snow, but the cold was so intense 
 that the two women were obliged to cover their 
 faces with a mask. Then there were no com- 
 fortable quarters in which to rest. The orders 
 of Frederick, who had commended the Countess 
 of Reinbek the name under which the Princess 
 was travelling to the care of the Prussian burgo- 
 masters and posting-house keepers, served them 
 in little stead. ' As the rooms in the posting- 
 houses were not warmed,' wrote the Princess, 
 'we had to take refuge in the landlord's room, 
 which was just like a pig-sty ; husband, wife, 
 watch-dog, fowls, and children all slept pell-mell 
 in cradles, beds, mattresses, and behind the stove.' 
 It was worse still beyond Memel. There were 
 not even post-horses to be had. Horses had to 
 be borrowed from the peasants : not less than 
 twenty- four were required to drag the four heavy 
 berlines in which the Princess and her suite were 
 travelling. Sledges had been fastened on behind 
 the carriages, in preparation for the snow that 
 might be found further north. This gave 9. 
 more picturesque air to the caravan, but did not 
 hasten its progress. The advance was slow, and 
 Figchen had an indigestion through drinking the 
 beer of the country. 
 
 They arrived at Mittau on the 5th of February, 
 in a state of exhaustion. Here they met with a
 
 24 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 better reception, and the pride of Jeanne-Eliza- 
 beth, secretly wounded by the familiarity that the 
 Countess of Reinbek had had to endure from 
 posting-house keepers, received its first satisfac- 
 tion. There was a Russian garrison at Mittau, 
 and the commandant, Colonel Voieikof, exerted 
 himself to do the honours of the place to so 
 near a relative of his sovereign. Next day 
 they reached Riga. 
 
 And suddenly, as in a pantomime, the scene 
 changed. The letters of the Princess to her 
 husband were quite effusive over this unexpected 
 coup de theatre ; the civil and military authorities 
 presenting themselves at the entrance to the 
 town, under the command of the Vice-Governor, 
 Prince Dolgorouki, another high functionary, 
 Siemiene Kirillovitch Narychkine, ex-ambassador 
 at London, with a state chariot, cannon firing 
 salutes on the way to the castle. And what 
 splendour in the castle, prepared for the reception 
 of these foreign guests ! Rooms magnificently 
 decorated, sentries at all the doors, couriers on all 
 the staircases, drums beating in the court. The 
 salons, lit by a thousand tapers, are crowded with 
 people : court etiquette, kissing of hands, obeis- 
 ances to the ground, magnificent uniforms, mar- 
 vellous toilettes, dazzling diamonds, velvet, silk, 
 gold, a profusion never seen, never heard of 
 before. To Jeanne-Elizabeth it seems as if her 
 head is turning, as if she is in a dream. ' When 
 I sit down to table,' she writes, ' the trumpets in 
 the house, the drums, flutes, and hautboys of the 
 guard outside, sound a salute. It always seems 
 to me that I must be in the suite of Her Imperial 
 Majesty or of some great princess ; it never
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 25 
 
 enters into my head that all this is for poor me, 
 accustomed as I am to have only the drum 
 beaten for me, and sometimes not even that.' 
 She takes all the honour, however, and with the 
 greatest delight. As for Figchen, we know 
 nothing of the impression produced on her by 
 all this riches and magnificence, so suddenly un- 
 folded before her. Without doubt, it must have 
 been profound. Russia, the great mysterious 
 Russia, opened before her, giving her a foretaste 
 of future splendours. 
 
 On February 9th they set out for St. Peters- 
 burg, where, by the will of the Czarina, they were 
 to stay for a few days, before rejoining her at 
 Moscow, and see that their toilettes were con- 
 formed to the fashion of the country. This was 
 Elizabeth's delicate way of repairing the defi- 
 ciences, known or guessed, of Figchen's wardrobe. 
 Assuredly, with her three dresses and her dozen 
 chemises, the future Grand Duchess would cut a 
 sorry figure at a court where all the splendours 
 met together. The Czarina herself had 15,000 
 silk dresses, and 5000 pairs of shoes ! Catherine 
 did not mind, in later days, recalling her poverty 
 at the time when she arrived in her new country. 
 She seemed to herself to have paid her debt. 
 
 Needless to say, the heavy German berlines 
 with their odd equipment had been left behind at 
 Mittau. Another sort of train was now to con- 
 duct the two travellers on their way to fortune. 
 The Princess of Zerbst describes it thus : *(i) a 
 detachment with a lieutenant of cuirassiers of 
 the corps of His Imperial Highness, named the 
 Holstein Regiment ; (2) the Chamberlain, Prince 
 Narychkine ; (3) an equerry ; (4) an officer of the
 
 26 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Ismailovski Guards, who fills the place of gentle- 
 man-in-waiting ; (5) a major-domo ; (6) a confec- 
 tioner ; (7) cooks and under-cooks, to I know not 
 what extent ; (8) a butler and under-butler ; (9) a 
 man for the coffee; (10) eight lackeys; (n) two 
 grenadiers of the Ismailovski Guards; (12) two 
 quarter-masters ; (13) any number of sledges and 
 stable-boys. Among the sledges is one named Les 
 Linges Her Majesty's linen, that is. It is scarlet, 
 and decked with gold, lined inside with sable. It 
 has silk cushions, coverings of the same stuff, above 
 which is placed one that has just been sent me 
 with the pelisses (a present from the Empress, 
 brought by Narychkine). My daughter and I are 
 to have this sledge, where we shall lie at full length. 
 La Kayn (maid of honour of the Princess) has 
 one to herself, not such a fine one.' Further on, 
 Jeanne-Elizabeth grows yet more eloquent over 
 the perfections of the marvellous imperial sledge : 
 ' It is extremely long. The top is like our 
 German chairs. It is hung with red cloth striped 
 with silver. There is fur all round the bottom. 
 On that are placed a feather bed and damask 
 cushions ; above that again, a satin covering, very 
 neat and nice, on which one lies down. Under 
 one's head are yet more cushions, and one puts 
 over one the furred coverings, so it is exactly 
 like being in a bed. For the rest, the long space 
 between the driver's seat and the covered part 
 serves for two purposes, and is at the same time 
 useful in regard to the comfort of the conveyance, 
 because, whatever rut it passes over in the road, 
 it can pass over without jolting ; and the bottom 
 of this space is made up of boxes, in which one 
 can put what one likes. By day it serves for the
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 27 
 
 gentlemen in attendance, and by night for the 
 servants, who can sleep there at full length. 
 These constructions are drawn by six horses, 
 harnessed two and two, and cannot be upset. It 
 is all the invention of Peter the Great.' 
 
 Elizabeth had left St. Petersburg on the 2ist 
 January. Nevertheless, a large number of per- 
 sonages belonging to the Court and a part of 
 the diplomatic corps were still there. The 
 journey to Moscow, at this epoch, was quite an 
 affair. It necessitated the moving, not only of 
 people, but of furniture as well. The departure 
 of the sovereign displaced a hundred thousand 
 people, and emptied an entire quarter of the town. 
 The French and Prussian Ambassadors had no in- 
 tention of letting any one whatever be beforehand 
 with them in regard to the two princesses. La 
 Chetardie, in his despatches to Amelot, boasted 
 that he knew both mother and daughter intimately. 
 He had recently met with them at Hamburg, on 
 his return to Russia. Both exerted themselves to 
 the utmost. The Princess of Zerbst found her- 
 self in an atmosphere of homage, of assiduity, of 
 forced flattery, in which already intrigues and 
 rivalries began to show themselves. She was in 
 her element, and she flung herself into it with 
 delight, holding receptions, giving audiences, from 
 morning to night, surrounding herself with pro- 
 minent personages, essaying the most complicated 
 moves of the game of politics. At the end of a 
 week she was out of breath. Her daughter held 
 out better. ' Figchen southenirt die Fatige besser 
 als ich,' wrote the princess to her husband. And 
 she noted this trait, which seems already to 
 indicate the future Semiramis: 'It is the grandeur
 
 28 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of her surroundings that sustains the courage of 
 Figchen.' 
 
 The grandeur ! that, indeed, is what seemed 
 most to impress the mind of this girl of fifteen, 
 initiating her into the mysteries of her future 
 destiny. At the same time she learnt of what 
 this grandeur was made, and how it was attained. 
 She was shown the barracks from which, so short 
 .a time before, Elizabeth had set out to conquer 
 a throne. She saw the wild grenadiers of the 
 Pr^obrajenski regiment, who accompanied the 
 Czarina on the night of the 5th December 1741. 
 And the one true lesson, the living lesson of 
 things, spoke to her awakening mind. 
 
 In the mind of her mother certain anxieties 
 intrude themselves into the intoxication of the 
 present hour. Across the crowd of compliments 
 there pierce certain dim warnings, certain veiled 
 threats. The all-powerful Bestoujef remains 
 always hostile to the projected alliance, and he 
 has not thrown up the game. He counts on 
 the Bishop of Novgorod, Ambrose Jouchkievitch, 
 disapproving of the too close relationship between 
 the Grand Duke and the Princess Sophia, or 
 won over, as people said, by the Saxon court 
 with a thousand roubles. The influence of this 
 prelate is considerable. But Jeanne-Elizabeth 
 has no lack of courage. She has, too, for her 
 further confidence in her own success, two reasons 
 worth all the arguments of her adversaries : 
 first, her extraordinary levity of temperament, 
 which made her give herself the name of Will-o'- 
 the-Wisp ; and secondly, her own opinion of her- 
 self, of her resources for intrigue, of her aptitude 
 in surmounting the gravest difficulties. What,
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIAMARRIAGE 29 
 
 after all, has to be done ? Merely to overcome 
 the opposition of a minister who is unfavourable 
 to her. For that there is a remedy, which has 
 already been discussed by her and Frederick on 
 her passage through Berlin : it consists in sup- 
 pressing the opposition by suppressing the 
 minister. Frederick has had it in mind for some 
 time. Well, she will overthrow Bestoujef as soon 
 as she has reached Moscow. Brummer and 
 Lestocq will aid her. 
 
 It is with this fine project in her mind that she 
 once more starts on her way. 
 
 in 
 
 The journey, this time, is very different from 
 that between Berlin and Riga. The posting- 
 houses on the way are almost palaces. The 
 sledges skim over the firm ice. They push 
 forward night and day, in order that they may 
 reach Moscow by the Qth of February, the Grand 
 Duke's birthday. For the last relay, at seventy 
 versts from Moscow, sixteen horses are harnessed 
 to the famous sledge constructed by Peter the 
 Great, and the distance some fifty miles 
 is covered without a stoppage in three hours. 
 This headlong course is all but interrupted by 
 a fatal accident. In passing through a village, 
 the lumbersome vehicle, which once again carries 
 the fortunes of Russia, grazes the corner of a 
 cottage. The blow detaches from the roof of 
 the sledge two great bars of iron, which come 
 near crushing the two sleeping princesses. One, 
 indeed, strikes Jeanne- Elizabeth on the neck, but 
 the pelisse in which she is enveloped softens the
 
 3 o CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 blow : her daughter is not even awakened. Two 
 grenadiers of the Pre"obrajenski regiment, sitting 
 on the front part of the sledge, are dashed to the 
 ground, bleeding and dislocated. Leaving it to 
 the villagers to pick them up, the horses are 
 whipped up, and at eight o'clock in the even- 
 ing they halt at Moscow, before the wooden 
 palace, the Golovinski Dvarets, inhabited by the 
 Czarina. 
 
 Elizabeth, all impatience, is waiting for the new- 
 comers behind a double row of courtiers. Her 
 nephew, more impatient still, disregarding eti- 
 quette, and not giving the travellers time to take 
 off their furs, dashes into their room and gives 
 them the warmest greeting. Soon after, they are 
 conducted to the presence of the Czarina. The 
 interview is all that could be wished ; nor does it 
 pass without a touch of feeling, which seems of 
 good augury. After having gazed attentively at 
 the mother of the future Grand Duchess, the 
 Empress turns aside and goes quickly out of the 
 room. It is to hide her tears, for she has seen 
 certain traits in the face of the princess which 
 remind her of her unforgotten sorrow. The 
 princess, instructed by Drummer, has not for- 
 gotten to kiss the imperial hand, and Elizabeth 
 is gratified by these testimonies of excessive 
 respect. 
 
 Next day, Figchen and her mother are simul- 
 taneously raised to the rank of Dames of the 
 Order of Catherine, at the desire of the Grand 
 Duke, as Elizabeth assures them. 'We are 
 living like queens, my daughter and I,' writes 
 the Princess of Zerbst to her husband. As for 
 the all-powerful Bestoujef, there is no need for
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 31 
 
 the Princess to organise a cabal against him. 
 There is one already formed by the French and 
 the Prussian parties, supported by the Hol- 
 steiners who have been attracted to Russia by 
 the fortune of Peter- Ulric. Lestocq directs, or 
 seems to direct, the affair; putting forward, in 
 opposition to Bestoujef, Count Michael Voront- 
 sof, who has taken part in the accession of 
 Elizabeth. We need not here paint the portrait 
 of the minister whom Jeanne-Elizabeth would 
 thus put in check, one of the most astonishing 
 diplomatic free-lances of the age, for he has 
 served many before finally offering his services to 
 Russia. Does Figchen's mother really represent 
 to herself the gravity of the struggle into which 
 she is entering, and the power of the adversary 
 whom she has against her? It is not probable. 
 But she remembers that Frederick has promised 
 her the Abbey of Quedlinbourg for her younger 
 sister, if she succeeds in her enterprise, and she 
 means to have her abbey. In Frederick's mind 
 the fall of Bestoujef serves as the signal of a 
 great political upheaval, which may lead to the 
 closer union of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden. 
 How glorious for the Princess of Zerbst, to link 
 her name with the accomplishment of such a 
 task ! She feels within herself the power to 
 achieve it. She is a woman, and she comes 
 from Zerbst : let that be her excuse. She 
 imagines herself still in the midst of the little 
 intrigues, the frail plots, that she has known 
 before ; and it is this that constitutes her great 
 mistake, till one day her eyes open to the reality 
 of things, and she sees the immensity of the abyss 
 near which she has unknowingly ventured. As
 
 32 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 for the marriage of her daughter, she will have 
 no more to do with it. 'It is a settled thing,' 
 she writes to her husband. Figchen has won the 
 suffrage of all ; ' cherished by the sovereign, 
 loved by the heir apparent.' And what has the 
 heart of the future wife to say to all this ? Has 
 the recollection of that first meeting at Eutin with 
 the sickly ' child of Kiel ' given place to more 
 favourable impressions ? That is not a point 
 that enters into the calculations of her mother. 
 Peter is Grand Duke ; one day he will be 
 Emperor. The heart of her daughter would be 
 made of different stuff from the hearts of all 
 German Princesses, past and present, if she were 
 not satisfied with her chances of happiness under 
 such conditions. Let us see nevertheless what 
 has happened to the sickly child since the un- 
 expected change in his fate. 
 
 IV 
 
 Peter was born at Kiel, February 21, 1728. 
 The minister at Holstein, Bassewitz, wrote to St. 
 Petersburg that the Czarevna Anna Petrovna 
 had given birth to 'a robust and healthy boy/ 
 It was a phrase of court flattery. The child was 
 not robust, and never could be. His mother 
 died three months later ; of consumption, said the 
 doctors. The feeble health of the future Emperor 
 caused his education to be neglected. Up to the 
 age of seven he is in the hands of governesses, 
 French governesses, at Kiel as at Stettin. He 
 has also a French master, Millet. At this point 
 he is suddenly put under the discipline of the 
 officers of the Holstein Guard. He becomes a
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 33 
 
 soldier before he is a man, a soldier of the 
 barracks, of the mess, of the guard-room, of 
 the field-parade. So he acquires a taste for 
 the low side of soldiering, its vulgarities, its 
 hardships, its minutiae. He goes through his 
 drill, he mounts guard. In 1737, at the age of 
 nine, he is sergeant, and he stands, musket in 
 hand, at the door of a room in which his father is 
 giving a sumptuous dinner to the officers. Tears 
 run down the child's cheeks as he sees the suc- 
 culent dishes file past under his eyes. At the 
 second course his father has him relieved, ap- 
 points him lieutenant, and allows him to sit down 
 to the table. After he had come to the throne, 
 Peter was wont to refer to this incident as the 
 happiest recollection of his life. 
 
 In 1739, on the death of his father, there is a 
 complete change of regulation. He has a head 
 tutor, under whom are several others. This head 
 tutor is the Holsteiner Brummer, whom we know 
 already. Rulhiere has eulogised this man 'of 
 rare merit,' whose sole error, according to him, 
 was that of ' bringing up the young Prince after 
 the greatest models, considering rather his station 
 than his abilities.' Other testimonies that have 
 come to us in regard to this personage are much 
 less favourable. The Frenchman Millet said of 
 him that 'he was good for training horses, and 
 not princes.' He treated his pupil, it seems, 
 brutally, inflicting on him preposterous punish- 
 ments utterly unsuited to the delicacy of his 
 health, such as depriving him of food, or inflict- 
 ing on him the torture of kneeling for a long 
 space of time on dried peas spread on the ground. 
 At the same time, as the little Prince, 'le dia- 
 
 c
 
 34 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 blotin,' who persisted in living despite the objec- 
 tion of the Empress Anne was at once heir to 
 the throne of Russia and to that of Sweden, he 
 was taught alternately Russian and Swedish, 
 according to the chances of the moment. The 
 result was that he knew neither language. When 
 he came to St. Petersburg in 1742, Elizabeth 
 was astonished to find him so backward. She 
 handed him over to Stahlin, a Saxon, who had 
 come to Russia in 1735, and who was Professor 
 of Eloquence, of Poetry, and of the Philosophy of 
 Gottschedt, of the Logic of Wolff, and of many 
 other things besides. To his functions as pro- 
 fessor he joined the exercise of a great number of 
 talents. He wrote official verse for the Court 
 fetes, translated Italian operas for her Majesty's 
 theatre, designed medals destined to record some 
 victory over the Tartars, directed the choir of 
 the imperial chapel, and composed mottoes for 
 the court fireworks. 
 
 What became of Peter's education in the midst 
 of all this may be easily imagined. Brummer 
 still remained with the child in his position 
 of master of the household grosser and more 
 brutal than ever, according to Stahlin's report. 
 One day the latter was obliged to interfere in 
 order to hinder actual violence ; the Holsteiner 
 was making for the young Prince with raised 
 fists, while Peter, half-dead with fright, shouted 
 to the guard to come to his aid. 
 
 Under such training the character of Catherine's 
 future husband contracted vicious habits and in- 
 eradicable defects ; he was at once violent and 
 cunning, cowardly and braggart. He already 
 astonished the candid Figchen by his lies, as
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 35 
 
 he was afterwards to astonish the world by his 
 cowardice. One day, as he amused himself by 
 thrilling her with records of his prowess against 
 the Danes, she inquired naively at what time these 
 exploits had happened. 'Three or four years 
 before my father's death.' ' But you would only 
 be seven ! ' He reddened with anger. Weakly 
 withal, uncomely in body as in mind, he was a 
 crooked soul in an impoverished and prematurely 
 ravaged body. Figchen would certainly do ill 
 to count on his affection, sincere as it appeared 
 in the eyes of Jeanne- Elizabeth, to assure her 
 establishment in Russia. Was he even capable 
 of love, this young man who cut so sorry a 
 figure ? 
 
 Happily for her, Catherine was well able to 
 depend on her own resources. The account she 
 herself gives of this period of her life would be 
 scarcely credible if we had not wherewith to 
 verify the accuracy of her story. She was hardly 
 fifteen, and already we find in her that just and 
 penetrating perception, that soundness of judg- 
 ment, that marvellous sense of the situation, and 
 that admirable good sense which, later on, formed 
 so large a part of her genius, which were, per- 
 haps, her genius. To begin with, she realises 
 that to remain in Russia, to make a figure, to 
 play a role, it is needful to become a Russian. 
 Without doubt her cousin Peter had never 
 thought of it. But she sees well the discomfort 
 and the dislike that he creates about him with his 
 Holstein jargon and his German manners. She 
 gets up in the night to repeat the lessons that 
 her Russian master, Adadourof, has set her. As 
 she never takes the precaution of dressing, and
 
 36 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 walks barefoot in the room to keep herself awake, 
 she takes a chill. Soon her life is in danger. 
 
 ' The young Princess of Zerbst,' writes La 
 Chetardie (March 26, 1744), 'is ill with peri- 
 pneumonia.' The Saxon party takes courage 
 uselessly, if we may believe the French diplo- 
 matist, for Elizabeth is resolved, whatever 
 happens, that they shall never profit from the 
 event. ' " They shall gain nothing," she said the 
 day before yesterday to MM. de Briimmer and 
 Lestocq ; " for if I have the misfortune to lose this 
 dear child, may the devil take me if ever I have 
 a Saxon princess." Briimmer also confided to 
 La Chetardie that, ' in the distressing extremity 
 that must be faced and considered, he had laid 
 his plans, and that a Princess of Armstadt [sic], 
 a charming person, who had been thought of by 
 the King of Prussia in case the Princess of Zerbst 
 were to fail, would have the preference over every 
 other.' The prospect of this substitution, reassur- 
 ing as it is, is far from delighting La Chetardie. 
 'We shall lose much,' he declares, 'seeing how 
 I am looked upon by the Princesses of Zerbst, 
 mother and daughter, and their persuasion that 
 I have contributed to the future prepared for 
 them.' 
 
 While rival ambitions thus fight over her, the 
 Princess Sophia struggles with death. The 
 doctors prescribe blood-letting. Her mother 
 opposes it. It is referred to the Empress; but 
 the Empress is at the convent of La Troitza, 
 absorbed in the devotions to which she abandons 
 herself in her passionate, though intermittent 
 way, putting a certain passion into all that she 
 does. Five days pass ; the patient waits. At
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 37 
 
 last Elizabeth arrives with Lestocq, and orders 
 the blood-letting. The poor Figchen loses con- 
 sciousness. When she returns to herself, she 
 finds herself in the arms of the Empress, who, 
 to console her for the prick of the lancet, makes 
 her a present of a diamond necklace and a pair 
 of earrings worth 20,000 roubles. It is the 
 Princess Jeanne- Elizabeth who notes the price. 
 Peter himself becomes generous, and gallantly 
 offers a watch covered with diamonds and rubies. 
 But diamonds and rubies have no power over the 
 fever. In twenty-seven days she is bled sixteen 
 times, sometimes four times in twenty-four hours. 
 At length the youth and robust constitution of 
 Figchen get the better alike of the disease and 
 the treatment. It appears, even, that this long 
 and severe crisis has had a decisive and singularly 
 happy influence over her destiny. While her 
 mother has succeeded in rendering herself insup- 
 portable to everybody, always in opposition to 
 the doctors, in dispute with the attendants, scold- 
 ing and tormenting her own daughter, she, on 
 the other hand, has known how to win all hearts, 
 and, despite her condition, to render herself 
 liked and loved by all. There is a story of 
 a certain piece of stuff the famous blue stuff 
 embroidered with silver, the present of her uncle 
 Louis that Jeanne-Elizabeth took it into her 
 head, one knows not why, to try to take away 
 from the poor Figchen. It is easy to imagine 
 the excitement caused in the sick-chamber by 
 this pitiful incident : a concert of reprobation 
 against the unnatural mother, a concert of sym- 
 pathy in favour of the daughter, victim of such 
 unfeeling treatment. Figchen gave up the piece
 
 38 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of stuff, and lost nothing by it. And she had 
 other triumphs. Her very illness endeared her 
 to the Russian heart, for it was known how she 
 had come by it. The image of the young girl, 
 barefooted, heedless of the winter weather, con- 
 ning over by night the unfamiliar sounds of the 
 Sclavonic tongue, already haunted the imagina- 
 tion, was already a legend. And it was said 
 that, at the most dangerous point of the crisis, 
 her mother had wished to summon a Protestant 
 pastor to her bedside. 'No,' was her reply ; 
 'what for? Send for Simon Todorski.' Simon 
 Todorski was the orthodox priest who had had 
 charge of the religious education of the Grand 
 Duke, and who was now to undertake that also 
 of the Grand Duchess. 
 
 What were the sentiments, at this time, of 
 the Princess Sophia on this delicate subject ? 
 It is difficult to be sure. Certain indications 
 favour the supposition that the treatise of Heinec- 
 cius and the objurgations of the Pro Memoria 
 of Christian-August had produced on her a some- 
 what profound impression. ' I pray God,' she 
 wrote to her father, still at Konigsberg, ' to 
 strengthen my soul with all the force it will 
 need in order to resist the temptations to which 
 I prepare to see myself exposed. He will accord 
 this grace to the prayer of your Highness and of 
 dear mamma.' Mardefeldt, for his part, showed 
 some anxiety. 'There is one point,' he writes, 
 ' that causes me infinite embarrassment : it is 
 that the mother believes, or pretends to believe, 
 that this young beauty could never embrace the 
 Greek religion.' He tells how he had one day 
 to have recourse to the pastor, in order to calm
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 39 
 
 the mind of the Princess, frightened by the 
 lessons of the Pope. Here, nevertheless, is what 
 Catherine thought later, no doubt looking back 
 on her own experience, of the difficulties that 
 line the way to the bosom of the orthodox 
 church on the part of a German Princess brought 
 up in the Lutheran religion, of the time required 
 for surmounting them, and of the course and 
 progress of the moral problem. Writing to 
 Grimm on August 18, 1776, in reference to the 
 Princess of Wiirtemberg, whom she destines for 
 her son Paul, she expresses herself in these terms : 
 'As soon as we have her, we will set about her 
 conversion. We shall need quite fifteen days. 
 . . . To hasten it all on, Pastoukhof has gone to 
 Memel to teach her the ABC and the Confession 
 in Russian : conviction will come after' 
 
 However it may have been, the refusal to 
 see the evangelical minister a repudiation of 
 the faith of her childhood coming from the 
 dying lips of the future Grand Duchess, and the 
 appeal for the aid of Todorski an anticipatory 
 confession of the orthodox faith received a 
 ready belief. From that time the position of 
 Figchen in Russia was assured. Whatever might 
 come about, she was sure for the future to find 
 it in the hearts of this naif and profoundly re- 
 ligious people, whose beliefs she had espoused, 
 and who testified its gratitude by immediately 
 espousing her interests. The link that was to 
 unite this little German Princess to the great 
 Sclavonic nation, whose language she was but 
 beginning to stammer ; the compact that for near 
 a half-century was to associate their destinies 
 in a single glorious fortune, to be broken only
 
 40 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 by death ; this link, this compact, were from this 
 moment found and formed. 
 
 On April 20, 1744, the Princess Sophia 
 appears for the first time in public after her 
 illness. She is still so pale that the Empress 
 sends her a pot of rouge. But, notwithstanding, 
 she attracts all eyes, and she feels that all eyes 
 look on her kindly. Already she pleases and 
 attracts. She brightens and warms about her 
 the glacial atmosphere of a court which she is 
 one day to render so brilliant. Peter himself 
 shows himself more attentive and more con- 
 fiding. Alas ! his gallantry and his confidence 
 are of but one kind. He tells his future wife 
 the story of his intrigue with one of the maids 
 of honour of the Empress, the Princess Lapou- 
 khine, whose mother has recently been exiled 
 to Siberia. The freiline has to quit the court 
 at the same time. Peter would like to have 
 married her, but resigned himself to the will 
 of the Empress. Figchen blushes, and thanks 
 the Grand Duke for the honour he has done 
 her in making her the third party to his 
 secrets. Already it is evident what sort of 
 future lay before these two creatures so little 
 made for one another. 
 
 During this time the Princess Jeanne-Eliza- 
 beth is quite given over to her enterprises in 
 the higher diplomacy. She makes friends with 
 the Troubetzkoi family, and with the bastard 
 Betzky himself, whose bustling personality 
 begins to make itself felt. She has a salon,
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 41 
 
 which is the meeting- place of all the adversaries 
 of the actual political system, all the enemies 
 of Bestoujef : Lestocq, La Chetardie, Mardefeldt, 
 Brummer. She forms cabals, she plots, she 
 intrigues. She goes forward with all the ardour 
 of an hysterical woman, and all the heedlessness 
 of an airy brain. She thinks she has secured 
 her success, and also her Abbey of Quedlin- 
 bourg. She already sees herself complimented 
 by Frederick, and assuming, in short, the role 
 of his ambassador at the court of the North, 
 his best, his most precious ally. She sees 
 nothing of the abyss at her feet. 
 
 On the ist of June 1744 Elizabeth has 
 betaken herself once more to the convent of 
 La Troitza, this time with full ceremony and 
 the pomp of a solemn pilgrimage, taking half 
 her court with her, and journeying on foot. 
 She has formed the vow, on coming to the 
 throne, that she will repeat this ceremony 
 every time that she visits Moscow, in memory 
 of the refuge that Peter I. had found in the 
 ancient monastery, at a time when his life was 
 in danger through the revolt of the Strelitz. 
 The Princess Sophia, still too weak, is not able 
 to accompany the Empress, and her mother 
 remains with her. But after three days a 
 courier arrives, bearing a letter from Elizabeth: 
 the two Princesses are to rejoin the Imperial 
 cortege, and assist at its solemn entrance within 
 the walls of La Troitza. Scarcely are they 
 installed in a cell, where the Grand Duke 
 comes to pay them a visit, when the Empress 
 herself enters, followed by Lestocq. She seems 
 greatly agitated. She orders the Princess
 
 42 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Jeanne-Elizabeth to follow her into a neigh- 
 bouring room. Lestocq accompanies them. 
 The interview is long. Figchen pays no heed 
 to it, occupied in listening to her cousin's usual 
 extravagant chatter. Little by little her youth 
 and vivacity get the better of the constraint 
 which the Grand Duke's presence generally in- 
 spires, she enters into his childish mood, and both 
 fall to laughing and playing with great gaiety. 
 Suddenly Lestocq returns : ' This is soon to 
 be put a stop to,' says he brusquely ; then, 
 addressing the Princess Sophia : ' You had 
 better see about packing up.' Figchen remains 
 dumfounded, and, as the Grand Duke demands 
 what it all means, Lestocq contents himself with 
 adding : ' You will soon see.' 
 
 4 1 saw clearly,' writes Catherine in her 
 memoirs, ' that he (the Grand Duke) would 
 have abandoned me without regret. For my 
 part, his disposition being what it was, I should 
 have viewed his loss with indifference, but not 
 that of the crown of Russia.' Was it possible 
 that this girl of fifteen was already thinking 
 about the crown? Why not? Writing her 
 memoirs forty years afterwards, supposing that 
 she really wrote them as they have come to 
 us, Catherine may, and indeed must, have 
 forced the note of her childish impressions. 
 ' My heart,' she tells us, referring to this period, 
 ' foresaw nothing good in the future ; ambition 
 alone sustained me. I had, deep down in my 
 heart, an indefinable something which never 
 let me doubt for an instant that I should 
 become the Empress of Russia.' Here the 
 exaggeration is evident, and the a posteriori
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 43 
 
 attitude stares one in the face. But the throne 
 in company with Peter might well allure the 
 imagination of the precocious child ; ' expecta- 
 tions ' far more distant have at all times figured 
 in the matrimonial bill, and fiancees of fifteen, 
 now as ever, know very well how to cash them. 
 
 After Lestocq comes the Empress, very red, 
 and the Princess Jeanne-Elizabeth, very agitated, 
 her eyes full of tears. At the sight of the 
 sovereign the two youngsters, who had been 
 sitting on the ledge of the window, their legs 
 dangling, and, taken aback by what Lestocq 
 had just said, had not moved from their place, 
 jump down precipitately. One sees the picture. 
 It seems to disarm the Empress's wrath. She 
 smiles, goes up to them, embraces them, and 
 goes out without a word. Then the mystery 
 begins to clear up. For more than a month 
 the Princess of Zerbst had been unconsciously 
 walking over a mine that had been dug for her 
 by the enemies whom she fancied it so easy to 
 dispose of. And the mine had just exploded. 
 
 The Marquis La Chetardie had returned to 
 Russia at the age of thirty-six, with the reputa- 
 tion of being the most brilliant diplomatist of the 
 day. Tall, well made, an imposing and accom- 
 plished cavalier, he seemed destined to take a 
 great place at a court where everything was 
 decided by favour, where success depended on 
 the power of pleasing, and where he, it was said, 
 had already had the good fortune to please. He 
 had his plan, a very ingenious, perhaps a too 
 ingenious, plan, whose adoption he had already 
 secured, not without difficulty, at the court of 
 Versailles. It placed the fall of Bestoujef, that
 
 44 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 is to say the abandonment of the Austrian policy 
 defended by this minister, as the price of an ar- 
 rangement long debated between the two courts, 
 eagerly desired by Elizabeth, obstinately refused 
 by France. It related to the title of Imperial 
 Majesty, tacitly allowed to the Czars of Russia 
 since Peter the Great, but not yet inscribed on 
 the protocol, and consequently absent from the 
 official documents emanating from the chancellor 
 of the Most Christian King. La Chetardie had 
 obtained credentials containing the longed-for 
 title. He kept them by him, to give to the 
 successor of Bestoujef, after his dismissal. Eliza- 
 beth was well aware of it, and soon it was known 
 to every one at the court. Until matters were 
 arranged, the French diplomatist, relying on his 
 personal ascendency, affected to deal directly 
 with the Empress, over the head of her chancellor. 
 This was relying too much on his powers ; it 
 showed, too, a singular error in regard to the 
 character of Elizabeth. The portrait of the 
 daughter of Peter I. has been often sketched, and 
 we have been able to arrive at a probably exact 
 idea of this singular sovereign's ways of living and 
 ruling. She was at once restless and indolent, 
 avid of pleasure and nevertheless fond of affairs, 
 spending hours over her toilette, keeping a signa- 
 ture or an order waiting for weeks or months, 
 and yet authoritative withal ; voluptuous, pious, 
 incredulous, and superstitious ; passing, from 
 moment to moment, from excesses which ruined 
 her health to religious exaltation which impaired 
 her intellect : une ndvrosde, as we should say to- 
 day. The Baron de Breteuil relates, in one of 
 his despatches, that, in 1 760, she was in the act
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 45 
 
 of signing the renewal of the treaty concluded in 
 1 746 with the court of Vienna, and had already 
 written ' Eli . . . ' when a wasp settled on the 
 end of her pen. She stopped, and it was six 
 months before she made up her mind to finish the 
 signature. Of her appearance, the Princess of 
 Zerbst has left us this pleasant sketch : 
 
 ' The Empress Elizabeth is very tall ; she had 
 formerly an extremely good figure. She was 
 getting fat when I knew her, and it always 
 seemed to me that what Saint Evremond says in 
 his portrait of the famous Duchess de Mazarin, 
 Hortense Mancini, might have been said of the 
 Empress : " De ce qu'elle a la taille deliee une 
 autre 1'aurait belle." It was then true to the 
 letter. Never was a head more perfect ; it is 
 true that the nose is less so than the other 
 features, but it is well enough in its way. The 
 mouth is unique : there never was such another : 
 it is all graces, and smiles, and sweetness. It 
 could never look sour, could never take any but 
 a gracious shape ; reproaches from it would be 
 adorable, if it could ever proffer reproaches. 
 Two rows of pearls show through the coral of two 
 lips that must be seen to be imagined. The eyes 
 are full of sensibility ; yes, that is the effect they 
 make upon me. One might take them for black, 
 but they are really blue. They inspire all the 
 sweetness with which they are animated. . . . 
 Never was a forehead more pleasing. Her hair 
 grows in such a manner that with a touch of the 
 comb it seems to have been cunningly arranged. 
 She has black eyebrows, and hair naturally 
 cendrde. Her whole form is noble, her bearing 
 fine, her presence full of grace ; she speaks well,
 
 46 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 with an agreeable voice ; her gestures are correct. 
 In short there never was one like her. Her 
 complexion, her neck, her hands never were 
 any such seen. Believe me, I know what I am 
 talking about, and I am speaking without pre- 
 possession.' 
 
 As for her mind, the pen of the Chevalier 
 d'lion opposes to this gracious ensemble a terrible 
 counterpart : 
 
 ' Under an air of apparent bonhomie, she 
 (Elizabeth) has a sharp and incisive intelligence. 
 If one is not buttoned and cuirassed beforehand 
 against inspection, her eye glides under your 
 clothing, lays you bare, pierces open your breast, 
 and when you discover it, it is too late : you are 
 naked, the woman has read you to the root of 
 your heart, has rummaged your very soul. . . . 
 Her frankness and good nature are only a mask. 
 In your France, for example, and in all Europe, 
 she has the reputation and the name of clement. 
 On her accession to the throne, indeed, she swore 
 on the venerated image of St. Nicholas that no 
 one should be put to death during her reign. 
 She has kept her word to the letter, and not a 
 head has as yet been cut off, it is true ; but two 
 thousand tongues, two thousand pairs of ears 
 have been. . . . You know, no doubt, the story 
 of that poor, interesting Eudoxie Lapoukhine ? 
 She did some wrong perhaps to her Majesty, but 
 the gravest wrong, be sure, was to have been her 
 rival, and fairer than she. Elizabeth had her 
 tongue pierced with a red-hot iron and twenty 
 strokes of the knout administered by the hand of 
 the hangman, and the unhappy creature was 
 pregnant, and near the birth. . . . You will find in
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 47 
 
 her private life the same contradictions. Now 
 impious, now fervent, sceptical to the point of 
 atheism, bigoted to the point of superstition, she 
 passes whole hours on her knees before the 
 image of the Virgin, talking with her, interrogat- 
 ing her with ardour, and demanding of her in what 
 company of the Guards she should take the lover 
 of the moment. ... I was forgetting one thing. 
 Her Majesty has a pronounced taste for strong 
 liquor. It happens to her sometimes to be in- 
 disposed to the extent of falling in a swoon. . . . 
 Then her dress and her corsets have to be cut. 
 She beats her servants and her women.' 
 
 It is easy to see what difficulties must have 
 been found by La Chetardie in his relations with 
 a princess of so strange a humour, and on what 
 slippery ground the Princess of Zerbst was ven- 
 turing in his company. For she had become his 
 associate, and had ended by pinning all her faith 
 to him. Mardefeldt was quite out of the battle, 
 Brummer had little by little drawn away from the 
 party, and Lestocq tacked about, with the native 
 suspiciousness of his shrewd instinct. Despatches 
 from Versailles exhorted the Marquis to pru- 
 dence, ending by peremptorily ordering him not 
 to make too uncertain a bargain on the strength 
 of the expected gratitude for the Imperial title. 
 After all, the matter was not of such grave im- 
 portance, 'the King is Emperor in France.' It 
 was much better to pay the Czarina ' a kind of 
 flattery,' by showing her the king's letter. This 
 would, perhaps, induce her to force the minister's 
 hand in favour of the conclusion of the wished- 
 for alliance. La Chetardie declared himself 
 ready to obey, but there was some difficulty in
 
 48 CATHERINE //. OF RUSSIA 
 
 doing so : it was needful to ' catch and keep ' the 
 Czarina, for at least a quarter of an hour, and 
 this he could not do. 
 
 Meanwhile, Bestoujef put himself on the de- 
 fensive. With the assistance of an employe of 
 the chancellor's, Goldbach, a German, perhaps 
 a Jew, an expert in the art of deciphering, so 
 much cultivated at that period, he intercepted 
 and brought to light all the correspondence of 
 the French ambassador, which he suddenly 
 planted before the eyes of the Empress, bringing 
 specially to her notice the passages which per- 
 sonally concerned her, the passages in which La 
 Chetardie deplored the idleness and frivolity of 
 the sovereign, her unrestrained love of pleasure, 
 and her very coquetry, which caused her to 
 change her toilette four or five times a day. One 
 can imagine Elizabeth's anger, and the conse- 
 quences. . Having deliberately refrained from 
 making use of his credentials, La Chetardie was 
 without official standing. A simple note from 
 the chancellor's office gave him orders to quit 
 Moscow and Russia within twenty-four hours. 
 The Empress even demanded the return of a 
 portrait that she had given him on the cover of 
 a snuff-box set with diamonds. The snuff-box 
 he could keep. 
 
 But it was not La Ch6tardie only who was 
 compromised. His despatches had revealed to 
 the Empress the part taken by the Princess of 
 Zerbst in the abortive intrigue. They showed 
 her at the court and in her own intimacy play- 
 ing the part of spy in the service of Prussia and 
 France, giving secret information to La Chdtardie 
 and Mardefeldt, corresponding secretly with
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 49 
 
 Frederick. That is what was meant by the enig- 
 matical scene at the convent of La Troitza. 
 
 The Princess of Zerbst escaped with a good 
 fright, with a taste of the truth that she had to 
 hear from the lips of Elizabeth, and with the irre- 
 vocable loss, not only of the credit she had fondly 
 hoped to acquire at court, whose secret springs 
 she only now began to realise, but also of that 
 to which she might legitimately have laid claim. 
 ' The name of the Princess of Zerbst,' wrote La 
 Chetardie's successor, d' Albion, a year after these 
 events, 'was frequently met with in the inter- 
 cepted letters of M. de La Chetardie. From that 
 time the Empress took a decided dislike to her. 
 . . . Her best course would be to return to 
 Germany.' This, indeed, is what she did, but 
 not without having assisted at the single victory 
 of which a chance remained to her under a sky 
 now so overcast, the single one of which she 
 seemed to have lost sight, almost to the point 
 of letting it escape her. 
 
 VI 
 
 The person of Figchen had passed through 
 this crisis unhurt. From this moment, indeed, 
 and as if her proved innocence had pleaded her 
 cause with even her adversaries and the enemies 
 of her fortune, her triumph became certain, and 
 her marriage with the Grand Duke finally 
 assured. One delicate point still remained to be 
 settled, the solemn admission of the Princess 
 Sophia into the Greek Church. The Princess of 
 Zerbst had done her best to carry out the injunc- 
 tions of her husband. She had tried to fortify 
 
 D
 
 50 CA THER1NE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 her own faith and the faith of her daughter. She 
 had also made inquiry if the precedent of the 
 wife of the Czarevitch Alexis, who had retained 
 her position in the Protestant Church, might not 
 be utilised for the benefit of Figchen. On this 
 last point the result of her investigation was 
 unsatisfactory. But the news that she gave of 
 it to the pious and scrupulous Christian- August 
 was accompanied by reassuring statements. She 
 had gone over the creed of the Greek Church 
 with Simon Todorski, she had compared it care- 
 fully with Luther's catechism, and she had 
 arrived at the conviction that there was no funda- 
 mental difference between the two religions. As 
 for Figchen, she had not taken so long to find 
 out that she could save her soul in the orthodox 
 religion. Heineccius evidently did not know 
 what he was talking about, and Methodius har- 
 monised admirably with Luther. The arguments 
 of Simon Todorski on this subject were irresist- 
 ible. He was a clever man, this archimandrite. 
 He had seen the world, and had been a student 
 at the University of Halle. Christian- August 
 was not at first easy to move. ' My good Prince 
 of Zerbst,' wrote Frederick, later on, ' was most 
 restive on this point. ... He replied to all my 
 arguments, "My daughter shall not join the 
 Greek Church." ' Happily there was another 
 Simon Todorski at Berlin. 'Some priest,' con- 
 tinues Frederick, 'whom I knew how to win 
 over . . . was complaisant enough to persuade 
 him that the Greek rites were similar to those of 
 the Lutherans. After that he was always saying 
 "Lutheran-Greek, Greek- Lutheran, it is the same 
 thing." In the course of June, a courier, sent
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 51 
 
 by Elizabeth, returned with the Prince's official 
 authorisation of the marriage .and conversion 
 of the Princess Sophia. The good Christian- 
 August declared that he had perceived the finger 
 of God in the circumstances which had led to 
 this determination. 
 
 June 28th was fixed for the public profession of 
 the young catechumen, and the day following, the 
 feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, for the betrothal. 
 The approach of this ceremony did not fail to 
 cause some emotion to Figchen. The letters 
 that she received in great numbers from her 
 relations in Germany were not all of a reassuring 
 kind. One can see to what comment of all kinds 
 this unexpected destiny of the little princess 
 would give rise in the minds of those among 
 whom she had lived till now. The tendency 
 was not generally too favourable. A little 
 jealousy mingled perhaps with the apprehensions 
 that seemed inspired only by a tender solicitude. 
 The lamentable history was recalled of that un- 
 happy Charlotte of Brunswick, the wife of Alexis, 
 deserted by her husband, forgotten by the Czar. 
 And had not the far-off Russia been fatal to all 
 that German family, which had thought to find 
 there a future of glory and greatness ? All that 
 came to the future Grand Duchess in long con- 
 torted phrases of Teutonic jargon, stuffed with 
 French, in which she saw more of envy than 
 of true consideration, but which made her some- 
 times tremble as she gazed anxiously into the 
 future. 
 
 No one certainly would have thought so among 
 the crowd of courtiers who, at ten o'clock in the 
 morning of the 28th June 1744, thronged the
 
 52 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 entrance to the imperial chapel of the Golovinski 
 Dvarets. Dressed in an 'Adrienne' robe of 
 red cloth of Tours laced with silver, a simple 
 white ribbon about her unpowdered hair, Fig- 
 chen was radiant with youth, beauty, and modest 
 assurance. Her voice did not tremble, her 
 memory did not hesitate an instant, as she 
 pronounced in x Russian the creed of her new 
 faith before the moved assembly. The Arch- 
 bishop of Novgorod, he who had formerly 
 declared himself against the marriage, shed pious 
 tears on receiving her profession of faith, and 
 all the assistants felt bound to imitate him. 
 They had wept the same, it is true, at the 
 conversion of Peter - Ulric, who had made 
 grimaces during the ceremony, and had amused 
 himself at the expense of the officiant. This 
 sensibility was a part of the ceremony. The 
 sovereign testified her contentment by present- 
 ing the catechumen with a clasp and collar of 
 diamonds, which the expert Jeanne -Elizabeth 
 estimated at 100,000 roubles. 
 
 But what would the good Christian -August 
 have said if he had heard his daughter declare 
 before God and man : ' I believe and I confess 
 that faith alone doth not suffice for my justifica- 
 tion ? ' Did not Figchen herself need some effort 
 to pronounce these words, which separated her 
 finally from her past? Those who would find 
 here the influence of the Parisian philosophers 
 on her youthful mind have somewhat confused 
 their dates. It is extremely probable that at 
 this moment the future friend of Voltaire did 
 not know of that writer's existence. On leaving 
 the chapel she found herself at the end of her
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 53 
 
 strength, and she could not appear at dinner. 
 But it was no more either Figchen or the Princess 
 Sophia- Frederika who had crossed with unsteady 
 feet the threshold of this temple of golden icones. 
 That day, in the official liturgy, a prayer was 
 introduced for the ' Orthodox (Olagovierna) 
 Catherine Aleksiei'evna.' The Princess of Zerbst 
 explained to her husband, it is true, that Catherine 
 had simply been added to Sophia, * as occurs at 
 confirmation.' As for Aleksiei'evna, that sur- 
 name, according to the usage of the country, 
 stood for 'daughter of Augustus,' Augustus 
 having no nearer translation in Russian. The 
 good Christian asked no questions. He had had 
 for some time to lay in a provision of credulity, 
 and there were special graces, no doubt, for 
 the benefit of German princes with marriageable 
 daughters abroad. 
 
 The betrothal took place next day in the Ou- 
 spienski Sobor. The Princess of Zerbst herself 
 placed the rings upon the fingers of Catherine 
 Aleksiei'evna and her future husband two little 
 marvels, these rings, worth quite 50,000 ecus, 
 said she. Some writers, Rulhiere among others, 
 affirm that Catherine received on this occasion the 
 title of heir to the throne, with right of succession 
 in case of the Grand Duke's death. The fact is 
 contested by the most recent Russian authorities. 
 It would have required an official manifesto, and 
 there is no trace of this. The future Grand 
 Duchess continued to win all hearts by the per- 
 fect grace and seemliness of her attitude. Her 
 mother herself observed with satisfaction that 
 she blushed every time that the exigencies of 
 her newly acquired rank obliged her to take pre-
 
 54 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 cedence over her who had given her birth. She 
 had soon to find out that her daughter, notwith- 
 standing, seized the opportunity afforded by her 
 new position to escape from a tutelage that had 
 long weighed upon her. Nor was she alone in 
 finding herself now out of place and unwelcome 
 in the position in which she was obliged to live. 
 The Princess of Zerbst was treated in general 
 as a 'stranger,' and she aroused no sympathy. 
 Catherine, for the first time in her life, had now 
 money of her own 30,000 roubles which had 
 been sent to her by Elizabeth, 'pour son jeu* as 
 the phrase was at the Court of Russia an 
 amount which seemed to her an inexhaustible 
 treasure. She soon drew upon it largely, and, 
 at first, very commendably. Her brother had 
 just been sent to Hamburg to finish his studies. 
 She declared that she would pay the cost of his 
 maintenance. She had her own court, of whom 
 the principal functionaries, chamberlains and 
 gentlemen of the bedchamber, were carefully 
 chosen outside of the coterie that the Princess 
 of Zerbst professed to keep in her interests and 
 in those of Frederick. The son of the chancellor 
 himself, Peter Bestoujef, was one of the number. 
 This was one disappointment the more for the 
 Princess of Zerbst, and she did not fail to give one 
 more instance of her want of tact by showing it. 
 Her bad temper, bursting forth on any occasion 
 and at the expense of every one, put the finishing 
 touch to her unpopularity. There were violent 
 scenes between her and the Grand Duke, which 
 afforded the latter an opportunity for showing off 
 his guard-room manners and language at the 
 expense of his mother-in-law.
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 55 
 
 Catherine, nevertheless, rapidly took root in 
 her new situation. She even seized the occasion 
 to become more intimately acquainted with the 
 vast domain that she would one day be called to 
 govern. She made, in the company of the Grand 
 Duke and of her mother, the journey to Kief 
 which, forty years after, she was to make over 
 again with such pomp and splendour, and the im- 
 pression of this journey was destined never to be 
 effaced from her memory, but to have a visible 
 influence on her mind and even on the char- 
 acter of her future government. Journeying five 
 hundred miles without ever leaving the domains 
 of Elizabeth, without ever seeing anything but 
 crowds prostrate before the omnipotence of 
 the Czarina, the little German Princess, ac- 
 customed to the narrow horizons of the puny 
 sovereignties of her country, felt the rise and de- 
 velopment in her of an idea of grandeur and force 
 absolutely without limits. It was this idea that, 
 become Empress, she felt to be incarnated in her, 
 and destined to subdue the world. At the same 
 time, with her young, clear-eyed sagacity, her 
 already just perception of things, she perceived 
 the seamy side of all this pomp and splendour, 
 this magnificent empire one day to be hers. At 
 St. Petersburg, at Moscow, she had till now had 
 before her eyes only the throne glittering with 
 gold, the diamond-starred court, the outer 
 drapings of the imperial majesty, lined with a 
 somewhat barbarous showiness and a half-Asiatic 
 luxuriousness, but so much the more imposing. 
 She now found herself face to face with the roots 
 and sources of this unparalleled splendour : she 
 saw the Russian people as they were, she saw
 
 56 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 them with astonishment, with affright. They 
 were sordid and savage, half-clothed, shivering 
 with cold and hunger in their smoky hovels, and 
 bearing like a cross the double yoke of misery 
 and servitude. The lamentable vices of the 
 social and political organisation, frightful abuses 
 of power, forced themselves upon her. And all 
 those attempts at reform, all those generous 
 instincts, all the liberal ideas that were to mark 
 the first part of her reign, had their origin in this 
 first rapid vision of things. 
 
 On her return to Moscow she had also to make 
 experience of another side of the picture : the 
 little annoyances inseparable from so elevated a 
 rank. One evening at the theatre, in the Grand 
 Duke's box, opposite to that of the Empress, she 
 observed the angry looks of the Empress turned 
 in her direction. Presently the obsequious Les- 
 tocq, with whom the sovereign had just been 
 conferring, presented himself before her, and 
 drily, almost brutally, with the visible intention of 
 making the rigidity of his attitude felt, explained 
 to her the reason of the Czarina's anger. Cathe- 
 rine had got into debt 17,000 roubles, besides 
 the 75,000 francs that she had spent in a few 
 months. Her treasure had slipped between 
 her fingers, one day to shed a shower of gold 
 through the empire, through all Europe. But 
 what was she to do ? Was she to content herself 
 with the three dresses that she had brought to 
 Russia ? She had had, at first, to borrow the 
 very bedclothes of her mother. She could not 
 decently continue in such a fashion. Then, too, 
 she had soon found out that in this court, as 
 much and more than in that of Zerbst, presents
 
 ARRIVAL IN R USSIAMARRIA GE 57 
 
 make friends, and that a person in her position 
 had no other means of paying for so indispens- 
 able an outlay. The Grand Duke himself had a 
 marked predilection for this means of forwarding 
 the good terms on which he hoped to keep with 
 his fiancde. Finally, the Countess Roumiantsof 
 had her own way of reading the responsibilities 
 of her position as lady in waiting a responsibility 
 which seemed to her to lie in the direction of 
 perquisites. 
 
 In her memoirs, from which we take these 
 details, Catherine is very severe upon those who 
 were at this time in attendance on her, nor does 
 she spare the Grand Duke himself, with whom, 
 in spite of his generosity, her relations, up to the 
 present, had not been specially cordial. Perhaps 
 she gave way to the temptation of blackening this 
 corner of the picture. A letter in her writing, 
 which dates from this period, seems to justify the 
 supposition. The Grand Duke had been attacked 
 by a pleurisy, in the month of October, and was 
 obliged, despite his impatience, to keep his room. 
 This is what Catherine writes to him (we respect 
 the style and orthography of the document) : 
 
 ' Monsiegneur, ayant consulte ma Mere, sach- 
 ant qu'elle peut beaucoup sur le grand-marechal 
 (B rummer), elle m'a permis de lui en parler et 
 de faire qu'on vous permettent de jouer sur les 
 instrumens. Elle m'a aussy chargee de vous 
 demander, Monseigneur, sy vous voulez quelques 
 Italiens aujourd'hui apres Midy. Je vous assure 
 que je deviendray folle en Votre place sy on 
 m'otois tous. Je vous prie au Nom de Dieu, ne 
 lui montrez pas ses billets. 
 
 CATHERINE.'
 
 58 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 This may do something to rehabilitate the 
 Princess of Zerbst herself from the accusations 
 of crabbed and cross-grained temper that her 
 daughter was fond of bringing against her 
 memory. Two months later, in December, we 
 find Catherine imploring, with tears and prayers, 
 that she may be allowed to see her betrothed, 
 who, having recovered from the pleurisy, has just 
 been attacked by another and more dangerous 
 disease. On his way from Moscow to St. Peters- 
 burg, at Hotilof, Peter was brought to a stop : 
 smallpox had manifested itself. It was of this 
 disease that the betrothed of Elizabeth had died. 
 The Czarina promptly sent Catherine and her 
 mother out of the way to St. Petersburg, and 
 took up her place by the bedside of her son. 
 Catherine wrote the tenderest letters to her be- 
 trothed, letters in which, for the first time, she 
 used the Russian language. The letters, it is 
 true, were really written by her Russian master, 
 Adadourof, whose writing she copied. 
 
 This second stay at St. Petersburg was marked 
 for Catherine by the arrival of Count Gyllemborg, 
 an envoy from Sweden, who brought news of the 
 marriage of the heir to the throne, Adolph- 
 Frederick, Catherine's uncle, with the Princess 
 Ulrica of Prussia. Catherine had already met 
 the Swede at Hamburg, in 1740. He had then 
 recognised in her 'a philosophical mind.' He 
 now wanted to know how the philosophy was 
 getting on, and urged her to read Plutarch, the 
 life of Cicero, and the Causes de la Grandeur et de 
 la Decadence des Romains. In return, Catherine 
 offered to the grave philosopher her portrait, 
 the portrait of a philosopher of fifteen,' composed
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 59 
 
 by her in his honour, according to the custom of 
 the age. The original of this composition, which 
 she laid claim to later on, was unluckily burnt by 
 her, and no copy is to be found in the papers 
 of Count Gyllemborg, which are preserved in 
 the university of Upsal. In her memoirs Cathe- 
 rine states that, on seeing this juvenile work in 
 1758, she was astonished at the truth and depth 
 of the characteristics she had there noted. It is 
 to be regretted that she has not given us the 
 chance of verifying this appreciation. 
 
 Peter was not able to set out for St. Peters- 
 burg till the end of January. Castera relates that 
 Catherine, having embraced her betrothed with 
 every sign of the greatest delight, fainted away 
 as soon as she had reached her room, and did not 
 recover consciousness for three hours. The 
 smallpox had not improved the appearance of 
 the Grand Duke. The marks on his face, and 
 an enormous wig in which he was muffled to hide 
 other ravages, rendered him almost unrecog- 
 nisable. The Princess of Zerbst was alone in 
 finding him better looking than ever as she 
 reported to her husband. Castera no doubt 
 exaggerated in his story, as he was accustomed 
 to do, and the Princess remembered that letters 
 sent through the post at St. Petersburg were 
 copied without extra charge. However that 
 may have been, the preparations for the marriage 
 commenced soon after this auspicious, or in- 
 auspicious, return. 
 
 VII 
 
 Such a ceremony had never yet been seen in 
 Russia. The marriage of the Czarevitch Alexis,
 
 60 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 son of Peter I., had taken place at Targau, in 
 Saxony, and, before his time, the heirs to the 
 throne of Moscow were not future Emperors. 
 Inquiries were made in France, where the mar- 
 riage of the Dauphin had just been celebrated, 
 and also at the court of Saxony. From Versailles 
 and from Dresden arrived abundant memoranda, 
 minute descriptions, drawings even, giving the 
 minutest details of the pomps to be imitated, to 
 be surpassed. As soon as the ice was broken up 
 on the Neva, English and German vessels fol- 
 lowed one another with equipages, furniture, 
 draperies, liveries, ordered from every corner of 
 Europe. Christian-August sent a present of 
 Zerbst goods, heavy pieces of silk broidered with 
 gold and silver, much thought of at that time. 
 Flowered silks were in fashion then, gold or 
 silver on a clear ground. England was specially 
 noted for them, and Zerbst came next in order, 
 in the opinion of connoisseurs. 
 
 After many alterations, the date of the cere- 
 mony was at last fixed for the 2 ist August. The 
 festivities were to last till the 3Oth. The Grand 
 Duke's physicians would have wished for a longer 
 postponement. In March Peter had again had 
 to take to his bed. A year seemed scarcely long 
 enough to set him on his feet again entirely. 
 But Elizabeth would not wait. It has been 
 suggested that she was in a hurry to get rid of 
 Catherine's mother. Probably she had more 
 serious reasons for showing impatience. Peter 
 was in such uncertain health, that the succession 
 to the throne was anything but assured, and the 
 remembrance of the young Ivan, shut up in his 
 prison, still haunted her. In June 1745 an un-
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 61 
 
 known man had been found, poniard in hand, 
 in Elizabeth's bedroom. He had been put to 
 the torture, but had preserved silence. It ap- 
 pears, nevertheless, on the best authority, that 
 Jeanne- Elizabeth continued to make herself very 
 disagreeable. There was no dirty business in 
 which she is not implicated during the last weeks 
 of her residence in Russia. She plots and plans 
 and intrigues without cease. She even goes so 
 far as to accuse her daughter, declaring that she 
 is having nocturnal rendezvous with her be- 
 trothed. The Empress intercepts her corre- 
 spondence and carefully examines it She does 
 not invite her husband to the ceremony which is 
 about to take place. The Princess of Zerbst has 
 long held out the hope of this invitation to her 
 husband, telling him to hold himself ready, 
 putting him off from day to day and from 
 month to month. Frederick himself, misled by 
 Mardefeldt, has raised similar expectations in 
 the mind of his field - marshal. At length 
 Jeanne- Elizabeth has to confess that there is 
 more chance of her being herself sent away 
 before the ceremony. 
 
 The Princess's brother was the only one of the 
 family to be present ; thanks to the treachery, it 
 is said, of Bestoujef. Homely, uncouth, poor- 
 spirited August of Holstein was not a nice 
 relative to produce in public. The English 
 ambassador Hindford declares in his despatches 
 that he never saw so fine a procession as that 
 which conducted Catherine to the church of Our 
 Lady of Kasan. The religious ceremony began 
 at ten o'clock in the morning, and was not over 
 till four o'clock in the afternoon. The orthodox
 
 62 CA THERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 church does things conscientiously. During the 
 following days there was a constant succession of 
 fites. Balls, masquerades, state dinners and 
 suppers, the Italian opera, the French plays, 
 illuminations, fireworks, nothing was wanting to 
 the programme. The Princess of Zerbst has left 
 us a detailed description of the most interesting 
 day, the day of the wedding : 
 
 ' The ball did not last beyond half-past one in 
 the morning; after which Her Imperial Majesty, 
 preceded by the masters of the ceremonies, the 
 grand master of household, the grand marshal, and 
 the grand chamberlain of the Grand Duke's court, 
 and followed only by the bride and bridegroom, 
 holding one another's hands, by me, by my brother, 
 the Princess of Hesse, the mistress of the robes, 
 the staats dames, the cammer frelen, and some 
 frelen, directed her steps to the nuptial chamber, 
 which the men all quitted as soon as the ladies 
 had entered, and the doors were closed, while the 
 bridegroom entered the dressing-room. First the 
 bride was undressed. Her Imperial Majesty 
 took off the crown from her head ; I waived, in 
 favour of the Princess of Hesse, the honour of 
 putting on the chemise. The mistress of the 
 robes put on the dressing-gown, and the rest of 
 the ladies helped to adjust the most magnificent 
 deshabille imaginable. 
 
 ' Except this ceremony,' observes the Princess 
 of Zerbst, ' there is much less undressing of bride 
 and bridegroom than there is with us. Not a 
 man dares enter after the bridegroom has gone 
 to undress for the night. The " garland " 
 is not danced, and the garter is not handed 
 round.
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 63 
 
 ' As soon as the Grand Duchess was dressed, 
 her Imperial Majesty went into the Grand 
 Duke's room, where the Master of the Hunt, 
 Count Razonmovski, and my brother had aided 
 him to undress. We followed the Princess in. 
 He was dressed much like the bride, but he did 
 not look near so well. Her Imperial Majesty 
 then gave them her benediction, which they 
 received kneeling. She embraced them tenderly, 
 and left the Princess of Hesse, the Countess of 
 Roumiantsof, and myself, to put them to bed. I 
 tried to speak to her of the thanks and gratitude 
 I owed her, but she only laughed at me.' 
 
 We owe to the pen of Jeanne- Elizabeth a 
 description of the suite of rooms reserved for the 
 bride and bridegroom : 
 
 ' It consists of four large rooms, one more 
 beautiful than another. The principal room is 
 the richest ; the hangings are of cloth of silver 
 embroidered with silk, of the finest possible 
 shading ; the furniture all matches : chairs, 
 curtains, portieres. The bedroom is in red velvet, 
 almost scarlet. It is embroidered with columns 
 and garlands in raised silver ; the bed is in the 
 middle. The furniture all matches. It is all so 
 fine, so majestic, that you cannot see it without 
 being transfixed with admiration.' 
 
 The series of fetes ended with a ceremony of a 
 unique kind, never afterwards to be repeated. 
 For the last time the Diedouchka (grandsire) of 
 the Russian Fleet, a ship constructed by Peter the 
 Great himself, according to the legend, was set 
 afloat. By a ukase dated September 2, 1724, that 
 monarch had ordered that the ship should be thus 
 launched on the 3Oth August of every year, and
 
 64 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 kept the rest of the time in the monastery of 
 Alexander Nevski. After his death, ukase and 
 ship were alike forgotten. It was only in 1724 
 that Elizabeth thought of it. She attempted the 
 ceremony again the following year, on the occasion 
 of her nephew's marriage, and then it was done 
 with for ever. A raft had to be made to support 
 the ship, which could no longer hold water. 
 Elizabeth went on board in great pomp, and 
 kissed the portrait of her father, which was 
 suspended to a mast. 
 
 A month later, the Princess of Zerbst parted 
 for ever from her daughter and from the court of 
 Russia. In taking leave of the Empress, she 
 threw herself at her feet, and asked pardon for all 
 the trouble that she had caused her. Elizabeth 
 drily replied that ' it was too late to speak about 
 it, but that if the Princess had always been so 
 humble, it would have been better for everybody.' 
 In her own account of the parting scene, Jeanne- 
 Elizabeth only speaks of the graciousness of the 
 Empress, of the reciprocal tenderness, of the tears 
 of regret shed by both. As we have already 
 seen, the court tears were at that time current 
 coin, and Jeanne-Elizabeth, despite the failure of 
 her political enterprises, did not lack diplomacy 
 in what she wrote. 
 
 A terrible blow overtook her at Riga. A letter 
 of Elizabeth, which reached her there, charged 
 her to demand at the court of Berlin the im- 
 mediate recall of Mardefeldt. This meant 
 absolute ruin to the hopes that Frederick himself, 
 generally more wide awake, had founded on the 
 Princess's intervention with the Empress ; hopes 
 that she had done her best to encourage. It so
 
 ARRIVAL IN RUSSIA MARRIAGE 65 
 
 happened that on the very day of the departure 
 of Jeanne-Elizabeth from St. Petersburg, Octo- 
 ber 10, 1745, the Empress had discovered the 
 measures which were being taken by Frederick to 
 induce the new husband of the Princess Louise- 
 Ulrica, and the brother of the Princess of Zerbst, 
 to confirm his claim to the Duchy of Holstein. 
 Frederick conceived that the possession of this 
 Duchy was incompatible with that of the throne 
 of Russia. At the same time came the news of 
 the first successes of the Prussian army in Saxony 
 (at Sorr, September 30), and the Council of the 
 Empire, instantly convoked, decided that it was 
 advisable to send a body of soldiers to the support 
 of the King of Poland, attacked in his hereditary 
 domains. From that time Mardefeldt, the friend 
 and political ally of the Princess of Zerbst, and 
 consequently of her brother, became impossible at 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
 Thus had Jeanne-Elizabeth succeeded in 
 making her daughter Grand Duchess of Russia, 
 and with very little trouble on her part. On every 
 other point, notwithstanding that she had put 
 forth all the resources of her intelligence and of 
 her indefatigable activity, her failure had been 
 complete. Among other things, we may note in 
 passing, she had endeavoured to make her hus- 
 band a Duke of Courland, and with the same 
 want of success. 
 
 Nevertheless, Catherine gave way to tears, not 
 mere court tears, over the departure of this rest- 
 less mother of hers. And well she might. It was 
 a mother, after all, and the single person, amidst 
 all her new splendours, whose affection she could 
 not call in question, however little she might agree 
 
 E
 
 65 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 with her advice. Her absence left a great void 
 about her. It is from this moment, in such a 
 solitude, the great element of strong natures, that 
 the real education of the future Empress was to 
 begin, an education of which Mile. Cardel had not 
 dreamed. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 
 
 DESPITE her precocity, Catherine was still only a 
 child. Despite her orthodox name and her 
 official title, she was only a stranger, brought by 
 chance into Russia that she might hold high rank 
 there, and one to whom it was no easy thing to 
 hold herself on the level of so high a station. If 
 she were ever to forget it for a moment, as she 
 would seem to a certain extent to have done, there 
 was always some one to remind her of it sharply 
 enough. It seems that once having attained her 
 end, once married, Mile. Cardel's pupil somewhat 
 relaxed the propriety of demeanour which had 
 hitherto gained for her unanimous approbation. 
 The 'gracious instructions' of Christian- August 
 appeared to have escaped her memory. She was 
 soon to receive others, somewhat less paternal. 
 
 On the roth or nth of May 1746, less than 
 nine months after the marriage, two documents 
 concerning the Grand Duke and Duchess were 
 presented for signature to the Empress. Their 
 object appeared to be to fix the choice and
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 67 
 
 regulate the conduct of the two 'persons of 
 distinction' who were to be assigned to their 
 Imperial Highnesses as master of the household 
 and mistress of the robes. Their real end was 
 quite other. Under pretext of filling a place in 
 the official list of offices, it was really two tutors 
 and spies who were set over Catherine and her 
 husband. They were put to school again, so to 
 speak. And, under colour of indicating the 
 programme of this complementary education, it 
 was an act of accusation that was drawn up against 
 the young people, whose conduct had rendered 
 necessary the application of such a measure. The 
 mover in this matter, the concocter of the two 
 documents, was Bestoujef in person. 
 
 This work of the chancellor has been preserved. 
 It abounds in truly extraordinary revelations, so 
 extraordinary, indeed, that we should treat them 
 with incredulity if we were not able to check them 
 by another testimony. This testimony is to be 
 found in Catherine's memoirs. The author of the 
 memoirs repeats in almost identical terms every- 
 thing that is said by Bestoujef of the doings and 
 sayings of Catherine and her husband at this 
 period of their life. In certain respects the pen of 
 Catherine is even more frank than that of the 
 chancellor, and it is from her that we learn the 
 most dubious details, even in respect to herself. 
 
 The ' person of distinction ' assigned to the 
 Grand Duke as companion will make it his 
 business, we read in the chancellor's report, to 
 correct certain unseemly habits of his Imperial 
 Highness, as, for example, that of throwing the 
 contents of his glass at the servants who wait 
 table, that of greeting every one who has the
 
 68 CA THERINE II. OF R US SI A 
 
 honour of approaching him, including even the 
 strangers who visit his court, with gross jests and 
 indecent pleasantries ; that of disfiguring himself 
 in public with grimaces and with incessant con- 
 tortions of all his members. 
 
 4 The Grand Duke,' we read in the memoirs, 
 ' passed his time in childish pursuits unworthy of 
 his age. . . . He had a theatre of marionettes in 
 his room, the stupidest thing in the world. . . . 
 The Grand Duke passed his time literally in the 
 company of valets. . . . The Grand Duke put all 
 his suite under arms : the servants, the huntsmen, 
 the gardeners, all had muskets on shoulder . . . 
 the corridor of the house served as guard- 
 room. . . . The Grand Duke grumbled at me on 
 account of what he termed my excessive devo- 
 tion ; but having no one but me to speak to 
 during mass, he ceased complaining. When the 
 Grand Duke learnt that I fasted on Fridays, he 
 grumbled at me more than ever.' 
 
 The same figure of the ill-bred, unmannerly 
 child with vicious instincts stands out in both 
 reports, even more prominently, in some respects, 
 in the second. 
 
 Let us now look at Catherine's share in the 
 matter. There are three principal complaints 
 brought against her by the chancellor: negli- 
 gence in the observances of the orthodox religion ; 
 prohibited interference with the affairs of state, 
 those of the empire and those of the Duchy of 
 Holstein ; excessive familiarity with the young 
 lords of the court, the gentlemen in waiting, and 
 even the pages and valets. This last point is 
 evidently the most serious ; and it is on this that 
 Catherine enlarges in her memoirs, in the
 
 THE SECOND ED UCA T1ON OF CA THERINE 69 
 
 clearest fashion, leaving no doubt whatever as to 
 the familiarity, to say no more, of her relations at 
 this time with three at least of the young people 
 at court, the three brothers Tchernichef, all tall, 
 well-made persons, extremely in favour with the 
 Grand Duke. The eldest, Andre, the most 
 brilliant of the three, was the favourite of Peter, 
 and soon of Catherine. She called him affec- 
 tionately her ' petit fils ' ; he gave her the name 
 of 'petite mere.' Peter not only tolerated this 
 intimacy, he encouraged it, and pushed it to 
 excess, even to the forgetfulness of the most 
 elementary proprieties. He carried everything 
 to excess, and cared little for impropriety of 
 demeanour in himself or in those about him. 
 While Catherine was still only betrothed, Andre 
 had reminded him that the daughter of the 
 Princess of Zerbst was destined to be called 
 Grand Duchess of Russia, and not Mme. Tcher- 
 nichef. Peter burst out laughing at this ex- 
 planation, which seemed to him extremely droll, 
 and it only served to make him give his friend 
 the name of ' fiance de Catherine.' ' Votre 
 fiance,' he said to her in speaking of the young 
 man. Catherine, for her part, tells us that she 
 was remonstrated with by one of her valets de 
 chambre^ Timofei Jevreimof, who felt it to be his 
 duty to warn her of the perils to which she was 
 exposing herself. She pretends, it is true, to 
 have acted in all innocence and ignorance, either 
 of evil or of danger. Timofei also warned 
 Tchernichef, who, on his advice, feigned illness 
 for a time. This was during the carnival of 
 1746. In April, when the court was moved 
 from the Winter to the Summer Palace, Tcherni-
 
 70 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 chef reappears, and tries to get into Catherine's 
 room. She bars the way, but without thinking 
 of fastening her door, which would certainly 
 have been more prudent She holds it half- 
 open, and continues a conversation which no 
 doubt she finds interesting. Suddenly there 
 comes on the scene Count Devierre, one of the 
 heroes of the Seven Years' War, at present 
 chamberlain at the court, and spy also, it would 
 seem. He informs the Grand Duchess that the 
 Grand Duke wishes to see her. Next day the 
 Tchernichefs are sent away from the court, and 
 the same day the ' distinguished lady ' charged to 
 look after the conduct of Catherine makes her 
 appearance. The coincidence is significant. Nor 
 does Elizabeth stop there. She imposes both on 
 Catherine and on Peter a sort of ' retreat,' in the 
 course of which Simon Todorski, the zealous 
 archimandrite and Bishop of Pskof, is instructed 
 to interrogate them on their relations with the 
 Tchernichefs. The Tchernichefs themselves are 
 put under arrest, and undergo a similar interro- 
 gation, more pressing still, and no doubt less 
 mild. No one confesses to anything. Never- 
 theless Catherine speaks of a correspondence 
 that she has found means to carry on with Andr6 
 Tchernichef, even while he is in prison. She 
 wrote to him, he replied ; she gave him com- 
 missions, which he executed. Let us assume 
 that at this time she acted innocently. Later on 
 we shall have to be less indulgent. 
 
 It was certainly a singular and unfortunate 
 idea, as the event proved, to attempt to treat a 
 married woman and a Grand Duchess of Russia 
 as if she were a little girl. Catherine was ex-
 
 THE SECOND ED UCA TION OF CA THERINE 7 1 
 
 pressly forbidden to write directly and personally 
 to any one, even to her father and mother. She 
 was only to sign the letters written for her at the 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that is to say, under 
 the secretaryship of Bestoujef. This was actually 
 to invite Catherine to engage in a secret corre- 
 spondence, so much in vogue then. She was 
 not long in doing so. Just then there arrived at 
 the court of St. Petersburg an Italian gentleman 
 of the name of Sacromoso, a Knight of Malta. 
 A Knight of Malta had not been seen in Russia 
 for a long time. He was received with great 
 honour. He was present .at all the ftes, and at 
 both the official and private receptions. One 
 day, in kissing the Grand Duchess's hand, he 
 slipt into it a note : ' From your mother,' he 
 murmured, so as to be heard by no one. At the 
 same time he pointed out a musician in the 
 Grand Duke's orchestra, a compatriot of the 
 name of Ololio, as the man who would take 
 charge of the reply. Catherine deftly hid the 
 note in her glove. It was not the first time, no 
 doubt. Sacromoso had not deceived her : it 
 was really her mother who had written to her. 
 Having written her answer, she followed atten- 
 tively, for the first time for she had no taste for 
 music the concerts of the Grand Duke. The 
 man who had been pointed out to her, seeing her 
 approach, carelessly drew his handkerchief out of 
 his vest-pocket, so as to leave the pocket wide 
 open. Catherine threw her letter into this 
 improvised letter-box, and the correspondence 
 was started. It lasted during the whole time 
 that Sacromoso was at St. Petersburg. Thus 
 was put to nought the wisdom of statesmen and
 
 72 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 the power of an Empress, for having failed to 
 reckon with that other power of youth, and that 
 other wisdom, which bids that its power be not 
 abused. 
 
 II 
 
 We may here pause for a moment to throw 
 a rapid glance over the surroundings in which 
 Catherine found herself placed, through so many 
 long years of initiation. The Russia of the 
 eighteenth century is a building all front, a piece 
 of scene-painting. Peter I. endeavoured to put 
 his court on a European footing, and his suc- 
 cessors did their best to maintain and develop his 
 work. At St. Petersburg as at Moscow, Elizabeth 
 is surrounded with all the pomp and splendour of 
 other civilised countries. She has palaces in 
 which there are suite after suite of rooms, the 
 walls covered with tall mirrors, the floors inlaid, 
 the ceilings painted by great artists. She gives 
 fetes which are crowded with courtiers dressed in 
 velvet and silk, laced with gold, starred with 
 diamonds ; where the court ladies appear in the 
 newest fashions, with powdered hair, rouged 
 cheeks, and a killing patch at the corner of the 
 lips. She has her retinue, her Mat de maison, 
 her train of chamberlains, of maids of honour, of 
 officers of the court, and of servants, which, for 
 number and splendour of uniforms, has not its 
 equal in Europe. According to certain con- 
 temporary accounts, which modern Russian 
 writers have perhaps too implicitly believed, the 
 imperial residence of Peterhof exceeds in mag- 
 nificence that of Versailles. To judge of the
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 73 
 
 matter, we must look a little closely into all these 
 splendours. 
 
 And, to begin with, they have for the most 
 part something precarious and ephemeral which 
 takes off much of their value. Her Majesty's 
 palaces, like those of her most opulent subjects, 
 are almost entirely made of wood. When they 
 catch fire, and that often happens, all the treasures 
 with which they are heaped up, furniture and 
 works of art, disappear in the disaster. They are 
 rebuilt always in a hurry, without an attempt to 
 make a durable piece of work. The palace at 
 Moscow, three kilometres and a half in circum- 
 ference, burns in three hours under the eyes of 
 Catherine. Elizabeth gives orders that it is 
 to be rebuilt in six weeks, and she is obeyed. 
 It is easy to imagine what the construction is 
 like. The doors will not shut, the windows 
 let in the draught, the chimneys smoke. The 
 house of the high priest of Moscow, in which 
 Catherine takes refuge after the burning of 
 the palace, catches fire three times while she 
 is there. 
 
 Then there is no idea of comfort or convenience 
 in these outwardly imposing structures. Every- 
 where sumptuous reception-rooms, magnificent 
 galleries for balls and gala dinners, and scarcely a 
 corner to live in only a few little rooms without 
 light or air. The wing of the summer palace at 
 St. Petersburg, in which Catherine lives, looks 
 out on one side on the Fontanka, which at that 
 time is a pool of fetid mire ; on the other, upon 
 a court a few feet square. At Moscow it is 
 worse still. ' They stowed us away,' writes 
 Catherine, ' in a wooden wing built during the
 
 74 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 autumn, so that the water dropt from the ceiling, 
 and all the rooms were dreadfully damp. This 
 wing contained two ranges of five or six rooms 
 each, of which the one looking on the street was 
 mine and the other the Grand Duke's. In my 
 dressing-room were stowed away all my waiting- 
 maids and other servants, so that there were 
 seventeen women and girls in one room, a room 
 which had, it is true, three large windows, but no 
 outlet except through my bedroom, which they 
 had to pass through every time they went in and 
 out. . . . Besides that, their dining-room was one 
 of my anterooms.' At length another com- 
 munication with the outer world was made for 
 this feminine establishment, by means of a single 
 plank going from the window to the ground and 
 serving as a ladder. Surely that is different 
 enough from Versailles ! 
 
 Catherine sometimes regretted her modest 
 dwelling-place by the clock-tower of Stettin, or 
 sighed after the castle of her uncle John at 
 Zerbst, or that of her grandmother at Hamburg, 
 heavy, but solid and spacious constructions in cut 
 stone, dating from the sixteenth century. And 
 she took her revenge on the discomforts that met 
 her at every turn by rhyming these verses that 
 have been found among her papers : 
 
 ' Jean bath une maison 
 Qui n'a ni rime ni raison : 
 L'hiver on y gele tout roide, 
 L'ete ne la rend pas froide. 
 II y oublia 1'escalier, 
 Puis le batit en espalier.' 
 
 And not merely were Elizabeth's palaces built 
 in this way, they were furnished to match. The 
 afiectation of settled furniture was then an un-
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 75 
 
 known thing. The things belonged to the 
 person, and were taken about from place to place. 
 It was a sort of survival of the nomad life of 
 the Eastern people. Hangings, carpets, mirrors, 
 beds, tables and chairs, the luxuries and the 
 necessities, followed the court from the Winter to 
 the Summer Palace, from thence to Peterhof, and 
 sometimes to Moscow. It goes without saying 
 that some of these things got damaged or lost on 
 the way. This resulted in an odd mixture of 
 magnificence and destitution. One ate off gold 
 plate on lopsided tables which had lost a leg 
 somewhere. In the midst of masterpieces of 
 French or English cabinet-work, there was 
 nothing to sit down on. In the home of the 
 Tchoglokofs, which Catherine inhabited for 
 some time at Moscow, she found no furniture 
 at all. Elizabeth herself was often no better 
 looked after. But she used every day a cup that 
 Roumiantsof had brought from Constantinople by 
 her order, and which had cost 8000 ducats. 
 
 Corresponding with this outward disorder and 
 dilapidation was the private license to which, 
 despite the appearance of extreme pomp and 
 refined etiquette, the very dignity of the throne 
 abandoned itself. Some idea of this may be 
 gathered from the following anecdote, which is 
 told by Catherine in her memoirs. A little while 
 before the intervention of Bestoujef, which had 
 brought about such changes in the environment 
 of Catherine and her husband, Peter was guilty 
 of an action which may well have contributed, if 
 not to provoke, at all events to justify, the severi- 
 ties of the chancellor, and to have determined the 
 Empress to approve them. The room in which
 
 76 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 the Grand Duke had set up his marionettes 
 communicated by a door, which had been closed 
 up since the installation of the young court, with 
 one of the salons of the Empress. In this salon 
 Elizabeth sometimes had little private dinners 
 of a few persons only. There was a table so 
 arranged that the presence of servants could be 
 dispensed with. One day Peter heard a noise in 
 the room, the sound of many voices, and the 
 clink of glasses. He bored several holes in the 
 door with a gimlet, and, looking through, saw the 
 Empress sitting at table with the master of the 
 hunt, Prazoumofski, her favourite of the moment, 
 wearing a mere dressing-gown. With this 
 friendly couple were a dozen of the courtiers. 
 Peter was immensely amused by the sight, and, 
 not content with enjoying it himself, he hastened 
 to ask Catherine to take part in the amusement. 
 The Grand Duchess, more prudent, declined the 
 invitation. She even warned her husband of the 
 impropriety and danger of the proceeding. He 
 paid no heed to her, and, in her place, brought in 
 the ladies of her suite, made them get up on 
 chairs and footstools in order to see better, and 
 arranged a whole amphitheatre before the door, 
 behind which was exposed the dishonour of his 
 benefactress. The incident was soon found out, 
 and Elizabeth was extremely angry. She even 
 went so far as to remind her nephew that Peter I. 
 had also had an ungrateful son. It was a way of 
 saying that his head was no more firmly planted 
 on his shoulders than was that of the unfortunate 
 Alexis. Every one at the court soon heard of 
 the incident, and was amused in turn. 
 
 As for Catherine, no doubt she learnt, if not a
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 77 
 
 moral lesson, which may be doubted, at least a 
 lesson in practical wisdom. If she, in after days, 
 had her favourites in their dressing-gowns, she 
 took care not to be overlooked through a keyhole. 
 She either concealed them, or flaunted them 
 before the world in all the magic of an incompar- 
 able mise en scene. But she learnt from Eliza- 
 beth, at this period, other precious lessons. If 
 she refused to violate the secret of the private 
 banquets in which the Empress forgot herself 
 and her state, she was assuredly present, just 
 after the departure of the Princess of Zerbst, at 
 the state festival in yearly celebration of the day 
 on which the daughter of Peter the Great had 
 ascended the throne. In the great hall of the 
 Winter Palace the tables were laid for 330 under- 
 officers and soldiers of the regiment which had 
 then accompanied Elizabeth in the conquest of 
 her crown. The Empress, in captain's uniform, 
 wearing top-boots, a sword by her side, and a 
 white feather in her cap, took her place in the 
 midst of her 'comrades.' The dignitaries of the 
 court, the head officers, and the foreign ministers 
 were seated at table in a neighbouring room. No 
 doubt it is from having seen and thought over 
 such sights in early life that Catherine was able, 
 at the right moment, to put on the warlike livery 
 with such easy grace, and to win in her turn the 
 enthusiasm and support of these same grenadiers, 
 ready themselves, thanks to the lessons of the 
 past, to strike, and to strike hard. 
 
 The Grand Duke, though more generally 
 called elsewhere by his pleasures and his amours, 
 was sometimes, for a change, very attentive to 
 his wife. These were not her most agreeable
 
 78 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 moments. During a whole winter he spoke to 
 Catherine of nothing but his project of building 
 near his country house a place of rest and re- 
 creation in the form of a Capuchin monastery. To 
 please him she was forced to design, over and 
 over again, the plan of this establishment, which 
 he was for ever altering. Nor was this the worst 
 she had to put up with. The presence of the 
 Grand Duke brought with it other trials, such, for 
 example, as the constant neighbourhood of a pack 
 of hounds, who infected the place with an intoler- 
 able stench. The Empress having forbidden 
 this kind of amusement, it occurred to Peter to 
 hide his kennel in the bedroom, where Catherine's 
 nights soon became a martyrdom. By day the 
 barking and the piercing cries of the beaten 
 animals left her not a moment's repose. When 
 the pack was quiet, Peter seized his violin and 
 walked from room to room, merely endeavouring 
 to make the greatest possible noise with the in- 
 strument. He had a taste for uproar. He had 
 also, from an early age, and increasingly, a taste 
 for drink. From 1753 he got drunk 'almost 
 daily.' And on this point Elizabeth was un- 
 happily, and for an obvious reason, unable to 
 exercise the needful repression. From time to 
 time the Grand Duke returned again to his 
 marionettes. Once Catherine found him in full 
 uniform, booted and spurred, and with drawn 
 sword, standing before a rat suspended in the 
 middle of the room. She found that there had 
 been a military execution : the unhappy rat 
 having devoured a paste sentinel placed before 
 a cardboard fortress, a council of war, solemnly 
 assembled, had condemned it to be put to death.
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 79 
 
 With her vigorous youth, and the ardour of 
 her temperament, Catherine could never have 
 endured such an existence, had she not con- 
 tracted certain habits capable of diverting her 
 by taking her away from this wretched interior. 
 In summer, during her stay at Oranienbaum, she 
 rose at dawn, slipped on a man's suit, and started 
 for the chase, in the company of an old servant. 
 ' There was a fishing-boat,' she tells us, ' by the 
 shore ; we crossed the garden on foot, our guns 
 over our shoulders, we got into the boat, he and 
 I and a pointer, and the fisher who was taking us, 
 and I shot at the wild ducks in the reeds on both 
 sides of the Oranienbaum canal.' Besides the 
 chase, horsemanship gave occasion for staying 
 out of doors. Elizabeth herself was a passionate 
 horsewoman. She felt obliged, however, at one 
 time, to cool the growing ardour of Catherine in 
 this kind of exercise. With that taste for mas- 
 culinity which always haunted her, the Grand 
 Duchess liked to sit astride her horse, like a 
 man. The Czarina fancied she had discovered 
 one of the reasons which hindered her from having 
 children. Catherine thereupon procured a saddle 
 so arranged that she was able to mount as if it 
 were a side-saddle, and to regain her favourite 
 position as soon as she was out of Elizabeth's 
 sight. A 'divided skirt' aided her in this 
 performance. She took lessons of a German 
 groom, the teacher of the corps of cadets, and 
 by her rapid progress won a prize of silver spurs. 
 She was also very fond of dancing. One evening, 
 in one of the frequent balls with which Elizabeth 
 enlivened the court, the Grand Duchess made a 
 wager with Mme. Arnheim, the wife of the
 
 8o CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 Saxon minister, that she would not be the first 
 to be out of breath. She won the wager. 
 
 in 
 
 It was in such distractions, and in the read- 
 ing of Bayle's Dictionary and other less serious 
 books, that Catherine was passing her time, when, 
 in 1754, a long-looked-for event came to bring a 
 great change, into the monotony of her life. She 
 became a mother. 
 
 How did this come about ? The question 
 may seem strange : yet there is no point in the 
 whole biography of Catherine which has given 
 rise to more controversy. It must be re- 
 membered that ten years had elapsed since the 
 Grand Duchess's marriage, ten years during 
 which her union with Peter had remained without 
 issue, while the relations between husband and 
 wife had become more and more frigid. A letter 
 of the Grand Duke to his wife, published at 
 the end of the Russian translation of the memoirs 
 of Catherine, and belonging to the year 1746, 
 seems to indicate that the rupture was already 
 complete. Here is the letter, textually : 
 
 MADAME, 
 
 Je vous prie de ne point vous incommodes 
 cette nuis de dormir avec moi car il n'est plus le terns 
 de me tromper, le lit a e"te" trop etroit, apres deux 
 semaines de separation de vous aujourd'hui apres 
 mide. 
 
 Votre 
 
 tres infortune" 
 mari qui vous ne 
 daignez jamais de 
 ce nom. PETER.'
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 81 
 
 At the same time, and in spite of her re- 
 tired life, and the careful watch kept over her, 
 Catherine was exposed to many temptations, 
 was engaged in pursuits where her virtue was 
 constantly in peril, and was plunged, so to speak 
 (to use the phrase of a Russian historian), in 
 an atmosphere of love. As she says in her 
 memoirs, without being absolutely pretty, she 
 was attractive: that was 'her fort.' She called 
 forth love in every direction. In the summer of 
 1749, a part of which was spent at Raiova, a 
 property belonging to the Tchoglokofs, she was 
 in a state of mortal dulness. She there saw 
 nearly every day the young Count Razoumofski, 
 who lived near, and who used to ride over to 
 dinner or supper and back to his chateau at 
 Pokrovskoi'e, a distance of nearly forty miles 
 each way. Twenty years later Catherine asked 
 him what had induced him to come over every 
 day to share the ennui of the Grand Ducal Court, 
 when at his own house he had, whenever he 
 pleased, the best company in Moscow. ' Love/ 
 replied he, without a moment's hesitation. 
 ' Love ? But who could you have been in love 
 with at Raiova ? ' ' You.' She laughed aloud. 
 It had never occurred to her. 
 
 It was not always so, however. Tchoglokof 
 was ugly, Razoumofski too discreet. Others 
 came forward who had neither the defect of the 
 one nor the defect or merit of the other. In 
 the first place, one of the three exiles of 1745, 
 Zahar Tchernichef, reappears at the court in 
 1751. He finds that Catherine is handsomer 
 than ever, and does not hesitate to tell her so. 
 She hears him with pleasure. He takes ad- 
 
 F
 
 82 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 vantage of a ball at which, according to the 
 custom then (and until quite recently), people 
 exchanged ' mottoes," little pieces of paper con- 
 taining verses more or less ingeniously turned, to 
 present her with a billet-doux full of passionate 
 declarations. She enjoys the joke, and keeps 
 it up with the best grace in the world. He 
 wishes to force his way into her room in the 
 guise of a lackey ; she merely points out the 
 danger of the undertaking, and the correspond- 
 ence by ' mottoes ' goes on again. A part of 
 this correspondence is to be seen. It was pub- 
 lished anonymously, as a specimen of the style 
 employed by a lady of rank, in the eighteenth 
 century, in writing to her lover. The contents 
 seem to leave no doubt that it was not Zahar 
 Tchernichef who could lay claim to this title. 
 
 After the Tchernichefs came the Saltykofs. 
 There were two brothers of this name among 
 the chamberlains of the Grand Ducal Court. 
 The family was one of the oldest and most 
 important in Russia. The father was general 
 aide-de-camp ; the mother, ne Princess Galitzine, 
 had rendered services to Elizabeth in 1740, 
 about which the Princess of Zerbst was particu- 
 larly well informed. ' Mme. de Soltickof suc- 
 ceeded in captivating whole families. She was 
 Galitzine. Further, she was beautiful, and she 
 manoeuvred in a way that ought to be forgotten 
 as soon as possible. She went with one of her 
 waiting-women into the barracks of the Guards, 
 she abandoned herself, she drank, she gambled, 
 lost, let them win. . . . She had for lovers the 
 300 grenadiers who accompanied her Majesty.' 
 The elder of the two brothers was not hand-
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 83 
 
 some ; or, as Catherine put it, he could rival 
 the unfortunate Tchoglokof in both wit and 
 beauty. The younger, Sergius, was ' beau comme 
 le jour.' In 1752 he was twenty-six years of 
 age, and he had been married for two years to 
 a freiline of the Empress, Matrena Pavlovna 
 Balk, a love-match. It was at this epoch that 
 Catherine fancied he was paying court to her. 
 She went almost every day to see Mme. 
 Tchoglokof, who, being in an interesting con- 
 dition, kept her room. Always finding the 
 handsome Sergius there, she began to doubt 
 whether he came entirely to see the mistress of 
 the house. It will be seen that she had acquired 
 some experience. It was not long before the 
 handsome Sergius explained himself more de- 
 finitely. The surveillance of Mme. Tchoglokof 
 was just now more easy-going than usual. He 
 arranged to divert that of the husband, who, 
 himself in love with the Grand Duchess, might 
 be more troublesome. He pretended to dis- 
 cover that the good Tchoglokof had a remarkable 
 talent for poetry. Highly flattered, he would 
 retire into a corner to fill up bouts-rimts, or to 
 turn into verse the themes that were liberally 
 supplied to him. Meanwhile, there was a chance 
 of uninterrupted talk. The handsome Sergius 
 was not only the handsomest man at the court, 
 he was a man of resources ; ' a demon for in- 
 trigue,' says Catherine. She heard his first 
 declarations in silence. She certainly could not 
 have thus intended to discourage him from going 
 on. At last she asked him what he wanted of 
 her. He had no difficulty in painting, in the 
 most vivid colours, the happiness that he had
 
 84 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 pictured for himself. ' And your wife ? ' said 
 she. It was almost a confession, and it reduced 
 to a very fragile obstacle the distance which still 
 separated them. He was by no means taken 
 aback, and resolutely threw the poor Matrena 
 Pavlovna overboard, speaking of a youthful error, 
 declaring that he had been mistaken in his choice, 
 and that 'the gold had soon changed into lead.' 
 Catherine assures us that she did all she could 
 to turn him aside from his pursuit, even to the 
 point of insinuating that he had come too late. 
 ' How do you know ? My heart may be already 
 lost.' It was not a happy means. The truth 
 is, as she admits, that the difficulty she had 
 in getting rid of her handsome admirer came 
 mainly from herself; she liked him extremely. 
 A hunt was organised by the poet Tchoglokof, 
 in the course of which the occasion so long 
 sought by Sergius presented itself. They were 
 alone. The tUe-a-tete went on for an hour and 
 a half, and to bring it to an end Catherine 
 had to have recourse to heroic means. The 
 scene is charming, as Catherine describes it in 
 her memoirs. Before going, Saltykof would have 
 her admit that he was not indifferent to her. 
 4 Yes, yes,' she murmured at last, ' but go.' 
 ' Good, I have your word,' cried the young man, 
 putting spurs to his horse. She would take back 
 the fatal word. She cried after him, ' No, no ! ' 
 ' Yes, yes ! ' he cried from the distance. And so 
 they parted ; doubtless, to meet again. 
 
 Shortly after, it is true, Sergius Saltykof was 
 obliged to leave the court ; indeed, on account of 
 the scandal which his relations with the Grand 
 Duchess had caused. Elizabeth severely re-
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 85 
 
 primanded the Tchoglokofs, and the handsome 
 Sergius received a month's congd, with instruc- 
 tions to go and see his family in the country. 
 He fell ill, and was only able to return to court 
 m ! 753> when he once more joined the inner 
 circle, mainly of young people, that had formed 
 around Catherine, in which there was now another 
 cavalier of high rank and fine bearing, Leon 
 Narychkine, who was already playing the part 
 of court fool, which he was to keep up through 
 so great a part of the future reign, but for the 
 moment, no doubt, aiming at something more 
 than that. Catherine was now on the best terms 
 with the two Tchoglokofs. She had succeeded 
 in making a friend of the wife, on the ground 
 that she repelled the advances of her husband ; 
 and in making the husband himself her slave, by 
 cunningly tantalising him with expectations. She 
 thus had the confidence of both, and was able to 
 count on their discretion. Whether from pru- 
 dence or from natural inconstancy, the handsome 
 Sergius seemed now more reserved, so that by a 
 change of parts it was now Catherine who com- 
 plained of the lack of his attentions. But soon a 
 fresh intervention of the supreme power, and this 
 time quite unexpected, gave a new turn to the 
 second chapter of the old romance. The point is 
 a little difficult to explain ; it would be yet more 
 difficult to believe, were it not for the testimony 
 of Catherine herself. This is the story she gives 
 in her memoirs. At a few days interval, Sergius 
 and herself were summoned, one before the 
 chancellor Bestoujef, the other to a confidential 
 interview with Madame Tchoglokof, and both 
 received, on the subject which occupied them so
 
 86 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 closely, hints which must have surprised them not 
 a little. Speaking in the Empress's name, the 
 governor and guardian of the Grand Duchess's 
 virtue, and of the honour of her husband, explained 
 to the young woman that there were state reasons 
 which must override all other considerations, 
 even the legitimate desire of a wife to remain 
 faithful to her husband, if that husband proved 
 incapable of confirming the peace of the empire 
 by ensuring the succession to the throne. In 
 conclusion, Catherine was peremptorily ordered 
 to choose between Sergius Saltykof and Lev 
 Narychkine, and Madame Tchoglokof was per- 
 suaded that she preferred the latter. Catherine 
 protested. ' Well, then, the other,' said the gou- 
 vernante. Catherine kept silence. Bestoujef, 
 with somewhat more reserve, spoke after the 
 same manner to the handsome Sergius. 
 
 In due course Catherine became enceinte, and 
 after two miscarriages gave birth to a son on the 
 2oth September 1754. Who was the father of 
 the child ? The question is a natural one, and 
 all that we know on the subject leaves it still an 
 open question. Physically and morally, especially 
 morally, Peter resembled his legitimate father. 
 Few, however, of his contemporaries were will- 
 ing to admit the hypothesis of this paternity. 
 Various suppositions were current at the time. 
 ' The child,' wrote the Marquis de 1'Hopital, ' is, 
 they say, the Empress's own, which she has 
 changed with the Grand Duchess's.' In a later 
 despatch, it is true, the marquis took back his 
 story, saying that he had been better informed ; 
 but Elizabeth did much to give it credit, and her 
 conduct at the time of the Grand Duchess's con-
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 87 
 
 finement was calculated to lend colour to the 
 rumours which were in the air. The child had 
 no sooner been born, and thereupon summarily 
 baptized, than the Czarina ordered him to be 
 taken away, and disappeared after him. Catherine 
 did not see her child again for six weeks. She 
 was left alone with her chambermaid, without 
 even the necessary attentions which her situation 
 demanded. The bed on which she had been 
 delivered was placed between a door and two 
 enormous windows, through which a cutting 
 draught entered. As she was in a constant per- 
 spiration, she wished to return to her ordinary 
 bed. La Vladislavova dared not take upon 
 herself to grant this request. Catherine wanted 
 something to drink. The answer was the same. 
 At last, after three hours, the Countess Chouvalof 
 came on the scene, and gave her some assistance. 
 That was all. She saw no one else either that 
 day or the following. The Grand Duke was 
 feasting with his friends in a neighbouring room. 
 After the solemn baptism of the child, the mother 
 received, on a plate of gold, as a sort of recom- 
 pense for her trouble, a ukase of the Empress, 
 presenting her with 100,000 roubles and some 
 trinkets. The trinkets were so valueless that 
 Catherine tells us she would have been ashamed 
 to give them to one of her women. She was 
 glad of the money, for she had now a good many 
 debts. Her joy was of short duration. A few 
 days afterwards Baron Tcherkassof, the Empress's 
 treasurer, ' the Cabinet Secretary, according to 
 the official designation, came to beg back the 
 amount. The Empress had given a second 
 order of payment for the same amount, and there
 
 88 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 was not a kopeck in the treasury. Catherine 
 knew very well that it was a trick of her husband. 
 Peter had been very angry on hearing that she 
 had received 100,000 roubles, while he had had 
 nothing, he who had at least equal rights, it 
 seemed to him, to the imperial munificence. To 
 calm him, Elizabeth, to whom signatures cost 
 nothing, had made another demand on her 
 treasury, without a thought of the difficulty of 
 her treasurer. At the end of six weeks the 
 'purification' of the Grand Duchess was cele- 
 brated with great pomp, and on this occasion 
 she was allowed to see her child. She admired 
 it. She was allowed to hold it during the cere- 
 mony ; then it was again taken away. At the 
 same time she learnt that Sergius Saltykof had 
 been sent to Sweden with the news of the little 
 Grand Duke's birth. At that time, for a noble- 
 man occupying his position at the court of 
 Russia, a change of place of this kind was rarely 
 a favour. For the most part it was the applica- 
 tion of a sort of judicial measure, even when it 
 was not an actual punishment. From this point 
 of view, the departure of the young chamberlain 
 was not without its significance. 
 
 We shall not insist further. This historical 
 question, turning as it does on a disputed pater- 
 nity, has, to our thinking, we must admit, a very 
 secondary importance. So far as Catherine is 
 concerned, the only really important point in the 
 history of the intellectual and moral development 
 of her personality which is what we are study- 
 ing is the uncontested and incontestable pre- 
 sence of the handsome Sergius beside the cradle 
 of her first child, with Lev Narychkine, Zahar
 
 THE SECOND ED UCA TION OF CA THERINE 89 
 
 Tchernlchef, and perhaps others in the back- 
 ground. And there is also this kind of incomplete 
 maternity of hers, outrageously suspected by 
 public rumour, cruelly curtailed by an abuse of 
 power which is almost a violence, and in which 
 something equivocal seems to hide under the 
 cloak of etiquette, so counter to the most 
 natural rights and functions. There is, too, the 
 isolation and abandonment, now more profound 
 and sorrowful than ever, into which the young 
 wife and mother sinks, between the empty cradle 
 and the long deserted nuptial couch. 
 
 IV 
 
 If Catherine had been a vulgar, or even an 
 ordinary, woman, the existence in which she was 
 thus placed would doubtless have served to add 
 one or many chapters to the chronique galante of 
 the eighteenth century. Sergius Saltykof would 
 have had a successor, the Grand Duke new 
 motives to doubt the virtue of his wife ; but that 
 would have been all. Catherine was not an ordi- 
 nary woman ; she has superabundantly proved 
 it. Nor was she one of those who make the 
 martyrs of the domestic hearth. She replaced 
 the handsome Sergius ; she entered definitely, 
 blindly, on a path which was to lead to the 
 most colossal and the most cynical display of 
 imperial licence known to modern history ; but 
 she did not allow herself to become absorbed in 
 it. In abandoning herself, her honour, and her 
 virtue to ever-new distractions, to pleasures fol- 
 lowed with an ever-increasing ardour, she never 
 meanly forgot her rank, her ambition, and the
 
 90 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 supremacy that a near future was to signalise. 
 On the contrary, she drew herself together, she 
 fell back upon her own resources, and carried yet 
 further forward her self-culture, that adaptation 
 of her mind and character to a vaguely-realised 
 destiny, of which we have indicated the com- 
 mencement. 
 
 It is at this moment that we see her more 
 actively absorbed than ever in the study of the 
 Russian language and literature. She reads all 
 the Russian books that she can lay her hands on. 
 They do not give her the idea of a very high 
 intellectual level. She is unable afterwards to 
 remember the name of any of these books, except 
 a Russian translation in two volumes of the 
 Annals of Baronius. But she obtains from her 
 reading a conviction destined never to leave her, 
 a conviction which is to imprint a definite stamp 
 upon her future reign, and to make it a sort of 
 continuation of that of Peter the Great : her 
 adopted country's absolute necessity of taking 
 pattern from the West, in order to raise itself to the 
 height of its newly-acquired position in Europe. 
 
 At the same time she gives herself seriously to 
 the study of serious books. Despite the recom- 
 mendation of Count Gyllemborg, and the atten- 
 tion she had paid to it, she had not read the 
 Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des 
 Remains. She now makes the acquaintance of 
 Montesquieu, reading L 'Esprit des Lois, which is 
 only laid aside for the Annals of Tacitus and the 
 Histoire Universelle, as she calls it, which, no 
 doubt, means the Essai sur Us Mceurs et Esprit 
 des Nations of Voltaire. 
 
 Tacitus impresses her by the vivid reality of
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 91 
 
 his pictures, and by the striking analogy which 
 she finds in them with the men and things around 
 her. Across all the space of time and circum- 
 stance she perceives the unchangeable identity of 
 certain types which compose human nature, and 
 certain laws which it obeys. She sees the re- 
 production of the same traits of character, the 
 same instincts, the same passions, the same com- 
 binations of interests, and the same formulas of 
 government, reproducing the same consequences. 
 She learns to disentangle the play of elements 
 so differently associated, and yet unvarying ; to 
 penetrate their inner mechanism and appreciate 
 their true value. Her hard and dry mind the 
 philosophical mind with which the Swedish diplo- 
 matist credited her finds itself singularly at 
 home with the abstract, detached, impersonal 
 manner of judging of events and their causes 
 peculiar to the Latin historian ; his way of soar- 
 ing above humanity, which he seems to observe 
 as a disinterested spectator, having himself other 
 claims on existence. 
 
 It is, however, Montesquieu who attracts and 
 satisfies her the most. He does not confine him- 
 self to presenting the facts, he theorises upon 
 them. He provides her with formulas ready 
 made, which she appropriates with ardour. She 
 makes them her Breviary, to use her own pic- 
 turesque expression. She declares later that this 
 book, L Esprit des Lois, ought to be 'the 
 Breviary of every sovereign of common sense.' 
 This is not to say that she understands it. 
 Montesquieu was probably, during a good half 
 of the eighteenth century, the most widely read, 
 and the least understood, man in Europe. No
 
 92 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 doubt Catherine and others found in him a good 
 store of ideas and theories, which they were 
 ready to apply in an isolated manner. As for 
 appropriating the doctrine as a whole, in its true 
 spirit, few indeed were capable of that. And as 
 for applying it en bloc, to use a modern phrase, 
 that occurred to no one. As a matter of fact it 
 would have led, and the author of L 'Esprit des 
 Lois was probably himself far from realising it, 
 to an utter upset of the political and social regime 
 of the time, and to a revolution more radical than 
 that which the end of the century saw accom- 
 plished. What this doctrine attacked was the 
 principle itself of the vices which he analysed, 
 the abuses which he pointed out, the catastrophes 
 which he foresaw, in the constitution of human 
 societies. Now, to suppress this principle was 
 not merely to overturn such and such an institu- 
 tion or manner of government, nor even, nor 
 mainly, such and such a government itself, it was 
 to set aside the great idea which governed the 
 world, and which is perhaps to govern it for 
 ever ; it was to substitute an ideal, and perhaps 
 unrealisable, equilibrium of natural forces for the 
 sharp, constant battle of interests and passions 
 which has for all time constituted human life, 
 which is perhaps life itself. 
 
 Of all that Catherine is still unaware. But 
 she has pleased to attribute to herself a ' re- 
 publican soul,' after the fashion of Montesquieu, 
 without too closely considering what that meant 
 in the thought of the illustrious author, without 
 caring too much what it meant in hers. The 
 idea pleased her as it pleased so many ; she 
 adopted it as she might have done a feather or
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 93 
 
 a flower in fashion. A certain prepossession 
 against the abuse of despotism, the admitted 
 necessity of substituting, in the conduct of men 
 and things, the counsels of universal reason for 
 the inspirations of individual caprice ; there was a 
 vague liberalism in that, no doubt. Catherine 
 was one day to astonish the world by the revolu- 
 tionary boldness of certain maxims flung in the 
 face of Europe in an official document. She had 
 copied them out of Montesquieu and Beccaria, 
 but without understanding them. When their 
 meaning was revealed to her in their passage 
 from theory to practice, no doubt she was taken 
 by surprise. But she continued to govern in a 
 reasonable, and even, to a certain point, liberal, 
 way. Montesquieu had done his work. 
 
 What she is prompt in understanding, with 
 the reflective mind and the infallible good sense 
 with which nature has endowed her, is that there 
 is a flagrant contradiction, apparently inevitable, 
 between the hatred of despotism and the state 
 of a despot. This established fact must certainly 
 clash with the overbearing instincts that are 
 already at work in her. It will one day set 
 her at variance with her philosophy, or at all 
 events with certain philosophers. Meanwhile, 
 some one is found to prove to her that what 
 she fears is vain, and this, too, is a philosopher, 
 Voltaire. Doubtless the introduction of caprice 
 in the sway of human destinies is a fault, and 
 may become a crime ; doubtless it is reason 
 that should govern the world, but still there 
 must be some one to act as its representative 
 here below. This once granted, the formula 
 is seen at once : the despotic government may
 
 94 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 be the best sort of government possible ; it is 
 indeed the best, if it be reasonable. To this 
 end it must be enlightened. All the political 
 doctrine of the author of the Dictionnaire 
 Philosophique lies in that, and also the explana- 
 tion of his admiration, undoubtedly sincere, for 
 the Semiramis of the North. Catherine has 
 realised this formula : she is enlightened by 
 philosophy, by that of Voltaire in especial ; she 
 governs reasonably, she is reason itself, set over 
 the direction of forty millions of men ; she is 
 a divinity, the prototype of those that an odd 
 deviation of intelligence and a grotesque freak 
 of imagination were to instal over the altars 
 profaned by the orgy of revolution. 
 
 It is thus that Voltaire becomes the favourite 
 author of Catherine. This time she has found 
 her man, the master par excellence, the supreme 
 director of her conscience and her thought. He 
 instructs without alarming her, accommodating 
 the ideas that he gives her with the passions 
 that she has. With that, he possesses, for all 
 the ills of humanity, which he points out with 
 Montesquieu, which he deplores with him, a 
 number of simple remedies, within easy reach, 
 and of easy application. Montesquieu is a great 
 scientist working on broad lines. According to 
 him, it would be needful to begin at the begin- 
 ning and change everything. Voltaire is an 
 empiric of genius. He takes one by one the 
 sores that he discovers on the human body, 
 and professes to heal them. An ointment here, 
 a cautery there, and all will be gone, the sick 
 man will be well. And what clearness of lan- 
 guage, what limpidity of thought, with what
 
 THE SECOND EDUCATION OF CATHERINE 95 
 
 wit! Catherine, like most of her contem- 
 poraries, is charmed, dazzled, fascinated, by this 
 great magician of the art of writing, and, like 
 them, by his defects as much as by his qualities, 
 more perhaps ; by what there is of superficiality 
 in his vision of things, of childishness some- 
 times in his conceptions, of injustice often in 
 his judgments, and especially by the licentious, 
 irreligious, and irreverent side of his attacks 
 on established beliefs, for which the philo- 
 sophical tendencies of the time, and the need of 
 liberty, then agitating the minds of men, were 
 not alone accountable. If Voltaire did not aid 
 Catherine to exchange the Lutheran religion 
 for the orthodox faith, he did much at all 
 events to allay the memory of this doubtful 
 step, and to save her, if not a remorse, at least 
 some uneasiness of mind, at the same time that 
 he set her at ease in regard to certain other 
 transactions, which could not harmonise with 
 the rigid morals of any catechism, Greek or 
 Lutheran. Essentially intellectual as was the 
 immorality of the author of La Pncelle, it lent 
 itself also to other interpretations, which might 
 justify every sort of liberty, including that of con- 
 temporary morals. For that too Voltaire was 
 popular, and for that he was liked by Catherine. 
 
 No doubt also he took hold on her by other 
 nobler parts of his genius, by the humanitarian 
 ideas which made him the apostle of religious 
 tolerance, by the generous outbursts which forced 
 all Europe to applaud in him the defender of 
 Calas and Sirven. Catherine certainly owed 
 him some of her best inspirations. 
 
 But to him, as to Montesquieu and Tacitus,
 
 96 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 she owed especially, at this period, a certain 
 intellectual gymnastic, a certain flexibility in 
 the handling of great political and social pro- 
 blems, a sort of general preparation, in short, 
 for her future work. 
 
 And at the same time, with the rapid ripening 
 of her intelligence in its contact with these great 
 minds, and the corresponding development of 
 her practical qualities, she acquires new tastes 
 and habits which bring with them other benefits. 
 She begins to find pleasure in the society of 
 some of those serious personages who had 
 frightened her in her childhood. She seeks 
 
 o 
 
 the company of certain old women, far from 
 being in favour at a court such as Elizabeth's, 
 and she holds long conversations with them. 
 She thus makes progress in the Russian lan- 
 guage ; she follows up the information she has 
 derived from la Vladislavova as to the ins 
 and outs of a society that she desires to know 
 so intimately. She gains, too, many a friend 
 and ally, destined one day to be of the greatest 
 service. 
 
 Thus was the second education of Catherine 
 brought about.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 IN PURSUIT OF POWER 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 
 
 AFTER having given birth to the heir to the 
 throne, Catherine had not merely to endure 
 the singular treatment that we have recorded, 
 she found herself, by the very fact of this birth, 
 relegated to the second place. She was still 
 a person of high rank, but of great show rather 
 than of great importance. She had ceased to 
 be the sine qua non of the dynastic programme, 
 the necessary being on whom were fixed the 
 eyes of all the world, from the Empress to the 
 humblest subject of the empire, all waiting for 
 the great event. She had accomplished her task. 
 It was, nevertheless, not long after this decisive 
 event that she came, little by little, to assume 
 a role such as no Grand Duchess had ever 
 played before, or was ever to play again, in 
 Russia. What this so-called ' young court' was, 
 that of Peter and Catherine, during a period of 
 six years, from 1755 to January 5, 1762, the 
 day of Elizabeth's death, nothing in the history
 
 98 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of any other country, or of Russia itself at any 
 other time, can give an idea. At certain 
 moments the diplomatists sent to St. Peters- 
 burg were embarrassed to know to whom they 
 should address themselves ; some, among others 
 H anbury Williams, the English ambassador, 
 did not hesitate to knock at the lesser door. 
 
 A detailed account of this epoch would take 
 us beyond our limits. We will indicate only 
 its most salient features, namely, the entrance 
 of Catherine into the political arena, her liaison 
 with Poniatowski, and the violent crisis brought 
 about by the fall of the all-powerful Bestoujef, 
 in the course of which the future Empress 
 played her first game on the ground of her 
 future triumphs, and gained her first victory. 
 
 It was love that brought Catherine into the 
 domain of politics. She was destined to per- 
 petually mingle these two elements, so divergent 
 in appearance ; and it was her art, or her good 
 fortune, to almost always obtain a good result 
 from a mixture which was so often unlucky to 
 others. Her first escape from the narrow limits 
 within which Elizabeth had tried to keep her 
 for ever was an intervention in the affairs of 
 Poland. Now it certainly did not occur to her 
 to interest herself in these affairs until she had 
 become interested in those of a certain handsome 
 Pole. And she had to be helped even to this 
 discovery. 
 
 In 1755 a new ambassador came to St. Peters- 
 burg from England, then desirous of renewing 
 the treaty of subsidies which, since 1742, had 
 included Russia in its system of alliances, anxious 
 also to make sure of the support of the Russian
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 99 
 
 forces in the event of a rupture with France. 
 Guy Dickens, the then ambassador, found him- 
 self at a loss in so bustling a court as Elizabeth's, 
 where a state question was settled between a 
 ball, a play, and a masquerade. At his own wish, 
 a new man was found, more fitted to cope with 
 the difficulties of the post. This was Sir Charles 
 Hanbury Williams, a happy choice, for the friend 
 and boon-companion of Robert Walpole had been 
 trained in a good school, and he never missed a 
 ball or a masquerade. He was not long, how- 
 ever, in finding that he was after all no further 
 forward. His attentions to Elizabeth seemed to 
 be quite agreeable to her, but, politically speaking, 
 were of no avail. Whenever he tried to get on 
 the positive ground of no matter what negotia- 
 tion, the Czarina evaded the question. Where 
 he would find an Empress, he found no more 
 than an amiable dancer of the minuet, and some- 
 times a Bacchante. At the end of a few months 
 he came to the conclusion that Elizabeth was not 
 a woman with whom one could have any serious 
 talk, and he decided to look elsewhere. Foiled 
 by the present he looked to the future. The 
 future was the young court. 
 
 But there again he was repelled by the aspect 
 of the future Emperor. It seemed to him at first 
 that he would lose his time as he had done before. 
 But he was clear-sighted, like his countrymen, 
 and his eyes fell upon Catherine. Perhaps he 
 felt the current of other hopes and other decep- 
 tions setting in the same direction. Was not 
 the great Bestoujef himself beginning to recant 
 his early beliefs ? Williams could not but see the 
 significant advances, the disguised approaches,
 
 too CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 that were being made to the Grand Duchess. 
 He was prompt in decision. He had heard the 
 rumours of certain adventures in which the hand- 
 some Saltykof and the handsome Tchernichef 
 had figured, and, adventurous himself in his 
 way, might he not himself, for a moment, have 
 tried to follow on this romantic trail? At all 
 events he did not waste time over it. Catherine 
 made him welcome, talked with him on any 
 subject, even serious subjects, which Elizabeth 
 would not hear of; but she looked elsewhere. 
 He followed the look, and, being a practical man, 
 he at once chose his part. He left the way open 
 to a young man in his suite. It was Poniatowski. 
 The obscure origin of this romantic hero, whom 
 an unhappy chance, a chance fatal to Poland, had 
 thus brought into the history of his country, was 
 well known. Williams, who before coming to 
 Russia had for some years been minister at the 
 Court of Saxony, had there met with Ponia- 
 towski, the son of a parvenu, and the nephew 
 of two of the most powerful Polish noblemen, the 
 Czartoryskis. He interested himself in him, and 
 offered to begin his political education by taking 
 him to St. Petersburg. The Czartoryskis, on 
 their side, were glad to seize the occasion of thus 
 defending, at the Russian court, both their own 
 interests, and, as they understood them, the in- 
 terests of their country. They were just setting 
 on foot in Poland a new political movement, one 
 of compromise and of cordial understanding with 
 the hereditary enemy, Russia, and of desertion 
 of the traditional allies of the republic, France 
 in particular. They turned their back on the 
 West, and made head for the North, hoping to
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 101 
 
 find a port of refuge for the unhappy vessel, 
 shattered by the tempest, and leaking in every 
 timber, of which they professed to be the pilots. 
 This scheme was precisely in accord with that 
 which Williams himself wished to further. 
 
 The future King of Poland was then twenty- 
 two. Pleasant to look at, he could not rival 
 Sergius Saltykof in beauty, but he was an 
 accomplished gentleman of the period ; with his 
 varied acquirements, refined manners, cosmo- 
 politan education, and superficial tincture of 
 philosophy, he was an accomplished specimen of 
 the kind, and the first that had come before the 
 notice of Catherine. He personified to her that 
 mental culture and worldly polish of which the 
 writings of Voltaire and of Mme. de Sevigne 
 had given her a notion and a taste. He had 
 travelled, and at Paris he had belonged to that 
 brilliant society whose charm and glitter had 
 taken the admiration of all Europe, a very 
 royalty, and less contested than every other. 
 He was in some sort an emanation of it, and had 
 both its merits and its defects. He could talk 
 playfully on the most abstract questions, and 
 touch lightly on the most risky subjects. He 
 knew how to turn a love-letter gracefully, and 
 to manipulate a commonplace into a madrigal. 
 He had sensibility, and he knew the melting 
 mood. He had a stock of romantic ideas, which 
 could give him on occasion an adventurous and 
 heroic air, hiding away, as under flowers, a 
 cold dry nature, an imperturbable egoism, a 
 very depth of cynicism. He united all the 
 qualities likely to take her heart, even to a 
 certain frivolity, always so attractive to her,
 
 102 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 perhaps by a mysterious affinity with her own 
 firm and stable nature. 
 
 On his own account, Poniatowski had a further 
 merit, strange enough, almost incredible, in a 
 young man just come from Paris. ' A severe 
 education,' he tells us in an autobiographical frag- 
 ment which has reached us, ' had kept me out of 
 all vulgar debauchery ; an ambition of winning 
 and holding a place in what is called, especially 
 at Paris, high life, had stood by me in my travels, 
 and a concourse of singular little circumstances 
 in the Liaisons that I had barely entered upon in 
 foreign countries, in my own, and in Russia, had 
 seemed expressly to reserve me all in all for her 
 who has disposed of all my destiny.' 
 
 Bestoujef, too, encouraged the young Pole, who, 
 however, showed a certain distrust in the matter. 
 He had heard gloomy tales of what had happened 
 to young men who had pleased Empresses and 
 Grand Duchesses of Russia, after they had 
 ceased to please. Bestoujef had recourse to Lev 
 Narychkine, who generously consented to show 
 the new favourite the road that he no doubt knew 
 well. Narychkine was always the most accom- 
 modating of men. But it was probably Catherine 
 herself who bore down the last resistances. Her 
 beauty alone, had there been no other attraction, 
 would have sufficed. This is how the favoured 
 lover afterwards described it : 
 
 'She was five-and- twenty ; she had not long 
 recovered from her first childbed ; she was at 
 that perfect moment, which is generally, for 
 women who have beauty, the most beautiful. 
 With her black hair, she had a dazzling whiteness 
 of skin, the colour [sic] of the eyelids black and
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 103 
 
 very long, a Grecian nose, a mouth that seemed 
 made for kisses, hands and arms perfect, a slim 
 figure, rather tall than short, an extremely active 
 bearing, and nevertheless full of nobility, the 
 sound of her voice agreeable and her laugh as 
 gay as her humour, which caused her to pass 
 with facility from the most sportive, the most 
 childish amusements, to the driest mathematical 
 calculation.' 
 
 Gazing at her, 'he forgot,' said he, 'that there 
 was a Siberia.' And soon those about the 
 Grand Duchess were the spectators of a scene 
 which went far to settle the floating conjectures. 
 Count Horn, a Swede who was on a visit to 
 St. Petersburg, and a friend of Poniatowski, was 
 in the ' set ' of the Grand Duchess. One day, as 
 he entered the room, a little Bolognese dog 
 belonging to her began to bark furiously. It 
 did the same to all the other visitors, until at 
 last Poniatowski appeared, and the little traitor 
 rushed up to him with an air of the greatest 
 delight, and with all the tender demonstrations 
 in the world. 
 
 ' My friend,' said the Swede, taking the new- 
 comer aside, 'there is nothing so terrible as a 
 little Bolognese dog ; the first thing I have 
 always done with the women I was in love with 
 is to give them one, and I have always found 
 out by their means if there was any one more 
 favoured than I.' 
 
 Sergius Saltykof, on his return from Sweden, 
 was not long in finding out that he had a suc- 
 cessor. But he had no inclination to be jealous. 
 If, later on, Catherine was not particularly con- 
 stant to her lovers, it was certainly the lovers them-
 
 to4 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 selves who first set her the example. Even before 
 Poniatowski was in favour, Sal tykof carried his in- 
 solence to the point of giving rendezvous which 
 he did not keep. One night Catherine waited 
 for him in vain till three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 Williams had thus at his disposition, with 
 regard to the Grand Duchess, a powerful in- 
 fluence. He did not, however, neglect other 
 means. He had soon discovered the money 
 difficulties in which Catherine was desperately 
 entangled. In this matter the remonstrances of 
 Elizabeth had been of no avail. Despite her 
 love of order, and even certain bourgeois habits of 
 economy, Catherine was all her life a spendthrift. 
 Her taste for display carried all before it, and 
 also her way of considering the utility of certain 
 outlays that the mercenary spirit of her native 
 country had implanted in her mind, and that the 
 experience acquired in her new surroundings had 
 only developed. Faith in the sovereign efficacy 
 of the ' tip ' was one of the beliefs to which she 
 remained most faithful. Williams offered his 
 services, which were gladly accepted. The total 
 amount borrowed by Catherine from this source 
 is unknown. It must have been considerable. 
 Williams had carte blanche from his government. 
 Two receipts, signed by the Grand Duchess, for 
 a sum-total of 50,000 roubles, bear date July 21 
 and November n, 1756, and the loan of July 21 
 was not the first, for, in asking for it, Catherine 
 writes to Williams's banker : ' I have some hesita- 
 tion in coming to you again' 
 
 It only remained for the English ambassador 
 to put to profit the influence thus acquired ; and 
 the reconciliation that had come about between
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 105 
 
 the Grand Duchess and Bestoujef seemed of 
 good augury. 
 
 II 
 
 Bestoujef had triumphed successively over all 
 his enemies, but these victories, in which he had 
 put forth all his strength, had exhausted him. 
 He was growing old, and he felt less and less 
 able to cope with the incessant attacks of rival 
 ambitions, of old grudges, of old thirsts for 
 revenge. Elizabeth herself did not forgive him 
 for having, in some sort, imposed himself upon 
 her. She began to treat him with coldness. 
 She began also to suffer from attacks of apoplexy, 
 and that gave the chancellor food for reflection. 
 The Grand Duke, the Emperor of to-morrow, 
 showed him the same discouraging aspect which 
 had daunted Williams. Not that he imagined 
 it would be very difficult to get into his favour ; 
 it would be easy enough, but it would lead to 
 nothing, or rather, it would lead only where 
 Bestoujef absolutely would not go. If Peter had 
 a political idea in his narrow brain, it was his 
 admiration for Frederick. He was Prussian 
 from head to foot. Bestoujef was, had been, and 
 meant to die, a good Austrian. There was still 
 the Grand Duchess. From the year 1754 the 
 idea of a direct understanding with her seems to 
 have been in the chancellor's mind. 
 
 The progress of this evolution was rapid. 
 Catherine soon saw a considerable change, and 
 one entirely to her advantage, in the organisation 
 of the staff charged with the service and the 
 surveillance of her person. Her head chamber- 
 maid, la Vladislavova, a sort of feminine Cer-
 
 io6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 berus, became all at once as meek as a lamb, 
 after a confidential interview with the chancellor. 
 Not long after, Bestoujef made his peace with 
 the Princess of Zerbst, and offered himself, most 
 unexpectedly, as intermediary in the correspond- 
 ence which she continued to keep up with her 
 daughter, and which he had himself done his 
 best to put down. Finally, he ventured upon a 
 heroic effort : by means of Poniatowski a docu- 
 ment of capital importance was submitted to 
 Catherine on the part of the chancellor. This 
 time Bestoujef had burned his boats, and indeed 
 risked his head ; but he opened out before the 
 sad companion of Peter a new horizon, enough to 
 dazzle her and to tempt her growing ambition ; 
 he opened to her, in some sort, the way by 
 which she was to arrive at the conquest of the 
 empire : it was a project to settle the succession 
 to the throne. It suggested that, immediately 
 after the death of Elizabeth, Peter should be pro- 
 claimed Emperor, but conjointly with Catherine, 
 who should become co-partner in all his rights 
 and all his authority. It need not be said that 
 Bestoujef did not forget himself. He reserved 
 to himself nearly all the power, leaving to 
 Catherine and her husband only what his position 
 as a subject did not allow him to take. Catherine 
 showed on this occasion the tact of which she 
 had already given proof. She was far from 
 discouraging the project, but she made her 
 reserves. She did not believe, she said, in the 
 possibility of its execution. Perhaps the old fox 
 did not believe it any more himself. He went 
 over the scheme again, turned it about, made 
 additions and alterations, submitted it again to
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 107 
 
 the interested party, then made fresh corrections, 
 and appeared absorbed in the task. There was 
 sharp practice on both sides ; but the ice was 
 broken, and there were other points on which it 
 was easy to agree. 
 
 Thus was Catherine urged, from two sides at 
 once, to come out of the reserve a forced reserve, 
 certainly in which she had hitherto been kept. 
 She was by no means disinclined. All her tastes 
 and instincts urged her forward. Held back for 
 a time by a sentiment of prudence which was 
 only too well justified, she ventured timidly at 
 first, then more and more boldly, till finally she 
 brought herself within a hair's-breadth of ruin. 
 It is but just to add that neither Bestoujef nor 
 Williams, the allies of to-day, the adversaries of 
 to-morrow, showed any sort of discretion, first by 
 joining to spread abroad the growing fame of the 
 Grand Duchess, their common work, then in 
 quarrelling over her when events had set them at 
 variance. Bestoujef staked his whole hand, and 
 endeavoured to increase his stake as best he 
 could. As for Williams, he showed himself per- 
 fectly reckless. The Englishman joined to a 
 certain practical ability, and a very clear sense of 
 things, an extraordinary dose of imagination and 
 a strange capacity for making blunders. He had 
 the most chimerical ideas in his head ; he arranged 
 things his own way, and whenever chance or 
 providence disposed them otherwise, he refused 
 to accept his defeat. He was a very Gascon of 
 England. When, in August 1755, he had 
 secured the renewal of the treaty of subsidies 
 between England and Russia, he chanted vic- 
 tory. He had gained-over Bestoujef, conquered
 
 io8 CA THER1NE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Elizabeth, and beguiled Catherine through the 
 medium of Poniatowski. He already saw a 
 hundred thousand Russians in the field, putting 
 to flight the enemies of his Britannic Majesty. 
 These enemies were of course France and Prussia. 
 Suddenly he learnt that the Treaty of West- 
 minster had been concluded (January 5, 1756) 
 and Prussia was now an English ally. Williams 
 was nothing daunted. The hundred thousand 
 Russians would now have only one enemy to 
 fight instead of two. They would triumph on the 
 banks of the Rhine instead of conquering on the 
 banks of the Spree. They would merely have to 
 march a little further. Meanwhile the adven- 
 turous diplomatist put himself at the disposal of 
 Frederick. Frederick had had no envoy at St. 
 Petersburg since 1750; Williams took upon 
 himself to supply the place. By means of 
 his colleague at Berlin he set on foot an active 
 exchange of correspondence, intended to keep 
 his Prussian Majesty au courant with what 
 happened in Russia. Elizabeth, on hearing the 
 news of the Anglo-Prussian Treaty, at first 
 refused to ratify her own treaty of subsidies with 
 England ; then, on signing the ratification, 
 February 26, 1756, she added a clause which 
 limited it to the single event of England being 
 attacked by Prussia. This was simply to annihi- 
 late the treaty, and to make game of both Prussia 
 and England. Williams did not give way even 
 yet. Amidst all this chasst-croist of alliances, 
 this general break-up of European politics which 
 seemed likely to be its result, he remained faith- 
 ful to his programme, which was to secure the 
 co-operation of the Russian forces against the
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 109 
 
 enemies of England. His hatred of France led 
 him forward blindfold. The Treaty of Versailles, 
 even (May I, 1756), did not succeed in opening 
 his eyes. He did not or would not see, that, 
 allied as it now was with Austria, France had 
 become, with regard to Russia, not so much an 
 enemy to oppose, as a natural associate in the 
 new group of rival powers and interests, and a 
 brother in arms in the coming conflict. It was 
 just then that he wished to push forward the 
 union that he had made with the young court 
 and the power that he professed to wield over 
 the dispositions and procedures of the Grand 
 Duchess. In his infatuation he succeeded in 
 making Frederick believe that Catherine had the 
 power and the will to hold back the Russian 
 army, at the very moment when the commands 
 of Elizabeth had sent it into the field ; that at 
 least she could keep it inactive. When Frederick 
 was undeceived it was too late : Apraksyne had 
 taken Memel, and inflicted on the Prussian army 
 a sanguinary defeat at Gross- Jaegerdorf, August 
 1759. But the illusion lasted two years, during 
 which Williams, speaking of Catherine as his 
 1 dear friend,' varied at will her sentiments for 
 or against the King of Prussia, boasted of the 
 information, equivalent to a betrayal of the secrets 
 of state, that he received from her, and ended by 
 imputing to this Russian Princess the position of 
 a common spy in the service of a power with 
 which Russia was at war. 
 
 What part was really played by Catherine 
 during this period, one of the most troublous 
 periods of her life, it is difficult to know for 
 certain. Williams, most assuredly, deceived both
 
 no CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Frederick and himself. German historians are 
 agreed in accusing the English cabinet of having 
 retouched the despatches of the presumptuous 
 ambassador, with whom the cabinet at Berlin was 
 in communication. In one particular instance, 
 Williams appears to have carried his infatua- 
 tion to the point of inventing a measure and a 
 letter of Catherine, both entirely imaginary. It 
 is no less certain that the attentions of Williams 
 and the homage of Poniatowski did not permit 
 the Grand Duchess to remain entirely disin- 
 terested in this grave crisis, or even indifferent 
 to the English interests. The receipts that the 
 banker Wolff continued to give on the orders of 
 the English ambassador had their eloquence. 
 But, on the other side, the advances of Bestoujef 
 were not to be lightly regarded by Catherine ; 
 now, the chancellor, whom Frederick had not 
 succeeded in corrupting, insisted that the pact of 
 alliance concluded with Austria should be faith- 
 fully carried out. All that must have brought 
 the political pupil of Montesquieu and of 
 Brantome into many a hazardous and perhaps 
 contradictory undertaking. 
 
 Moreover, what she did not do, Poniatowski 
 did, or seemed to do, for her ; and the Pole began 
 to be very stirring. He was soon so very much 
 so, that, in the allied courts of Vienna and 
 Versailles, he passed for the worst enemy that 
 they had at St. Petersburg, a man who must be 
 got rid of at any price. The unofficial character 
 of the personage seemed to render the under- 
 taking easy. Vigorous attempts were made, but 
 they met with an unexpected obstacle . love had 
 been left out of the question. Williams himself
 
 THE YOUNG COURT in 
 
 was more easily dislodged from a post in which 
 he seemed to be doing as much or more for 
 Prussia than for England itself. He left in 
 October 1757. Poniatowski remained. But 
 Catherine was thus brought definitely into the 
 field of politics, which had been so expressly 
 forbidden to her. 
 
 We must add that her ddbut was far from 
 promising. At her first trial she made use of 
 her newly-acquired influence in certain personal 
 interests to which she could not confess, and 
 which were, in certain respects, against the in- 
 terests of her adopted country as they were then 
 understood by those who had their direction. 
 She had entered politics on account of love ; 
 love followed and kept her there. This episode 
 of her life is so decisive that we must dwell 
 upon it yet further. 
 
 in 
 
 Poniatowski had pleased Catherine because he 
 spoke the language of Voltaire and also that of 
 the heroes of Mile, de Scuderi. He gained the 
 favour of the Grand Duke by mocking at the King 
 of Poland and his minister, which was an indirect 
 way of doing homage to Frederick. He made no 
 further conquests at St. Petersburg. Elizabeth 
 looked upon him askance, and seemed inclined to 
 give way to the demand of the Court of Saxony 
 that he should be recalled. By what title did he 
 claim a place in the English Embassy, being 
 neither an Englishman nor a diplomatist ? The 
 argument was of small avail. Personages more 
 enigmatical still, diplomatic agents even less 
 authorised, swarmed in every court in Europe-
 
 H2 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 That of St. Petersburg was no exception. D'Eon 
 had just arrived there. Poniatowski, nevertheless, 
 was obliged for the moment to obscure himself. 
 Catherine let him go, being certain that he would 
 come back again. He came back three months 
 later, with the official title of Polish Minister. 
 This was the doing of Bestoujef, who persisted in 
 making himself agreeable. 
 
 Finding the ground more solid under his feet, 
 the Pole did not wait long before he began to 
 concern himself in the affairs of his uncles the 
 Czartoryskis, to the detriment of those of his 
 master, the King of Poland ; and in those of his 
 friend Williams, to the benefit of the King of 
 Prussia. Frequently Catherine seconded his 
 doings, adding postscripts to the letters he wrote 
 to Bestoujef. Even if her intervention did not 
 appear openly, it was easily to be guessed, and 
 that came to the same thing. There was soon a 
 new chorus of complaints on the part of the 
 French and Austrian ambassadors. At one 
 moment, Douglas, the aide-de-camp of the Mar- 
 quis de 1'Hopital, fancied the way was open 
 to a good understanding with the young court 
 and with Poniatowski himself. After some in- 
 decision and a certain amount of resistance, the 
 Marquis de I'Hdpital came over to his way of 
 thinking, and abandoned his opposition to the 
 presence of the Polish diplomatist in the capital 
 of the North. But at this very moment a violent 
 quarrel broke out between the representative of 
 French interests at St. Petersburg and its repre- 
 sentative at Warsaw, the Comte de Broglie. The 
 latter clamoured with might and main for the 
 recall of Poniatowski. Alas ! it was the French
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 113 
 
 interests themselves, the influence of France in 
 the East, that were to founder in the conflict of 
 irreconcilable ideas and principles. 
 
 In September 1757 Douglas paid a visit to 
 Warsaw, and in a series of conferences with the 
 Comte de Broglie did his best to convince him of 
 the necessity of a radical change of front in regard 
 to the defence of the French interests in the east 
 of Europe. In his eyes the Treaty of Versailles, 
 which had brought France into the system of 
 alliances which included Russia and Austria, 
 would have as its consequence the rupture of the 
 old alliances of the King, both with the Porte 
 and with Poland. The gain of a powerful ally at 
 St. Petersburg would make up for the loss of 
 influence at Warsaw and at Constantinople. 
 There was the problem, and it was this view of 
 things that had convinced both Douglas and the 
 Marquis de 1'Hopital of the possibility of dis- 
 arming the hostility of the young court, and even 
 of obtaining the support of Poniatowski. From 
 the moment they declared frankly and entirely 
 for Russia, the nephew of the Czartoryskis, 
 occupied in the advancement at St. Petersburg of 
 the Russophilist programme of his uncles, would 
 become their natural ally. 
 
 But the Comte de Broglie was by no means 
 disposed to adopt these views. As for those who 
 had to fix his line of conduct in this respect, they 
 were simply precluded from having, on this as on 
 many other points, any clear and definite view at 
 all. Those who presided in France at the direc- 
 tion of foreign affairs, and by this we mean not 
 only the anonymous directors of the private 
 politics of Louis XV., the holders of the 'royal 
 
 H
 
 ii4 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 secret,' but also the official ministers, Rouille, the 
 Abb6 de Bernis, or Choiseul, pretended on the 
 contrary, though in an uncertain measure, to 
 reconcile the most irreconcilable things, the 
 change of system with the immutability of 
 principles, the co-operation of the Russian army 
 against a common enemy, with the retention of the 
 old clientele, whether Turkish, Polish, or Swedish, 
 an advance towards an obscurely-realised future 
 with fidelity to the past. If there was a divergence 
 of opinion in this respect between the two powers 
 of direction, between the ministerial cabinet and 
 the mysterious laboratory wherein were elaborated 
 these often contradictory despatches, it was merely 
 a question of limit and degree. Doubtless, while 
 on one side they insisted on seeing in Russia 
 only the barbarous element, with which no under- 
 standing was possible, which was merely to be 
 driven back into Asia, on the other they were 
 inclined to look for an ally in the formidable 
 empire created by Peter the Great, an ally, if not 
 too desirable, at all events possible, and perhaps 
 necessary in the more or less distant future ; a 
 power, in any case, which had to be reckoned 
 with, and to which it was well to make some 
 concessions, even on the banks of the Vistula. 
 But both parties were agreed in limiting these 
 concessions. More than a century was destined 
 to elapse before a series of cruel deceptions, of 
 sterile efforts, of disasters shared, alas ! by those 
 unhappy dependants who were not to be sacrificed, 
 and who were, after all, sacrificed to a common 
 illusion, had at last proved the essential mistake 
 of such a conception of things and of such a 
 scheme. Meanwhile they persisted in the
 
 THE YOUNG COURT n- 
 
 extraordinary resolution of defending Poles, 
 Turks, and Swiss against the Russians, while at 
 the same time in alliance with Russia. As for the 
 Comte de Broglie, he had come, after his long 
 residence in Poland, to identify himself with the 
 Polish party, we might almost say to confound 
 the interests of France, not even only with those 
 of Poland, but with those of one of the parties 
 among which the republic was divided ; and 
 this party was precisely the one opposed to the 
 Russian interests and to the powerful Czartoryski 
 family, which would advance those interests and 
 their own with them. 
 
 The result of all this was, that the ambassador 
 of the King at Warsaw received in October orders 
 at once official and secret to press for the recall 
 of Count Poniatowski, which he did with all 
 ardour. In November the thing was done. 
 Briihl had given way. ' The blow has been 
 struck,' wrote the Marquis de 1'Hopital to the 
 Abbe de Bernis ; ' it must now be followed up.' 
 But he added that the matter had been done 
 much too brusquely. ' The consequence will be,' 
 he said, ' a lively resentment against me on the 
 part of the chancellor Bestoujef, and a bitter 
 grudge on the part of the Grand Duke and 
 Duchess. ... I cannot help letting you know 
 that, in my opinion, M. le Comte de Broglie has 
 put into all this much too great a heat and passion. 
 He has made it a point of honour towards his 
 party to inflict this mortification on the Ponia- 
 towskis and the Czartoryskis. In short, it is his 
 impegno! In general, 1'Hopital found that the 
 Comte de Broglie, ' accustomed to take the lead,' 
 took somewhat too lofty a tone with his colleague,
 
 n6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 and acted in regard to him more as if he were 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs than Ambassador. 
 This authoritative diplomatist also permitted 
 himself to indulge in certain pleasantries that 
 seemed to his colleague out of place. He had 
 written to d'Eon : 'You will perhaps be surprised 
 at the recall of M. Poniatowski ; send him back 
 to me quickly ; I have an inexpressible desire to 
 see him again, and pay him my compliments on 
 the success of his negotiations.' 
 
 But Poniatowski did not leave. First of all he 
 pretended to be ill, thus putting off his leave of 
 absence from week to week and from month to 
 month. And meanwhile an event happened 
 which changed the whole situation of affairs and 
 the very position of the foes on the European 
 battle-field. France, which before had taken the 
 tone, if not of a master, at least of one who must 
 be respectfully listened to, at St. Petersburg as 
 at Warsaw, had soon to lower its demands. This 
 event was Rosbach (Nov. 5, 1757). 
 
 There was no more question for the cabinet 
 of Versailles of imposing its will. The Grand 
 Duchess made her own more emphatically felt by 
 the chancellor Bestoujef. The latter reminded 
 her of the orders of the Prime Minister of 
 Poland, recalling Poniatowski, now put on half- 
 pay. 'The Prime Minister of Poland would go 
 without his bread to please you,' replied Catherine 
 drily. Bestoujef pointed out the necessity of 
 looking after his own position. ' No one will 
 molest you if you do what I wish you to do.' 
 One sees that with the lofty idea of the power 
 of Russia, gained at the cost of the present 
 eclipse of France, a not less lofty idea of her
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 117 
 
 own importance had taken hold of the future 
 Empress. This was another consequence of 
 Rosbach. 
 
 And the event justified both suppositions. 
 Brlihl, the Saxon Minister, did indeed go without 
 his bread to please the chancellor of all the 
 Russias ; Poniatowski received the order to re- 
 main at his post, and things returned to their 
 former courses. As for the Marquis de 1'Hopital, 
 he gave up, once for all, his attempts to accom- 
 modate himself to a state of things in which he 
 had ceased to have the least weight. He ceased 
 to try to put back the current, and ' let things 
 drift.' He did not even seek to enter into 
 relations with the young court, where he saw ' a 
 little stormy sea,' full of reefs. 
 
 It was Poniatowski himself who, six months 
 later, gave the Comte de Broglie the satisfaction 
 that he had no doubt lost all hope of obtaining. 
 To render himself impossible at St. Petersburg, 
 after all he had done there, did not seem an easy 
 thing for him. He succeeded however in doing: 
 
 O o 
 
 so. The story has been differently told ; we shall 
 follow the narrative of the principal actor in it, 
 which is confirmed, almost throughout, by the 
 testimony of the Marquis de 1'Hopital. 
 
 The Grand Duke had not yet said his say in 
 regard to the presence of the Polish diplomatist 
 in Russia, and the relations he had established 
 there. It is true that he was absorbed by a new 
 passion : Elizabeth Vorontsof, the last of his 
 mistresses, had just entered upon the scene. An 
 interference on his part, however, remained a 
 quite possible, if not probable, eventuality. It 
 came in July 1758. Issuing from the chateau of
 
 n 8 CA THERINE II. OF R US SI A 
 
 Oranienbaum in the early morning, Poniatowski 
 was arrested by one of the pickets of cavalry that 
 Peter planted round his house as in time of war. 
 He was in disguise. He was roughly seized and 
 hauled before the Grand Duke. Peter insisted 
 on knowing the truth, which in itself did not seem 
 in the least to trouble him. ' It could all be 
 arranged,' he said, as long as he was taken into 
 confidence. The silence which the prisoner felt 
 bound to keep exasperated him. He concluded 
 that this nocturnal visit had been meant for him, 
 and he pretended to believe that his life was in 
 danger. Had it not been for the presence of 
 mind of a compatriot, recently arrived in St. 
 Petersburg in the suite of Prince Charles of 
 Saxony, Poniatowski might have paid dearly for 
 his imprudence. But the Grand Duke, none the 
 less, talked for some days of what he would do to 
 this stranger who had tried to elude the vigilance 
 of his outposts. Catherine was so alarmed that 
 she resigned herself to a great sacrifice : Elizabeth 
 Vorontsof received from her the most unhoped- 
 for advances and civilities. Poniatowski, on his 
 part, made his supplications to the favourite, ' It 
 would be so easy for you to render everybody 
 happy,' he whispered in her ear, at one of the 
 court receptions. 
 
 Elizabeth Vorontsof desired nothing better. 
 The same day, after a talk with the Grand Duke, 
 she suddenly introduced Poniatowski into his 
 Highness's apartment. 'What a fool you have 
 been,' cried Peter, 'not to have taken me into 
 your confidence before ! ' 
 
 And he explained laughingly that he had not 
 the least wish to be jealous ; the precautions taken
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 119 
 
 round Oranienbaum were merely for his personal 
 safety. On this Poniatowski, not forgetting to 
 be diplomatic, broke out into compliments on his 
 Highness's military arrangements, whose per- 
 fection he had found out to his expense. The 
 good humour of the Grand Duke increased. 
 ' Since we are all good friends/ said he, ' there is 
 one wanting/ 
 
 'And with that/ relates Poniatowski in his 
 memoirs, ' he goes into his wife's room, pulls her 
 out of bed, without leaving her time to put on her 
 stockings or shoes, and without so much as a 
 petticoat, brings her in to us, and says, pointing 
 to me, "Well, here he is, and I hope you will be 
 satisfied/" 
 
 They supped gaily together, and the party did 
 not break up till four o'clock in the morning. 
 Elizabeth Vorontsof was obliging enough to make 
 a personal explanation to Bestoujef, in order to 
 convince him that the presence of Poniatowski at 
 St. Petersburg had ceased to be displeasing to the 
 Grand Duke. Festivities were recommenced 
 next day, and for some weeks this astonishing 
 manage a quatre had the best of times together. 
 
 ' I often went to Oranienbaum/ writes Ponia- 
 towski ; ' I got there in the evening, mounted by 
 a secret staircase to the Grand Duchess's apart- 
 ments, where I found the Grand Duke and his 
 mistress ; we supped together ; after which the 
 Grand Duke departed with his mistress, saying to 
 us. " Now, my children, you don't require me any 
 longer." And I stayed as long as I liked/ 
 
 Rumours of the adventure, however, began to 
 circulate at court, and, lenient as every one was 
 in matters of this kind, it made a scandal. The
 
 120 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Marquis de 1'Hopital thought it his duty to profit 
 by it in order to renew his demands for the dis- 
 missal of Poniatowski. This time he succeeded. 
 Poniatowski was obliged to go. Elizabeth saw 
 that the reputation of her nephew and heir 
 was at stake. Two years later the Baron de 
 Breteuil was charged to do all he could to wipe 
 out the impression caused on Catherine by this 
 painful event. He only half succeeded. It is 
 true that, uniting as he did the position of official 
 representative of French politics with that of 
 secret agent, he had a double part to play, and, 
 while assuring the Grand Duchess 'that his Most 
 Christian Majesty not only would make no oppo- 
 sition to the return of Count Poniatowski to 
 St. Petersburg, but that he was even disposed to 
 lend himself to the measures that were being 
 taken to induce the King of Poland to take up 
 his cause,' he was obliged also, ' without open 
 offence to the Grand Duchess, to avoid granting 
 her wishes.' 
 
 The extravagant dualism which had resulted 
 in France from the fantasy of the sovereign in 
 conflict with the serious duties of sovereignty, 
 came out very eloquently in this comedy. Cathe- 
 rine was not duped by it. Having with some 
 difficulty obtained a private interview with the 
 Grand Duchess, Breteuil had to listen to some 
 flattering speeches. ' I have been brought up to 
 love the French,' said she, ' I have long had a 
 preference for them ; it is a sentiment that your 
 services bring back to me.' ' I wish,' wrote the 
 Baron after this interview, ' that I could render 
 the fire, the dexterity, and the effrontery that 
 Madame la Grande Duchesse put into this conver-
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 121 
 
 sation.' But he added sadly : ' All that means, 
 perhaps, and will continue to mean, nothing but 
 the excess of her thwarted passion.' 
 
 He judged truly. Poniatowski was to return 
 to St. Petersburg no more until, indeed, thirty- 
 five years later, a dethroned king. Soon, ab- 
 sorbed by other preoccupations, distracted too by 
 other amours, Catherine herself lost interest in 
 the success of her own and others' tentatives in 
 this direction. But the leaven of spite against 
 France remained in her heart The more, as 
 she did not, in giving up hope of seeing her 
 Pole again, give up thinking of him. Fidelity, 
 at least a certain fidelity, odd enough at times, 
 it must be admitted, was a part of her character. 
 As she had associated politics with love, she 
 had to keep her love-affairs in line with her other 
 affairs. Now she could sometimes not always 
 be consistent in the latter. It is thus that, in 
 all her changes of lovers, she continued to love 
 some of them, even beyond the passing infatua- 
 tion of the heart and senses. She loved them in 
 another way, more calm, but as definite, if not 
 more so, tranquilly, ' imperturbably,' as the 
 Prince de Ligne was to say. There was a 
 certain effrontery also, and even a little cynicism, 
 in the edict that she addressed in 1763 to her 
 ambassador at Warsaw, recommending the can- 
 didature of the future King of Poland, and 
 stating that he ' had rendered, during his resi- 
 dence at St. Petersburg, more services to his 
 country than any other minister of the republic.' 
 But there was tenderness as well as a wise fore- 
 thought in the measures that she took at the 
 same epoch, in order to pay all the debts of this
 
 122 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 singular candidate. In 1764 the supposition 
 of a marriage which would commingle the two 
 empires having taken general hold of people's 
 minds, Catherine had recourse to an ingenious 
 expedient to reassure her excitable neighbours. 
 She wrote to Obrescof, her ambassador at Con- 
 stantinople, that he was to communicate to the 
 Porte the news of imaginary parleyings under- 
 taken by Poniatowski in view of an alliance with 
 one of the first families of Poland. And, her 
 heart being now disinterested in regard to a 
 romance thus followed up across time and space, 
 without her mind and her ambition having lost 
 interest in it, she gave simultaneous orders to 
 Count Kaiserling and Prince Repnine, her repre- 
 sentatives in Poland ; so that, after his election, 
 Poniatowski really did marry a Pole, or at least 
 intended to. It was a measure designed to calm 
 the disquietude of the Porte, perhaps also to 
 raise an insuperable barrier between past and 
 present. Alas ! a near future was to remove 
 from her this care, leaving, in place of the 
 obstacle she had wished for, a bottomless gulf. 
 This is how Poniatowski, after he had become 
 King of Poland, wrote, two years later, to his 
 representative at the court of St. Petersburg, 
 Count Rzewuski : 
 
 ' The last orders given to Repnine to intro- 
 duce dissension even in the legislation have 
 come like a very thunderbolt upon the country 
 and myself. If it is still possible, make the 
 Empress see that the Crown she has given me 
 will become a very Nessus' shirt for me, to burn 
 and bring me to a fearful end.' 
 
 The lover of former days was now, for Cathe-
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 123 
 
 rine, merely the executant of her supreme will 
 in a half-conquered country. She replied by a 
 letter in which she ordered this improvised king, 
 the fragile work of her hands, to let Repnine 
 have his way ; if not, ' there will only remain to 
 the Empress the continual regret of having been 
 so much deceived in the friendship, the way of 
 thinking, and the sentiments, of the King.' 
 Poniatowski insisting still, she sent him this last 
 and sinister warning, which already foretells the 
 brutal measures of the Salderns, Drevitchs, and 
 Souvarofs, the future stranglers of the last 
 national resistances : ' All that now remains for 
 me is to leave this matter to its fate. ... I close 
 my eyes on the consequences, flattered neverthe- 
 less that your Majesty should believe me so far 
 disinterested, in all I have done for yourself and 
 for the nation, as not to reproach me with having 
 set up in Poland a target for my arms. They 
 shall never be directed against those . . . ' 
 Here the pen of the Empress paused ; she had 
 written, ' Those I love ' ; she erased the words 
 and substituted ' those to whom I wish well ' ; 
 then she ended with this phrase, which betrays 
 all her thoughts, and which must have sounded 
 in the unhappy Poniatowski's ears like the roll of 
 drums before the fire of the squadron : ' As I 
 shall not withhold them when it seems to me 
 that their use may be useful.' 
 
 We shall not have to refer again, other than 
 cursorily, to this liaison, destined to such sin- 
 gular and tragic reversion. It held, indeed, a 
 less important place in the life of Catherine than 
 in that of the unfortunate people called to play 
 the part of expiatory victim. After having
 
 124 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 risked her reputation, which she was no longer 
 afraid of compromising, and her credit, which she 
 knew so well how to keep intact, Catherine 
 finally gained an enormous profit therefrom. 
 We might say that Poland died of it, if nations 
 had not more profound reasons for living and 
 dying. We must now return to the period in 
 which the heyday of this love affair was about 
 to end, and to this strange interior, outwardly so 
 like a prison, a guard-house, and a villa, which 
 screened, indiscreetly enough, so many mysteries. 
 
 IV 
 
 In her connections, political with Williams and 
 Bestoujef, amatory and political with Ponia- 
 towski, Catherine is no longer the recluse of the 
 past, watched by officers of the court in the guise 
 of spies, ill-treated by her husband, terrorised 
 over by Elizabeth. The chancellor's agents 
 have been mastered one by one, and finally he 
 himself has undergone the same fate. Peter 
 remains the same gross, extravagant, and in- 
 supportable being that he has always been, 'a 
 strange brute, streaked with insanity,' according 
 to St. Beuve's expression. He still knows how 
 to render himself odious. Frequently he comes 
 to bed dead drunk, and between two hiccups he 
 speaks to his wife on his favourite subject, his 
 amours with the Duchess of Courland, who is a 
 hunchback, or with Freiline Vorontsof, who is 
 marked with small-pox. If Catherine pretends 
 to go to sleep, he pummels her with hands and 
 feet to keep her awake until sleep takes hold of 
 himself. He is almost always drunk, and he
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 125 
 
 becomes more and more mad. In 1758 Cathe- 
 rine gives birth to a daughter, the Czarevna 
 Anna, of whom Poniatowski is supposed to be 
 the father. At the moment when the pains 
 of childbed take hold of her, at half-past two 
 in the morning, Peter, informed of it, arrives, 
 ' booted and spurred, in his Holstein uniform, 
 a belt round his waist, and an enormous sword 
 by his side.' On Catherine's inquiry as to why 
 he has put on these accoutrements, he replies 
 that 'a friend in need is a friend indeed, that in 
 this garb he is ready to act as duty bids him, 
 that the duty of a Holstein officer is to defend 
 the ducal house, according to his oath, against 
 its enemies, and that, believing his wife was 
 alone, he had come to her aid.' He can scarcely 
 stand on his feet. He has at times, however, as 
 we have seen, his agreeable moments, an occa- 
 sional access of good humour or an accidental 
 complaisance, which he exaggerates, in his usual 
 extravagant way, but of which his wife has the 
 benefit. It is partly that, like others, he has 
 come under the charm of the Grand Duchess, 
 or at least under the power of her mind and 
 temperament. He is often obliged to recognise 
 the wisdom of her counsels, and the accuracy of 
 her views. He has become accustomed to go to 
 her in all his difficulties, and little by little there 
 has come into his dull brain some notion of the 
 superiority that he is one day to realise so 
 terribly. At the fatal moment it is this idea, 
 haunting and discouraging him, which will 
 paralyse his defence. 
 
 ' The Grand Duke,' writes Catherine in her 
 memoirs, ' for a long time called me Madame la
 
 126 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Ressource, and, however vexed he might be with 
 me, if ever he found himself in distress on any 
 point, he came running to me at full speed, to 
 have my advice, and, as soon as he had it, he 
 would dash away again at full speed.' 
 
 As for Elizabeth, worn out by an irregular life, 
 haunted by terrors which will not allow her to 
 sleep two nights following in the same room, and 
 which have caused her to search through all her 
 empire for a man sufficiently slumber-proof to 
 watch all night by her bedside without dozing, 
 she is now only the shadow of herself. 
 
 ' This princess,' writes the Marquis de 1'Hopital, 
 under date January 6th, 1759, 'has sunk into a 
 singular state of superstition. She remains whole 
 hours before an image for which she has great 
 devotion ; she talks to it, consults it ; she comes 
 to the opera at eleven, sups at one, and goes to 
 bed at five. Count Chouvalof is the man in 
 favour. His family have taken possession of the 
 Empress ; and affairs go as God wills.' 
 
 This new favourite, Ivan Chouvalof, does not 
 fear to awaken the jealousy and the anger of 
 the Empress by paying, under her very eyes, 
 assiduous court to the Grand Duchess, who is now 
 the observed of all. He covets 'the double post,' 
 declares the Baron de Breteuil, ' dangerous as it 
 is.' From the year 1757 the Marquis de 1'Hopital 
 is alarmed and scandalised to see the young court 
 (and the young court, politically speaking, is 
 Catherine) 'break a lance openly with the Em- 
 press, establish a sort of counter- cabal.' ' They 
 say, 'he observes, 'that the Empress has given 
 up objecting to anything, and leaves them free 
 course.' About the same time, in a conversation
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 127 
 
 in which all the foreign ministers take part, the 
 Grand Duchess, speaking to the ambassador of 
 the King in reference to her love of riding, cries : 
 ' There is not a bolder^ woman than I ; I am 
 perfectly reckless.' D'Eon, who saw her then, 
 thus depicts her : 
 
 ' The Grand Duchess is romantic, ardent, pas- 
 sionate ; her eyes are brilliant, their look fasci- 
 nating, glassy, like those of a wild beast. Her 
 brow is high, and, if I mistake not, there is a 
 long and awful future written on that brow. 
 She is kind and affable, but, when she comes 
 near me, I draw back with a movement which I 
 cannot control. She frightens me.' 
 
 She frightens, indeed, and fascinates a wider 
 and wider circle, making of these persons the 
 slaves of her will, of her ambition, of her passions, 
 now from day to day more ardent. Nor is it 
 only in the domain of politics that she begins to 
 find elbow-room, and if, in one respect, the young 
 court resembles a stormy sea, as the Marquis de 
 1'Hopital would have it, the Baron de Breteuil 
 sees in it, no doubt, a certain resemblance with 
 the Pare aux Cerfs. Licence is everywhere the 
 order of the day, during these last years of the 
 reign of Elizabeth. In March 1755 the Saxon 
 Minister, Funcke, gives an account of the repre- 
 sentation at the Imperial Theatre of a Russian 
 opera, Cephale and Procris. Elizabeth is present, 
 the Grand Duke, and all the court ; and it is 
 simply the court, with all its depravities, which is 
 put on the stage, in a series of tableaux so revolt- 
 ing that the good Funcke is obliged to draw a 
 veil over them. To this same year belongs the 
 following episode (told in Catherine's memoirs),
 
 128 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 which opens a new chapter in the history of 
 her private life, that of nocturnal rambles, which 
 render entirely illusory the pretence of surveil- 
 lance still exercised over her. In the course of 
 the winter, Lev Narychkine, who, faithful to his 
 buffooning instincts, is accustomed to mew like a 
 cat at the Grand Duchess's door, to announce his 
 presence, makes the familiar signal one evening, 
 just as Catherine is on the point of going to bed. 
 He is admitted, and proposes to go and see the 
 wife of his elder brother, Anna Nikitichna, who 
 is ill. 'When?' 'To-night.' 'You are mad!' 
 ' I am quite collected ; nothing is easier.' And 
 he explains his project, and the precaution to be 
 taken. They will pass through the Grand 
 Duke's apartments ; he will never notice them, 
 as he will certainly be at table with some jolly 
 boon-companions, if he is not already under the 
 table. There is not the least risk. He puts 
 it so convincingly that Catherine hesitates no 
 longer. She has herself undressed and put to 
 bed by la l/ludislavova, while at the same time 
 she gives orders to a Calmuck whom she has 
 always at hand, and whom she has trained to a 
 blind obedience, to procure for her a suit of men's 
 clothes. As soon as la Vladislavova has gone, 
 she gets up, and goes off with Lev Narychkine. 
 They arrive without difficulty at Anna Nikit- 
 ichna's, whom they find in good health and in 
 gay company. They have a delightful time, and 
 all promise to meet again. They soon do, and 
 Poniatowski, naturally, is of the company. Some- 
 times they return on foot through the most ill- 
 famed streets of St. Petersburg. Then, when 
 the winter has become too severe, they find
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 129 
 
 means to renew their pleasures without exposing 
 the Grand Duchess to the inclement nights, 
 and the jolly party ends by transporting itself 
 to the Empress's bedroom, always through the 
 apartments of the Grand Duke, who suspects 
 nothing. 
 
 After her second confinement, the nights not 
 being enough for her, Catherine arranges to 
 receive during the day whenever, whoever, and 
 in what manner soever she pleases. Of late she 
 has suffered somewhat from the cold ; she there- 
 upon seizes the pretext for arranging by her bed- 
 side, by means of an assemblage of screens, a 
 sort of little retreat, where she will be properly 
 screened from the draught. Here she gives 
 frequent hospitality to select visitors, such as 
 Lev Narychkine or Count Poniatowski. The 
 latter comes and goes in a great blond wig, which 
 renders him unrecognisable, and if on the way 
 he is stopped with ' Who goes there ? ' he 
 answers, ' The Grand Duke's musician.' The 
 'cabinet,' due to the inventive spirit of Catherine, 
 is so ingeniously constructed that she is able, 
 without quitting her bed, to put herself into com- 
 munication with those who are there, or, by 
 drawing one of the curtains of the bed, to hide 
 them entirely from view. One day, while the 
 two Narychkines, Poniatowski, and some others 
 are hidden behind this protecting curtain, she 
 receives Count Chouvalof, who comes to see her 
 on behalf of the Empress, and who leaves her 
 without the least suspicion that she was not 
 alone. When Chouvalof has gone, Catherine 
 declares that she is terribly hungry, orders six 
 dishes, and, sending away the servants, she has 
 
 I
 
 130 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 supper with her friends. Then she draws the 
 curtain again, and, summoning the servants to 
 take away the plates, she amuses herself with 
 their astonishment at the sight of this extra- 
 ordinary voracity. 
 
 Doubtless her maids of honour are well aware 
 of what is going on. But they have other things 
 to do than to be concerned about it. They have 
 their own daily and nightly visitors. To reach 
 their rooms, it is true, they have to pass through 
 that of their gouvernante, Mme. Schmidt, or 
 that of the Princess of Courland, honorary 
 directress of the establishment. But Mme. 
 Schmidt, ill nearly every night with the in- 
 digestion that she has given herself during the 
 day, generally leaves the coast clear. As for the 
 Princess of Courland, she has a weakness herself 
 for a good-looking man. The Grand Duke's rela- 
 tions with her we have already seen. Neverthe- 
 less, on the news that his wife is again enceinte, 
 Peter has a momentary fit of ill humour. He 
 does not remember being responsible for it. 
 'God knows where she gets them,' he grumbles 
 one day before the whole table ; ' I don't at all 
 know that the child is mine, and yet I shall have 
 to take the responsibility.' Lev Narychkine, who 
 is present, hastens to report the remark to 
 Catherine. She is not at all concerned. ' You 
 are children,' she says, shrugging her shoulders. 
 ' Go and find him, speak sharply to him, and 
 make him swear that he has not slept with his 
 wife for four months. After that, declare that 
 you will report the fact to Count Alexander 
 Chouvalof, the Grand Inquisitor of the Empire.' 
 She thus calls the head of the terrible 'secret
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 131 
 
 chancellorship,' which in our days has been re- 
 placed by the famous third section. Lev Narych- 
 kine faithfully executes her commission. ' Go to 
 the devil ! ' replies the Grand Duke, whose mind 
 is not quite easy on the subject. 
 
 But, despite the assurance that she has shown 
 on this occasion, the incident gives some uneasi- 
 ness to Catherine. She sees in it a warning, and 
 a commencement of hostilities in the decisive 
 struggle for which she has for some time been 
 preparing. She accepts the challenge. It is 
 from this moment, if we may believe her, that she 
 forms the resolution to ' follow an independent 
 line,' and we know where these simple words will 
 lead her. The last agony of Peter III. in the 
 sinister house of Ropcha comes at the end of 
 the way she has chosen. But it is at this same 
 moment that she stands face to face with the 
 crisis which in some hours and for some months 
 threatens her with the ruin of all her hopes and 
 all her ambitions. 
 
 On February 26th (i4th, Russian style), 1758, 
 the chancellor Bestoujef was arrested. At 
 the same time field-marshal Apraksyne, com- 
 mandant of the army sent into Prussia against 
 Frederick, was removed from command and 
 brought to trial. These two events, though 
 they had not really a cause in common, seemed, 
 in the eyes of the public, to hang together. We 
 know what had taken place in the course of the 
 last campaign. The capture of Memel and the 
 victory of Gross- Jaegersdorf, achieved by Aprak-
 
 132 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 syne in August 1757, had transported with joy 
 the allies of Russia, and awakened in their minds 
 the liveliest hopes. Already they saw Frederick 
 lost and at bay, begging for mercy. Suddenly, 
 instead of pushing forward and profiting by its 
 advantages, the victorious army abandoned its 
 position and beat a retreat so precipitately that 
 one would have thought the roles, to be reversed, 
 and the Prussian troops, instead of having re- 
 ceived a bloody defeat, to have won another 
 triumph. A great cry of indignation arose in 
 the camp of Frederick's enemies. Evidently 
 Apraksyne had betrayed them. But why ? It was 
 known that he was an intimate friend of Bestoujef. 
 It was known, too, that the Grand Duchess 
 had written to him several times by the means 
 and at the suggestion of the chancellor. That 
 was quite enough. Evidently the field-marshal 
 had carried out a plan concocted by the friends, 
 new or old, of Prussia and England. Bestoujef, 
 bought by Frederick, had won over Catherine, 
 whose relations with Williams and Poniatowski 
 rendered her only too likely to be so influenced, 
 and between them both they had induced the 
 victorious general to sacrifice his own glory, 
 the interests of the common cause, and the 
 honour of his flag. France especially was con- 
 vinced of this. The Comte de Stainville, am- 
 bassador of the King at Vienna, was instructed 
 to propose a common application to Elizabeth 
 for the dismissal of Bestoujef. Kaunitz reflected, 
 and finally declined the proposition. He had, 
 meanwhile, received information from St. Peters- 
 burg which cleared Bestoujef and Catherine. 
 The representative of the court of Vienna at
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 133 
 
 St. Petersburg, Esterhazy, did not believe them 
 culpable. The Marquis de 1'Hopital was alone 
 in supporting the accusation. He supported it 
 to the very end. During the inquiry against the 
 ex-chancellor, he wrote : 
 
 ' This first minister had found means to win over 
 the Grand Duke and Duchess to use their influence 
 with Apraksyne to hinder him from acting as 
 vigorously and promptly as the Empress ordered 
 him to do. These plots were made under her 
 Majesty's very eyes ; but as her health was then 
 very uncertain, she was entirely taken up with it, 
 whilst the whole court was at the disposition 
 of the Grand Duke, and especially the Grand 
 Duchess, who was gained over by the chevalier 
 Williams and by English money, with which this 
 ambassador supplied her by means of her jeweller 
 Bernardi, who has confessed all. The Grand 
 Duchess had the indiscretion, not to say temerity, 
 to write a letter to General Apraksyne, in wh ; ch 
 she dispensed him from the oath that he had 
 made to her not to bring the army into the field, 
 and giving him permission to put it in action. 
 M. de Bestoujef, having one day shown this 
 letter to M. de Bucow, lieutenant-general of the 
 Empress, who had come to St. Petersburg to push 
 forward the operations of the Russian army, this 
 officer immediately informed M. de Vorontsof, 
 the chamberlain Schwalof, and M. le Comte 
 Esterhazy. This was the first step in M. de 
 Bestoujefs ruin.' 
 
 It is almost certain that if the conduct of the 
 chancellor, as well as that of Catherine, appeared 
 somewhat dubious in regard to this circumstance, 
 they had neither of them any hand in the retreat
 
 134 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of Apraksyne's army. Catherine took some 
 trouble to clear her conduct and that of her sup- 
 posed accomplice from all suspicion, and she did 
 so at a time when she need not have minded 
 confessing the truth. The movements of the 
 Russian army after the victory of Gross-Jaegers- 
 dorf were made in consequence of three councils 
 of war, held on the 27th August and the i3th and 
 28th September. General Fermor, who suc- 
 ceeded Apraksyne in command, had been present 
 at these councils, and had voted for the retreat. 
 The army was dying of hunger, and Apraksyne 
 had foreseen that it would be so. The partisans 
 of the Austrian alliance had urged it forward 
 without thinking of providing it with food. 
 Those about Elizabeth, too, had cried, heed- 
 lessly enough, 'A Berlin ! a Berlin ! ' But it 
 was thought well to give satisfaction to the 
 clamours of the Austro- French party by sacri- 
 ficing the marshal. As for Bestoujef, his ruin 
 had long been decided on, and the disgrace of 
 Apraksyne was but a pretext to hasten his. 
 The chancellor's enemies had got scent of his 
 project for eventually associating Catherine with 
 the government of the empire. They insinuated 
 to Elizabeth that among the minister's papers 
 would be found some endangering the safety 
 of her crown. That decided her. 
 
 Imagine the terror of Catherine on learning of 
 this formidable event ! Would she not seem to 
 be the accomplice of the minister who had come 
 to his downfall on an accusation of a definite 
 state crime? Her letters to Apraksyne were 
 nothing. But the great project which had been 
 formed on her behalf, what a menace seemed
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 135 
 
 to be suspended above her head! The prison, 
 torture perhaps ; and afterwards, what sort of 
 disgrace ? the convent ? dismissal to Germany ? 
 who knows, perhaps Siberia ? A cold shiver ran 
 through her veins. This is what all her dreams 
 were to end in ! 
 
 But she soon took heart again. At this tragic 
 moment we see her rise to the occasion, strong 
 and resolute, calm and full of resources ; just as 
 a near future was to show her, when, having done 
 violence to fortune and snatched the supreme 
 power, she was to weave out of the bloody vest- 
 ments of Peter III. the most magnificent imperial 
 mantle that woman has ever borne. Her edu- 
 cation is done ; she is now in full possession of 
 all her gifts, natural and acquired, of one of the 
 most marvellous intellectual and physical organi- 
 sations that have ever been made for combat, 
 for the conduct of affairs, and for the government 
 of men and things. She has not a moment's 
 hesitation. She faces the danger resolutely. 
 The day after the chancellor's arrest there is 
 a state ball, in honour of the marriage of Lev 
 Narychkine. Catherine appears at the ball. 
 She is smiling and unaffectedly gay. The 
 charge of the trial which is on foot has been 
 confided to three high dignitaries of the empire, 
 Count Chouvalof, Count Boutourline, and Prince 
 Troubetzkoi'. Catherine goes up to the last- 
 named. ' What are these fine affairs that I have 
 heard of? ' says she playfully. ' Have you found 
 more crimes than criminals, or more criminals 
 than crimes?' Surprised by such aplomb, Trou- 
 betzkoi stammers out some excuse or other. 
 He and his colleagues have done what they
 
 136 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 have been told to do. They have interrogated 
 the supposed criminals. As for the crimes, they 
 have yet to be found. Somewhat reassured, 
 Catherine goes on to gather further information. 
 ' Bestoujef is arrested,' says Boutourline simply ; 
 ' we have now to find out why.' 
 
 So nothing has yet been discovered, and it is 
 Catherine who, interrogating the two inquisitors of 
 Elizabeth, and listening to their replies, has made 
 a discovery. In their embarrassed air, in their 
 eyes that dare not meet her own, she has divined 
 the fear that she inspires already. Some hours 
 later she breathes yet more freely : the Holstein 
 minister Stampke has brought her a note from 
 Bestoujef himself bearing these words : ' Have 
 no fear in regard to that you know of; I have 
 had time to burn all.' The old fox was not to 
 be caught in the snare. Catherine can thus go 
 forward without fear. The time is past when, 
 counselled by Madame Kruse, one of her maids 
 of honour, she had replied to the least reproach 
 of the Empress, ' Vinovata matouchka (I am in 
 the wrong, little mother),' which produced, it 
 seems, a marvellous effect. The Marquis de 
 1'Hopital, whose advice she seeks, no doubt in 
 order that she may put him on the wrong scent, 
 recommends her to make full confession to the 
 Empress. She is far enough from doing that ! 
 To begin with, she makes use of Stampke, of 
 Poniatowski, her valet de chambre Chkourine, 
 to keep up an active correspondence with Bes- 
 toujef and the other prisoners implicated in the 
 accusation against him, the jeweller Bernardi, 
 the Russian master, Adadourof, and lelaguine, 
 a friend of Poniatowski. A little servant, who is
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 137 
 
 allowed to look after the ex-chancellor, leaves and 
 takes the letters from a heap of bricks used as 
 a letter-box, which serves also a double purpose, 
 for the love-correspondence with Poniatowski 
 is carried on by the same means. The Pole 
 gives her a rendezvous for the evening at the 
 opera, and Catherine promises to be there with- 
 out fail, cofite que coute. She finds it no easy 
 matter to keep her word, for at the last moment 
 the Grand Duke, who has made his own plans 
 for the evening, and who does not wish to have 
 them upset by his wife going out with her maids 
 of honour, especially one of them, the Freiline 
 Vorontsof, puts in an objection. He goes so 
 far as to countermand the orders that the Grand 
 Duchess has given, and forbids the horses to be 
 put in the carriage. Catherine declares that 
 she will go to the theatre if she has to go on 
 foot ; but first she will write to the Empress 
 to complain of the ill-treatment of the Grand 
 Duke, and to ask permission to go back to her 
 parents in Germany. Just this a forced, humili- 
 ating return to her native country, to a narrow 
 horizon, to mediocrity, to the misery of the 
 domestic hearth is of all things what she now 
 fears the most. Where, even, could she return ? 
 Her father is no more ; she had mourned his 
 death in 1747. She had even been hindered 
 from mourning it too long; she had been told 
 at the end of a week that that was enough, and 
 that the deceased not having worn a crown, 
 etiquette did not allow her a longer mourning. 
 As for her mother, she herself had had to leave 
 Germany, in consequence of a well-known inci- 
 dent, which had brought about the occupation of
 
 138 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 the Duchy of Zerbst by Frederick. In August 
 1757 the Abb de Bernis had sent a special 
 emissary to Zerbst, the Marquis de Fraignes, 
 ' with the view of inspiring, in the mind of 
 Madame la Grande- Duchesse of Russia, through 
 Madame la Princesse de Zerbst, her mother, the 
 desired feelings.' Frederick, hearing of the 
 presence in his neighbourhood of a French 
 officer, ordered a detachment of his huzzars to 
 capture him. Surprised in his sleep, de 
 Fraignes made a spirited defence. He barri- 
 caded himself in his room, shot the first Prussian 
 who crossed the threshold, roused the entire 
 town, and was saved, and taken to the castle. 
 Frederick, who would not be thus balked, sent 
 a whole corps of soldiers with cannon to besiege 
 the refractory Frenchman. De Fraignes at last 
 gave in. The Duchy and town of Zerbst had 
 to pay the expenses of the war. The reigning 
 Duke, who was now the brother of Catherine, 
 sought refuge at Hamburg. The mother took 
 shelter in Paris, where, though she seemed to 
 have suffered for France, and to some extent 
 through it, she was not welcomed. Her liking 
 for intrigue and her restless spirit were feared, 
 though it seemed useful, all the same, to have 
 in her a sort of surety, and a powerful hold upon 
 the Grand Duchess. But it is precisely this 
 which alarmed people at St. Petersburg. On 
 the demand of the vice-chancellor Vorontsof, 
 1'Hopital had to beg that the princess should be 
 sent back. The reply was, naturally, that she had 
 not been asked to come, that, had it been thought 
 of, she would have been detained at Brussels, 
 but that she could not be turned away, now that
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 139 
 
 she was there, without gravely offending the 
 Grand Duchess, and even without doing wrong 
 to France: 'for France,' wrote de Bernis nobly, 
 ' has always been the refuge of unhappy princes. 
 The Princess of Zerbst, who has suffered partly 
 by reason of her devotion to the king, has more 
 right to it than most.' 
 
 Where then would Catherine go if she were 
 to leave Russia ? To Paris ? Assuredly Eliza- 
 beth would never consent to lengthen the list 
 of unhappy princes domiciled in France by 
 adding to it a Grand Duchess of Russia. But 
 the more impossible it appeared to Catherine, 
 the more she felt emboldened to beg for it. 
 Elizabeth, on her side, is in no haste to respond 
 to this embarrassing request. She sends word 
 to the Grand Duchess that she will have a per- 
 sonal explanation with her. Days and weeks 
 pass. The examination of Bestoujef and his 
 supposed accomplices goes on apace, and, if 
 one may believe the Marquis de 1'Hopital, who 
 follows feverishly the course of affairs, every day 
 new proofs are discovered of his culpability, with- 
 out, however, the opportunity of bringing in a 
 sufficiently definite act of accusation to allow of 
 a trial. 
 
 Finally Catherine carries the day by main 
 force. One night the Empress's chaplain is 
 awakened with the news that the Grand Duchess 
 is very ill, and desires to confess herself. He 
 goes, and allows himself to be convinced of the 
 necessity of giving the alarm to the Czarina. 
 Elizabeth is frightened, and agrees to what had 
 been asked : for the sake of Catherine's health 
 an interview must be granted, and she grants it.
 
 140 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Of this meeting we know only what Catherine 
 has told us herself. Forty years afterwards her 
 memory may well have deceived her in a few 
 details, and this remark applies to the whole of 
 her autobiography, from which we have, up to 
 now, made numerous excerpts, and from which 
 we must now, unhappily, cease to borrow ; for the 
 memoirs stop at this exact point. There is no 
 trace, however, of arrangement or straining after 
 effect in these pages ; the narrative rises without 
 preparation and without apparent effort to the 
 most intensely dramatic point. One sees the 
 scene of the interview : the Empress's dressing- 
 room, a vast apartment bathed in semi-obscurity, 
 for it is the evening. At one end, like an altar, 
 the table of white marble before which the 
 Empress passes long hours, seeking the fled 
 dream of her former beauty, shines in the shadow, 
 its heavy ewers and basins of fine gold shedding 
 dull gleams. In one of these basins the sharp 
 eyes of Catherine, attracted by a streak of light, 
 observe a roll of paper, which the hand of the 
 Empress has evidently just thrown there. It is, 
 she feels sure, the incriminating papers her 
 correspondence with Bestoujef and Apraksyne. 
 From behind a screen comes a stifled murmur of 
 voices : she recognises them. Her husband is 
 there, and also Alexander Chouvalof ; doubtless 
 as witnesses. At last Elizabeth appears, frigid in 
 manner, brief in speech, her eyes hard and cold. 
 Catherine throws herself at her feet. Without 
 giving the Empress time to commence her ex- 
 amination, she renews the request she has already 
 made in writing : that she may be allowed to 
 return to her mother. She has tears in her voice :
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 141 
 
 it is the sorrowful complaint of a child whom 
 strangers have ill-used, and who cries to go back 
 to its own people. Elizabeth is surprised, and 
 somewhat embarrassed. 
 
 'How shall I explain your departure?' she 
 says. 
 
 ' By saying that I have had the misfortune to 
 offend your majesty/ 
 
 ' But how will you live ? ' 
 
 'As I did before your Majesty deigned to 
 summon me hither.' 
 
 ' But your mother has had to leave her home. 
 She is at Paris, as you know.' 
 
 4 In truth she has called on herself the hate of 
 the King of Prussia through her love for Russia.' 
 
 The answer is triumphant. Every word tells. 
 The embarrassment of the Czarina increases 
 visibly. She endeavours, however, to reassume 
 the offensive ; she reproaches the young woman 
 with her excessive pride. Once, in the Summer 
 Palace, she had been obliged to ask her if she 
 had a stiff neck, so difficult did she seem to find 
 it to incline her head before the Empress. The 
 conversation thus turns to a vulgar quarrel of 
 wounded self-esteem. Catherine makes herself 
 humbler and smaller than a blade of grass. She 
 has no recollection of the incident that her Majesty 
 would recall to her mind. Doubtless she is too 
 stupid to have understood the words that her 
 Majesty deigned to address to her. But her 
 eyes those wild beast's eyes of which d'Eon 
 speaks are fixed glitteringly upon the Empress. 
 To avoid the look before which Troubetzkoi and 
 Boutourline have trembled, Elizabeth goes to the 
 other end of the room and speaks to the Grand
 
 142 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Duke. Catherine listens. Peter profits by the 
 occasion to make accusations against his wife, 
 whom he fancies already condemned. In violent 
 terms he denounces her wickedness and ob- 
 stinacy. Catherine flares up : ' I am wicked, I 
 know,' she cries, in a ringing voice ; ' I am and I 
 ever will be against those who deal unjustly with 
 me. Yes, I am obstinate with you, since I have 
 learnt that one gains nothing by giving way 
 to your caprices ! ' 
 
 ' You see now ! ' says the Grand Duke trium- 
 phantly, addressing the Empress. But the 
 Empress is silent She has again met the look 
 of Catherine, she has heard the ring of her voice, 
 and she too is afraid. Once more she endeavours 
 to intimidate the young woman. She orders her 
 to avow the culpable relations that she has had 
 with Bestoujef and Apraksyne ; to admit that she 
 has written other letters to the latter besides those 
 which have been found. On her refusal, she 
 threatens to put the ex-chancellor to the torture. 
 'As it pleases your Majesty,' replies Catherine 
 coldly. Elizabeth is overcome. She changes 
 her tone ; puts on a confidential air ; intimates to 
 Catherine by a gesture that she cannot speak to 
 her openly before the Grand Duke and Chouvalof. 
 Catherine is prompt to seize the indication. 
 Lowering her voice, she says, in a humble 
 murmur, that she longs to open all her heart and 
 mind to the Empress. Elizabeth is touched, 
 and sheds a few tears. Catherine does the same. 
 Peter and Chouvalof are astounded. To put an 
 end to the scene, the Empress points out that it 
 is very late. As a matter of fact it is three 
 o'clock in the morning. Catherine retires, but
 
 THE YOUNG COURT 143 
 
 before she has had time to go to bed, Alexander 
 Chouvalof comes to her from the Empress, to 
 bid her be of good courage, and to announce to 
 her that she shall have another interview shortly 
 with her Majesty. A few days after, the vice- 
 chancellor in person is sent to her by Elizabeth 
 to beg her to think no more of returning to 
 Germany. At last, on the 23rd of May 1758, 
 the two women meet again, and part apparently 
 enchanted with one another. Catherine weeps 
 once more, but it is tears of joy that flow from 
 her eyes, ' as she thinks of all the benefits that 
 the Empress has conferred upon her.' Her 
 victory is complete and decisive. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 
 
 AFTER the departure of Williams and Ponia- 
 towski, after the fall of Bestoujef, Catherine found 
 herself severed from all those with whom the 
 chances of her destiny had brought her most in 
 contact since her arrival in Russia. Zahar Tcher- 
 nichef was always in the field ; Sergius Saltykof 
 lived at Hamburg in a sort of exile. In April 
 1759 she lost her daughter. In the following 
 year her mother died at Paris (none too soon, it 
 must be said), and with her the last link was 
 broken that attached her to the country of her 
 birth. But in Russia she had no more isolation
 
 144 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 to fear. Williams had been replaced by Keith, 
 and Keith, it is true, applied himself with greater 
 diligence to win the favour of the Grand Duke. 
 Contrary to his predecessor, he found Peter quite 
 efficient in the role that he intended him to play, 
 a simple role of reporter and spy. Peter showed 
 himself perfect in the part. His perverse mind 
 made him find a malicious pleasure in this base 
 occupation. Ere long the services that he rendered 
 to England and Prussia, to which Frederick gave 
 a word of grateful remembrance in his History of 
 the Seven Years War, were of public notoriety 
 at St. Petersburg. This did not, however, pre- 
 vent Keith from making himself useful to the 
 Grand Duchess, and, like Williams, lending her 
 money. 
 
 Poniatowski, too, had been replaced. In the 
 spring of 1759 there came to St. Petersburg 
 Count Schwerin, aide-de-camp of the King of 
 Prussia, who had been taken prisoner at the 
 battle of Zorndorf (August 25, 1758). He was 
 treated as a distinguished stranger who had come 
 to pay a visit to the capital. As a mere matter 
 of form, two officers were appointed to have him 
 in charge. One of these officers had signally- 
 distinguished himself at Zorndorf, where he had 
 received three wounds without leaving his post. 
 He had the fatalistic courage of the East. He 
 believed in his destiny. He was right : it was 
 Gregory Orlof. There were five brothers in the 
 Guards. Tall as his brother Alexis, endowed 
 like him with herculean strength, Gregory Orlof 
 excelled them all by the beauty of his calm 
 regular face. He was handsomer than Ponia- 
 towski, handsomer even than Sergius Saltykof, a
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 145 
 
 giant with the face of an angel. There was 
 nothing else angelic about him, however. Of 
 small intelligence and no education, living the 
 ordinary life of his companions-at-arms, but living 
 it a outrance, passing his time in gambling, drink- 
 ing, and paying court to brunette and blonde, 
 always ready to pick a quarrel, and to knock 
 down any one who opposed him, ready to run 
 any danger, and to stake his fortune on the cast 
 of the die, the more so as he had nothing to lose, 
 always having the air of being half intoxicated, 
 even when by chance he had taken nothing, 
 insatiable of every sort of pleasure, ready to go 
 blindfolded into any adventure, his whole life a 
 sort of madness ; such was the man who was now 
 to enter into the life of the future Empress, and, 
 still mingling politics and love, to hold for so 
 long the second, if not the first place in her mind 
 and heart The first place was for ambition. 
 The traits we have indicated do not make pre- 
 cisely a romantic hero, but there was nothing in 
 them to scandalise Catherine. She too, all her 
 life, loved adventures, and consequently she was 
 far from disliking adventurers. The ' headlong 
 recklessness ' that she one day indicated in herself 
 to the Marquis de 1'Hopital, went well with that 
 of Gregory Orlof. More than beauty, more than 
 wit, he possessed a charm which for long was in 
 the eyes of Catherine the most powerful charm 
 of all, which exercised over her a kind of fascina- 
 tion, which at one time attracted her in Patiom- 
 kine, and which chained her for years to the 
 uncouth person of this cyclops : ' he had a devil.' 
 Konigsberg, where he had lived in garrison, 
 long kept the legend of his prowess as a viveur.
 
 146 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 He began to form the same reputation at St. 
 Petersburg, where in 1 760 he received the envied 
 post of aide-de-camp of the General Grand 
 Master of Artillery. The post was occupied by 
 Count P. J. Chouvalof, cousin-german of the all- 
 powerful favourite of Elizabeth. This helped to 
 bring Orlof forward. Chouvalof had a mistress, 
 Princess Helen Kourakine, whose beauty was 
 the talk of St. Petersburg. Orlof became the 
 rival of his new chief, and carried the day. This 
 drew all eyes upon him, Catherine's among the 
 rest. But he was near paying dear for his 
 triumph. Chouvalof was not the man to pardon 
 an injury of the sort. The confidence that Orlof 
 had in his lucky star was not at fault : Chouvalof 
 died before he had time to avenge himself, and 
 Catherine continued to interest herself in the 
 adventures of this young man who risked his 
 head in turning that of a fair princess. It hap- 
 pened that he lived just opposite the Winter 
 Palace. This too helped in bringing Orlof and 
 Catherine together. 
 
 This officer, so full of charm and assurance, 
 was naturally an influential man in the milieu in 
 which he lived. And this milieu was to have a 
 main importance for a Grand Duchess of Russia, 
 who was determined ' to follow an independent 
 line.' In her memoirs, Catherine returns again 
 and again to the earnest desire that she professes 
 to have had from the first to conciliate the good 
 will of an element that she feels to be the true 
 and only support of her position in Russia. This 
 element she calls the Russian 'public.' She is 
 for ever concerned about what this ' public ' will 
 say or think of her. She tries to win it over to
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 147 
 
 her side. She would fain accustom it to rely on 
 her in case of need, in order that she may rely on 
 it in turn. This is a form of speech which is 
 enough to inspire doubt concerning the authen- 
 ticity of the document in which we find it. At 
 the time when Catherine is supposed to have 
 written out these confidences, she not merely 
 paid small heed to this element of which she 
 thought so much thirty years before, she had 
 even had time to find out that it did not exist in 
 Russia, at least in this acceptation, and with so 
 well-defined a place of its own. Where could a 
 ' public ' of this kind, that is to say, a social col- 
 lectivity, endowed with will and intelligence, 
 susceptible of thinking and acting in common, 
 have been found in the Russia of that time ? 
 Nothing of the kind was to be seen. Above, 
 there was a group of functionaries and of courtiers, 
 religiously subjected to all the degrees of the 
 tchtne and to all the steps of human baseness, 
 trembling at a look, annihilated by a gesture ; 
 below, the people, that is to say, a quantity of 
 muscular forces capable of being put to drudgery, 
 the souls only taken into account in the adding 
 up of units for an inventory ; between both, 
 nothing, except the clergy, a considerable power, 
 but little accessible, little manageable, more likely 
 to act de haut en has than de bas en kaut, in no 
 way to be utilised for political ends. It was not 
 any of these that had supported Elizabeth, that 
 had placed her on the throne. Something there 
 was, nevertheless, that had done so, something 
 which was strong and which could act on occa- 
 sion, apart from all these : the army. 
 
 Catherine loved Gregory Orlof for his beauty,
 
 143 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 his courage, his giant's build, his audacity, his 
 recklessness. She loved him also for the four 
 regiments that he and his brothers seemed to 
 hold in the hollow of their hands. He, on his 
 part, did not linger long at the feet of the Princess 
 Kourakine. He was not the man to keep from 
 lifting his eyes higher, especially when they rnet 
 with such encouraging smiles. He was not the 
 man, either, to make a mystery of his new 
 amours. He had published the name of the 
 Princess without caring what the Grand Master 
 of Artillery would say to it ; he published the 
 name of the Grand Duchess with equal com- 
 posure. Peter said nothing : he was otherwise 
 occupied. Elizabeth said nothing : she was dying. 
 Catherine let him act as he pleased : she was not 
 averse to having her name associated in the 
 barracks with that of the fine Orlof, whom the 
 officers adored, and for whom the men would 
 have gone through fire. Later, in 1762, she 
 wrote to Poniatowski, ' Osten remembers seeing 
 Orlof follow me about everywhere and commit a 
 thousand follies ; his passion for me was public 
 property.' 
 
 She was well pleased to be followed about. 
 After Poniatowski, this violent and headstrong 
 soudard must doubtless have seemed to her a 
 little strong in flavour. But she was not Rus- 
 sified for nothing. The taste, the necessity even, 
 of such contrasts was a part of the temperament 
 of this people, which but yesterday had acquired 
 a precocious civilisation, which had become her 
 own people, with whom she little by little as- 
 similated herself, taking their very inmost nature 
 for her own. After a few months passed in the
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 149 
 
 most cunning refinements of the most luxurious 
 ease, Patiomkine threw himself into a kibitka, 
 and covered nearly 2000 miles without stopping, 
 without anything to eat but raw onions. Catherine 
 did not travel by kibitka, but in love, certainly, 
 she was ready to go from one extreme to another. 
 After Patiomkine, who was a savage, she found 
 charm in Mamonof, whom the Prince de Ligne 
 himself considered well-bred. The sheer brutal 
 passion of the Russian lieutenant gave her a 
 change after the wire-drawn love-making of the 
 Polish diplomatist. 
 
 Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Parisian society 
 were not, however, forgotten. It is at this time, 
 in 1762, that she made friends with the afterwards 
 celebrated and troublesome Princess Dachkof. 
 She was the youngest of the three daughters of 
 Count Roman Vorontsof, brother of the vice- 
 chancellor. The eldest, Marie, had married 
 Count Boutourline. The second, Elizabeth, 
 dreamt of marrying the Grand Duke. She was 
 the favourite. The Empress had jestingly named 
 her Madame de Pompadour, and every one at 
 court called her by this name. The third, 
 Catherine, was fifteen years of age when, in 
 1758, the Grand Duchess met her in the house 
 of Count Michael Vorontsof, her uncle. She 
 did not know a word of Russian, spoke only 
 French, and had read all the books in that 
 language that she could meet with in St. Peters- 
 burg. Catherine was immensely taken with her 
 Having married Prince Dachkof shortly after, 
 she followed him to Moscow, and Catherine lost 
 sight of her for two years. In 1761 she returned 
 to St. Petersburg, and passed the summer of
 
 l$o CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 that year in a datcha belonging to her uncle 
 Vorontsof, situated midway between Peterhof, 
 where the Empress was residing, and Oranien- 
 baum, the usual residence of the Grand Duke 
 and Duchess during the hot weather. Every 
 Sunday Catherine went over to Peterhof to see 
 her son, whom the Empress would not give up. 
 On the way back she would stop at th.e Voront- 
 sof datcha, and carry off her young friend for 
 the rest of the day. They discussed philosophy, 
 history, and literature, and the gravest scientific 
 and social problems. Perhaps they sometimes 
 chanced upon gayer subjects ; but with these 
 two young women, one of whom was scarcely 
 thirty, and the other not yet twenty, gaiety 
 was a rare visitor. The Grand Duchess had 
 grave cares at the time, and the Princess Dachkof 
 was always a very serious person. Later on, 
 her society became less agreeable to Catherine, 
 and ended by becoming absolutely insupportable. 
 But just then the future Semiramis was very glad 
 to find some one with whom she could talk of 
 things of which Orlof understood nothing. It 
 pleased her, also, to find in the mind of a Russian 
 some glimmer, however pale, of that Western 
 culture for which she dreamt of making a home 
 in the heart of this immense and barbarous 
 empire. This little person of seventeen, who 
 had read Voltaire, was a fine opportunity ; the 
 firstfruits of the propaganda that she wished 
 to accomplish. And then she was a Russian 
 grande dame, connected by birth and by marriage 
 with two influential families. This too had its 
 importance. Finally, beneath the varnish of an 
 education similar to her own, as heterogeneous
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 151 
 
 and as incomplete, beneath the odds and ends 
 of ideas and the scraps of learning picked up 
 here and there at the chance of hurried reading, 
 Catherine discovered in her friend an ardent and 
 fiery soul, equipped for all hazards. The demon 
 of madness, which shook the athletic frame of 
 her new lover, dwelt also in this frail child. 
 They went hand in hand until the day when the 
 destiny of one of them was decided. 
 
 Neither the acquisition of Orlof nor of this 
 new friend, however, made up for the loss of 
 Bestoujef. The statesman trained in affairs, the 
 man of experience and of wise counsel, called 
 for a successor. A successor was found, Panine. 
 Panine was the political scholar of the ex-chan- 
 cellor. Ten years before, Bestoujef had thought 
 of him as a possible favourite for Elizabeth. 
 Panine was then a handsome young man of 
 twenty-nine, and for some time the Czarina 
 looked upon him with anything but an indifferent 
 eye. The Chouvalofs, who considered the place 
 in question as a sort of patrimony, and who 
 were in league with the Vorontsofs against the 
 supremacy of Bestoujef, got him out of the way. 
 He was sent to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, 
 where he played a somewhat important part in 
 the struggle against French influence. The 
 change of system, which placed Russia and 
 France side by side in the same camp, neces- 
 sitated his recall in 1790. Elizabeth thought of 
 him for the post of tutor to the Grand Duke 
 Paul, which had become vacant on the resig- 
 nation of Behtie'ief. The Chouvalofs did not 
 oppose the choice. After Alexander Chouvalof, 
 after Peter Chouvalof his brother, it was now
 
 152 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Ivan Chouvalof, a cousin, who held the other 
 post, which alone was of consequence. Himself 
 but thirty, he did not fear the competition of 
 Panine, who had aged. 
 
 Cold, methodical, with a certain nonchalance 
 which became more and more marked, Panine 
 was just the man to act as counterpoise to the 
 stormy temperaments of which Catherine formed 
 the centre. His political ideas drew him natur- 
 ally to the side of the Grand Duchess, while 
 they drew him away from the Prussian tendencies 
 of the Grand Duke. Like Bestoujef, he remained 
 Austrian in his sympathies. The strange temper 
 of Peter somewhat terrified him, the more so as 
 he had cause to suffer from it himself. There 
 were discussions, naturally, concerning the event, 
 which seemed to draw nearer and nearer, and 
 which began to occupy all minds, from end to 
 end of Europe. Elizabeth was dying, and her 
 death would be, not only at St. Petersburg, the 
 signal of a political crisis of incalculable import- 
 ance. All the interests concerned in the strife 
 of parties between the great continental powers 
 depended on this near eventuality. After the 
 taking of Colberg (December 1 761), a few months 
 more allowed for the combined action of the 
 Russian and Austrian troops, it was the certain, 
 the inevitable, ruin of Frederick. The vanquished 
 of Gross-Jaegersdorf and of Kiinersdorf had no 
 illusions himself on the point. But it could be 
 equally well predicted that the accession of 
 Peter III. would bring to an end the common 
 campaign against the King of Prussia. 
 
 Panine considered the problem, and seemed 
 inclined to solve it, if not absolutely in favour
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 153 
 
 of Catherine's secret ambitions, at least in such 
 a manner as to protect her interests against the 
 hostile intrigues about the bed of the dying 
 Czarina. According to an apparently serious 
 authority, the Vorontsofs had nothing less in 
 view than to procure the divorce of Catherine, 
 and to proclaim the illegitimate birth of the little 
 Paul. After which the heir of Elizabeth would 
 marry the Freiline Vorontsof. Happily for 
 Catherine, this too ambitious way of arranging 
 things awoke the rival susceptibilities of the 
 Chouvalofs, who, as a counterblast to the project, 
 went to the extent of plotting that Peter should 
 be sent into Germany, and the little Paul im- 
 mediately raised to the throne, with Catherine 
 as his guardian. Between these two opposed 
 camps, Panine adopted a middle plan, declaring 
 himself in favour of letting things follow their 
 natural course, save that a salutary influence in 
 the future government of Elizabeth's nephew 
 should be reserved for Catherine, and, through 
 her, for himself. Catherine listened, and said 
 nothing. She had her own ideas. She also 
 talked over things with the Orlofs. 
 
 ii 
 
 Elizabeth died on the 5th of January 1762, 
 without having made any change in her instruc- 
 tions for the succession of Peter. Had she ever 
 had the intention of changing them ? The 
 matter is uncertain. 
 
 ' The wish and expectation of all,' wrote the 
 Baron de Breteuil in October 1 760, ' is that she
 
 154 CA THERINE 77. OF R USSIA 
 
 will establish on the throne the little Grand Duke, 
 to whom she seems passionately attached.' 
 A month later, he recounted the following : 
 ' The Grand Duke had gone for a couple of 
 days into the country for hunting, and that very 
 day the Empress suddenly ordered that a Russian 
 piece should be played at her theatre, and, con- 
 trary to usage, did not invite the foreign ministers 
 and the other persons at the court who were 
 generally present ; so that she went to the play 
 with only the few people who were in immediate 
 attendance on her. The little Duke accompanied 
 her, and the Grand Duchess, having alone been 
 invited, was also present. Scarcely had the per- 
 formance begun when the Empress complained 
 of the small number of spectators, and she com- 
 manded that all her guard should be admitted. 
 The hall was soon filled with soldiers. Then, 
 according to all reports, the Empress took the 
 little Grand Duke on her knees, caressed him 
 in the most marked manner, and, addressing 
 some of these old grenadiers, to whom she owes 
 all her grandeur, she presented the child to them, 
 so to speak, spoke to them of his good qualities 
 and his charms, and seemed to take pleasure 
 in receiving their military compliments. These 
 performances went on almost all through the play, 
 and the Grand Duchess seemed well pleased.' 
 
 If we may believe the authority that we have 
 cited above, Panine, while seeming to make 
 common cause with the Chouvalofs, must have 
 played them false at the last moment : a monk 
 had been brought by him to the bedside of 
 Elizabeth, who had induced her to make her 
 peace with Peter. It is more probable that
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 155 
 
 Elizabeth could not make up her mind, or not 
 in time. She had come to detest her nephew, 
 but she loved her peace of mind above all. 
 Her death, which had been expected for years, 
 left room for the hypothesis of a revolution 
 which would supply the place of her will, 
 weakened as it was by debauch. The Baron 
 de Breteuil wrote : 
 
 ' When I look at the hate of the nation for 
 the Grand Duke, and the errors of this prince, 
 I am tempted to imagine an entire revolution ; 
 but when I observe the base and pusillanimous 
 air of those who are on the point of raising the 
 mask, I see fear and servile obedience come 
 into play with the same tranquillity as at the 
 Empress's usurpation.' 
 
 This is precisely what happened. If we 
 may believe Williams, Catherine had planned 
 five years before the part that she was to play 
 by the dying bed of Elizabeth. ' I shall go 
 straight,' she said, ' to the room of my son ; if 
 I meet Alexis Razoumofski I will leave him 
 with my little Paul ; if not, I will take the 
 child into my own room. At the same time 
 I shall send a trusty messenger to summon 
 five officers of the Guard, each of whom 
 will bring fifty soldiers, and I shall send for 
 Bestoujef, Apraksyne, and Lieven. I shall go 
 into the death-chamber, where I shall receive 
 the oath of the captain of the Guard, and I shall 
 take him with me. If I see the least hesitation, 
 I shall lay hands on the Chouvalofs.' She 
 added that she had already had an interview 
 with the hetman Cyril Razoumofski, and that 
 he answered for his regiment, and engaged to
 
 156 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 bring with him the Senator Boutourline, Trou- 
 betzkoi, and even the vice-chancellor Vorontsof. 
 She even wrote to Williams : ' The Czar Ivan 
 the Terrible proposed to fly to England ; for 
 my part I shall not seek refuge with your king, 
 for I am resolved to reign or to perish.' 
 
 Is Williams to be believed? According to 
 the Abbe Chappe d'Auteroche, it was a quite 
 different scene that took place at the moment 
 of the Empress's death. The French historian 
 represents her throwing herself at her husband's 
 feet, and declaring her wish to serve him 'as 
 the first slave of his empire.' Later on, 
 Catherine was greatly offended by this account 
 of things, denying it on oath with a singular 
 vehemence. We may be excused from pro- 
 nouncing an opinion. 
 
 At all events Peter took possession of his 
 empire quite peaceably. His reign began just 
 as it had been anticipated on all hands. 
 Frederick breathed freely again, and might 
 well feel himself saved by the death of Eliza- 
 beth. On the very night of his accession 
 to the throne, Peter sent couriers to the 
 different corps of his army, with orders to 
 suspend hostilities. The troops occupying East 
 Prussia were to stay their march. Those acting 
 in concert with the Austrians were to separate 
 from them. They were all to accept an armistice 
 if the proposition were made to them by the 
 Prussian generals. At the same time the 
 Emperor despatched the chamberlain Goudo- 
 vitch to Frederick himself with a letter from 
 his hand giving expression to his friendly inten- 
 tions. Then followed rapidly public resolutions
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 157 
 
 and demonstrations announcing a radical change 
 of tendencies and sympathies. Even the French 
 players were dismissed without the smallest 
 consideration. Lastly, in February a declaration 
 addressed to the representatives of France, 
 Spain, and Austria, informed them of what 
 they had to expect under the new rule : Peter 
 turned round upon his allies without ceremony, 
 told them that he had decided to make peace, 
 and advised them to do the same. A scene, 
 picturesquely recounted by the Baron de Breteuil, 
 emphasised, two days after, the last part of this 
 declaration. It was on the 25th of February 
 1762, at a supper-party given by the chancellor 
 Vorontsof. It lasted from ten in the evening 
 till two in the morning. The Czar, says de 
 Breteuil, ' never ceased all the time to bawl, 
 and drink, and talk nonsense.' Towards the 
 end Peter rose, staggering, and turning towards 
 General Werner and Count Hordt, drank a toast 
 to the King of Prussia. 'Things are different 
 now from what they have been for years past/ 
 he said, ' and we shall see, we shall see ! ' At 
 the same time he threw confidential smiles and 
 looks at Keith, the English ambassador, whom 
 he called ' his dear friend.' At two o'clock in 
 the morning the company passed into the salon. 
 Instead of the usual faro-table there was a great 
 table covered with pipes and tobacco. To pay 
 court to the Emperor, one was obliged to 
 smoke a pipe for hours together, and drink 
 English beer and punch. However, after a long 
 talk with Keith, his Majesty proposed to play 
 at campi. During the game, he calls over the 
 Baron de Posse, the Swedish minister, and tries
 
 158 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 to convince him that the declaration recently 
 issued by Sweden is exactly the same as his 
 own. 'It is only intended,' explains Posse, 
 4 to call the attention of the allies to the diffi- 
 culties which would be incurred by a prolonga- 
 tion of the war.' ' We must make peace,' 
 declares the Emperor. ' For my part, I will 
 have it.' The game continues. The Baron 
 de Breteuil loses a few ducats to Prince George 
 of Holstein, the uncle of the Czar, whom he 
 had once encountered, in the course of his 
 military career, on a German battle-field. 'Your 
 old antagonist has got the better of you ! ' cries 
 Peter, laughing. He continues to laugh and 
 repeat the word, like a drunken man. The 
 Baron de Breteuil, a little taken aback, ex- 
 presses his assurance that neither he nor France 
 will ever have the Prince as adversary again. 
 The Czar makes no reply, but a little while 
 after, seeing Count Almodovar, the Spanish 
 minister, lose in turn, he whispers in the ear 
 of the French envoy, ' Spain will lose.' And 
 he laughs once more. The Baron de Breteuil, 
 choking with rage, endeavours to preserve a 
 cool demeanour, and replies in his most dignified 
 manner, ' I think not, sire.' Upon which he 
 proceeds to point out what might be done with 
 the forces of Spain joined to those of France. 
 The Emperor only replies with mocking ' ha- 
 ha's.' At last the French diplomatist sums 
 up the matter: 'If your Majesty remains stead- 
 fast in your alliance, as you have promised and 
 as you are bound to do, both Spain and France 
 are in the best of cases.' 
 
 This time Peter can contain himself no longer.
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 159 
 
 He roars out in a rage : ' I told you two days 
 ago : I will have peace.' 
 
 ' And we too, sire ; but we would have it, as 
 your Majesty would also, honourably, and in 
 agreement with our allies.' 
 
 ' Just as you please. For my part, I will have 
 peace. After that, you can do as you like. Finis 
 coronal opus. \ am a soldier, and I don't joke.' 
 Upon which he turns on his heel. 
 
 ' Sire/ replies the Baron de Breteuil gravely, 
 ' I will report to the King the declaration that 
 your Majesty is pleased to make to me.' 
 
 It is the final rupture. The Chancellor 
 Vorontsof, who is immediately informed of the 
 incident, attributes the fault to his master's 
 drunken condition and his peculiar temper. He 
 offers his excuses. But neither at St. Petersburg 
 nor at Versailles is there any uncertainty as to 
 the bearing of the Emperor's words. 
 
 'You will have imagined my indignation,' 
 writes the Duke de Choiseul, 'on hearing of 
 what took place on the 25th of February. I 
 confess I did not expect treatment of this kind, 
 for France is not yet accustomed to having its 
 laws dictated to it by Russia. I do not believe 
 M. Vorontsof can give you any further explana- 
 tions. It is useless to demand them. We know 
 all there is to know, and the final information 
 that we shall get will be the news of a treaty 
 made between Russia and our enemies.' 
 
 As a matter of fact that is exactly what hap- 
 pened two months later. On April 24th Peter 
 signed a treaty of peace with Prussia, in which 
 he inserted a paragraph announcing the speedy 
 conclusion of a defensive and offensive alliance
 
 160 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 between the two powers. He announces publicly 
 his intention of putting himself, with a body of 
 troops, at the disposition and under the orders of 
 Frederick. It is a project that he has long had 
 in view. In May 1759 the Marquis de 1'Hopital 
 notified to his cabinet : 
 
 ' The Grand Duke, finding himself alone with 
 Count Schwerin and Prince Czartoryski, began 
 to praise the King of Prussia, and said in so 
 many words to Count Schwerin that he would 
 think it an honour and glory to make a cam- 
 paign under the command of the King of 
 Prussia.' 
 
 At the same time Peter seemed desirous of 
 seeking a quarrel with Denmark, on account of 
 its German possessions. The Emperor of Russia 
 was ready to stoop to avenge the injuries, real or 
 imaginary, of the Duke of Holstein. A Russian 
 historian has written a book to explain ' the 
 political system/ as he is pleased to call it, of 
 Elizabeth's successor. In his opinion the whole 
 future of Russia would have been at stake if this 
 ' system ' had had its way. It seems to us that 
 this is too much honour to Peter III. and his 
 policy. Did he really dream of ' sacrificing the 
 mouth of the Dvina, and cutting himself off from 
 some millions of compatriots, in order that, with 
 the aid of Prussia, he might lay hold of another 
 shore, some hundreds of versts away, seize on 
 the mouth of the Elbe, and extend his dominion 
 over a few thousands of Dano-Germans ? ' We 
 are inclined to think that he simply wished to 
 express his admiration for Frederick, and astonish 
 the Germans with his general's uniform. He 
 continued to play at soldiers ; only, having the
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 161 
 
 choice before him, he was no longer content with 
 foot-soldiers in paste. 
 
 In the interior he proclaimed himself an 
 earnest reformer. Ukase followed ukase, one 
 decreeing the secularisation of the estates of the 
 clergy, another the emancipation of the nobility, 
 another the suppression of the ' secret chancellor- 
 ship,' or political police organisation. What are 
 we to think of this precipitate legislation ? Was 
 Peter really and truly a liberal ? A contemporary, 
 Prince Michael Chtcherbatof, explained after his 
 own fashion the ukase on the nobility. One 
 evening when he wished to escape the vigilance 
 of his mistress, Peter called aside his secretary of 
 state, Dimitri Volkof, and thus addressed him : 
 ' I have told Mile. Vorontsof that I shall 
 spend part of the night working with you on a 
 project of the greatest importance. You must 
 therefore let me have a ukase to-morrow which 
 will be the talk of the court and the town.' 
 Volkof bowed ; next day Peter was satisfied, and 
 the nobility as well. It is probable that the new 
 Emperor, while influenced to some extent by his 
 surroundings, and applying, without reflection, 
 the ideas that they gave him, was obedient, in 
 especial, to the instinct of meddling with every- 
 thing which we find in most children, and which 
 in him was increased by his naturally restless 
 spirit. It amused him to overturn the constitu- 
 tion of his empire with a signature, and to see 
 about him the frightened looks of those whom 
 these rapid changes alarmed. They were his 
 little jokes. Perhaps, too, he thought to imitate 
 Frederick. He enjoyed himself vastly, and felt 
 himself in a fair way to make a great sovereign. 
 
 L
 
 162 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Was he really in clanger of alienating the 
 affection of his subjects, or of shaking the 
 foundations of his throne, by these measures 
 abroad and at home? We cannot believe it. 
 His subjects had seen so many contradictory 
 measures ! The clergy was certainly wounded to 
 the quick, but it said nothing. The nobility had 
 had reason to be satisfied, but it too had nothing to 
 say. The senate offered to the Emperor a statue 
 of gold, which he refused. Later on, much was 
 said about the symptoms of disorganisation which 
 had begun to manifest themselves throughout 
 the machinery of government before the event 
 which brought the new reign to an end. Such 
 observations are always made after the event. 
 Meanwhile Peter reigned tranquilly, despite his 
 eccentricities. Biron before him had been more 
 eccentric still. The machinery of government in 
 Russia resembled the massive sledge that had 
 brought Catherine as far as Moscow : it was 
 proof against blows. 
 
 Peter was guilty of two capital faults in 
 making one malcontent and in exasperating 
 another. The malcontent was the army. Not 
 that it was so averse as people have imagined 
 to changing sides, and righting with the Prussians 
 against the Austrians after having fought with 
 the Austrians against the Prussians. The hatred 
 of the peaked helmet, attributed to the soldiers 
 commanded in 1762 by a Tchernichef or a 
 Roumiantsof, seems to us a quite modern in- 
 vention. The peaked helmet did not exist, and, 
 German for German, the warriors of Maria 
 Theresa were no less so than those of Frederick. 
 Peter wished to introduce into his army the
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 163 
 
 Prussian discipline ; it is that which his army 
 could not forgive. It had a discipline of its own. 
 For a slight infraction, one of those grenadiers 
 whom Elizabeth cherished so dearly, and with 
 such good reason, could be sentenced to 3000, 
 4000, or even 5000 blows of the stick, without 
 protesting against the sentence. If, sometimes, 
 he did protest against this frightful torture, he 
 went back to the ranks without a murmur. But 
 it seemed to him intolerable that he should be 
 made to go all over a manoeuvre again because 
 of a fault in the ensemble. Then Peter spoke of 
 changing the uniforms : that was a second offence. 
 Finally, he spoke of suppressing the Guards, as 
 his grandfather had suppressed the Strelitz. This 
 was to lay hands on the Holy of Holies. For 
 nearly half a century the Guards had been the 
 most solid and stable thing in the empire. The 
 new Czar began by dismissing the bodyguards, 
 those whose under-officers the late Empress had 
 invited to dinner. He replaced them by a Hoi- 
 stein regiment. Prince George of Holstein was 
 named Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, 
 and placed at the head of the horse-guards, who 
 had always had the sovereign himself as their 
 Colonel. It was too much to be endured. It 
 seems to us that the almost unanimous testimony 
 of contemporaries in regard to the hostile public 
 feeling evoked by the new Emperor refers entirely 
 to these military reforms, and to the effect which 
 they produced in the ranks of the army. We 
 know already what the word ' public ' meant in 
 Russia. 
 
 The exasperated malcontent was Catherine. 
 In this respect a positive madness seemed to
 
 1 64 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 have come over Peter. On January 15, 1762, the 
 Baron de Breteuil wrote to the Due de Choiseul 
 
 * The Empress is in the cruellest state and 
 treated with the most marked contempt. I have 
 told you how she endeavoured to fortify herself 
 with philosophy, and how little this food consorts 
 with her disposition. I now know, for certain, 
 that she is already much put out by the way in 
 which the Emperor treats her, and by the airs of 
 Mile, de Vorontsof. I should not be surprised, 
 knowing her courage and violence, if this were 
 to drive her to some extremity. I know that 
 some of her friends are doing their best to pacify 
 her, but they would risk everything for her, if she 
 required it.' 
 
 In the month of April, when he took up his 
 residence in the new palace which had just been 
 finished, Peter occupied one of the wings, and 
 assigned to his wife apartments at the other 
 extremity. Close to him was lodged Elizabeth 
 Vorontsof. From a certain point of view this 
 arrangement was quite agreeable to Catherine ; it 
 gave her more liberty, and she needed it in every 
 way : she was once more enceinte, and, this time, 
 without the slightest possibility of assigning the 
 paternity to the Emperor. It was none the less 
 a visible sign of the contemptuous treatment 
 which the Baron de Breteuil speaks of, and the 
 official recognition, so to speak, of a state of 
 things difficult to tolerate. Peter constantly 
 subjected her to the most gross and offensive 
 treatment, the most paltry and cruel bickerings. 
 One day, as he was supping with his mistress, he 
 sent for Count Hordt, who was with the Empress. 
 The Swede, not daring to say to Catherine where
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 165 
 
 he was wanted, declined the invitation. There- 
 upon Peter arrived himself, announcing brutally 
 to the Count that they were waiting for him at 
 the Vorontsof s, and that he must make up his 
 mind to come. Another day, having discovered 
 that the Empress was very fond of fruit, he 
 ordered that none should be served at table. 
 From time to time he had fits of jealousy. 
 Catherine, according to the general custom of 
 the time, even among young and pretty women, 
 took snuff. She acquired the habit at an early 
 age, and clung to it all her life. Sergius Galitzine 
 relates that she had to give up snuff-taking, by 
 the Emperor's command, because she had once 
 asked his (Sergius's) father for a pinch of snuff. 
 The scene is well known in which the Emperor 
 apostrophised the Empress in public, and flung at 
 her head a gross insult. It was the 2ist of June 
 1762, at a dinner of four hundred people, the 
 dignitaries of the three first orders and the foreign 
 ministers, on the occasion of the ratification of 
 the treaty of peace with Prussia. The Empress 
 was seated in her usual place in the middle of 
 the table. The Emperor, having on his right 
 the Baron von Goltz, was seated at one end. 
 Before drinking the health of Frederick, the 
 Emperor proposed that of the imperial family. 
 Scarcely had the Empress set down her glass, 
 when he sent his aide-de-camp, Goudowitch, to 
 know why she had not risen to do honour to the 
 toast. She replied that as the imperial family 
 consisted only of the Emperor, herself, and her 
 son, she had not thought it necessary. Peter 
 immediately sent back Goudowitch, with orders 
 to tell the Empress that she was a fool (doura),
 
 166 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 and that she ought to know that the two Princes 
 of Holstein, his uncles, formed part of the im- 
 perial family. And, fearing no doubt that Goudo- 
 witch would not execute his commission faithfully, 
 he himself shouted ' Doura ! ' across the table, 
 addressing the compliment to the one for whom 
 it was intended. Every one heard the word. 
 Tears started from Catherine's eyes. 
 
 These were but insults. Peter had the folly 
 of adding threats. The same day, the Freiline 
 Vorontsof received the order of St. Catherine, 
 which was habitually reserved to princesses of 
 the blood-royal. Catherine herself had only had 
 it after having been officially designated as the 
 fiancee of the future Emperor. It even appears 
 that on leaving the table, drunk as usual, Peter 
 gave the order to Prince Bariatinski to arrest the 
 Empress, and only the entreaties of Prince 
 George of Holstein persuaded him to revoke his 
 decision. But it was matter of general belief 
 that, urged on by the Vorontsofs, he would pro- 
 ceed to this extremity. Catherine would be shut 
 up in a convent, Paul thrown into prison, and 
 the favourite legally married. She had certainly 
 gained an absolute hold over him. She was 
 just the mistress for this imperial puppet, half 
 German corporal. She was not pretty ; ' ugly, 
 common, and stupid,' says Masson. The Ger- 
 man Scherer, who has only praises for Peter, 
 admits that he gave evidence, in his choice of a 
 companion, of deplorable taste the only fault, in 
 his eyes, that is to be found in him. She was 
 worthless and without education. ' She swore 
 like a trooper, squinted, and spat while talking.' 
 It seems that she sometimes beat the Emperor,
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 167 
 
 but she got drunk with him, which was some 
 compensation. It is reported that at the very 
 moment of the revolution, which hurled down 
 Peter and his mistress, the manifesto destined to 
 remove Catherine from the throne, and to set up 
 the Vorontsof in her place, was made out, and 
 ready to be published to the world. 
 
 Thus did Catherine find herself face to face 
 with a dilemma, of which both ways indicated a 
 terrible risk to run, with this difference, that 
 there was nothing to gain on one side and 
 not much to lose on the other. She made her 
 choice in consequence. 
 
 in 
 
 The history of the conspiracy of 1762, which 
 cost the throne and the life of Peter III., has 
 yet to be written, and, up to the present, suffi- 
 ciently authentic and definite documents for the 
 historian are lacking. Rulhiere seems to be 
 utterly mistaken in regard to the part played by 
 Panine and the Princess Dachkof in bringing 
 about this event. According to him they did 
 little or nothing. Nevertheless, according to 
 him, it is the Princess Dachkof who began, by 
 sacrificing her virtue in order to win over Panine, 
 who was himself little disposed to run the risk. It 
 must be added that the scruples of the Princess 
 were owing mainly to her belief that a very near 
 relationship existed between her and the man 
 whose homage she at first repulsed. She 
 thought she was his daughter. An obscure 
 intermediary, the Piedmontese Odard, afterwards 
 secretary to Catherine, persuaded her out of this
 
 168 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 notion, and after that the two lovers were soon 
 in agreement. Unhappily they were not from 
 the first in agreement with Catherine as to the 
 end towards which their efforts were to tend. 
 The Princess's reading, the residence of Panine 
 at Stockholm, had imbued them both with 
 republican ideas. They would not give the 
 power to Catherine save on certain conditions. 
 Catherine declined any sort of compromise, and, 
 having the Orlofs under her hand, seemed dis- 
 posed to go without the services which were 
 offered her at such a price. They therefore 
 decided to work independently towards the dis- 
 lodgment of Peter, waiting on the event to see 
 how he should be replaced. It was an instance 
 of the 'parallel action,' of which recent events 
 have given rise to further instances. Princess 
 Dachkof and Panine recruited partisans among 
 the high officers of the army, stooping sometimes 
 to the very soldiers. The Orlofs worked among 
 the soldiers, and made several tentatives among 
 the chiefs. Sometimes they met one another in 
 the barracks, and, not being mutually acquainted, 
 looked upon one another with suspicion. At 
 length Catherine succeeded in uniting the two 
 intrigues, and took the direction of the move- 
 ment into her own hands. 
 
 Such is the account of Rulhiere. Convincing 
 as it has seemed to-day to the most intelligent 
 writers, it is easy to find in it grave objections. 
 The portrait that Diderot, who afterwards knew 
 the Princess Dachkof at Paris, has left of this 
 beauty, is one : 
 
 1 The Princess is by no means beautiful ; she is 
 small ; her forehead is high and broad, she has
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 169 
 
 fat puffy cheeks, eyes neither large nor small, a 
 little deeply set in their sockets, black eyes and 
 eyelashes, a flat nose, a large mouth, thick lips, 
 bad teeth, a round, straight throat of the national 
 shape, the chest convex, no figure, promptitude 
 in her movements, few graces, nothing im- 
 posing.' 
 
 She seems, certainly, to have exercised a 
 certain influence, due perhaps to the vivacity of 
 her character, on the indolent spirit of the future 
 minister of Catherine ; that she can have had the 
 power to rid him not only of his indolence, but 
 also of his habitual prudence, to the point of 
 implicating him in an enterprise of which he was 
 well able to appreciate all the danger, seems to 
 us more than doubtful. That on her side Cathe- 
 rine should have put her interests, her destiny 
 and that of her son, her ambition, and her very 
 life, into the hands of this conspiratress of 
 eighteen, is what we find the greatest diffi- 
 culty in admitting as possible. The Princess, 
 too, has told us in her memoirs the manner in 
 which her first advances were received. It was 
 a little before the death of Elizabeth. One 
 winter evening, towards midnight, the Grand 
 Duchess, who had already gone to bed, saw her 
 friend appear, trembling with fright or cold, and 
 entreating her to confide in her, in view of the 
 dangers which surrounded her. She desired to 
 know what was the plan of the future Empress, 
 and what instructions she had to give her. 
 Catherine first of all did her best to keep this 
 intrepid adventuress from catching cold. She 
 made her lie down by her side, covered her up 
 with the bedclothes, and then gently advised her
 
 170 CATHERINE II, OF RUSSIA 
 
 to return to her own bed and not be frightened. 
 She had no plan, and she put her trust in 
 Providence. 
 
 In reality no one, among those who were 
 most concerned in foreseeing the great event, 
 had any suspicion of its approach, or saw it 
 coming. Who could pay any attention to the 
 obscure and unmethodical machinations of a few 
 hare-brained creatures ? According to one of 
 the versions that we owe to the Princess Dach- 
 kof, the very conspirators themselves had no 
 better view of things : 'The affair was well 
 forward before she, or the Empress, or any one 
 at all, was aware of it. Three hours before the 
 revolution there was not a soul who expected it 
 in less than three years.' 
 
 At all events it seems that, up to the last 
 moment, there was no settled plan, nor even any 
 very definite idea, on the part of any one, as to 
 the course to be followed and the methods to be 
 used in attaining the end in view. How was 
 Peter to be dethroned and Catherine set in his 
 place ? No one knew. According to Odard's 
 confidences to Be"ranger, several attempts were 
 made, without success, to seize the Emperor. 
 As far as one can judge, they went forward at 
 hazard. The Princess Dachkof, so much is 
 probable, spoke to some officers. There was, it 
 is certain, a whole propaganda, a work of cor- 
 rupting and tampering, carried on in the barracks 
 by the brothers Orlof on a wide scale. Money 
 was not lacking, even before the tentative finally 
 made upon the Baron de Breteuil. At the 
 beginning of March, Gregory Orlof occupied the 
 post of paying officer to the artillery. The
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 171 
 
 grand master of artillery, the luckless lover of 
 the Princess Kourakine, had just died, and had 
 been succeeded by a former chamberlain of the 
 young court, who had been removed from his 
 post by Elizabeth on account of his excessive 
 devotion to Catherine the Frenchman Villebois. 
 Villebois was the son of a page of Peter I., who 
 had afterwards been made vice-admiral. It was 
 written that a Frenchman once again should 
 play an important part in the coup dttat destined 
 to give a new ruler to Russia, and that La 
 Ch^tardie should have a successor. It is pro- 
 bable, indeed, that the choice of Gregory Orlof 
 was due to the personal intervention of the new 
 grand master, inspired, no doubt, by Catherine 
 herself. Nothing seemed to point out the young 
 officer as a suitable person for such a post of 
 confidence. One might as well have put the 
 cash-box on deposit in the cave of Ali-Baba. 
 The second in command under Villebois, Lieu- 
 tenant-General Pournour, made the observation. 
 He was informed that Orlof was protected by 
 the Empress, and he bowed. The paying 
 officer made heavy demands upon the treasury. 
 In this way not less than ninety-nine soldiers in 
 each regiment of the Guard had been gained 
 over the Ismailofski (the first before which 
 Elizabeth had presented herself on the day of 
 the coup cttat\ the Siemienofski, the Preobra- 
 jenski, and the regiment of horse guards in which 
 served the famous Patiomkine. 
 
 Catherine was sometimes induced to give 
 direct and personal aid to those who were re- 
 cruiting in her interests. She seems, neverthe- 
 less, to have shown much restraint and discretion
 
 170 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 in the matter. One of the grenadiers won over 
 by Alexis Orlof, the grenadier Strolof, required 
 a sign from the Empress. He was promised 
 that if he would be in the Czarina's way in the 
 course of her promenade in the park of the 
 imperial palace, he should have this sign : her 
 Majesty would give him her hand to kiss. 
 Catherine lent herself readily to the plan, by 
 which she ran no sort of risk. ' Everybody 
 kisses my hand,' she said, later on, to Chrapo- 
 wicki. But the brave soldier was moved to 
 the depths of his soul. He shed tears as he 
 bent over the imperial hand, and asked no 
 further conviction. 
 
 The last to be convinced, in this conspiracy, 
 would seem to have been Catherine herself. In 
 the account that she is supposed to have written 
 of this period of her life, she states that she 
 refused to lend an ear to the proposals that were 
 made to her from the time of Elizabeth's death, 
 until, after having publicly insulted her, Peter 
 carried his spite and extravagance to the point of 
 wishing to have her arrested. The incident, as 
 we know, happened on the 2ist of June, that 
 is to say, only a few weeks before the coup d'dtat. 
 But even then, and up to the time of the 
 coup d'ttat itself, no active part is known to 
 have been taken by the future Empress in the 
 operations of her friends. Her part, up to the 
 last moment, would seem to have been a part 
 of attitude and bearing alone. In this respect 
 she was admirable. The art with which she 
 always continued to take the opposite side to 
 her husband, and tone down whatever was 
 offensive in his conduct by some counterpart
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 173 
 
 exaggeration of behaviour, places her among the 
 finest political actresses of all time. The death 
 of Elizabeth, and the complication of ceremonies 
 which arose from the clashing of the rites of the 
 Greek Church with the court etiquette over the 
 mortal remains of the Empress, provided a fresh 
 occasion for the new Emperor to display the 
 singularity and churlishness of his disposition. 
 He did not fail to take it, showing himself 
 indecorous to excess. Catherine protested, and 
 won the admiration and sympathy of all by her 
 manifestations of respect and filial piety. 
 
 'No one,' wrote the Baron de Breteuil, 'has 
 been more assiduous in carrying out the late 
 Empress's funeral rites, which, according to the 
 Greek Church, are numerous and most super- 
 stitious, and at which she must certainly laugh 
 in her sleeve, but the clergy and the people 
 believe her to be deeply affected, and are highly 
 delighted.' 
 
 There is a portrait of her in the morning 
 dress which she always wore at this time. She 
 observed carefully all the religious ceremonies, 
 fasts, jours maigres, holidays, everything for 
 which Peter affected the most absolute contempt. 
 At a solemn mass, sung in the chapel of the 
 palace, on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, the 
 Austrian ambassador was amazed to see the 
 Emperor walking unceremoniously about the holy 
 edifice, and talking aloud during the service with 
 the gentlemen and ladies of the court, while 
 the Empress, motionless in her place, appeared 
 buried in her prayers. 
 
 Peter, growing more and more violent as time 
 went on, forgot himself to the extent of inflicting
 
 174 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 manual correction upon the members of his im- 
 mediate retinue, upon high dignitaries, upon his 
 most devoted followers, in public, before the 
 assembled court. Narychkine, Mielgounof, Vol- 
 kof, had in turn to suffer these indignities. 
 Catherine was sweetness itself. All who came 
 near her united in praise of her affability, her 
 evenness of temper, her good graces. To the 
 brutalities of the Emperor, of which she was 
 herself one of the victims, she gently opposed 
 the most dignified deportment, well made to 
 inspire sympathy, without allowing sympathy 
 to degenerate into pity and disesteem. At the 
 famous banquet where the Emperor flung at her 
 the word ' Fool ! ' she let some tears be seen, just 
 enough to touch the hearts of those who wit- 
 nessed the painful scene ; then, turning immedi- 
 ately to Count Strogonof, who was standing 
 behind her chair, she begged him to tell her 
 something merry, to make her laugh and dis- 
 tract people's attention. 
 
 At one moment she carried her science of 
 dissimulation so far as to become amiable 
 and considerate for Peter himself. The diplo- 
 matic correspondence notifies an unexpected re- 
 conciliation of husband and wife. The Empress 
 appeared, smiling and gracious, at the Emperor's 
 suppers, in the midst of orgies of beer and 
 tobacco. She endured stoically the odour of 
 pipes, the heavy German drunkenness, the low 
 talk of drinkers. It was the critical moment. 
 Catherine, as we have said, was enceinte. She 
 had need to hide the fact from all eyes, and 
 especially from the eyes of the Emperor. There 
 is a story that on the day when she was taken
 
 THE FIGHT FOR THE THRONE 175 
 
 with the pangs of childbirth, her faithful valet 
 de chambre, Chkourine, set fire to a house be- 
 longing to him in one of the suburbs of the city, 
 in order to attract the curious in that direction. 
 Peter ran off there, naturally, to enjoy the sight, 
 and distribute insults and blows of his cane. 
 His favourites followed. Catherine gave birth, 
 on the 23rd April, to a son, who took the name 
 of Bobrinski, and became the founder of one of 
 the most important families in Russia. We 
 shall meet him again later on. It was at this 
 time that, a courtier complimenting the Empress 
 on looking so well, and bringing such a ray of 
 beauty into the company, she could not resist 
 saying : ' You have no idea how much it some- 
 times costs me to look well.' 
 
 But where was all this to lead ? She little 
 knew, in all probability. A day would come, 
 no doubt, when the subterranean labour of her 
 friends would come to the light of day, bringing 
 with it an explosion ; when the extravagances 
 of her husband would come to a crisis : then it 
 would be time for her to act. Then she would 
 act. Meanwhile, as she had said to Princess 
 Dachkof, she put her trust in Providence. 
 According to Frederick, it was the best she 
 could have done. ' She could not yet carry 
 anything through,' he said afterwards, recalling 
 these times ; ' she threw herself into the arms 
 of those who were ready to save her.' That 
 ability in the conduct of affairs, that sureness 
 of vision, that prudence and dexterity needed 
 to pull through an enterprise of this sort, were 
 never specially in her line. It was in her tempera- 
 ment that her true superiority was to be found,
 
 i;6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 by that that she really shone. It was on this 
 account that she had always to rely principally, 
 as she did all her life, on that superior and 
 mysterious force that she invoked in speaking 
 to the Princess Dachkof, and whose might 
 Frederick himself did not deny, irreverently 
 calling it ' His Sacred Majesty Chance.' To 
 abandon herself to Orlof, as she did now, or to 
 Patiomkine, as she did later, was really, properly 
 speaking, nothing else. Chance brought good 
 luck with Orlof, good luck, and perhaps genius, 
 with Patiomkine, disaster with Zoubof. But 
 Catherine still remained great. For the moment, 
 chance gave her the victory. Chance did not, 
 however, act alone ; but rather with the aid of 
 the man most interested in bringing the enter- 
 prise to nought. ' He let himself be dethroned 
 as a child lets himself be sent to bed/ said 
 Frederick, speaking of Peter III. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE VICTORY 
 
 PETER left St. Petersburg June 24th for Or- 
 anienbaum. On the 22nd there was a supper 
 at which 500 guests sat down, and there were 
 fireworks after the supper in honour of the peace 
 with Prussia. On the 2 3rd the feasting still 
 continued, and it continued afterwards at Or- 
 anienbaum with a smaller number of guests. The
 
 THE VICTORY 177 
 
 sojourn of the Emperor in his summer residence 
 was to be of short duration. Peter intended 
 shortly to rejoin his army in Pomerania and put 
 to flight the Danes, until he had the chance of 
 making his name glorious on some vaster battle- 
 field, whither his new ally should summon him. 
 He meant to embark at the end of July. The 
 fleet, reduced by sickness, was not really in con- 
 dition to set sail. Peter was not at a loss. He 
 signed a ukase ordering the sick sailors to get 
 well. 
 
 These warlike projects caused some anxiety to 
 his friends, beginning with Frederick himself. 
 His Prussian Majesty's envoys, the Bacon von 
 Goltz and Count Schwerin, had not failed to 
 remonstrate with him on the subject. Was it 
 prudent for the Emperor to leave his capital 
 and his empire before allowing himself time to 
 establish himself upon his throne, before even 
 having been crowned ? Frederick insisted per- 
 sonally on this last point. Before undertaking 
 any enterprise, he should go to Moscow and 
 assume the diadem of the Czar. In a country 
 like Russia this question of form was of immense 
 importance. Peter would listen to nothing. 
 ' One is sure of the Russians when one knows 
 how to take them,' he said. He imagined that 
 he had this knowledge. 
 
 He imagined also that he had his eye upon 
 the possible conspirators. The two Orlofs had 
 been pointed out to him. One of their friends, 
 Lieutenant Perfilef, put himself at the disposal 
 of the Czar, and undertook to spy on the five 
 brothers, and play them into his hands. It was 
 he himself who played into their hands. The 
 
 M
 
 1 78 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Orlofs were distrustful of him, and at the last 
 moment made merry over the confident traitor. 
 
 On June 29th, Catherine, whom Peter had had 
 the imprudence to leave behind at St. Petersburg, 
 had herself to take up her summer quarters. 
 She received orders to go to Peterhof. At 
 Oranienbaum it was Elizabeth Vorontsof who 
 reigned. Paul remained at St. Petersburg under 
 the care of Panine. Peter nevertheless counted 
 on seeing his wife before setting out on the pro- 
 posed campaign. He had put off the date of his 
 departure in order to celebrate the loth of July 
 (29th June), his feast-day. He meant to cele- 
 brate it at Peterhof. On the morning of the 9th 
 he set out for the palace, where a grand dinner 
 was to be given in his honour by the Empress 
 on the following day. Peter travelled slowly, 
 taking a large following after him, among which 
 were seventeen ladies. He did not arrive at 
 Peterhof till two o'clock. A surprise was await- 
 ing him ; the chateau was empty. Peter found 
 only a few servants overcome with terror. 
 
 ' And the Empress ?' 
 
 'Gone!' 
 
 ' Where ? ' 
 
 No one knew, or no one would answer. A 
 peasant approached and handed a paper to the 
 Emperor. It was a letter from Bressan, the former 
 French valet of Peter, whom he had appointed 
 to the supervision of the manufacture of Gobelins. 
 Bressan wrote that the Empress had arrived at 
 St. Petersburg that morning, and had been pro- 
 claimed sole and absolute sovereign. Peter 
 could not believe his eyes. He rushed like a 
 madman through the empty rooms, hunted in
 
 THE VICTORY 179 
 
 every corner, and all through the gardens, calling 
 the Empress again and again. The crowd of 
 frightened courtiers followed him in his useless 
 search. They had at last to give in to the 
 evidence of their own eyes. 
 
 What had happened ? No one has ever quite 
 known. The uncertainties and contradictions which 
 have already embarrassed us in the course of our 
 narrative confront us once more at this juncture. 
 The narrative of Princess Dachkof seems in 
 many respects dubious, and that of Catherine 
 does not bear examination. On the night of the 
 8th or 9th July Catherine's friend appears to 
 have been awakened by one of the Orlofs, with 
 the news of the arrest of one of the conspirators, 
 Captain Passek. It meant the discovery of the 
 plot and the certain ruin of all who had taken 
 part in it. Princess Dachkof did not hesitate. 
 She gave orders to give the immediate alarm to 
 the Ismai'lofski regiment, that of which they 
 were most certain ; to prepare it to receive the 
 Empress ; and at the same time to send for her 
 to Peterhof. It was done. There was, never- 
 theless, a certain hesitation on the part of the 
 Orlofs. The youngest brother, Theodore, came 
 back a few hours afterwards to submit their 
 objections to the Princess. Was it not too soon 
 to venture on so bold a stroke ? She declared 
 angrily that they had wasted too much time 
 already. He bowed to her will, and all obeyed. 
 That is the friend's version. Catherine's is quite 
 different. A few years afterwards she was 
 greatly wroth with Ivan Chouvalof, ' the basest 
 and most cowardly of men,' who has dared to 
 write to Voltaire ' that a o-irl of nineteen had 
 
 o
 
 i8o CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 changed the government of Russia.' Most as- 
 suredly, she declares, the Orlofs had something 
 else to do than to put themselves at the com- 
 mand of a little scatter-brain. To the last 
 moment, on the contrary ' she was kept from 
 knowing the most essential part of this affair.' 
 Everything was done under the ' quite personal ' 
 direction of Catherine, and of Catherine alone, 
 in consequence of plans which had been made 
 and agreed upon ' six months before,' between 
 her and the heads of the conspiracy. Six months 
 before ! Is this really true ? Has not Catherine 
 herself said elsewhere that she paid no heed to 
 the proposals for the dethronement of her hus- 
 band till after she had been publicly insulted 
 by him that is to say, only three weeks before 
 the Qth of July ? 
 
 It is all very uncertain. Quarrels between 
 jealous women usually are. Moreover, both may 
 have spoken in good faith, recalling as they did, 
 so long afterwards, memories blurred with mists 
 of emotion, and attributing to themselves an 
 imaginary part in the events that they both 
 imagined they had conducted, and by which they 
 were both most likely conducted themselves. It 
 is probable that the arrest of Passek, due, as it 
 seems, to a mere accident, hastened things on, 
 and decided the conspirators to risk everything 
 in order to save their lives, which they saw to be 
 in danger. It is certain that, on the 9th of July, 
 at five o'clock in the morning, Alexis Orlof pre- 
 sented himself suddenly at Peterhof, and brought 
 the Empress back to St. Petersburg. 
 
 Catherine was sound asleep it is she who 
 gives us this detail when the young officer
 
 THE VICTORY 181 
 
 entered her room. Nothing had yet been 
 decided on, and she was not prepared for any- 
 thing. To understand the scene which followed, 
 according to her own story of it, one must have 
 come in contact with primitive natures like that 
 of this Orlof. One meets many like them 
 to-day in Russia. The thought of such folk 
 being utterly without any complication, their 
 expression of this thought is always simple. 
 The art of preparation is unknown to them, 
 and all the fine shades. They say exactly what 
 they have to say, going straight to the point. 
 They say in the same manner and with the 
 same tone the most commonplace or the most 
 startling of things. They speak always in 
 monochord. If the moon were to fall from 
 the sky, a peasant near Moscow would say to 
 you, ' The moon has fallen,' in the same tone 
 as he would tell you that his cow had had a 
 calf. Alexis Orlof simply woke the Empress 
 and said to her: 'It is time to get up. Every- 
 thing is ready for your proclamation.' 
 
 She asked for explanations. He said, ' Passek 
 is arrested. You must come.' That was all. 
 She dressed herself hurriedly, without ' making 
 a toilette,' and jumped into the coach that had 
 brought Orlof. One of her women, the Charo- 
 grodskaia, took her place by her side, Orlof 
 mounted in front, the faithful Chkourine behind, 
 and the vehicle set out at headlong speed for 
 St. Petersburg. On the way they met Michel, 
 the French coiffeur of her Majesty, who was as 
 usual on his way to wait upon her. He was 
 taken along. 
 
 There were nearly 20 miles to cover, and the
 
 1 82 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 horses, which had already done the distance 
 one way, were scarcely able to start on the 
 return journey. No one had thought of or- 
 ganising a relay. This negligence was near 
 costing them dear. Two horses from a passing 
 peasant's cart perhaps saved Catherine, and won 
 for her a crown. Five versts outside the town 
 they met Gregory Orlof and Prince Bariatinski, 
 in a state of great anxiety ; they changed from 
 the one coach to the other, and arrived at last 
 before the barracks of the Ismailofski regiment. 
 
 ' Thus,' writes Rulhiere, ' to reign despotically 
 over the vastest empire in the world, arrived 
 Catherine, between six and seven in the morn- 
 ing, having set out on the word of a soldier, 
 brought by peasants, conducted by her lover, and 
 accompanied by her lady's maid and her coiffeur' 
 
 Only a dozen men were there. In reality, 
 nothing had been seriously prepared, notwith- 
 standing what Alexis Orlof had said. Drums 
 were beaten. Soldiers half dressed and half 
 asleep came tumbling out. They were told to 
 shout ' Long live the Empress ! ' They looked 
 forward to a distribution of vodka, and shouted 
 whatever was told them. Two of them were 
 sent for a priest, whom they brought back 
 between them. The priest also did whatever 
 he was told. He raised the cross, mumbled a 
 form of oath, the soldiers all bowed down : it 
 was done, the Empress was proclaimed. 
 
 ' The throne of Russia is neither hereditary 
 nor elective,' said the Neapolitan Caraccioli ; 
 ' it is occupative. ' 
 
 The proclamation made no mention of Paul. 
 It declared Catherine sole and absolute and
 
 THE VICTORY 183. 
 
 aristocratic sovereign (saniodierjsamodierjitsa). 
 This was not at all what Panine had intended. 
 But where was Panine at this hour, and who 
 troubled about Panine ? 
 
 ' A pack/ says Herzen, ' of oligarchs, strangers, 
 pandours, and minions, brought by night' an 
 unknown, a child, a German, raised her to the 
 throne, worshipped her, and distributed kicks 
 and blows in her name to all who had anything 
 to say in objection.' 
 
 Of the other regiments of the Guard, one only, 
 the Preobrajenski, made some show of resist- 
 ance. Simon Vorontsof, a brother of the 
 favourite, who commanded a company in it, 
 would not betray a cause which might pass for 
 that of his sister. He was besides, as he 
 proved afterwards, a man of duty and honour. 
 He harangued his men ; Major Voieikof sup- 
 ported him, and the regiment marched resolutely 
 against the mutineers who followed Catherine. 
 The two little armies met before the church 
 of Our Lady of Kasan. Catherine had on her 
 side the superiority of numbers, but it was only 
 that of a crowd in disorder. The Preobrajenski 
 regiment, on the contrary, marshalled by its 
 officers, and drawn up in rank, presented an 
 imposing front of battle ; it might yet decide 
 the issue of the day. 
 
 But the fortune of Catherine declared itself. 
 At the moment when loyalists and rebels came 
 to a standstill within a few paces from one 
 another, ready to come to blows, one of the 
 colleagues of Simon Vorontsof, who marched 
 in the ranks, cried suddenly : ' Oura / Long 
 live the Empress ! ' It was a train of powder.
 
 1 84 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 The whole regiment took up the cry and dis- 
 banded in an instant, the soldiers threw them- 
 selves into the arms of their comrades, and then, 
 falling on their knees, they asked pardon of the 
 Empress for not having greeted her at once, 
 accusing their officers. Voieikof and Vorontsof 
 broke their swords. They were arrested. 
 Catherine afterwards pardoned them, but she 
 never forgot. Vorontsof had to quit the army, 
 where his merits and his brilliant services 
 brought him nothing but vexation. Appointed 
 ambassador at London, he lived in a sort of 
 honourable exile. 
 
 Every one now crowded into the church of 
 Our Lady of Kasan, where Catherine betook 
 herself to receive the oaths of fidelity of her 
 new subjects. Panine soon made his appear- 
 ance. It is said that in the coach with him 
 was the little Paul, in his nightcap. The child 
 may thus have been present at his own down- 
 fall, for it was really his downfall, at least pro- 
 visionally, which was being consummated. After 
 the revered temple it was the Winter Palace, the 
 scene of so many of Catherine's past humiliations, 
 that saw her surrounded with a crowd, hasten- 
 ing to do homage. The senate and the synod 
 came forward among the rest. These two great 
 bodies had already made it their habit to march 
 behind the regiments of the Guard. Another 
 personage came on the scene whom Catherine 
 had not at all expected to see the chancellor 
 Vorontsof. He was still unconscious of what 
 was going forward, and naively demanded of 
 the Empress why she had left Peterhof. For 
 answer, she made sign that he was to be
 
 THE VICTORY 185 
 
 brought along. He was told to go into the 
 church and take the oath. He went there. 
 
 Lastly, elbowing her way through the crowd, 
 all out of breath, agitated, and somewhat dis- 
 appointed, arrived the pretended organiser of 
 all this triumph the Princess Dachkof. Her 
 coach had not been able to get as far as the steps 
 of the palace, but, according to her account, the 
 heroes of the day, the officers and soldiers who 
 surrounded the entrance, raised her on their 
 shoulders^and brought her in. Her dress and 
 her coiffure had to suffer, but her self-esteem 
 found a compensation for the mortifications which 
 were soon to begin for her. For her interview 
 with the Empress was briefer and less solemn 
 than she had hoped for. It was not the hour 
 for tender effusions, nor for grand ceremonies. 
 There was serious business to be done. First of 
 all, a serious form had to be given to what had 
 just been improvised in a burst of youthful energy 
 and victorious boldness. A manifesto was neces- 
 sary. It was an obscure employe from the 
 chancellor's office, Tieplof, who was appointed to 
 draw it up. Why not Panine ? There are 
 various stories current on this subject. Did the 
 tutor of the little Paul actually think it apropos, 
 even at this moment, and had he the courage, 
 to stand up for his favourite idea and his pupil ? 
 According to one version, the officers of the 
 Ismailofski regiment were opposed to the signa- 
 ture of a reversal, binding Catherine not to reign 
 after the end of Paul's minority. According to 
 another version, the reversal dictated by Panine, 
 and imposed by him upon the Empress, had been 
 signed and deposited in the archives of the
 
 1 86 CATHERINE If. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Senate, but the Orlofs, by one account, the 
 chancellor Vorontsof, by another, had afterwards 
 withdrawn the document and handed it over 
 to Catherine. The story is very improbable. 
 Panine was not the man to believe in com- 
 promises of this kind, and to delude himself as to 
 the worth of such a guarantee. He knew the 
 history of his country. The Empress Anne had 
 risen to the throne under the security of a 
 veritable constitutional charter. Six weeks after- 
 wards nothing more was heard of it. The future 
 minister might have had other reasons' for not 
 taking part in the drawing up of the manifesto. 
 
 What Tieplof wrote was sent to press and 
 read to the people, who cried, ' Long live the 
 Empress ! ' as they had heard the soldiers cry. 
 Catherine reviewed the troops, who hailed her 
 once again ; and the new reign had been estab- 
 lished : not a drop of blood had been shed. 
 There were a few isolated scenes of disorder. 
 The house of Prince George of Holstein was 
 attacked and pillaged, and he and his wife were 
 somewhat roughly handled, the rings of the 
 Princess being- torn off by the soldiers. Some 
 shops were broken into, and the soldiers de- 
 manded wine. One wine-merchant lost 4000 
 roubles' worth. The indemnities claimed by 
 the victims of these excesses amounted to 24,000 
 roubles, not a very serious amount. When the 
 evening was come, and the intoxication of the 
 moment had worn off, and Catherine and her 
 companions, once more in the Winter Palace, 
 proceeded to review the situation, a certain 
 anxiety began to be felt. If, from one point of 
 view, everything in regard to the establishment
 
 THE VICTORY 187 
 
 of the throne had been done, from another, every- 
 thing had yet to be done. All would count for 
 nothing if Peter were to make a resistance. 
 
 Was it within his power to do so ? The answer 
 left no room for doubt, and perhaps Panine was 
 just then considering it. Peter had with him 
 about 1500 Holsteiners, an excellent body of 
 men, and ready, according to all appearance, to 
 fight for him to the last, especially as they 
 would be fighting for themselves at the same 
 time. At the head of this little army was the 
 first soldier of Russia, and one of the first of the 
 epoch Field- Marshal Munich. Recalled by the 
 new Emperor from Siberia, he would never desert 
 his benefactor. Now Catherine herself had at 
 her command only the four regiments that had 
 proclaimed her. The main body of the Russian 
 force was in Pomerania, as yet belonging to no 
 one, or rather belonging to the Emperor, and at 
 his command. If Peter made a resistance, if he 
 gained time, if he made the most of the name 
 and fame of his victorious marshal, would not 
 this Pomeranian army obey his orders, and come 
 to the rescue ? He was the Emperor, and he 
 was about to open a new campaign, a prospect 
 generally agreeable to the soldier, especially after 
 a series of brilliant successes. Up to the present 
 he had only given offence to the Guards, of whose 
 privileges all the rest of the army was jealous. 
 The Orlofs, on their side, had not used their 
 influence beyond this point. The problem was 
 formidable. 
 
 But where was the Emperor at this moment, 
 and what was he thinking about and doing ?
 
 1 88 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 II 
 
 After having satisfied himself that the Empress 
 was not where he had expected to find her, Peter 
 could not at once admit the truth, or grasp the 
 whole extent, of his misfortune. The man in 
 whom he placed his confidence, Perfilef, had not 
 forewarned him. The hapless Perfilef had passed 
 the night playing at cards with Gregory Orlof, 
 thinking to have him thus under his eye. Peter 
 resolved to send for information. He had plenty 
 of people about him. The chancellor Vorontsof, 
 Prince Troubetzkoi, Alexander Chouvalof, offered 
 to go to St. Petersburg. None of them returned. 
 But a Holsteiner, returning from the town, where 
 he had been spending a twenty- four hours' leave 
 of absence, confirmed the bad news. It was now 
 three o'clock. Peter made another resolution : 
 he summoned Volkof, and ordered him to draw 
 up several manifestoes, by way of beginning a 
 campaign on paper. Nevertheless, on the advice 
 of Munich, he deckled to send one of his aides- 
 de-camp, Count Devierre, to Kronstadt, in order 
 to make sure of this important position. An 
 hour afterwards, he remembered that he was a 
 soldier, put on his field-day uniform, and sent for 
 the Holstein troops that had remained behind at 
 Oranienbaum. His intention was to fortify him- 
 self at Peterhof, and hold his own against the 
 insurrection. The Holsteiners arrived at eight, 
 but Peter had changed his mind. Munich could 
 not answer for putting Peterhof in condition to 
 stand a siege. He would have preferred to go 
 to Kronstadt instead of sending there. He had
 
 THE VICTORY 189 
 
 his plan. Suddenly Peter wheeled round, and 
 agreed with his field-marshal. But by this time 
 it was night. They set out, nevertheless ; but, 
 one would have thought, on a pleasure-party. A 
 yacht and a galley with oars took on board the 
 Emperor's cortege, masculine and feminine. They 
 arrived in sight of Kronstadt at one o'clock in 
 the morning. 
 
 ' Who goes there ? ' cried a sentinel from the 
 top of the ramparts. 
 
 'The Emperor.' 
 
 1 There is no Emperor. Keep off! ' 
 
 Count Devierre had been outstripped by an 
 envoy of Catherine, Admiral Talitsine. 
 
 Munich was not yet disheartened. He and 
 Goudowitch entreated Peter to disembark in 
 spite of all. They would never dare fire upon 
 them ; of that they were certain. But Peter was 
 down in the hold, trembling in every limb. He 
 had only had to do with cardboard fortresses. 
 The women uttered piercing shrieks. The 
 vessels were turned about. 
 
 Then Munich proposed another plan : to go on 
 to the port of Reval, embark on a warship, and 
 make their way to Pomerania, where Peter could 
 take command of his army. 
 
 ' Do this, sire,' said the old warrior, 'and six 
 weeks afterwards St Petersburg and Russia will 
 again be at your feet. I answer for it with my 
 head.' 
 
 But Peter had exhausted his whole stock of 
 energy. He thought only of getting back to 
 Oranienbaum, and entering into negotiations. 
 They returned to Oranienbaum. There too 
 they met with unexpected news. The Empress
 
 190 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 had left for St. Petersburg at the head of her 
 four regiments, and was marching upon Peter 
 and his Holsteiners. 
 
 It was a triumphal march. Catherine led the 
 troops on horseback wearing the uniform of the 
 grenadiers of the Preobrajenski regiment. A 
 crown of oak-leaves adorned her cap, with its 
 sable fur, and her long hair floated in the wind. 
 By her side, dressed in the same uniform, gal- 
 loped Princess Dachkof. The soldiers were in 
 ecstasies. They had unanimously thrown aside 
 the uniforms into which they had been put by 
 Peter, tearing them to pieces or selling them to 
 the second-hand dealers ; and they had returned 
 to their old garb, which Peter I. had imported 
 from Germany, but which passed already as 
 national. They burned to measure arms with 
 the Holsteiners. 
 
 They had not this satisfaction. After a night's 
 march, at five o'clock in the morning, a messen- 
 ger bearing a flag of truce arrived from Peter. It 
 was Prince Alexander Galitzine. The Emperor 
 offered to divide the power with the Empress. 
 Catherine disdained to answer. An hour after- 
 ward, she received the act of abdication of 
 her husband. She halted at Peterhof, whither 
 Peter was brought. Panine, who had been de- 
 puted to notify to him the final orders of the 
 Czarina, found him in the most pitiful state. 
 Peter endeavoured to kiss his hand, entreating 
 not to be separated from his mistress. He cried 
 like a whipt child. The favourite crawled to the 
 knees of Catherine's envoy ; she too begged to 
 be allowed to stay by her lover. They were 
 separated none the less. Mile. Vorontsof was
 
 THE VICTORY 191 
 
 sent to Moscow. Peter was sent provisionally 
 to a house situated at Ropcha, ' a very lonely but 
 a very agreeable spot/ Catherine declares, nearly 
 twenty miles from Peterhof, where he was to 
 remain until suitable accommodation had been 
 found for him in the fortress of Schliisselburg, the 
 Russian Bastille. 
 
 On the following day, July 14, Catherine made 
 a solemn entry into St. Petersburg. She had 
 only remained a few hours at Peterhof. Some- 
 thing, however, had happened, besides the down- 
 fall of Peter. Princess Dachkof had made a 
 discovery, of which she speaks sadly enough in 
 her memoirs, and which, by the surprise it caused 
 her, proves that, for an organiser of plots, she 
 was somewhat simple. On entering the Em- 
 press's salon at the dinner- hour she saw a man 
 stretched at full length on a sofa. It was Gregory 
 Orlof. He had before him a heap of sealed papers 
 which he was nonchalantly proceeding to open. 
 
 ' What are you doing ? ' cried the Princess, 
 recognising, by the aspect familiar to her in her 
 uncle's house, documents belonging to the chan- 
 cellor's office. ' No one has a right to touch 
 them, except the Empress and those whom she 
 specially appoints.' 
 
 ' Exactly,' replied Orlof, without changing his 
 position, and with the same air of disdainful 
 indifference. ' She told me to look through this.' 
 He seemed very much bored by his task, and 
 resolved to get it over as quickly as possible. 
 
 The Princess was thunderstruck. Her aston- 
 ishment was not at an end. Three covers were 
 laid on a table at the other end of the room. 
 The Empress, arriving immediately, asked her
 
 192 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 friend to seat herself beside her. The third place 
 was for the young lieutenant. But he made no 
 move. The Empress then had the table moved 
 over by the divan. She and the Princess sat 
 down opposite to the young man, who still lay at 
 full length on the sofa. He was, it appeared, 
 wounded in the leg. 
 
 Thus was disclosed the situation which he was 
 to occupy in connection with the new sovereign. 
 It was the inauguration ot favouritism. 
 
 in 
 
 Some further ordeals still awaited Catherine at 
 St. Petersburg. The very night after her return, 
 there was a great noise outside the palace. The 
 soldiers of the Ismailofski regiment had left their 
 barracks, and demanded to see the Empress, to 
 assure themselves that she had not been carried 
 off. She had to get up from bed, and once 
 again put on her grenadier's uniform, in order 
 to reassure them. 
 
 ' I cannot and would not,' she writes some 
 months later to Poniatowski, ' tell you all the 
 obstacles there are to your coming here. . . . My 
 situation is such that I have to be extremely 
 careful, and the least soldier of the Guards who 
 sees me says to himself: "See the work of my 
 hands." I am frightened to death at the letters 
 you write me.' 
 
 She held her own admirably, however, with 
 the difficulties and dangers of the situation. 
 Neither in the preparation nor the execution 
 of the coup dttat had she shown very great 
 forethought or capacity, qualities, certainly, de-
 
 THE VICTORY 193 
 
 sirable in a leader ; but she had shown courage, 
 coolness, resoluteness, and especially the art of 
 doing things with effect. These means of action 
 she still employed. All the eye-witnesses of the 
 events which were then taking place at St. 
 Petersburg are unanimous in praise of her calm- 
 ness, her affable and yet imposing air, and the 
 smiling majesty of her mien and bearing. She 
 was already showing herself ' imperturbable.' 
 
 She did not neglect, either, the means she had 
 long ago chosen for the subjection of wills and 
 the conquest of devotions : she manifested herself 
 from the first as an ostentatious Empress, splen- 
 didly rewarding those who served her, generous 
 to profusion. During the first few months of her 
 reign, it is a veritable Pactolus that streams forth 
 upon those who have wrought for her her fortune. 
 Up to November 16, 1762, the amount of indem- 
 nities paid, apart from payment in kind, in land, 
 and in peasants, comes to 795,622 roubles, or 
 nearly four million francs at the then rate of 
 reckoning. And these sums are for the most part 
 but instalments. Thus Gregory Orlof has received 
 only 3000 roubles out of the 50,000 assigned to 
 him. The resources of the Treasury do not admit 
 of more at the present. Princess Dachkof figures 
 on the list of payments to the amount of 25,000 
 roubles. A sum of 225,850 roubles has been 
 appropriated to the remittance of a half-year's 
 pay, by which the staff of the Guards' regiments 
 are the gainers. The soldiers are not so well off. 
 They have had plenty to drink on the day of the 
 1 2th July. On this head the expense amounts 
 to 41,000 roubles, or more than 200,000 francs. 
 But, not long after the great event, a consider- 
 
 N
 
 194 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 able number of these Praetorians are in want, 
 and Catherine does nothing for them. It is 
 true that she is no longer in need of them. 
 
 The absent are not forgotten. One of 
 Catherine's first cares was to send an express 
 messenger to the ex-chancellor Bestoujef, an- 
 nouncing her accession to the throne, and invit- 
 ing him to rejoin her in the capital. The bearer 
 of this good news, chosen by Catherine, was a 
 certain Nicholas Ivanovitch Kalyshkine, who, in 
 February 1758, being then a sergeant in a regi- 
 ment of the Guards, had been intrusted with the 
 surveillance of the jeweller Bernardi, implicated 
 in the Bestoujef case, and had aided in the ex- 
 change of correspondence between the Grand 
 Duchess and the prisoners. That, too, Catherine 
 remembered. She was nevertheless raising false 
 hopes in her former associate in politics. Bes- 
 toujef hastened to her at once, and was received 
 with open arms. Catherine was very glad to have 
 at hand a man of his experience and authority. 
 She paraded his name and his past services, and 
 often had recourse to his counsels. But he 
 no doubt anticipated recovering his place as 
 omnipotent minister, indeed an influence even 
 greater than he had had under Elizabeth. In 
 this he was greatly mistaken. 
 
 There were a number of similar disappoint- 
 ments. Field-Marshal Munich, who had has- 
 tened to make his submission, had a very 
 considerable one. Catherine did not appear to 
 cherish any ill-will against him on account of the 
 assistance, useless, it is true, that he had rendered 
 to Peter. He had only done his duty. He said 
 it handsomely enough, and she seemed to lend ear
 
 THE VICTORY 195 
 
 to it in like manner. But she did with him as she 
 did with Bestoujef. She got rid of him politely. 
 She judged, to use the expression of a modern 
 statesman, that a new situation needed new men. 
 
 Another to be disenchanted was Princess 
 Dachkof. She had conceived of the reign of 
 Catherine as a sort of transformation scene, in 
 which she would continue day by day to sway 
 the destinies of the empire, prancing on a noble 
 steed at the head of a column of grenadiers. 
 She had acquired a taste for a uniform, for in- 
 trigue, for parade. She imagined herself to be 
 neither esteemed and rewarded according to her 
 merits, nor utilised according to her capacities. 
 We shall come across her again later on, with 
 her dreams, her pretensions, and all the follies 
 that poisoned her own life, and gave no little 
 trouble to her imperial friend. We shall also 
 come across Bestoujef and Munich. 
 
 Catherine was very near making another mal- 
 content in the person of an obscure friend, of 
 whom we have already spoken. Princess Dach- 
 kof was not the only one to claim a principal 
 share in the event of the I2th July. Four days 
 after the coup cCttat, General Betzky was an- 
 nounced to the Empress. He had been em- 
 ployed in making some distributions of money to 
 the soldiers gained over by the Orlofs. He had 
 received an order and a few thousand roubles. 
 Catherine imagined that he had come to thank 
 her. He fell on his knees, and, in that posi- 
 tion, he entreated the Empress to state before 
 witnesses to whom she owed her crown. 
 
 ' To God and to my subjects' choice,' said 
 Catherine simply.
 
 196 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 On hearing these words, Betzky rose, and 
 with a tragic gesture took off the ribbon of his 
 order. 
 
 ' What are you doing ? ' 
 
 ' I am no more worthy to bear these insignia, 
 the reward of my services, since my services are 
 disowned by the Empress. I imagined myself to 
 have been the sole workman of her grandeur. 
 Was it not I who raised the Guards ? Was it not 
 I who scattered the gold ? The Empress denies 
 it. I am the most unhappy of men.' 
 
 The Empress turned it off with a joke. 
 
 ' You gave me the crown, Betzky, I admit. 
 Therefore I would receive it from your hands 
 alone. It is you to whom I confide the care of 
 rendering it as beautiful as possible. I put at 
 your disposal all the jewellers of my empire.' 
 
 Betzky took the joke seriously. He looked 
 after the jewellers who had to prepare the cro\vn 
 against the day of coronation, and was satisfied. 
 So, at least, the Princess Dachkof tells the story, 
 in which she may well have put some amount of 
 invention. 
 
 In general, however, as we have said, Catherine 
 was as generous to her friends as she was mag- 
 nanimous to her enemies. The new reign began 
 well. The enthusiasm with which it had been 
 received in the capital found an echo in the 
 remotest provinces. Suddenly a dark cloud came 
 across this radiant dawn. On July 18, as she 
 was retiring from the senate, where she had read 
 a new manifesto setting forth the description, 
 somewhat coloured, of the means whereby she 
 had risen to the throne, Catherine was about to 
 prepare to appear before the court, when a man
 
 THE VICTORY 197 
 
 rushed into her dressing-room, covered with 
 sweat and dust, his clothes all in disorder. It 
 was Alexis Orlof. He had ridden full speed 
 from Ropcha to announce to the Empress the 
 death of Peter III. 
 
 IV 
 
 How had this come about? It is still a 
 mystery. More than in any other country in 
 Europe, it yet remains for history in Russia to 
 get at the true sense of the official accounts of 
 great events of state. The walls of palaces built 
 of granite are thick, tongues are silent. Peter 
 had resigned himself to his fate with surprising 
 facility. He had confined his complaints and 
 demands to three things, that he might have 
 his mistress, his monkey, and his violin. He 
 passed his time in drinking and smoking. On 
 the 1 8th of July he was found dead. That is 
 almost all that we know with certainty. 
 
 That his death was a violent one is almost 
 certain. At the time no one doubted it. Writing 
 to the Due de Choiseul, the French chargd- 
 (Faffaires, Beranger stated that he had by him 
 'everything that could justify the generally re- 
 ceived opinion.' He had not seen the body of 
 the sovereign, exposed in public with the usual 
 ceremony, for the diplomatic corps had not been 
 invited to see it, and Beranger knew that those 
 who found their way there were noted. But he 
 had sent a trustworthy man, whose report went to 
 confirm his suspicions. The body of the unfor- 
 tunate sovereign was quite black, and ' extra- 
 vasated blood oozed through the pores, and even
 
 T98 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 showed through the gloves which covered the 
 hands/ Those who thought it their duty to kiss 
 the corpse on the mouth, according to the custom 
 of the country, came back with their lips swollen. 
 
 There is here a certain amount of what is 
 imaginary, though in a diplomatic document. 
 But the fact itself is supported by the strongest 
 presumptions. As for the mode of assassination, 
 since it seems that one must admit the hypothesis, 
 suppositions have varied equally. Some have 
 spoken of poisoning by Burgundy, Peter's fav- 
 ourite wine, others of strangling. The most part 
 have suggested Alexis Orlof as the author, in- 
 spirer, or even executor, propria manu, of the 
 deed. One version, however, which is not with- 
 out authority, brings forward quite different data. 
 It sets Orlof completely aside. It is not he but 
 Tieplof who has done, or at least arranged it all. 
 On his injunction, a Swedish officer in the service 
 of Russia, Svanovitz (?), strangled Peter with a 
 musket-strap. The crime took place, not on the 
 1 8th, but the i5th, of July. It is not Orlof, it is 
 Prince Bariatinski, who carried the news to St. 
 Petersburg. 
 
 Orlof or Tieplof, the question may seem of 
 secondary or trifling importance. It is not so. 
 If Tieplof was the instigator of the crime, it is 
 Catherine who was the supreme instigator. For 
 how can we imagine that he would act without her 
 consent ? With Orlof it would be quite different. 
 He and his brother Gregory were then, and were 
 for some time to be, the masters, to a certain 
 point, of the situation that they had brought about, 
 masters also in how they chose to follow up the 
 game in which their lives were at stake. They
 
 THE VICTORY 199 
 
 had not consulted Catherine over the coup 
 they may well not have consulted her this time. 
 
 ' The Empress was quite ignorant of this 
 crime,' declared Frederick, twenty years after- 
 wards, talking with the Comte de Segur, 'and 
 she heard of it with a despair which was not 
 feigned, for she justly foresaw the judgment that 
 everybody passes upon her to-day.' 
 
 'Everybody' was perhaps too much to say. 
 But the great majority certainly held the opinion 
 which Castera, Masson, Helbig, and others have 
 echoed. In a journal of the period, printed at 
 Leipzig, the death of Peter was compared with 
 that of King Edward of England, murdered 
 in prison by order of his wife Isabella (1327). 
 Later on, there was a certain change of opinion, 
 to which the memoirs of Princess Dachkof con- 
 tributed not a little. On the death of Catherine 
 Paul is said to have discovered in the papers of 
 the Empress a letter of Alexis Orlof, written im- 
 mediately after the event, and referring definitely 
 to himself as the author of the crime. Bloodthirsti- 
 ness, terror, and remorse all expressed themselves 
 in it. The Emperor lifted his eyes to heaven and 
 said, ' Thanks be to God ! ' But the Princess 
 Dachkof, who relates the scene, did not witness it. 
 
 Among modern writers there is still some 
 conflict of opinions and conjectures. Catherine 
 herself, it must be confessed, did much to heighten 
 the obscurity of this terrible enigma, by enveloping 
 the event in all the darkness within the power of 
 an absolute sovereign. If she has been wronged, 
 it is perhaps she herself who, to a certain extent, 
 provoked the calumny by proscribing the truth. 
 Her severity in putting down all public discus-
 
 200 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 sion of the tragic incident went to the extent of 
 attacking the work of Rulhiere, who nevertheless 
 has pronounced no opinion on the question of her 
 share in the murder. Despite her science of 
 attitudes, that which she saw fit to assume at the 
 moment of the catastrophe was not perhaps the 
 best calculated to disarm public malignity, though 
 it testified to the strength of her character, and 
 her resources as an actress. In a council hastily 
 summoned, it was decided that the news should 
 be kept secret for twenty-four hours. The 
 Empress thereupon appeared before the court 
 without betraying the slightest trace of emotion. 
 It was only on the following day, a manifesto 
 having brought to the knowledge of the senate 
 the news of the dreadful ending, that Catherine 
 put on the air of one who has but just heard what 
 has happened : she wept copiously before her im- 
 mediate retinue, and did not appear in public. 
 
 One last word on the subject of this question 
 which can never be fathomed : neither Orlof, nor 
 Tieplof, nor any one, was prosecuted on account 
 of the drama of Ropcha. Does not this throw 
 the responsibility on the sovereign, on whatever 
 hypothesis ? There must have been at all events 
 consent on her part, consent to what had been 
 done, if not to the doing of it. And this leaves 
 one spot of blood on the hands which had just 
 seized the imperial sceptre. Perhaps there were 
 others. But perhaps human greatness cannot 
 reach certain heights without these soils, which 
 bring it down to the common level of humanity. 
 And Catherine was great. How, by what means, 
 and despite what defects, we shall now endeavour 
 to show. Not having undertaken to write the
 
 THE VICTORY 201 
 
 history of her life, we shall here quit the narrative, 
 in the course of which we have tried to indicate 
 the origins and beginnings of her strange career. 
 This preliminary investigation has seemed to us 
 necessary for the proper placing and showing up 
 of what is the real object of our study, that is to 
 say, the portrait of a woman and a sovereign who, 
 in both characters, has had few rivals in the history 
 of the world, and the aspect of a reign which has 
 been, up to the present, unequalled in the history 
 of a great nation. We have endeavoured to 
 show how Catherine became what she was ; we 
 shall now endeavour to say what she was.
 
 PART II 
 
 THE EMPRESS
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE WOMAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 
 
 1 To tell the truth, I have never fancied myself 
 extremely beautiful, but I had the gift of pleas- 
 ing, and that, I think, was my greatest gift.' So 
 Catherine herself defines the particular kind of 
 attraction that nature had given her in outward 
 appearance. Thus, having passed all her life 
 in hearing herself compared to all the Cleopatras 
 of history, she did not admit the justice of the 
 comparison. Not that she underrated its worth. 
 ' Believe me,' she wrote to Grimm, ' there can 
 never be too much of beauty, and I have always 
 placed a very high estimation on it, though I 
 have never been very beautiful.' Did she 
 deliberately depreciate her charms, through 
 a modest ignorance or an artifice of refined 
 coquetry ? One is tempted to believe it, on 
 hearing the almost unanimous opinion of her 
 contemporaries. The 'Semiramis of the North' 
 flashed across the latter half of the eighteenth 
 century, and over the very threshold of the 
 nineteenth, as a marvellous incarnation, not only 
 
 205
 
 =o6 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of power, grandeur, and triumphant success, but 
 also of adorable and adored femininity. In the 
 eyes of all, or of nearly all, she was not only 
 imposing, majestic, terrible, but also seductive, 
 beautiful among the beautiful, queen by right of 
 beauty as by right of genius, Pallas and Venus 
 Victrix. 
 
 Well, it seems that her contemporaries saw 
 the marvellous Czarina in a sort of mirage. The 
 illusion was so complete that it extended to the 
 most apparent and the most insignificant details. 
 Thus, the greater part of those who came into 
 her presence speak of her lofty stature, by which 
 she dominated a crowd. Now, as a matter of 
 fact, she was under the middle height, short 
 almost, with a precocious tendency to grow stout. 
 The very colour of her eyes has given rise to 
 absurd contradictions. Some found them brown, 
 others blue, and Rulhiere has tried to harmonise 
 both accounts by making them brown with a 
 shade of blue in some lights. Here is his whole 
 portrait a portrait which belongs to the period 
 a little before Catherine's accession to the throne, 
 at the age of thirty-seven. No portrait of an 
 earlier date has come down to us with anything 
 like so much detail : Poniatowski's is only four 
 or five years earlier in date, and is a lover's 
 portrait. 
 
 ' Her figure/ writes Rulhiere, ' is noble and 
 agreeable, her bearing proud ; her person and 
 her demeanour full of grace. Her air is that of 
 a sovereign. All her features indicate character. 
 Her neck is long, her head stands out well ; the 
 union of these two parts is of remarkable beauty, 
 alike in the profile and in the movements of the
 
 APPEARANCE- CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 207 
 
 head ; and she is not unmindful of her beauty in 
 this respect. Her forehead is large and open, 
 her nose almost aquiline ; her mouth is fresh, 
 and embellished by her teeth ; her chin a little 
 large, and inclined to fleshiness. Her hair is 
 .chestnut in colour, and of the greatest beauty ; 
 her eyebrows brown, her eyes brown and very 
 beautiful in certain lights there seem to be 
 shades of blue ; and her skin is of dazzling 
 whiteness. Pride is the main characteristic of 
 her physiognomy. The amiability and good- 
 nature which are also to be seen there seem, to a 
 penetrating eye, merely the effect of an extreme 
 desire to make a pleasing impression/ 
 
 Rulhiere is neither a lover nor an enthusiast. 
 Compare, however, with this sketch the sketch 
 done in pencil about this time by a Russian 
 artist, Tchemessof. There is a story that this 
 portrait was made at the desire of Patiomkine, 
 whom Catherine began to favour just after, or 
 perhaps just before, the revolution of July. 
 Catherine was very pleased with it, and took the 
 artist into her service as secretary to her cabinet. 
 And yet what an Empress this Tchemessof 
 shows us, and how unlike all that we see of 
 other painters, sculptors, and memoir-writers, 
 from Benner to Lampi, from Rulhiere to the 
 Prince de Ligne ! The face is agreeable indeed, 
 if you will, and intelligent, but so little ideal, 
 but dare one say it ? so common. The cos- 
 tume perhaps has something to do with this, a 
 strange mourning attire with the hair oddly 
 dressed, covering the forehead down to the eye- 
 brows, and overtopping the head with a pair of 
 bats'- wings. But the hard, smiling face, the
 
 208 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 heavy, half-masculine features, stand out with a 
 brutal frankness. You would say a German 
 vivandure turned into a nun. Cleopatra, never ! 
 
 Was Tchemessof a deceiver, and did Catherine, 
 in seeing herself in the portrait, merely show 
 that total ignorance of art which she afterwards 
 confessed with such candour to Falconet? It 
 may be, to a certain point. We have neverthe- 
 less a sort of duplicate of the Russian artist's 
 sketch in a written portrait done some years 
 later by Richardson, who seems to have had a 
 mind and eyes of his own, not to be taken in by 
 any kind of illusion. This is how he notes his 
 impressions : 
 
 'The Empress of Russia is under the middle 
 height, graceful and well-proportioned, but in- 
 clining to be stout. She has a good colour, and 
 nevertheless endeavours to improve it with 
 rouge, after the manner of all the women of this 
 country. Her mouth is well-shaped, with good 
 teeth ; her blue eyes have a scrutinising expres- 
 sion something not so pronounced as an in- 
 quisitive look, nor so ugly as a defiant look. 
 The features are in general regular and agree- 
 able. The general effect is such, that one would 
 do an injustice in attributing to it a masculine 
 air, and something less than justice in calling it 
 entirely feminine.' 
 
 This is not exactly in the tone of the naif "and 
 all but gross realism of Tchemessof. A common 
 trait, however, appears in both, and it is what 
 would seem to have been the dominant trait of 
 the model, and, from the point of view of plastic 
 beauty, to have considerably diminished, if not 
 destroyed, its charm : that mannish expression,
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 209 
 
 namely, which is emphasised in both, and which 
 we find, through all the magic of colours, in the 
 work of even the least conscientious of artists. 
 The portrait that was the delight of Voltaire, and 
 is still to be seen at Ferney even that betrays 
 something of it. Catherine was nevertheless 
 observant in the matter, and down to the very 
 last. A wrinkle that she discovered near the 
 root of the nose in the portrait painted by 
 Lampi, not long before her death, seeming to 
 her to give a hard expression to her face, 
 brought both picture and painter into trouble. 
 Lampi nevertheless, and quite justly, had the 
 reputation of not saying the truth too cruelly to 
 his models. He effaced the wrinkle, and the 
 all but septuagenarian Empress took the air of a 
 young nymph. History does not tell us if she 
 was satisfied this time. 
 
 1 What do you think I look like ? ' asked 
 Catherine of the Prince de Ligne, on his first 
 visit to St. Petersburg ; ' long, lanky, eyes like 
 stars, and a big hoop.' This was in 1780. The 
 Empress was fifty. This is what the Prince 
 de Ligne thought of her : ' She still looked well. 
 One saw that she had been beautiful rather than 
 pretty : the majesty of her forehead was tempered 
 by her pleasant eyes and smile, but the forehead 
 was everything. It needed no Lavater to read 
 there, as in a book, genius, justice, courage, depth, 
 equanimity, sweetness, calm, and decision : the 
 breadth of the forehead indicated memory and 
 imagination ; there was room for everything. 
 Her chin, somewhat pointed, was not absolutely 
 prominent, but it was anything but retiring, and 
 had a certain nobility of aspect The -oval, 
 
 o
 
 2io CA THERINE 11. OF R USSIA 
 
 notwithstanding, was not well designed, though 
 excessively pleasing, for frankness and gaiety 
 dwelt on the lips. Her fine bust had been ac- 
 quired somewhat at the expense of her waist, 
 once so terribly thin ; but people generally grow 
 fat in Russia. If she had not so tightly drawn 
 back her hair, which should have come down 
 more around her face, she would have looked 
 much better. One never noticed that she was 
 short.' 
 
 Again an enthusiast, but the Comte de Segur, 
 who piqued himself on being less so, in his 
 quality of diplomatist, noted at the same time 
 almost identically the same traits. ' The white- 
 ness and brilliance of her complexion,' he says, 
 ' were the charms that she kept the longest.' 
 But Castera explains in his own way her triumph 
 over the 'irreparable outrage': 'In the last 
 years of her reign she used a great deal of 
 rouge.' It is just this that Catherine would 
 never confess to. We read in one of her letters 
 to Grimm, dated 1/83 : 
 
 4 Thank you for the pots of rouge with which 
 you advise me to brighten my complexion ; but 
 when I tried to use it, I found that it was so 
 crude in colour that it made me look frightful. 
 So you will excuse me if I cannot imitate or 
 adopt this pretty fashion, notwithstanding my 
 great liking for your Paris fashions.' 
 
 The most authoritative, the least impressive, 
 testimony, from the plastic point of view, is 
 perhaps that of Mile. Vigee-Lebrun, who, un- 
 fortunately, never saw Catherine in her best days. 
 She had nothing to praise in the conduct of the 
 sovereign, so far a guarantee of her sincerity.
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 211 
 
 She could not induce the Empress to pose to 
 her. Her brush, later on, did no more than 
 evoke certain recollections. Pen in hand, she 
 retraced them thus : 
 
 ' I was at first extremely surprised to find that 
 she was short ; I had expected her to be mighty 
 in stature, as high as her renown. She was very 
 stout, but she had still a handsome face, admir- 
 ably framed in by her white hair, raised up on her 
 head. Genius sat on her large high forehead ; 
 her eyes were soft and clear, her nose quite 
 Grecian, her complexion bright, her physiognomy 
 very mobile. ... I said she was short ; yet on 
 her reception days, her head held high, her eagle 
 glance, the composure that comes of the habit 
 of command, all in her had such majesty that 
 she seemed to me the queen of the world. She 
 wore on these occasions the insignia of three 
 orders, and her costume was simple and dignified. 
 It consisted in a tunic of muslin embroidered 
 with gold, the ample sleeves folded across in the 
 Asiatic style. Above this tunic was a dolman 
 of red velvet with very short sleeves. The 
 bonnet that framed in her white hair was not 
 decked with ribbons, but with diamonds of the 
 greatest beauty.' 
 
 Catherine had early adopted the habit of 
 holding her head very high in public, and she 
 kept it all her life. Aided by her prestige, this 
 gave her an effect of height that deceived even 
 observers like Richardson. The art of mise en 
 scene, in which she was incomparable, has re- 
 mained a tradition at the court of Russia. A court 
 lady at Vienna once gave us her impressions of 
 the arrival of the Emperor Nicholas in that
 
 212 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 capital. When she saw him enter the castle, 
 in all the splendour of his uniform, his virile 
 beauty, and that air of majesty that shone in 
 his whole person, upright, lofty in stature, a 
 head taller than the princes, aides-de-camp, and 
 chamberlains, she felt that here was a demigod. 
 In the upper gallery, where she was placed, she 
 could not turn away her eyes from the sight. 
 Suddenly, she saw that the swarm of courtiers 
 had retired, the doors were closed. Only the 
 imperial family and a few of the private retinue 
 remained. But the Emperor where was he ? 
 There, sunk into a seat, his tall form doubled 
 in upon itself, the muscles of his face released 
 from constraint, settling into an expression of 
 unspeakable anguish ; unrecognisable, only the 
 half of himself, as if fallen from the height of 
 grandeur to the depth of misery : the demigod 
 was but a handful of suffering human flesh. This 
 was in 1850. Nicholas was then already stricken 
 by the first attacks of the disease that under- 
 mined the last years of his life, and prematurely 
 ended it. Withdrawn from the eyes of the crowd, 
 he bowed beneath its weight. Before the public, 
 by an heroic effort of will, he became once more 
 the splendid Emperor of the past. Perhaps it was 
 so with Catherine in the last years of her reign. 
 
 The Princess of Saxe-Coburg, who saw her 
 for the first time in 1/95, begins her account of 
 the meeting unpleasantly enough, saying that 
 she always fancied a sorceress must look much as 
 did the old Empress. But the sequel shows that 
 her idea of a sorceress was by no means disagree- 
 able. She praises in particular the ' singularly 
 fine complexion' retained by the Empress, and
 
 A PPEARANCECHARA CTER-TEMPERAMENT 2 1 3 
 
 says that in general she seemed to find in her 
 ' the personification of robust old age, though 
 abroad there is much talk of her maladies.' 
 
 Catherine, nevertheless, had never very good 
 health. She suffered much from headaches, ac- 
 companied by colics. This did not prevent her 
 from laughing at physic and physicians to the 
 very last. It was quite an affair to make her 
 swallow a potion. One day when her doctor, 
 Rogerson, had succeeded in making her take 
 some pills, he was so delighted as to forget him- 
 self, and clapped her familiarly on the shoulder, 
 crying, 'Bravo, madame!' She was not in the 
 least offended. 
 
 From 1722 she was obliged to use glasses 
 to read. Her hearing, though very sharp, was 
 affected by an odd peculiarity : each of her 
 ears heard sounds in a different way, not merely 
 in loudness, but in tone. This no doubt was 
 the reason why she could never appreciate 
 music, hard as she tried to acquire the taste. 
 Her sense of harmony was completely lacking. 
 
 It was pretended that when the scarves in 
 which she was accustomed to wrap up her head 
 at night came to be washed, they were seen to 
 emit sparks. The same phenomenon occurred 
 with her bedclothes. Such fables only serve to 
 indicate her actual physical influence over the 
 minds of her contemporaries, marvelling just 
 then over the mysterious discoveries of Franklin. 
 
 II 
 
 'I assure you,' she writes in 1774 to Grimm, 
 ' that I have not the defects you impute to me,
 
 214 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 because I do not find in myself the qualities 
 that you give me. I am. perhaps, good-natured, 
 ordinarily, but, by nature, I am constrained to 
 will terribly what I will, and there you have 
 what I am worth.' 
 
 Observe, however, that if, as a general thini;, 
 she is persevering in the exercise and in the 
 invariable tension of this natural energy, having 
 always willed, according to her expression, ' that 
 the good of the empire should be accomplished,' 
 and having willed it with extraordinary force, 
 in small things she is inconstancy itself. She 
 wills everything strongly, but she changes her 
 mind with a no less surprising facility, as her 
 idea of what is 'good' varies. In this respect 
 she is a woman, from head to foot. In 1767 
 she devotes herself to her Instruction for the 
 new laws that she would give to Russia. This 
 work, in which she has pillaged Montesquieu 
 and Beccaria, is in her eyes destined to open 
 a new era in the history of Russia. And she 
 wills, ardently, passionately, that it should be 
 put into action. Difficulties, however, arise ; un- 
 looked-for delays interpose themselves. Where- 
 upon, all at once, she loses interest in the thing. 
 In 1775 she excogitates Rules for the administra- 
 tion of her provinces. And she writes : ' My 
 last rules of the 7th November contain 250 
 quarto pages of print, and I swear to you that 
 it is the best thing I have ever done, and that, 
 in comparison, I look upon the Instruction as 
 so much nonsense.' And she is dying with 
 desire to show this new masterpiece to her con- 
 fidant. Less than a year afterwards it is finished. 
 Grimm has not had sight of the document, and
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 215 
 
 as he insists on being favoured with it, she loses 
 patience : ' Why is he so anxious to read any- 
 thing so little amusing? It is very good, very 
 fine, perhaps, but quite tedious.' At the end of 
 a month she has forgotten all about it. 
 
 She has the same way with men as with things ; 
 sudden, passionate infatuations, of an unexampled 
 impetuosity, followed by disenchantments and 
 by an equally rapid subsidence into the most 
 complete indifference. The greater part of the 
 able men whom she drew to Russia, Diderot 
 among the rest, experienced it in turn. After 
 having passed twenty years of her reign in 
 adorning different residences which have been 
 successively preferred and preferable in her eyes, 
 she takes a fancy, all of a sudden, in 1786, to a 
 site near St. Petersburg, which has no advantages 
 in itself. She summons the Russian architect 
 Starof, of the Academy of St. Petersburg, to 
 build a palace there in all haste ; and she writes 
 to Grimm : ' All my country houses are as hovels 
 in comparison with Pella, which is rising like a 
 phcenix.' 
 
 Not being wanting, by any means, either in 
 common sense or in acuteness, she comes to find 
 out, late enough, what we have just noted. 
 'Two days ago,' she writes in 1781, 'I made 
 the discovery that I am a beginner by profession, 
 and that up to now I have finished nothing of 
 all that I have begun.' And a year afterwards : 
 ' For all that, I only want the time to finish ; it 
 is like my laws, my regulations : everything is 
 begun, nothing finished.' She has her illusions, 
 however, and she adds : ' If I live ten years 
 longer, all will be finished to perfection.' Two
 
 216 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 years and more having passed, she ends by 
 perceiving that time has nothing to do with the 
 matter. ' Never have I so completely realised 
 that I am a very accumulation of broken ends,' 
 she declares, not without a certain melancholy. 
 To which she adds, that she is ' as stupid as a 
 goose,' and that she is convinced Prince Patiom- 
 kine had much more notion of good management 
 than she. 
 
 She would not be a woman if it did not some- 
 times happen to her not to know very well what 
 she wanted, or even not know it at all, while she 
 was very much in want of something. Apropos 
 of a certain Wagniere, who was secretary to 
 Voltaire, whose services she desired for herself, 
 and whom, after all, she did not know what to 
 do with, she writes to her souffre-douleur : 
 
 ' A truce to your excuses . . . and to mine, 
 for not knowing exactly, now as often, what I 
 wanted, nor what I did not want, and for having 
 consequently written for and against. . . . If you 
 will, I will found a professorship, in addition to 
 the one you counsel, on the science of indecision, 
 more natural to me than people think.' 
 
 It is to be observed that a disposition of this 
 kind is not made to give a firm and well-balanced 
 direction to the affairs of an empire. And, in- 
 deed, nothing of the kind is to be found in the 
 part that Catherine played in history. If this 
 part was a large one, it was as she well knew 
 herself because she had to do with a new people, 
 at the first stage of its career, the stage of ex- 
 pansion. In this stage a people has no need 
 of being directed ; for the most part, it is not 
 even susceptible of direction. It is an 'impelled
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 217 
 
 force ' which follows its own impulsion. In 
 obeying it, it is in no danger of going astray. 
 The sole misfortune of which it is capable is that 
 of falling asleep. It would be vain and useless to 
 take such a nation by the hand, and lead it into 
 the way that it knows so well how to find by 
 itself. It suffices to give it a shaking, and start 
 it forward from time to time. That is what 
 Catherine understood in the most wonderful 
 way. Her action was that of a stimulant and 
 a propeller of prodigious vigour. 
 
 In this respect she bears comparison with the 
 greatest men of history. Her soul is like a 
 spring, always at full tension, always vibrating, 
 of a temper which resists every test. In the 
 month of August 1 765 she is unwell, and is 
 keeping her bed. Rumours are spread that 
 she is enceinte, and that an abortion is to be 
 procured. Nevertheless she has arranged for 
 some great manoeuvres, 'a camp,' as it was 
 called then, for the end of the month, and she 
 has announced that she will be present. She is 
 present. The last day, during the 'battle,' she 
 remains on horseback for five hours, having to 
 direct the manoeuvres and to send orders, by the 
 intermediary of her aide-de-camp, to Marshal 
 Boutourline and to General Prince Galitzine, 
 who command the two wings of the army. The 
 aide-de-camp, glittering in a cuirass of gold 
 studded with jewels, is Gregory Orlof. Some 
 months later, riots having broken out in the 
 capital, she comes in the middle of the night 
 from Tzarskoie-Sielo to St. Petersburg with 
 Orlof, Passek, and a few other trusty friends, 
 mounts on horseback, and traverses the streets
 
 2i8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 to make sure that her orders have been properly 
 carried out, and proper precautions taken. Even 
 now she has not fully recovered from the more 
 or less mysterious crisis that she has passed 
 through. She can take no nourishment. She, 
 however, thinks well to appear cheerful and in 
 good health. Festivity follows festivity ; the 
 French play comes to Tzarskoi'e. 
 
 Physical or moral dejection, lassitude, or dis- 
 couragement, are things equally unknown to her. 
 Her force of resistance seems to increase in pro- 
 portion to the demand upon it. In 1791, when 
 things look dark about her, when she has to face 
 Sweden and Turkey, and is in danger of a 
 rupture with England, she has, or affects to have, 
 the most tranquil serenity, the most contagious 
 good humour. She laughs and jests ; advises those 
 about her to give up English liquors in good 
 time, and get accustomed to the national drinks. 
 
 And what ' go ' ; what ardour, for ever youthful ; 
 what impetuousness, never relaxed ! 
 
 ' Courage ! Forward ! That is the motto with 
 which I have passed through good years and bad 
 years alike, and now I have passed through 
 forty, all told, and what is the present evil com- 
 pared with the past ? ' 
 
 That is her habitual tone. The force of will 
 that she has at command allows her both to con- 
 trol the outward expression of her feelings, and 
 even to abstract herself when she will from these 
 feelings when they become troublesome, intense 
 as they may be, for she is far from being in- 
 different, or hard to move, or naturally calm. 
 Sang-froid, for instance, is not at all a part of her 
 disposition. In May 1/90, on the eve of a sea-
 
 APPEARANCE- CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 219 
 
 fight with Sweden, she passes whole nights with- 
 out sleep, puts every one about her on pins and 
 needles, gets a rougeur on her cheek, which she 
 attributes to the acuteness of her emotions, and 
 behaves in such a way that every one, includ- 
 ing her Prime Minister, Besborodko, bursts into 
 tears. No sooner has she known the issue of 
 the battle than her peace of mind is restored, and 
 no matter what bad news may follow, she is gay 
 and light-hearted again. Every moment she is 
 passing through some fever or other. She falls 
 ill with anxiety, and has colics. One day Chra- 
 powicki, her factotum, finds her lying on a sofa, 
 complaining of pains in the region of the heart. 
 ' It is the bad weather, no doubt,' says he, 'that 
 indisposes your Majesty.' 'No,' replies she, 'it 
 is Otchakof ; the fortress will be taken to-day or 
 to-morrow ; I have often such presentiments.' 
 These presentiments often prove deceptive, as in 
 the present case, for Otchakof was not taken till 
 two months after. On hearing the news of the 
 death of Louis XVI., she receives such a shock 
 that she is obliged to take to her bed. It is true 
 that, this time, she makes no attempt to master 
 or to dissimulate her emotion, which, however, is 
 not inspired only by a sentiment of political 
 solidarity, for the fibres of her heart are extremely 
 excitable. She has not merely ' sensibility,' after 
 the fashion of the day ; she is sincerely accessible 
 to sympathy and pity. 
 
 ' I forgot to drink, eat, and sleep/ she writes in 
 1776, announcing the death of her daughter-in- 
 law, ' and I know not how I kept up my strength. 
 There were moments when my very heart was 
 torn by the suffering I saw about me.'
 
 220 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 This does not hinder her from adding to the 
 letter, which is lengthy, a host of details con- 
 cerning current affairs, with the usual jokes, a 
 little heavy, which serve to season her familiar 
 correspondence. After giving herself up to 
 her impressions, she returns to herself, and she 
 explains it all : 
 
 4 On Friday I seemed to turn to stone. ... I 
 who am so given to weeping, saw death without 
 a tear. I said to myself: "If thou weep, the 
 others will sob ; if thou sob, the others will faint, 
 and every one will lose their head and their 
 wits." ' 
 
 She never lost her head, and, she declares in 
 one of her letters, she never fainted. Whenever 
 she has to play a part, to take an attitude, and, 
 by her example, to impose it upon others, she is 
 always ready. In August r 79 sne thinks 
 seriously of accompanying the army reserve to 
 Finland. ' Had it been needful,' she said after- 
 wards, ' I should have left my bones in the last 
 battalion. I have never known fear.' 
 
 With our present-day notions, it does not seem 
 a very signal proof of courage that she gave in 
 1768, in being the first, or almost the first, in her 
 capital and in her empire, to be inoculated. For 
 the time it was a great event, and an act of 
 heroism celebrated by all her contemporaries. 
 One need but read the notes written on the 
 subject by the inoculator himself, the Englishman 
 Dimsdale, expressly brought over from London, 
 to realise the idea that the profession itself still 
 cherished in regard to the danger of the opera- 
 tion. We cut open or trepan a man to-day with 
 much less concern. Catherine bared her arm to
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 221 
 
 the lancet on the 26th October 1768. A week 
 afterwards she had her son inoculated. On the 
 22nd of November the members of the legislative 
 commission, and all the chief dignitaries, as- 
 sembled in the church of Our Lady of Kasan, 
 where a decree of the senate was read, command- 
 ing public prayers for the occasion ; after which 
 they went in a body to present their compliments 
 and thanks to her Majesty. A boy of seven, 
 named Markof, who had been inoculated first of 
 all, in order to use the lymph found on him, was 
 ennobled in return for it, and received the sur- 
 name of Ospiennyi ( Ospa = smallpox). Catherine 
 took a liking to him, and had him brought 
 up under her eyes. The family of this name, 
 now occupying a high position in Russia, owes 
 its fortune to this ancestor. Dr. Dimsdale 
 received the title of baron, the honorary charge 
 of the physicians in ordinary to her Majesty, the 
 rank of Chancellor of State, and a pension of 
 ^500 sterling. It was certainly much ado about 
 nothing; but some years later, in 1772, the Abbe 
 Galiani announced, as still an important piece of 
 news, the inoculation of the son of the Prince of 
 San Angelo Imperial! at Naples, the first that 
 had taken place in that city. In 1768 Voltaire 
 himself found much to admire in an Empress 
 who had been inoculated 'with less ceremony 
 than a nun who takes a bath.' Catherine is 
 perhaps the one who thought least of her bravery. 
 Before the deputations that came to compliment 
 her, she thought it well to take. a serious air, 
 declaring 'that she had done no more than her 
 duty, for a shepherd is bound to give his life for 
 his sheep.' But, writing a few days afterwards
 
 222 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 to General Braun, the Governor of Livonia, she 
 laughs at those who are lost in admiration of her 
 courage : ' As for courage, I think every little 
 urchin in the streets of London has just as 
 much.' 
 
 in 
 
 Certainly, she possesses a happy equilibrium 
 of faculties, an excellent moral health. It 
 is this which renders her easy to get on with, 
 though she has perhaps less indulgence and 
 benignity than she would credit herself with, but 
 still is in no wise given to wrangling, nor exces- 
 sively hard to please, nor unreasonably severe. 
 Outside official ceremonies, in regard to which 
 she is very particular, giving to them the greatest 
 possible lustre, she is full of charm in her inter- 
 course with others. She has an easy simplicity 
 which puts every one at ease, and which allows 
 her to maintain her own rank, and to keep others 
 in their proper place, without her appearing to 
 give the matter a thought. On the birth of her 
 grandson, Alexander, she falls to regretting that 
 there are no more fairies ' to endow little children 
 with all one would like them to have,' and she 
 writes to Grimm : ' For my part, I would give 
 them nice presents, and I would whisper in 
 their ear: "Ladies, be natural, only be natural, 
 and experience will do pretty well all the rest." ' 
 She is bon enfant, and puts on a familiar manner. 
 She hits her secretary in the ribs with a roll of 
 paper, and tells him : ' Some day I will kill you 
 like that.' In corresponding with her master of 
 the horse, M. Eck, she writes : ' Monsieur mon 
 voisin.'
 
 APPEARANCE CHARA CTER TEMPERAMENT 223 
 
 The Prince de Ligne recounts an episode of 
 the tour in the Crimea, when she took it into her 
 head to be thee'd and thou'd by every one, and to 
 tiitoyer them in return. This whim often returned 
 to her. ' You cannot conceive/ she writes to 
 Grimm, ' how I love to be tutoyde ; I wish it were 
 done all over Europe.' Then hear her account 
 of her relations with Mme. Todi, a famous prima 
 donna, whose talent she could not appreciate, but 
 whom she was willing to pay very liberally. This 
 was at Tzarsko'ie-Sielo : 
 
 ' Mme. Todi is here, and she is always about 
 with her husband. Very often we meet face to 
 face, always however without coming in collision. 
 I say to her : " Good-morning or good-evening, 
 Mme. Todi, how do you do?" She kisses my 
 hands, and I her cheek ; our dogs smell one 
 another ; she takes hers under her arm, I call 
 mine, and we both go on our way. When she 
 sings, I listen and applaud, and we both say that 
 we get on very well together.' 
 
 She carries her condescension in the matter of 
 sociability to great lengths. If any one ventures 
 to criticise her choice of friends and lovers, she 
 replies : ' Before being what I am I was thirty- 
 three years what others are, and it is not quite 
 twenty years that I have been what they are not 
 And that teaches one how to live.' On the other 
 hand she makes merry at the expense of the great : 
 ' Do you know why I dread Kings' visits ? Be- 
 cause they are generally tiresome, insipid people, 
 and you have to be stiff and formal with them. 
 These persons of renown pay much respect to 
 my unaffected ways, and I would show them all 
 my wit; sometimes I show it by listening to
 
 224 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 them, and as I love to chatter, the silence bores 
 me.' 
 
 Her proverbial munificence is not only in 
 ostentation. Grimm often distributed large sums 
 for her anonymously. And she puts a charming 
 grace and delicacy in some of her gifts. ' Your 
 Royal Highness,' she writes to the Comte d'Artois, 
 who is leaving Russia, ' wishes, doubtless, to 
 make some small presents to the people who 
 have done you service during your stay here. 
 But, as you know, I have forbidden all commerce 
 and communication with your unhappy France, 
 and you will seek in vain to buy any trinkets in 
 the city ; there are none in Russia save in my 
 cabinet ; and I hope your Highness will accept 
 these from his affectionate friend Catherine.' 
 
 What she lacks, in this as in so many things, 
 is moderation. She is well aware of it herself, 
 and admits : ' I know not how to give ; I give too 
 much or not enough.' One would say that her 
 destiny, in raising her to such a height, has taken 
 from her the sense of proportions. She is either 
 prodigal or miserly. When she has exhausted 
 her resources by her excessive expenditure and 
 liberalities she has ' a heart of stone ' for the most 
 worthy, the most just, demands upon her. She 
 gives a third of his pension to Prince Viazemski 
 on his retirement. He has served her for thirty 
 years, and she has appreciated his services, but he 
 has ceased to please her. The poor man dies of 
 vexation. 
 
 With those who please her, as long as they 
 have that good fortune, she knows no stint. In 
 1781, when Count Branicki married a niece of 
 Patiomkine, she gave 500,000 roubles as a
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 225 
 
 marriage portion to the bride, and the same 
 amount to her husband, to pay his debts. One 
 day she amused herself with imagining how the 
 principal people at her court might meet their 
 end. Ivan Tchernichef would die of rage, 
 Countess Roumiantsof of having shuffled the 
 cards too much, Mme. Vsievolodsky of an excess 
 of sighs ; and so forth. She herself would die 
 of complaisance. 
 
 It is not only complaisance, there is in her an 
 instinctive generosity which comes out in more 
 than one way. With those whom she honours 
 with her confidence she has none of that 
 facile change of front so common to her sex. 
 She is incapable of suspicion. One of the foreign 
 artists whom she had commissioned to make 
 considerable purchases for her gallery at the 
 Hermitage, Reiffenstein the 'divine' Reiffen- 
 stein, as she called him fancied his honesty 
 suspected. Grimm, who acted as intermediary, 
 became anxious about it. 
 
 ' Begone with your notes and accounts, both 
 of you!' wrote the Empress to the latter. ' I 
 never suspected either of you in my life. Why 
 do you trouble me with stingy, useless things 
 of that sort ? ' 
 
 She added : ' No one about me has insinuated 
 anything against le divin' Grimm could well 
 believe her, for she was absolutely averse to 
 this kind of insinuation, so much favoured in 
 courts. In general, any one did but do a bad turn 
 for himself by saying evil of others. Patiomkine 
 himself experienced this in trying to shake the 
 credit of Prince Viazemski. 
 
 If there was need, however, to serve or defend 
 p
 
 226 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 her friends, she was ready to do anything, in 
 total forgetfulness of her rank. She learns, for 
 instance, that Mme. Ribas, the wife of an Italian 
 adventurer whom she has made Admiral, is in 
 childbed. She jumps into the first carriage that 
 she finds at the gate of the palace, enters like a 
 whirlwind into the room of her friend, turns up 
 her sleeves, and puts on an apron. ' Now there 
 are two of us,' she says to the midwife ; ' let us 
 do our best.' It often happens that advantage is 
 taken of this well-known characteristic. ' They 
 know I am good to bother,' she says. Is she 
 simply 'good,' in reality? Yes, in her way, which 
 assuredly is not the way of everybody. The 
 absolute mistress of forty millions of men is not 
 'everybody.' Mme. Vigde-Lebrun dreamed of 
 painting the portrait of the great sovereign. 
 ' Take," said some one, ' the map of the empire of 
 Russia for canvas, the darkness of ignorance for 
 background, the spoils of Poland for drapery, 
 human blood for colouring, the monuments of her 
 reign for the cartoon, and for the shadow six 
 months of her son's reign.' There is some truth 
 in this sombre picture, but it wants shading. At 
 the moment of the terrible uprising of Pougatchef, 
 sharp as was Catherine in the repression of a 
 revolt which put her empire to the stake, she bids 
 General Panine use no more than the indispensable 
 severity. After the capture of the rebel, she does 
 her best to succour the victims of this terrible civil 
 war. Yet, in Poland, the conduct of her generals 
 is for the most part atrocious, and she never 
 interferes. She even compliments Souvarof after 
 the massacre which accompanies the taking of 
 Warsaw. And in this empire of hers, ' from which
 
 APPEARANCE CHAR A CTER TEMPERAMENT 227 
 
 the light now comes,' the knout still bears sway, 
 the stick still falls on the bleeding shoulders of 
 the serf. She lets knout and stick do their work. 
 How is this to be understood ? 
 
 It is needful first of all to realise the conception 
 a well-reasoned and elaborated conception of 
 the position of the sovereign and of the exigencies 
 of that position, which obtained in the mind of 
 this autocratic ruler. We cannot make war with- 
 out dead or wounded, nor can we subdue a people 
 jealous of its liberty without stifling its resistance 
 in blood. Having resolved on the annexation of 
 Poland rightly or wrongly, need not be discussed 
 here it was necessary to accept all the con- 
 sequences of the enterprise. This Catherine 
 did, taking upon herself, calmly and frankly, the 
 entire responsibility of the affair. Calmly, for, 
 in these matters, reasons of state alone influence 
 her ; they take the place of conscience, and even 
 of feeling. Frankly, for she is not a hypocrite. 
 An actress ever, and of the first order, by reason 
 of her position, which is nothing but a part to 
 play. It is in this sense that the French envoy 
 Durand could say of her : ' My experience is quite 
 useless ; the woman is more false than our women 
 are tricky. I can say no more.' But she was 
 never a hyprocrite by preference, for the pleasure 
 of deceiving, like so many ; nor by need of 
 deceiving herself. * She was too proud to deceive,' 
 said the Prince de Ligne. 
 
 In what she did, or suffered to be done, in 
 Poland, she has had many imitators, beginning 
 with the pious Maria Theresa herself. Only 
 Maria Theresa mingled her tears with the blood 
 that she shed. ' She is always crying and
 
 228 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 stealing,' said Frederick. Catherine keeps dry- 
 eyed. 
 
 Catherine, too, followed a different principle 
 of government. A sovereign, however absolute, 
 cannot be everywhere at once. Souvarof has 
 orders to take Warsaw. He takes it. How ? 
 That is his affair, not that of any one else. The 
 principle is contestable, but we have not to discuss 
 political theories in a study of character. 
 
 Finally, Catherine is a Russian sovereign, 
 and the Russia of the eighteenth century, with- 
 out going further, is a country where European 
 ideas in regard to justice and sentiment are 
 quite out of place, where both moral and 
 physical sensibility seem to obey different laws. 
 In 1766, during the Empress's stay at Peterhof, 
 a sudden alarum one night startles her Majesty 
 and all about her. There is great excitement 
 and confusion. It turns out that a lackey, who 
 has been making love to one of the waiting- 
 maids of Catherine, has caused all this fright. 
 He is brought to trial, and condemned to 
 receive a hundred and one strokes of the knout, 
 which is practically equivalent to a sentence of 
 death, to have his nose slit, to be branded on 
 the forehead with a hot iron, and to end his 
 days in Siberia, if he recovers. No one has 
 anything to say against the sentence. It is 
 after such traits, and on the scale of notions, 
 sentiments, and sensations, apparently proper 
 to the surroundings in which they have root, 
 that we require to judge a sovereign who, 
 politically speaking, could certainly not claim 
 the title of ' most gracious.' 
 
 Apart from politics, Catherine is an adored
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 229 
 
 and adorable sovereign. Those about her have 
 nothing but praise for her dealings. Her 
 servants are spoilt children. The story of the 
 chimney-sweep is well known. Always an early 
 riser, in order to work more quietly in the 
 silence of the early hours, the Empress some- 
 times lights her own fire, so as not to disturb 
 any one. One morning, as she sets the faggots 
 in a blaze, she hears piercing cries from the 
 chimney, followed by a volley of abuse. She 
 understands, quickly puts out the fire, and 
 humbly proffers her excuses to the poor little 
 chimney-sweep whom she had nearly roasted 
 alive. There are thousands of similar stories 
 told of her. One day, the Countess Bruce 
 enters the Empress's bedroom and finds her 
 Majesty alone, half-dressed, with her arms folded 
 in the attitude of one who is waiting patiently be- 
 cause she is obliged to wait. Seeing her surprise, 
 Catherine explains the case 
 
 'What do you think? my waiting-maids have 
 all deserted me. I had been trying on a dress 
 which fitted so badly that I lost my temper; 
 so they left me like this . . . and I am waiting 
 till they have cooled down.' 
 
 One day she sends Grimm an almost inde- 
 cipherable letter, and thus excuses herself 
 
 ' My valets de chambre give me two new 
 pens a day, but when they are worn out I never 
 venture to ask for more, but I turn and turn 
 them again as best I can.' 
 
 One evening, after ringing in vain for some time, 
 she goes into the anteroom and finds these same 
 valets de chambre absorbed in a game of cards. 
 She offers one of them to take his place so that
 
 230 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 she can finish the game for him, while he can 
 do an urgent errand for her. She catches some 
 servants in the act of making off with pro- 
 visions intended for her table. ' Let this be 
 the last time,' she says, with severity; then she 
 adds : ' And now, be off quickly, or the martchal 
 de la cour will catch you.' She sees in the court- 
 yard of the palace an old woman running after 
 a fowl, and soon the valets are running after the 
 old woman, anxious to show their zeal under the 
 eyes of the Empress. For this fowl is a fowl 
 'belonging to her Majesty's treasure,' and the 
 woman is the grandmother of a court scullion ; 
 a double crime. Catherine, after making in- 
 quiries, orders a fowl to be given every day to 
 the poor old soul, but a fowl ready trussed. 
 
 She keeps by her, despite her infirmities, an 
 old German nurse, whom she watches over with 
 the greatest care. ' I feared her,' she writes 
 to Grimm, announcing her death, 'as I dread 
 fire, or the visits of kings and great people. 
 Whenever she saw me, she would seize me by 
 the head, and kiss me again and again till she 
 half stifled me. And she always smelt of 
 tobacco, which her respected husband used 
 largely.' 
 
 Nevertheless, she is far from being patient, 
 for naturally she is quick-tempered, too quick- 
 tempered. Her fits of rage are one of her 
 most noticeable defects. Grimm compares her 
 to Etna, and she delights in the comparison. 
 She calls the volcano ' my cousin,' and fre- 
 quently asks for news of it. For she knows 
 her defect, and it is this that enables her 
 to combat it effectually. If she gives way to
 
 APPEARANCE CHA RA CTER TEMPERAMENT 23! 
 
 the first paroxysm of anger, she immediately 
 recovers command of herself. If it is in her 
 private room, she turns up her sleeves with a 
 gesture to which she is accustomed., and begins 
 to walk to and fro, drinking glass after glass 
 of water. Never does she give an order or 
 a signature in one of these passing fits of rage. 
 In her speech she gives way sometimes to 
 undignified expressions, as in her sallies against 
 Gustave III. during the war with Sweden. 
 ' Canaille ' in French and ' Bestie ' in German 
 are too often part of her vocabulary. She 
 always, however, regrets what she has done or 
 said, and, in course of time, so strictly does 
 she watch over and restrain herself, she attains 
 to a bearing which makes this weakness of her 
 character or temperament seem almost incredible. 
 
 ' She said to me slowly,' writes the Prince 
 de Ligne, 'that she had been extremely quick- 
 tempered, which one could scarcely believe. . . . 
 Her three bows a la Russe are made always 
 in the same way in entering a room, one to 
 the left, one to the right, and one in the middle. 
 Everything in her was measured, methodical. 
 . . . She loves to repeat ' J'ai de 1'imperturba- 
 bilite,' taking a quarter of an hour to say the word.' 
 
 Senac de Meilhan, who visited Russia in 
 1750, confirms these characteristics. In one of 
 his letters, dated from St. Petersburg, he 
 speaks of the inexpressible impression of tran- 
 quillity and serenity with which the appearance 
 of Catherine before the court is always accom- 
 panied. She does not affect the rigidity of a 
 statue. She looks round her with eyes that 
 seem to see everything. She speaks slowly,
 
 232 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 not as if seeking for words, but as if choosing 
 quietly those that suit her. 
 
 Nevertheless, to the end of her life, Catherine 
 kept to her habit of pinning her serviette under 
 her chin on sitting down to table. ' She could 
 not otherwise,' as she frankly avows, 'eat an 
 egg, without dropping half of it on her collerette.' 
 
 Her temperament is particularly lively, san- 
 guine, and impetuous. This appears, we know 
 well, in more than one aspect of her private life. 
 To this we shall have to return. Let us say here 
 that the shamelessness of her morals, which it 
 would be idle to try to attenuate, does not seem 
 to have its root in any constitutional vice. She 
 is neither hysterical nor tainted with nympho- 
 mania. It is a sensual woman who, being Empress, 
 gives free course to her senses, imperially. What 
 she does in this order of things is done as she 
 does everything else, quietly, imperturbably we 
 might almost say methodically. She gives way 
 to no bewilderments of imagination, to no dis- 
 order of nerves. Love with her is but the natural 
 function of a physical and moral organism en- 
 dowed with exceptional energy, and it has the 
 same imperious character, the same lasting power, 
 as the other phenomena of her life. She is still 
 amorous at sixty-seven ! 
 
 Her other tastes are those of a person well- 
 balanced, both mentally and physically. She loves 
 the arts, and the society of intelligent and learned 
 people. She loves nature. Gardening, 'planto- 
 mania'as she calls it, is one of her favourite occupa-
 
 APPEARANCE CHAR A CTER TEMPERAMENT 233 
 
 tions. Note that though she adores flowers, she 
 cannot endure too strong perfumes, that of musk in 
 particular. Every day, at a fixed hour, which a bell 
 announces to the winged population, she appears at 
 a window of the palace and throws out crumbs to 
 the thousands of birds that are accustomed to come 
 to her to be fed. Elizabeth used to feed frogs, 
 which were expressly kept in the park : one sees 
 the difference, the morbid, extravagant note. In 
 Catherine there is nothing of the kind. She likes 
 birds, dogs, who play a considerable part in her 
 private life, horses too ; she likes animals in 
 general, but she prefers those which are more 
 generally liked. All that is very simple, very 
 natural, very normal. 
 
 Elizabeth led an irregular life, turning night 
 into day, never having a fixed hour for anything. 
 Catherine is regularity itself; always early to bed, 
 up with the dawn, fitting in her occupations as 
 well as her pleasures with a programme that she 
 has made out beforehand, and that she carries out 
 without deviation. Elizabeth used to get drunk ; 
 Catherine is sober, eating little, only drinking a 
 mouthful of wine at her principal meal, never 
 taking supper. In public and in private, save for 
 the mysteries of the alcove, she is perfectly correct 
 in demeanour, never allowing an impropriety in 
 conversation. And in this there is no hypocrisy, 
 for she shows, and indeed shows off, her lovers. 
 
 In order to find something unnatural, abnor- 
 mal, in her, some have laid emphasis on her sup- 
 posed indifference to family feeling. The point 
 is susceptible of controversy. She despised and 
 detested her husband, if she did not kill him or 
 let him be killed ; and she was not tender towards
 
 234 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 her son, if she did not think of disinheriting him. 
 Still it must be remembered what this husband 
 and this son really were, both to her and to 
 Russia. She never saw again her only brother, 
 never having allowed him to come and see her, 
 though she only survived him by three years. 
 That was a matter of policy. She found that 
 there were Germans enough in Russia, herself 
 among the number. With her, it is certain, the 
 head always ruled the heart, and, though German, 
 she was by no means sentimental. But she was, 
 as we shall see, a delightful grandmother, and she 
 was passionately fond of children. 
 
 Her shameless sensuality thus seems an iso- 
 lated phenomenon, without connection with any 
 other in her temperament. Perhaps this is only 
 in appearance ; perhaps we should seek a certain 
 connection, if not the relation of cause to effect, 
 between this side of her nature and another that 
 we are about to look into, that is to say, the 
 intellectual culture of one who loved to call 
 herself the pupil of Voltaire. If, indeed, there 
 is method in this madness of the senses, which 
 she does not lose even in middle age, there 
 is also a certain lofty cynicism, a certain tran- 
 quil assurance, which a physiological peculiarity, 
 anomaly if you will, is not sufficient to explain. 
 The philosophical spirit of the eighteenth century 
 has passed over it, and not only the spirit of the 
 age of Brantome. 
 
 Catherine is a great temperament, not a great 
 intellect. She herself did not pretend to 'a 
 creative mind.' Nevertheless she prides herself
 
 APPEARANCE CHARACTER TEMPERAMENT 235 
 
 on her originality. ' All my life,' she writes to 
 Mme. de Bielke, ' I never could tolerate imita- 
 tion, and, to put it bluntly, I am as much of an 
 original as the most determined Englishman.' 
 But it is in her tastes, her habits, her modes 
 of action, that is to say in her temperament rather 
 than in her mind, that we must look for this 
 personal note. There is not a single new idea in 
 her Instruction for the laws, written at the age of 
 thirty-six, in the full vigour of her intellectual 
 faculties. It is the second-rate work of a student 
 of rhetoric, who has been given as a task the 
 analysis of Montesquieu and Beccaria, and who 
 has done creditably, but without showing any 
 great talent. This work, nevertheless, gives her 
 enormous trouble. At the end of March 1765 
 she has been toiling at it for two months, at the 
 rate of three hours a day. Her best hours, in 
 the morning, are given up to this work. By the 
 middle of June she has covered sixty- four pages, 
 and she feels that she has made a considerable 
 effort. She is quite worn out. ' I have emptied 
 my sack, 'she writes, 'and, after this, I shall not 
 write another word for the rest of my life.' We 
 have all known these vows, and, too, this im- 
 pression of weariness at the end of the first long 
 effort. But having regard to the actual result, 
 this author's trouble is almost laughable. The 
 sack, too, that she had emptied, or thought she 
 had emptied, was easy to replace, for it was not 
 hers. She found plenty more in turn. 
 
 Had she then nothing of her own? Yes, much 
 good sense, to begin with, joined, singularly 
 enough, to a great wealth of imagination. She 
 passed the thirty-four years of her reign in build-
 
 236 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 ing castles in the air, magnificent buildings, 
 founded on nothing, and evaporating in space at 
 the least breath. But the day came when one 
 stone, a single stone, was placed in the soil, as if 
 by miracle, at the angle of the fantastic edifice. 
 It was Catherine who had planted it there. The 
 Russian people, this good people which has not 
 yet come to realise itself, nor to dispute with 
 those who govern it, did the rest. It brought its 
 sweat and blood, and, like the Egyptian colossi, 
 where the effort of thousands of unknown 
 existences is superposed, the edifice rose and 
 assumed tangible form. The conquest of the 
 Taurida was thus accomplished. This was one 
 of Catherine's dreams, put in action and trans- 
 lated into a novel of adventures by Patiomkine. 
 But the corner-stone appeared suddenly in a 
 port of the Black Sea, and the Crimea of to-day 
 was then created. 
 
 Nevertheless Catherine fascinated, and even 
 dazzled, by her qualities of mind the most part 
 of those to whom she gave the chance of judg- 
 ing ; men of a superior order of intellect, such 
 as Diderot, for example. It was an effect of 
 mirage, it seems to us, the artificial product of 
 a kind of fascination in which there were many 
 elements ; a superior force of will, the supreme art 
 of mise en scene that we know already, and a third 
 element, surprising, unlocked for, well-nigh in- 
 credible in this German of the North a heat 
 and fire which are extraordinary, overpowering, 
 which seem as if .they must be Southern by 
 birth. Judging by the reports of her way of 
 talking, the flow and colour of words which 
 crowd from her lips, the absolute volubility which
 
 APPEARANCE CHAR A CTER TEMPERAMENT 237 
 
 she manifests at every turn, Catherine is a true 
 Southern. 'She loved to chatter,' she said, and 
 Grimm despaired of being able to preserve for 
 posterity any idea of what her conversation was. 
 
 ' One must have seen, at those moments, this 
 singular head, made up of genius and of grace, 
 to form an idea of the fire that swayed her, the 
 shafts that she let fly, the sallies that pressed, 
 jostling, so to speak, and tumbling on one 
 another, like the limpid waters of a natural 
 waterfall. Had it only been in my power to 
 take down literally these conversations, the 
 world would have possessed a precious and 
 perhaps unique fragment of the history of the 
 human mind. The imagination and the judgment 
 were equally impressed by this profound and rapid 
 sweep of vision, whose immense reach passed like 
 a flash. And how could one seize, on the sudden 
 wing, all these fine, fugitive traits of light ? ' 
 
 What Grimm dared not attempt, Catherine 
 has essayed to do herself. In 1780, the day 
 after a conversation which had astonished Count 
 Ivan Tchernichef, she sent him, at his request, 
 a literal report of it. This fragment has been 
 preserved, and it is curious. Must we confess 
 that it is somewhat deceptive? It reminds us of 
 an observation that an old savant, who had reached 
 the extreme limits of human existence, and who 
 was an enfant terrible on occasion, made before 
 us one day to a politician afflicted with the mania 
 of publishing, in the least official of quarters, 
 speeches that the House had, not always heard : 
 ' Excuse me, sir, I see at every moment, in what 
 you have given me to read, the words : Sen- 
 sation, prolonged applause, uproar. But though
 
 238 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 I have looked for it, I can see nothing extra- 
 ordinary in all you say.' 
 
 It is a somewhat similar impression that we 
 receive on reading the famous report. We look 
 in vain for the brilliant sayings, the sallies of wit, 
 the sparks of genius, of which Grimm tells us. 
 
 To begin with, there is a quotation from the 
 Plaideurs of Racine, ' Ma foi, sur 1'avenir bien 
 fou qui se fiera,' serving as motto to flights of 
 political prophesying, in which ' the eagle eye ' 
 is nowhere to be seen. 
 
 ' I predict that France, Austria, Prussia, and 
 Russia will clash together for a time, will do 
 one another grievous hurt, and aid one another 
 in turn, and will all four arrive at the highest 
 pitch of glory.' 
 
 This resembles the deliverance of an extra- 
 lucid somnambulist, unless one chooses to see 
 in it a vision of the wars of Europe. But did 
 Catherine foresee the Revolution, as some have 
 alleged ? We do not see it, unless indeed it 
 be in this phrase : ' Buffon has predicted that 
 one day a comet will hook on to our globe and 
 carry it with it. I fancy that its course will be 
 from west to east.' But this is the veriest style 
 of fortune-telling, and Mile. Lenormand would 
 not have expressed it better. The mistakes 
 of the King of France could not but strike 
 the penetrating mind of the Czarina. Two years 
 before she said to Count Tchernichef : ' I do 
 not like to see Marie-Antoinette laugh so much, 
 and laugh at everything. It is true that she is 
 a woman, and very much a woman ; I am too, 
 somewhat ; in her place and her circumstances I 
 should be afraid that some one would say : He
 
 APPEARANCE CHARA CTER TEMPERAMENT 239 
 
 who laughs last laughs best.' The saying is 
 expressive, and has a wide bearing. In this 
 she saw true, thanks to her good sense and to 
 her sense of the part of government, which none 
 of her rivals in modern history possessed in the 
 same degree. With talents of a superior order 
 and both Frederick and Napoleon were pro- 
 bably her inferiors in this respect Catherine had 
 more flexibility, was more fruitful in resources, 
 had a more delicate sense of touch. She was an 
 incomparable virtuoso in the art of ruling. 
 
 But to return to the report of her conversa- 
 tion, or rather of her monologue. She hits on 
 an unhappy phrase in reference to England : 
 ' England ! Fanaticism built it, fanaticism sup- 
 ports it, fanaticism will destroy it.' We ask 
 ourselves what this may mean, and what could 
 have suggested it. It is really nothing but an 
 actuality of the moment, in the manner of our 
 present day journalists. We are in 1780, and 
 London has just been the scene of a popular 
 movement against the Catholics, provoked by the 
 ambitious and unscrupulous Lord Gordon. To 
 the traditional cry of ' No Popery ! ' a band of 
 twenty thousand fanatics has marched upon 
 Westminster, and the members of Parliament 
 have themselves been somewhat violently treated. 
 In this passing crisis Catherine discovers an 
 historic law. 
 
 Then follow some philosophical considerations : 
 
 1 One may have wit, talent, morals, virtue, 
 reason, as much as you will ; but not glory, 
 success, fortune, and especially favour.' 
 
 That is not very new, nor very profound, nor 
 even very true. For talented and virtuous
 
 240 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 people have had to suffer on account of their 
 talent and their virtue as often, or oftener, than 
 rich people on account of their money-bags. 
 Here is what seems to be a less commonplace 
 turn of thought : 
 
 'To gain a victory is nothing; land is some- 
 thing ; money everything. The rich have an 
 astonishing power over humankind, since kings 
 themselves end by respecting those who have 
 made money.' 
 
 This reflection might have been inspired in 
 an intelligence trained in the school of modern 
 materialism by the enormous fortunes of which 
 this century has seen the accumulation. Yet 
 the house of Rothschild was not yet born. But 
 was not the father of Alexander of Macedon 
 disturbed by just such thoughts ? 
 
 As for the piece as a whole, we can see 
 nothing astonishing about it except the import- 
 ance that Catherine herself, and not Tchernichef 
 alone, seems to have attached to it. It is true 
 that one side, and no doubt the most attractive, 
 of the conversation is lost for us. The words 
 are there ; but the accent, the impetuous flow 
 of speech, the well-modulated voice, had not 
 these a success of their own, the true orator's 
 success ? 
 
 'In your words, divine Princess, there is 
 neither method nor order. There is that sove- 
 reign and incomprehensible spirit with which you 
 are dowered.' Thus did Field-Marshal Munich 
 express himself in a letter addressed to the 
 Empress a few months after her accession. 
 The eloquence of Catherine had, for him also, 
 its enigmatic side.
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 241 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 WITH the temperament that we have seen, 
 Catherine could not well be a woman with prin- 
 ciples, at least immutable principles, nor with 
 formulated ideas. Her fixed ideas, which she 
 has often had, were so only for the moment ; 
 they were comets, not the guiding stars of 
 her life. 
 
 One point, however, on which she never varies, 
 is the national character, essentially Russian, that 
 she impresses on her government, and that she 
 seeks to extend to the entire development, politi- 
 cal, intellectual, and moral, of the Slavonic people, 
 over whose destinies she, a German princess, 
 has been called to preside. Not only the admi- 
 nistrative and legislative acts of her reign, 
 but her slightest sayings and doings bear the 
 trace of this constant preoccupation. Falconet 
 had hard work not to invest Peter I. with the 
 national Russian costume that the Czar was so 
 emphatic in forbidding throughout his empire. 
 Catherine would have had this trait in the history 
 of the great reformer forgotten. She would have 
 imposed, not merely upon the present, but upon 
 the past,._pf her adopted country, a whole host 
 of things contrary to the fact, but conformable 
 to the idea that it had pleased her to give her- 
 self and others- in regard to this land of vast 
 horizons, so tempting to flights of fancy. She 
 
 Q
 
 242 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 would have rewritten in her own way the whole 
 history of the old Muscovite fatherland. In 1790 
 Senac de Meilhan offered himself as historio- 
 grapher of the empire : she hesitated to accept 
 the offer. Would he be willing to lay aside the 
 prejudices ( that most strangers have against 
 Russia ' ? to the point of believing, for example, 
 ' that before Peter the Great the empire had 
 neither laws nor administration.' Now, ' it is 
 true that the troubles which followed on the 
 death of the Czar Ivan Vassilevitch had put 
 back Russia from forty to fifty years, but before 
 this time it was on the level of the rest of 
 Europe . . . the Grand Dukes of Russia took 
 a prominent part in the affairs of Europe, and 
 were allied and connected with all the sovereign 
 houses of our hemisphere.' 
 
 After this the poor Senac despaired of be- 
 ing able to cope with his task. But here too 
 Catherine was convinced. She wrote to Grimm : 
 ' No history furnishes better or greater men than 
 ours. I am passionately fond of this history.' 
 She meant, besides, to have a good space given 
 to her own reign, ' for we live in an age in which, 
 far from hiding the lustre of things and actions, 
 it is essential to sustain people's minds.' Would 
 S^nac consent to be ' directed ' in this respect ? 
 
 Here again we observe a trace of the huge 
 proportions which the vast empire, so strangely 
 become her own property, had little by little 
 attained in the Czarina's mind ; and we see one 
 fixed star the more in her firmament. This 
 hyperbolic idea of grandeur, applied to all the 
 constituent elements of the national inheritance, 
 to the past as to the present of Russia, to its
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES ^43 
 
 extent as to its population, to its material power 
 as to its moral worth, to its preponderance in the 
 Slavonic world as to its European position, is 
 one of those which never left Catherine, and 
 never lost its hold upon her. She seems dazzled, 
 hallucinated, and as if hypnotised before this 
 collossal conception. High as was the opinion 
 that she had, and that she wished others to have 
 of herself, of the merits of her government, and 
 of the great events which marked it, she did 
 not hesitate to make herself small by comparison : 
 'All that I can do for Russia is but a drop of 
 water in the sea.' 
 
 Russia is the sea, the ocean with its unsounded 
 depths, its borders lost to sight in the immensity 
 of space. It is for that that she has been willing 
 to submerge in it her own past, and the very 
 remembrance of her German fatherland. Never- 
 theless, it is she who writes, in 1782, complaining 
 to Grimm of the conduct of the Sultan Abdul- 
 Hamid : ' Das ist unmoglich dass ich mir so Lite 
 auf die Nase spielen lassen. You know that a 
 German will never suffer that.' But her mind 
 is essentially mobile, and, as she confesses, she 
 does not always know what she wants, or even 
 what she says, especially when she chats with 
 her confidant, pen in hand, in her moments of 
 most complete unbending, after the fatigues of 
 her formidable task. But she has conscientiously 
 applied to herself her Russophilist programme, 
 and she has become Russian from head to foot, 
 not only on the surface and by an artifice, but 
 sincerely and profoundly, in her mind and flesh, 
 in her most formal language, her most familiar 
 motion, her most private thought. The following
 
 244 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 lines were probably seen by no one till after her 
 death. 
 
 ' Never has the universe produced a creature 
 more manly, more solid, more frank, more human, 
 more benevolent, more ^generous, more obliging, 
 than the Scythian (Scythian and Russian are 
 synonymous in her eyes). No man equals him 
 in regularity of features, in beauty of face, in fine- 
 ness of complexion, build, and stature ; having 
 for the most part well-nourished, or nervous and 
 muscular, limbs, a thick beard, long and bushy 
 hair ; naturally averse to all ruse and artifice, to 
 which his probity and uprightness are utterly 
 alien. There is not on the earth a horse-soldier 
 or foot-soldier, or sailor, or manager to equal 
 him. No one is tenderer to his children and 
 his kinsmen. He has an inborn deference for his 
 parents and superiors. He is prompt and exact 
 in obedience, always faithful.' 
 
 This is quite a rhapsody! And no doubt 
 there is something in it of personal recollection, 
 too flatteringly recalled. In course of time, 
 however, something more immaterial, purer and 
 more profound, found its way into the love of 
 Russia that the love of certain Russians gave 
 to Catherine. 
 
 We must not forget, among the ideas to which 
 she remained faithful, what has been called the 
 great idea of her reign : the Greek project. We 
 shall see that she has had it in view from 1762, 
 and that she still has it in view on the eve of 
 her death. It was a beautiful dream, beautiful 
 and fantastic. The resurrection of Greece, the 
 enfranchisement of the Yougo- Slavs, mingled 
 with other equally dazzling, but less disinterested
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 245 
 
 visions : Constantinople opening its gates to 
 Christianity, represented by a Russian army ; 
 the crescent replaced on the dome of St. Sophia 
 by the double Greek cross, crowned by the two- 
 headed imperial eagle. It is on this account 
 that the second son of Paul is named Constantine, 
 and not Peter or Ivan ; it is on this account 
 that there is a Greek nurse and a Greek servant, 
 who was afterwards to become an important per- 
 sonage, Count Kourouta. There was also a corps 
 of Greek cadets, a Greek district-government at 
 Kherson, newly founded, and under the charge of 
 Eugene, a Bulgarian. Medals were struck, on which 
 were seen symbolic and suggestive images : on 
 one side the Empress, on the other Constantinople 
 in flames, a minaret crumbling into the sea, and 
 the cross resplendent in the clouds. The journal 
 of Chrapowicki is not less edifying on the subject. 
 On August 17, 1787, he considers a secret pro- 
 ject of Patiomkine for the capture of Bakou and 
 Derbent. Capital for that could be made out of 
 the troubles in Persia, and, by means of other 
 connections, a province could be formed to be 
 called Albania, which would serve as provisional 
 appointment for the Grand Duke Constantine. 
 On April 21, 1788, Moldavia and Wallachia 
 are discussed : these provinces should remain 
 independent, in order to serve as nucleus to 
 the future ' Dacia,' that is to say, the future 
 monarchy of Greece. On October 9, 1789, the 
 fs are dotted. The Greeks need to be 'stirred 
 up ' : Constantine may take charge of that. He 
 has a future before him. In thirty years he will 
 have got from Sebastopol to Constantinople.
 
 246 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 II 
 
 In 1769 the cause of liberty has no more 
 enthusiastic defender in Europe than the Empress 
 of Russia. 
 
 ' To the brave Corsicans, defenders of liberty 
 and of their country, and, in particular, to General 
 Paoli : Gentlemen ! All Europe has for many 
 years seen you oppose oppression, defend and 
 redeem the country from an unjust usurpation, 
 and fight for liberty. It is the duty of every 
 human creature to aid and support all who mani- 
 fest sentiments so noble, so great, and so 
 natural.' 
 
 The letter is from the hand of Catherine, and 
 is signed ' Your sincere friends, the inhabitants of 
 the North Pole (sic]' A sum of money is added, 
 which passes in the eyes of the brave Corsicans 
 as the result of a subscription. This, doubtless, 
 is in order to spare them the humiliation of being 
 subventioned by an absolute monarch, and also 
 to make them believe that there is, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the ' North Pole,' a respectable 
 number of people capable of sympathising with 
 the cause they defend. 
 
 In 1781 Catherine comes forward on behalf of 
 Necker. His famous Compte rendu, which is 
 practically an act of accusation against the ad- 
 ministration of royal finances, that is to say 
 against royalty itself, enchants and delights 
 her. She does not doubt that heaven has 
 destined the able Genevese for the salvation 
 of France. 
 
 Certainly she has not much love, just then,
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 247 
 
 either for France or for the turn that things are 
 taking there ; but in her hostile feelings the court 
 holds as large, if not larger, a place than the 
 people, and the old regime foundering under the 
 rising flood of social claims has no part in her 
 favour. This is the impression we receive from 
 her correspondence with her son and her daughter- 
 in-law, during the visit of their Imperial High- 
 nesses, in 1782, to Paris. Here is a specimen. 
 It is Catherine who writes : 
 
 ' May God bless her most Christian Majesty, 
 her shows, her balls and her plays, her rouge 
 and her beards, well or ill adjusted. I am not 
 sorry that this annoys you and makes you anxious 
 to return. But, how is it that, with its passion 
 for the play, Paris is no better off than we ? I 
 know the reason ; it is because every one leaves 
 the good show for the bad ; that in tragedy they 
 have nothing but what is atrocious ; that plays are 
 written by those who know neither how to make 
 comedies for laughter nor tragedies for tears ; 
 that comedy, instead of bringing laughter, brings 
 tears ; that nothing is in its proper place ; that 
 colours even have only abject and indecent 
 names. All that encourages no sort of talent, 
 but- spoils it.' 
 
 A frivolous and corrupt court, in the midst of 
 a society which its evil example has brought to 
 the verge of a fatal precipice, that is the idea 
 Catherine seems to hold, at this time, in regard to 
 the country of her ' dear master,' who himself has 
 given colour to her opinions, in denying at every 
 opportunity his kinship with the pitiable 'Vandals.' 
 Her dominant idea, however, is a feeling of in- 
 difference in regard to men and things there.
 
 248 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 For a long time, up to the very verge of the 
 revolutionary crisis, the events and agitations, in 
 this far country, seem to her without any general 
 importance ; she does not perceive their bearing. 
 Nor, whatever may have been said to the con- 
 trary, does she see the approach of the tempest. 
 On April 19, 1788, she writes to Grimm : ' I do 
 not share the belief of those who imagine that we 
 are on the eve of a great revolution.' Hearing, 
 in the course of her tour through the Crimea, of 
 the resolution of Louis XVI. to convoke an 
 'Assembly of Notables,' she sees in it only an 
 imitation of her own legislative commission. She 
 invites Lafayette to visit her at Kief. To open 
 her eyes on what is being prepared by the 
 Lafayettes, it needs the thunderclap of the 
 taking of the Bastille. Then she begins to under- 
 stand what is in the air, and the Gazette de St.- 
 Ptfersfiourg^which had been silent on the Assembly 
 of the States and the Tennis-court Oath, breaks 
 out in indignant protestations : ' Our hand shakes 
 with horror,' etc. The rest of the article may 
 be imagined. Soon the constituents are com- 
 pared by the officious journal to ' a drunken 
 mob,' as their successors are to be compared to 
 ' cannibals.' 
 
 From this moment Catherine's ideas underwent 
 a rapid change, and it is curious to follow, in her 
 correspondence and her confidential conversation, 
 the progress of this evolution. In June 1790 
 Grimm, who has not yet had time to perceive the 
 change which is coming over the Empress's mind, 
 asks for her portrait on behalf of Bailly, offering 
 in exchange that of the revolutionary hero of the 
 day. Catherine replies
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 249 
 
 ' Listen : I cannot accede to your request, and 
 it is as little suitable for the mayor who has dis- 
 monarchised France to have the portrait of the 
 most aristocratic Empress in Europe, as it would 
 be for her to send it to the dismonarchising 
 mayor ; it would be to place both the dis- 
 monarchising mayor and the aristocratissime 
 Empress in contradiction with themselves and 
 their functions, past, present, and future.' 
 
 And two days after 
 
 ' I repeat that you are not to give to the dis- 
 monarchising mayor the portrait of the greatest 
 aristocrat in Europe ; I would have nothing to 
 do with Jean Marcel, who will be strung up a la 
 lanterne some day soon.' 
 
 Here is a complete throwing overboard of 
 republicanism. It is not so with regard to philo- 
 sophy, to which the Empress still clings. She 
 endeavours to find out how far it is responsible 
 for the present events 
 
 TO GRIMM. 
 
 ' June 25, 1790. 
 
 'The National Assembly should burn all the best 
 French authors, and all that has carried their language 
 over Europe, for all that declares against the abominable 
 mess that they have made. ... As for the people and 
 its opinion, that is of no great consequence ! ' 
 
 It is this last phrase especially which shows the 
 antagonism, now only capable of increase, be- 
 tween the spirit of Catherine and of the Revolu- 
 tion. It is the part, more and more prominent, 
 played by the people in the events of which Paris 
 has become the theatre that shocks and offends 
 the sovereign. There was a time when, in this
 
 250 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 respect also, she had other ideas. At the outset 
 of her reign, in gathering together her legislative 
 commission, she did nothing less, in reality, than 
 summon it from the mass of her subjects. But it 
 is then, too, that, coming for the first time in 
 contact with the popular element, she began little 
 by little to change her mind in regard to it. 
 Perhaps she was unwise in generalising from her 
 impressions, but she had no other points of 
 comparison. She could but form her opinion on 
 what was before her eyes, and this opinion 
 became a profound contempt. In 1787, as her 
 secretary, Chrapowicki, points out to her the enor- 
 mous number of peasants who crowd to see her 
 and pay homage to her in a certain country town, 
 she replies with a shrug of the shoulders : ' They 
 would come just the same to see a bear.' It is 
 the same spirit to which she gives utterance two 
 years after, when, referring to the composition of 
 the political clubs in France, she says : ' How can 
 shoemakers have anything to do with affairs ? A 
 shoemaker only knows how to make shoes.' 
 
 Soon philosophy in turn is abandoned. Cathe- 
 rine still speaks with respect of 'good French 
 authors,' but she makes her choice, and, Voltaire 
 excepted, she throws overboard all those of the 
 eighteenth century. Diderot, d'Alembert, and 
 Montesquieu himself, are sacrificed at one blow 
 
 TO GRIMM. 
 
 Sept. 12, 1790. 
 
 ' I must tell you the truth, the tone with you now is 
 that of mere intemperance ; this is not the tone to 
 make France illustrious. . . . What will the French do 
 with their best writers, who almost all lived under Louis
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 251 
 
 XIV.1 All Voltaire himself are royalists; they 
 preach order and tranquillity, and all that is opposed 
 to the system of this hydra with twelve hundred 
 heads.' 
 
 The National Assembly is referred to more and 
 more bitterly. On August yth, 1 790, Chrapowicki 
 notes in his journal : ' Said in presence of her 
 Majesty, speaking of France : " It is a meta- 
 physical country ; every member of the assembly 
 is a king, and every citizen is an animal." Re- 
 ceived with approbation.' At the same time 
 Catherine writes to Grimm 
 
 * Sept. 27, 1790. 
 
 ' In bed I reflected over things, and, among others, I 
 thought that one reason why the Mathieu de Mont- 
 morencys, the Noailles, etc., are so ill-taught and so 
 base in spirit that they are among the first promoters 
 of the decree abolishing the nobility ... is that the 
 schools of the Jesuits have been abolished among you : 
 whatever you may say, those scamps looked well after 
 the morals and tastes of the young people, and what- 
 ever is best in France came out of their schools.' 
 
 '/an. 13, 1791. 
 
 'One never knows if you are living in the midst of 
 the murders, carnage, and uproar of the den of thieves 
 who have seized upon the government of France, and 
 who will soon turn it into Gaul as it was in the time of 
 Caesar. But Caesar put them down ! When will this 
 Caesar come ? Oh, come he will, you need not doubt. 
 
 'May 23, 1791. 
 
 ( The best of possible constitutions is worth nothing 
 when it makes more people unhappy than happy, when 
 brave and honest folk have to drudge, and only the 
 rogues are in clover, because their pockets are filled, 
 and nobody punishes them.' 
 
 Observe, however, with what moderation
 
 2J2 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Catherine is still capable, at this period, of dis- 
 cussing one of the revolutionary principles most 
 repugnant to her. Her letter of June 3Oth, 1791, 
 to the Prince de Ligne may be given in evi- 
 dence 
 
 1 1 think that the Academies ought to offer a 
 first prize for the question : What do honour 
 and worth, synonyms dear to heroic ears, become 
 in the mind of an active citizen under a jealous 
 and suspicious government, which proscribes all 
 distinction, while nature itself has given to the 
 intelligent man a pre-eminence over the fool, and 
 courage is founded on the sentiment of the force 
 of the body or of the head ? Second prize for the 
 question : Are honour and worth really needful ? 
 And if so, surely one should not restrain the 
 desire of emulation, and clog it with an insup- 
 portable enemy, equality.' 
 
 But soon she is carried away by more violent 
 feelings 
 
 1 Sept. I, 1791. 
 
 ' If the French Revolution takes in Europe, there 
 will come another Gengis or Tamerlane to restore it to 
 reason : that is what I prophesy, and be sure it will 
 come true, but it will not be in my time, nor, I hope, in 
 that of M. Alexandre.' 
 
 When the news of the death of Louis XVI. 
 reaches her, Catherine, as we have mentioned, is 
 cut to the heart ; she betakes herself to bed, in a 
 sort of fever, and she cries to her confidant 
 
 'Feb. I, 1793. 
 
 'The very name of France should be exterminated ! 
 Equality is a monster. It would fain be king ! ' 
 
 This time the holocaust is complete. Voltaire.
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 253 
 
 is sacrificed with the rest. And in the words 
 and writing of the Empress there are almost 
 savage calls to vengeance, the most extravagant 
 projects of repression 
 
 *Feb. 15, 1794. 
 
 4 1 propose that all the Protestant powers should 
 embrace the Greek religion, to save themselves from 
 the irreligious, immoral, anarchical, abominable, and 
 diabolical plague, enemy of God and of thrones ; it is 
 the sole apostolic and truly Christian religion an oak 
 with wide-spreading roots/ 
 
 Thus, after Caesar, she calls for Tamerlane 
 and his exterminating sword ; after the Jesuits, a 
 long-bearded pope, who will bring the lost peoples 
 into the safe fold of the Orthodox Church. Is 
 the Caesar for whom she calls, he whom France 
 and Europe have indeed felt? Yes and no. 
 This Caesar she did not at first perceive. In 
 1791 she is evidently dreaming of some officer of 
 justice coming from without some Brunswick. 
 It is only later on that her point of view changes, 
 becomes clearer, and then, it must be admitted, 
 she comes very near the truth touches it almost. 
 Catherine sees Napoleon before he has ap- 
 peared ; she points to him, describes his charac 
 teristics 
 
 ' If France is to come out of this alive,' she 
 writes, February n, 1794, 'she will be more 
 vigorous than ever ; she will be meek and 
 obedient as a lamb ; but it will need a man both 
 great and bold, a man above his contemporaries, 
 and perhaps above the age. Is he born ? Is he 
 not ? Will he come ? All depends on that. If 
 he is found, he will arrest the last downfall, and
 
 254 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 that will be arrested whenever he is found, in 
 France or elsewhere.' 
 
 The men of the Revolution who preceded 
 Napoleon all shared in the indignation of the 
 Empress, and in the severity of her judgments. 
 Lafayette is now called 'the big booby.' Mira- 
 beau is at first better treated. The praises 
 showered on his tardy loyalism in the Gazette de 
 St.-Pttersbourg show that the relations of the 
 tribune with the Russian Legation at Paris were 
 not unknown, nor yet the services that were 
 looked for from him. But, after his death, 
 Catherine's personal opinion is emphatically ex- 
 pressed in her letters to Grimm 
 
 ' Mirabeau was the colossus or monster of our 
 time ; in any other he would have been avoided, 
 detected, imprisoned, hanged, or broken on the 
 wheel/ 
 
 And three days afterwards 
 
 ' I do not like the honours paid to Mirabeau, 
 and I do not understand the why or wherefore, 
 unless it be to encourage wickedness and all the 
 vices. Mirabeau merits the esteem of Sodom 
 and Gomorrha.' 
 
 She retracts, too, her admiration for Necker 
 
 ' I agree with the views of M. F. on Malet du 
 Pan and on that bad and foolish Necker : to me 
 they are not merely hateful, but mere bores and 
 chatterboxes.' 
 
 She is not more tender towards the Duke of 
 Orleans 
 
 ' I hope that no Bourbon will ever again bear 
 the name of Orleans, after the horror that I feel 
 towards the last who bore it. 1 
 
 As for the Abbe Sieges, she settles his account
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 255 
 
 at once : ' I subscribe to the hanging of the Abbe 
 Sieges.' 
 
 It is but just to say that the Revolutionaries 
 give her back her own. Volney returns the gold 
 medal which the Empress has formerly bestowed 
 on him. Sylvain Marechal, in his Jugement 
 Dernier des Rois, depicts the Empress in gro- 
 tesque hand-to-hand conflict with the Pope, who 
 throws his tiara at her head, after which she is 
 swallowed up with all her accomplices by a 
 volcano that opens under her feet. The Moni- 
 teur is not always amiable towards her. 
 
 Nevertheless, it must be noted that, for a long 
 time, Catherine, while severely condemning the 
 revolutionary movement, does not, in Russia or 
 elsewhere, set on foot against it any act of direct 
 repression. She remains a passive, and in some 
 sort disinterested, spectator of passing events. 
 Her whole attitude seems to say that all these 
 things have no concern for her ; that, whatever 
 may happen, she has nothing to fear for herself 
 or for the empire. At bottom, she is probably 
 convinced of it to the last. Only it happens that 
 the combinations, or we might better say the 
 improvisations, of her policy come to impose 
 upon her convictions. The precise epoch when 
 she decides to abandon her inaction sufficiently 
 indicates her reasons for doing so : it 'is the 
 moment when, having settled affairs with Turkey 
 and Sweden, she judges the hour come to inter- 
 fere in Poland, and to put her hand to the 
 master-work of her reign. The French Revolu- 
 tion then appears in her eyes as one of those 
 propitious 'conjunctions ' which, with conjectures 
 and circumstances, make up, for her, the whole
 
 256 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of politics. A dialogue with her secretary 
 Chrapowicki, December 14, 1791, gives clear 
 utterance to her view in this respect 
 
 ' I am doing all I can to get the courts of 
 Berlin and Vienna to concern themselves with 
 French affairs.' 
 
 'They are not very active.' 
 
 ' No. The court of Berlin goes forward, but 
 that of Vienna remains behind. They do not 
 see my point. Am I wrong ? There are 
 reasons that one cannot say openly. I wish 
 them to become concerned in the French affairs 
 in order to leave me elbow-room. I have many 
 undertakings to be achieved. I would have 
 them occupied so that they may leave my way 
 clear.' 
 
 And immediately Catherine sets the tocsin 
 ringing. Up to the present she has been content 
 to publish in Paris, through her minister Simo- 
 line (in August 1790) a ukase commanding all 
 her subjects to quit France, in order that more 
 of them should not think to imitate the example 
 of the young Count Alexander Strogonof, who, 
 with his tutor, had joined a revolutionary club. 
 But it had not occurred to her to interdict in her 
 empire the incendiary publications coming from 
 the banks of the Seine. Russia remained the sole 
 country in Europe open to the circulation of the 
 papers printed at Paris. One number of the Moni- 
 teur had been confiscated, because it enlarged 
 somewhat too explicitly on the score of the Grand 
 Duke and different personages of the court. 
 From that day Catherine examined every number 
 before authorising the distribution. She soon 
 came across one where she herself, in her turn,
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 257 
 
 was very hardly treated : she was described as 
 'the Messalina of the North.' 'That concerns 
 no one but myself,' she said proudly, and ordered 
 its distribution. She tolerated the presence in 
 St. Petersburg of the brother of Marat, who, 
 while condemning the sanguinary furies of the 
 other, did not conceal his republican views. 
 Tutor in the house of Count Saltykof, he often 
 comes to court with his pupil. It is only in 1792 
 that he changes his name, and takes that of 
 Boudri. Then, in truth, all around him changes : 
 the Empress embarks in the anti-revolutionary 
 campaign, at first without much enthusiasm, 
 purely as a political manoeuvre, but more and 
 more sincerely, and more and more passionately 
 too, entering little by little into the part she has 
 wished to play, and adopting as her own those 
 ideas, sentiments, and instincts. Not content 
 with attacking the revolutionary spirit in France 
 and among the French, she pursues it in Russia, 
 among the Russians themselves, which is really 
 doing it more honour than it deserves. In regard 
 to France she draws up, in 1792, a memorandum 
 on the means of restoring the monarchy. It 
 must be said that she does not manifest much 
 common-sense in the project. She imagines 
 that a force of ten thousand men, marching 
 from end to end of the country, would suffice 
 to the task. The cost would only be ^500,000, 
 which could be borrowed at Genoa. France, 
 once handed back to its king, would return the 
 amount. In regard to the Frenchmen imbued 
 with the revolutionary spirit, who might be found 
 in her dominions, she concocts the famous ukase 
 of February 3, 1793, which constrains them 
 
 R
 
 2S8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 under threat of immediate expulsion, to take an 
 oath, of which the terms could not have been 
 better imagined by a tribunal of inquisitors. 
 Nor does she treat her subjects with more in- 
 dulgence. To ward them off from the contagion 
 of Jacobinism, she has recourse to means which 
 she could not have sufficiently scorned at the 
 commencement of her reign. Learning the choice 
 that had been made of Prozorofski for the post 
 of Governor of Moscow, Patiomkine writes to 
 his imperial friend 
 
 ' You have taken out of your arsenal the most 
 ancient piece of artillery, which will certainly 
 shoot in the direction in which you set it, for 
 it has no motion of its own ; but beware lest it 
 covers with blood for ever the name of your 
 Majesty.' 
 
 Prozorofski and his collaborators of Moscow 
 and St. Petersburg, Arharof, Chechkofski, and 
 Pestel, seemed, in the vigorous phrase of a 
 Russian writer, ' to have risen into the light of 
 day out of the torture-chambers of the Preo- 
 brajenski Prikaz, already lost in the night of 
 oblivion.' The trial of the Muscovite publicist, 
 Novikof, condemned to fifteen years' imprison- 
 ment for carrying on certain publications to 
 which the Empress herself had formerly con- 
 tributed, inaugurates a regime which justifies 
 only too well the apprehensions of Patiom- 
 kine. Catherine bears a grudge even against 
 the high French cravats, covering the chin, 
 which the dandies of St. Petersburg, Prince 
 Borys Galitzine at their head, persist in wearing. 
 
 We have endeavoured to present the notions 
 inspired in Catherine by the great political and
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 259 
 
 social upheaval of the end of the eighteenth 
 century. These notions, it is evident, were 
 narrow. Catherine could not see that, under all 
 its deplorable errors, its culpable mistakes, the 
 movement that she sought to repress contained 
 something noble, lofty, and generous. Perhaps 
 mere intelligence could not suffice for the com- 
 prehension of these things. What was wanted 
 was a certain personal elevation of sentiment, 
 which Catherine never possessed. In trying 
 to fight with the Revolution, she seized her 
 chance of stifling the last vestiges of national 
 independence on the banks of the Vistula : that 
 was a matter of policy, and we may waive our 
 judgment respecting it. But, the fight once 
 at end in Poland, she was neither touched as a 
 woman, nor impressed as a sovereign, by what 
 made the glory of the expiring republic and its 
 rehabilitation before posterity, by the last resist- 
 ance of the vanquished, by the hero who personi- 
 fied all its useless effort and its tragic destiny. 
 Having summoned to St. Petersburg as a com- 
 mon malefactor the vanquished soldier whom 
 Michelet named 'the last Knight of the West 
 and the first Citizen of the East,' whom Napoleon 
 afterwards, at the height of his power, would 
 have called to his aid, and who, in his Swiss 
 shelter, was not to be dazzled by Napoleon, 
 Catherine was not even curious to see him. 
 She was content to abuse him. ' Kostiouchko ' 
 she did not even know how to spell his name 
 ' has been brought here ; he is seen to be in 
 every way a mere fool, quite beneath contempt 
 That is how she judges the man. ' Ma pauvre 
 bete de Kostiouchka,' we read in another letter.
 
 260 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 That is all the pity she can spare to the soldier 
 who had fallen on the field of Macieiowice, the 
 soldier in whose wounds the very soul of a great 
 and noble people seemed to pass in one last cry 
 of agony. 
 
 Paul I., on reaching the throne, is said to have 
 visited the ex-dictator in his prison, and, bending 
 low before him, desired his pardon for his mother. 
 Perhaps it is only a legend, and if so, so much 
 the worse for the son of Catherine. At all events 
 he set the prisoner free. Catherine had never 
 thought of doing it. 
 
 We once heard a German, who to-day occupies 
 a high position at Vienna, declare that, being 
 cosmopolitan in his tastes, he liked every nation- 
 ality equally, except one, and that his own ; for, 
 said he, along with many good qualities, it had 
 one defect which he disliked above all others, it 
 did not know how to be generous. 
 
 In one sense, and from this point of view, just 
 or not, Catherine remained German. She knew 
 how to give, sometimes even how to pardon, but 
 she was utterly inaccessible to certain sentiments 
 that awaken naturally in all true hearts at the 
 sight of weakness, suffering, and misfortune. 
 Her ideas, as we know them, did not allow her 
 to appreciate a certain type of simple grandeur. 
 Her own simplicity was all made of show and 
 convention. She was always playing a part 
 when she showed herself under this aspect. She 
 was willing to come down from Olympus, and 
 she even took pleasure in it, but Olympus and 
 all its train must be not far off. This is why, in 
 1782, she refused the honour of receiving 
 Franklin. ' I do not care for him,' she said.
 
 IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES 261 
 
 She did not understand him. In 1795 she did 
 not understand Kosciuszko. 
 
 Is it true that she ever echoed the one among 
 all the kings her contemporaries whom she pro- 
 fessed the most to scorn, Louis XV., by repeating 
 in her way the famous saying 'After me the 
 deluge ' ? ' Poslie mienia hot trava nie rosti 
 (After me the grass may cease to grow) ' she is 
 said to have said at the end of her life. It 
 may well be. But to arrive at that point, she 
 had need to abjure all that made the true 
 glory of her reign, all to which she owes to- 
 day that immortality of which she had the 
 sublime thirst.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE SOVEREIGN 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ART OF RULING 
 
 : I LOVE the fallow land,' wrote Catherine. ' I 
 have said it a thousand times, I am good for 
 nothing out of Russia.' She thus proved the 
 extreme lucidity of mind which permitted her, at 
 least occasionally, to achieve this tour de force 
 a just appreciation of her own merits. Prince 
 Henry of Prussia, sent to St. Petersburg, as an 
 act of gratitude, by his brother, and there study- 
 ing the sovereign with a German's resolution to 
 get to the bottom of things, said one day to the 
 Comte de Segur 
 
 ' She (Catherine) is made to shine, she is 
 immortalised during her lifetime ; otherwise, she 
 would no doubt shine much less ; but in her 
 country she is more intelligent than all those 
 about her. It is easy to be great on such a 
 throne.' 
 
 Catherine did not fail to recognise one of the 
 elements, and perhaps the most essential, of all 
 her successes luck. ' I have had nothing but 
 good luck,' she said frankly enough. How
 
 THE ART OF RULING 263 
 
 indeed could she fail to see in the path of her 
 life this indispensable factor of all prosperity? 
 In 1770 she copied with her own hand a note 
 from her improvised admiral, the commandant-in- 
 chief of her naval forces in the Levant, Alexis 
 Orlof, who, though he had never till then seen a 
 ship or a sailor, knew enough at the end of a 
 week to see that those with whom he had been 
 told to conquer 'were not worth a pinch of salt.' 
 ' My hair stands on end as I think of these 
 things/ wrote Orlof. ' If we had to do with any 
 but Turks, there would soon be an end of the 
 fleet.' It is this fleet and its admiral that won 
 the victory of Tchesme, shattering to atoms one 
 of the finest fleets that Turkey had ever sent to 
 sea. And in 1781 Catherine had already sent 
 to Grimm the following rtsumd of the history of 
 her reign, set forth by her new secretary and 
 factotum, Besborodko, in the fantastic form of 
 an inventory : 
 
 Governments instituted according to the new 
 
 form, 29 
 
 Towns built, 144 
 
 Treaties made, ........ 30 
 
 Victories won, 78 
 
 Notable edicts, decreeing laws, . . . 88 
 
 Edicts on behalf of the people, . - . 123 
 
 Total, . 492 
 
 Four hundred and ninety-two active measures ! 
 This astonishing piece of book-keeping, which 
 betrays so naively all that there was of romantic, 
 extravagant, childish, and very feminine, in the 
 extraordinary genius that swayed Russia, and 
 in some sort Europe, during thirty-four years,
 
 264 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 will no doubt make the reader smile. It corre- 
 sponds, however, truly enough, to a sum-total 
 of great things accomplished under her direct 
 inspiration. 
 
 And all that, was it not really due to her good 
 luck ? No indeed ! Prince Henry of Prussia is 
 too severe, Catherine too modest, and we have 
 proved it already in speaking of the character of 
 the great sovereign. With such a character one 
 generally puts something more than chance and 
 success in the balance of human destinies, over 
 which one is called to preside. Catherine put 
 there, to begin with, remarkable qualities of 
 tenue. On July 3, 1764, the envoy of Frederick, 
 Comte de Solms, wrote to his master 
 
 ' On the part of the nation discontent and 
 commotion, and much courage and firmness, at 
 least in appearance, on the part of the Empress. 
 She left here (Livonia) with an air of the greatest 
 serenity and the most composed countenance, 
 though, only two days before, there had been a 
 mutiny in the army.' 
 
 In another circumstance, the Prince de Ligne 
 has noted 
 
 ' I was the only one to see that the last declara- 
 tion on part of Turkey gave her only a quarter 
 of an hour's reflection on the instability of human 
 things, and the uncertainty of success and glory. 
 She left the room with the same air of serenity 
 that she had before her courier had gone.' 
 
 Imposing on all the world, her friends as well 
 as her enemies, by this attitude, Catherine can 
 never be imposed upon by man or thing, and is 
 never put out of countenance. In 1788, at the 
 moment when the Swedish war broke out, there
 
 THE ART OF RULING 265 
 
 was a terrible lack of men, both in the army and 
 in the government, but especially in the army. 
 The Count of Anhalt presents himself, backed 
 by his European reputation as a soldier, and 
 offers his services. He is received with open arms. 
 But he demands the rank of general-in-chief, and 
 the supreme command. Catherine refuses. The 
 German condottiere, surprised and indignant, de- 
 clares that he will go and plant cabbages. ' Look 
 after them well,' replies the Empress calmly. 
 
 To increase the prestige that she already has, 
 she does not disdain, from time to time, to have 
 recourse to certain artifices, to certain effects of 
 pose and arrangement. The Comte de Segur, 
 on presenting his credentials, perceives 'some- 
 thing theatrical ' in the behaviour of the Empress ; 
 but this ' something ' has such an effect upon the 
 new-comer that he forgets the formal speech 
 he has prepared beforehand, and is obliged 
 to improvise another. One of his predecessors, 
 yet more overcome, was unable, if we may 
 believe Catherine, to get beyond the words, 
 ' The King my master,' which he repeated three 
 times in succession. At the third repetition 
 Catherine put an end to his misery by saying 
 that she well knew the good-will of his master 
 towards her. But she looked upon him, from 
 that moment, as a fool, though he had the 
 reputation in Paris of being a man of ready wit. 
 She was indulgent only to her servants. It 
 should be said that she had the right to be 
 exigent in regard to those who had to speak 
 before her, for, as the Prince de Ligne has 
 observed, she had ' the art of listening." ' Such 
 was her presence of mind,' he tells us, 'that
 
 266 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 she seemed to be listening, even when che was 
 thinking of something else.' The Prince de 
 Ligne adds that nevertheless his own Empress, 
 Maria Theresa, had ' more charm and magic,' 
 Catherine manifests more authority. And she 
 is careful to keep this side of her sovereign 
 prestige intact. One day, at an official dinner, 
 having to express some discontent with the 
 envoy of a foreign power, she makes one of those 
 scenes of which Napoleon, later on, was so fond. 
 In the midst of her tirade she hears her secre- 
 tary, Chrapowicki, observing in an undertone 
 how much it is to be regretted that the ma- 
 touchka loses her temper in this way. She 
 stops short, changes the conversation, behaves 
 most amiably to the end of dinner ; but on 
 rising from table she goes straight to the in- 
 terrupter : ' How dare you criticise in public what 
 I say!' Her voice trembles with wrath, and 
 the cup of coffee that she holds in her hand is 
 in danger of falling to the ground. She puts 
 down the cup without emptying it, and dismisses 
 the unfortunate secretary. He thinks himself 
 lost, and goes home expecting, at the very least, 
 an order to set out for Siberia. A messenger 
 comes to summon him before her Majesty. 
 Catherine is still much excited, and overwhelms 
 him with reproaches. He falls on his knees. 
 ' Come,' says the Empress, presenting him with a 
 snuff-box set with diamonds, ' keep this, and when 
 you have any observations to make in public on 
 what I say or do, hold your tongue and take a pinch 
 of snuff. The reminder may be of use to me.' 
 
 With such command over herself, it is certain 
 that she must exercise great command over
 
 THE ART OF RULING 267 
 
 others. It is indeed enormous, and all the traits 
 of her character, of her temperament, and of her 
 mind, serve to strengthen it. Her attitude 
 impresses and fascinates, her energy, her fire, 
 her youthful 'go,' her confidence, her audacity, 
 her verve, her way of presenting things to others 
 as they present themselves to her, that is to say, 
 on the brightest side, her scorn of danger and 
 difficulty, made up of a good half of ignorance 
 and a good third of adventurous infatuation, her 
 day-dreams, that sort of gorgeous hallucination 
 in which she lives, and through which the sense 
 of real things comes to her ; all that aids her in 
 driving forward good and bad, wise and foolish 
 alike, driving them forward as a horseman does 
 .his horse, now carressed and now flogged, 
 spurred, shaken, and in some sort borne along by 
 the effort of a will which increases tenfold the 
 play of the muscles. Read the correspondence 
 of the sovereign with her generals in the first 
 Turkish war, Galitzine and Roumiantsof. Galit- 
 zine is utterly incompetent, Roumiantsof is an 
 accomplished soldier : she scarcely notices the 
 difference. They must both march ; they must 
 both beat the Turks ; it is impossible that they 
 should not do that. The Turks, what are they ? 
 A herd, not an army. And then, 'Europe is ob- 
 serving us.' One seems to hear Napoleon be- 
 side the Pyramids. She thanks Roumiantsof for 
 a Turkish poignard that he has sent her, but the 
 capture of two ' hospodars ' would please her 
 better. Nor is that enough : ' I beg you to be 
 good enough to send me the Vizier himself, and, 
 if God wills, his Highness the Sultan himself.' 
 She will do all to render the victory easy : ' She
 
 268 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 is setting fire to the Turkish empire at all four 
 corners.' She sends word to her Minister of 
 War, so that he may hold himself in readiness: 
 ' Monsieur, monsieur, I want plenty of cannons. 
 ... What am I to do if the cannons are dear ? ' 
 One would take her for a fine lady ordering a 
 further supply of dresses from a good maker. 
 She adds : ' I have now an army at Cuban, an 
 army acting against the Turks, an army against 
 the brainless Poles ; I am about to collar the 
 Swedes, and I have three more soumatohi 
 (brawls) in petto, that I dare not avow. Send 
 me, if you can without attracting notice, a map 
 of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, and 
 then pray God : God will arrange all.' 
 
 But now, in September 1771, one of the lieu- 
 tenants of Roumiantsof, General Essen, is de- 
 feated under the walls of Giourgi. It is nothing. 
 ' Where there has been water, there is water 
 still,' says the Russian proverb. The Russian 
 proverb is right. ' God favours us, but some- 
 times he punishes us in order that we may not 
 become too proud.' We must go ahead, and all 
 will be well. Roumiantsof goes ahead, he leaves 
 the right, bank of the Danube. Victory ! cries 
 Catherine. Quick, a pen, to send the good news 
 to Voltaire, that the good news may spread 
 through all Europe ! Alas ! in obeying his sove- 
 reign, Roumiantsof has attempted too much. He 
 is obliged to beat a retreat. He excuses himself 
 on account of the state of the army. He ima- 
 gines that he has enemies about the Empress 
 who have purposely left him without enough food 
 and ammunition. ' He does not know what he is 
 saying ! ' Catherine has never heard that he had
 
 THE ART OF RULING 269 
 
 enemies capable of doing him a mischief with 
 her. That would be impossible. 'She has no 
 people about her to whisper in her ear. . . . She 
 will have none of such folk. . . . She judges 
 those capable of doing well by what they 
 do.' No doubt Roumiantsofs army is weak. 
 Especially (a little cut in passing) as it must have 
 suffered in the marches and counter-marches 
 from one bank of the Danube to the other. But 
 the Empress cannot forget the inscription en- 
 graved on the obelisk commemorating the vic- 
 tory won by Roumiantsof at Kagoul : it declares 
 that he had only 17,000 men under his command. 
 With his skill and energy he can renew this feat 
 of arms ; provided always that he does not allow 
 himself to be discouraged. Forward ! Forward ! 
 
 II 
 
 This correspondence discovers yet another 
 superiority in Catherine : her skill in the manage- 
 ment of men. In that she is simply marvellous. 
 She employs all the resources of a trained diplo- 
 matist, of a subtle psychologist, and of a woman 
 who knows the art of fascination ; she employs 
 them together or apart, she handles them with 
 unequalled maestria. If it is true that she some- 
 times takes her lovers for generals and statesmen, 
 it is no less true that she treats on occasion her 
 generals and statesmen as lovers. When the 
 sovereign can do nothing, the Circe intervenes. 
 If it avails nothing to command, to threaten, or to 
 punish, she becomes coaxing and wheedling. To- 
 wards the soldiers that she sends to death, bidding 
 them only win for her victory, she has delicate
 
 270 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 attentions, flattering forethought, adorable little 
 ways. After the battle of Kinburn (October 
 1787), having to send quantities of ribbon to the 
 heroes of the day, she arranges them with her 
 own hands, in a basket of flowers, which she 
 sends to Patiomkine. In September 1789 she 
 sends to Prince von Nassau-Siegen, the new 
 commander of the fleet, two warm dressing-gowns, 
 'like those I sent last year to Marshal Prince 
 Patiomkine before Otchakof, and which were of 
 great service to him, as he himself assured me.' 
 She flatters the literary ambitions of the Comte 
 de Sgur in absolutely insisting on putting his 
 Coriolanus on the stage, and, in the course of the 
 performance, she seizes both his hands to make 
 him applaud himself. She even gives out that she 
 knows the piece by heart, reciting aloud a dozen 
 lines, where, it is true, she has caught a political 
 allusion that she wishes to emphasise. 
 
 Should fortune smile upon the efforts she has 
 thus provoked and stimulated, she is profusely 
 grateful : honours, pensions, gifts of money, of 
 peasants, of land, rain upon the artisans of her 
 glory. But she does not abandon those who have 
 had the misfortune to be unlucky. In June 
 1790 Prince von Nassau-Siegen is ingloriously 
 defeated. She immediately writes to him 
 
 ' I hope you know me well enough to be sure 
 that the gossip of the town, which has apparently 
 reached you, will have no effect upon me. I know 
 perfectly your zeal ; I do it justice ; I most sin- 
 cerely share your mortification ; I am distressed 
 to hear that it has even affected your health. . . . 
 Mon Dieu, who is there, then, that has not had 
 great reverses in his life ? Have not the greatest
 
 THE ART OF RULING 271 
 
 captains had their unlucky days. The late King 
 of Prussia was really only great after a great 
 reverse. . . . Remember, Prince, your successes in 
 the South and North, rise above these untoward 
 events, and go forward against the enemy, instead 
 of asking me to appoint another commander for 
 the fleet. I cannot do so now without giving 
 occasion to your enemies. I lay too great store 
 by the services you have rendered me not to 
 support you, especially at a time when you are 
 suffering, as you tell me, in body and mind.' 
 
 She supports him, in fact, against all. As, in 
 his endeavour to retire from the position, he 
 appeals to the unfavourable state of affairs, she 
 replies that it will be cruel of him towards her if 
 he cannot remedy them. ' I have always liked to 
 take an interest in the affairs of those who looked 
 after mine.' And, as the clamour of court and 
 town still continue against the defeated general, 
 she writes to him again 
 
 ' You acted upon a plan approved by me and 
 upon my orders, and, coming from the supreme 
 authority, they could not have been submitted to 
 any further opinion, since, as long as I live, I 
 shall never allow what I have ordered and 
 approved of in regard to service to be called 
 in question by a living soul ; nor does any one 
 here attempt to do so. You are right, and you 
 must be right, since I say that you are right. 
 That is an "aristocratic" reason, no doubt; but 
 it can be no otherwise without turning every- 
 thing upside down.' 
 
 And it is always thus. In 1794 General 
 Igelstrom, having been surprised at Warsaw by a 
 popular outbreak, is suspended from office ; but,
 
 272 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 one day, as those about the Empress are intent 
 upon running him down, she raises her voice : 
 ' Silence, gentlemen ; do not forget that he served 
 me for thirty years, and that I owe to him the 
 peace with Sweden.' 
 
 A fragment of conversation with Count Nicolas 
 Roumiantsof, the son of the hero of the first 
 Turkish war, which is reported to us by Gretch, 
 shows, on the other hand, the multiplicity of 
 means which she has at her command, and which 
 she uses to obtain the aid of those whose devotion 
 is likely to be useful to her. She asks the Count 
 if he thinks it easy to govern men. ' I think there 
 is nothing more difficult,' replies Roumiantsof. 
 ' Come now, you have only to observe three 
 principles : the first is to act so that people fancy 
 they are doing of their own accord what you make 
 them do.' 'That is quite enough,' interrupts 
 Roumiantsof. Admiral Tchitchagof relates that 
 his brother, who was gentleman of the bedchamber, 
 had one day the misfortune to be late in arriving. 
 The Empress observed it, and did not fail to com- 
 ment on this negligence, but it was in the form 
 of eulogies heaped on the father of Tchitchagof, 
 who, for fifty years, never once failed to be at his 
 post. Those who were present imagined that the 
 young man was receiving the most extraordinary 
 signs of imperial favour, until he confessed to 
 them afterwards that he had never been so 
 miserable and confused. ' I make it a point to 
 praise aloud, and to complain quietly,' said 
 Catherine. 
 
 And is it not easy to imagine the effect that a 
 word from her lips, a gesture of her hand, the 
 slightest mark of satisfaction or of dissatisfaction,
 
 THE ART OF RULING 273 
 
 coming from her, would have over the simple and 
 impressionable people with whom she was for the 
 most part brought in contact ? Tchitchagof relates 
 that a General Vorontsof, Commandant of the Post 
 of Revel, whom he had known well, was struck 
 by an attack of apoplexy, of which he died, at the 
 mere idea of having incurred the sovereign's 
 displeasure. A non-commissioned officer named 
 Stepan Chirai, sent to the Empress by Souvarof 
 with the news of the taking of a fortress, returned 
 with the Cross of St. Vladimir of the fourth class, 
 which the Empress herself had pinned on his 
 chest. Thirty years later the Emperor Nicholas, 
 on the day of his coronation, thought to advance 
 him a class. He returned the new cross: he could 
 not make up his mind to give up the one that 
 he had received from the hands of the matouchka \ 
 
 in 
 
 Catherine's art of ruling was not, however, 
 without its shortcomings, some of which were 
 due to the mere fact of her sex, whose depen- 
 dences and weaknesses she was powerless to 
 overcome. ' Ah ! ' she cried one day, ' if heaven 
 had only granted me breeches instead of petti- 
 coats, I could do anything. It is with eyes and 
 arms that one rules, and a woman has only ears.' 
 The petticoats were not solely responsible for her 
 difficulties. We have already referred to a defect 
 which bore heavily upon the conduct of affairs 
 during her reign : this great leader of men, who 
 knew so well how to make use of them, did 
 not know how to choose them. Her judgment, 
 
 s
 
 274 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 usually so accurate and penetrating, her lucidity, 
 great as it was, deserted her on this point. She 
 could not see in others either the qualities or the 
 defects that she discovered and analysed in herself 
 with so extraordinary a clearness of sight. There 
 was here a gap in her intelligence, due probably, 
 in part at least, to the influence of her tempera- 
 ment. It seems that her vision of men in general 
 was disturbed, in this respect, by the breath of 
 passion which influenced all her life. The general, 
 the statesman, of whom she had need, she seemed 
 to see only through the male whom she liked or 
 disliked. What she looked for first, in the face of 
 any functionary whatever, was the romantic side, 
 the more or less attractive exterior. That she took 
 Patiomkine for an able man may be excused ; he 
 was perhaps a madman, but he had the madness 
 of genius. He belonged to the category of men 
 who are called forces of nature. And this force, 
 let loose upon immensity in this ' fallow land ' for 
 which Catherine felt that she had been born, had 
 its value. But after Patiomkine came Zoubof. 
 He was a mere puppet : Catherine took him for 
 a man of genius. 
 
 The contrary also happened to her. Rou- 
 miantsof having presented before her one of his 
 lieutenants, General Weissmann, whom he judged 
 capable of taking his place in case of need, 
 Catherine conversed with him on three occasions, 
 and, having turned him this way and that, ' came 
 to the conclusion that he was an absolute fool.' 
 The wretched man shortly afterwards rushed 
 upon his death in the battle of Koutchouk- 
 Kajnardji. In the opinion of all competent 
 to judge, he was beyond compare as a soldier,
 
 THE ART OF RULING 275 
 
 and valiant among the valiant. One historian 
 has called him 'the Achilles of the Russian 
 army.' 
 
 These mistakes of judgment were frequent. 
 But Catherine did more than this, and worse. 
 With the obstinacy which characterised her, and 
 the infatuation that her successes gave her, she 
 came little by little to translate this capital defect 
 into & parti pris, to formulate it as a system ; one 
 man was worth another, in her eyes, so long as 
 he was docile and prompt to obey. She had in 
 this respect maxims which might well disconcert 
 her admirers. 
 
 ' Tell me,' she wrote to Grimm, ' if ever 
 sovereign has more absolutely chosen his min- 
 isters according to the voice of public opinion 
 than Louis XVI. ? And we have seen what 
 happened. According to me, no country has a 
 dearth of men. Don't try to look all round about 
 you, try to use what you have at hand. It is 
 always said of us that we have a dearth of men ; 
 yet in spite of all, things come right. Peter I. 
 had the same, and knew not how to read or write ; 
 well, did not things succeed ? Ergo, there is no 
 such thing as a dearth of men ; there is a multi- 
 tude, but you must make them move : all will go 
 well if you have this other to make them move. 
 What does your coachman do, souffre-douleiir, 
 when you are boxed up in your coach ? A good 
 heart goes everywhere ; because this or that is 
 narrow and limited, the master is not.' 
 
 And again : ' Assuredly men of worth are 
 never lacking, for it is affairs which make men 
 and men which make affairs ; I have never tried 
 to look for them, and I have always found close
 
 276 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 at hand the men who have served me, and I have 
 for the most part been well served.' 
 
 This does not hinder her from one day making 
 this reflection, which she puts in a letter to the 
 Prince de Ligne 
 
 ' Ah, Prince, who knows better than I do that 
 there are clerks who are ignorant that a maritime 
 town has a port ? ' 
 
 And this other 
 
 ' It is not ideas which are wanting ; it is in the 
 execution, it is in the application, that things often 
 go awry.' 
 
 This does not prevent her, in 1 774, from being 
 on the point of going to Moscow herself in order 
 to put down Pougatchef ; for, since the death of 
 Bibikof, she knows not who can cope with him. 
 She summons a council : Gregory Orlof declares 
 that he has slept badly and has not an idea 
 in his head ; Razoumofski and Galitzine are 
 silent ; Patiomkine is for the man whom she 
 chooses ; Panine alone has the courage to give 
 advice, and his advice is that the Empress 
 should appeal to his brother, General Panine, 
 whose services she has long neglected, thinking 
 that another would do equally well in his place. 
 The peril being urgent, she submits, sacrifices 
 her amour-propre, and Panine saves the crown 
 and the empire. In 1788, after the first en- 
 counter with the Swedes, she court-martials three 
 captains of frigates ; the next day she writes to 
 Patiomkine : ' They deserve the gallows, but there 
 is nobody else to put in their place, unless he falls 
 from the sky.' 
 
 With the multiplicity of her enterprises, and 
 with her ideas on this point, which are but the
 
 THE ART OF RULING 277 
 
 expression of her caprices, she uses up a terrible 
 number of men. Her maxim that 'affairs make 
 men ' leads her to multiply to excess the number 
 of functionaries. According to one testimony, if 
 the two capitals and a few other larger towns are 
 left out of the question, there is one functionary 
 to every ten inhabitants in the provinces. 
 And her idea that one man is worth as much as 
 another causes her, for a mere nothing, for a 
 word that offends her, for a cast of countenance 
 that she finds unpleasing, or even without motive, 
 for the pleasure of change and the delight of 
 having to do with some one new, as she avows 
 naively in a letter to Grimm, to set aside, 
 disgraced or merely cashiered, one or another 
 of her most devoted servants. In 1788 Rou- 
 miantsof, the greatest warrior whom Russia pro- 
 duced before Souvarof, is still alive, and well 
 able to take the command, and Alexis Orlof, 
 the hero of Tchesme, is burning to renew his 
 old exploits. He has had a certain apprentice- 
 ship to the trade, which he entered into 
 in 1770, and a name that the enthusiasm of 
 Catherine herself has surrounded with such an 
 aureole, that his reputation is worth in itself a 
 fleet or an army. But both the one and the 
 other, Roumiantsof and Orlof, have long been 
 sacrificed to Patiomkine, and Catherine is re- 
 duced to seeking generals and admirals in Eng- 
 land, in Holland, in Germany. At last she 
 finds Nassau-Siegen, who, after having enchanted 
 her by his matador airs and stage costumes, ere 
 long costs her a fleet, and the shame of a disaster 
 without precedent in the history of the young 
 Russian navy.
 
 278 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 The extravagant optimism, which is part of 
 the character of Catherine, and which colleagues 
 like Nassau and Patiomkine assiduously encour- 
 age, has also to be observed. The story of the 
 scene-painting on canvas, which, during the visit 
 to the Crimea, is said to have represented the 
 absent villages, has been disproved. It is not 
 so very far from the truth, on the testimony even 
 of those who have contested its reality. The 
 Prince de Ligne is among these ; he observes, 
 nevertheless, that Catherine, never going on foot, 
 could see no more than what was shown her, and 
 imagined frequently that a town was built and 
 inhabited, ' when this town had no streets, the 
 streets no houses, and the houses no roofs, doors, 
 or windows.' The Comte de Langeron, who 
 was afterwards governor of these very provinces, 
 and whose memoirs have not the slightest trace 
 of retrospective hostility, goes even further. A 
 proclamation of the governor of Harkof, Vassili 
 Tchertkof, issued at the same time to announce 
 to the inhabitants the coming of the sovereign, 
 and to instruct them in their duties on this 
 solemn occasion, is equally characteristic in the 
 same way. It is severely ordered that the in- 
 habitants are to dress themselves in their best 
 clothes when her Majesty is expected to pass by. 
 The girls are to have their hair carefully combed 
 out and adorned with flowers. They are also 
 to strew flowers on the Empress's path, and 
 all the population is to 'express its delight by 
 appropriate gestures and attitudes.' The houses 
 on the route are to be repainted, the roofs 
 repaired, the doors and windows decked with 
 festoons, and, as far as possible, with rugs
 
 THE ART OF RULING 279 
 
 pleasing to the eye. It is forbidden for any one 
 to get drunk, or to present to her Majesty the 
 smallest request ; this under penalty of the knout 
 and hard labour. The local magistrates will see 
 to it in addition that the passage of the sovereign 
 does not raise the price of food. Prince Chtcher- 
 batof relates that at Moscow all the beggars had 
 been put outside, so that the Empress should not 
 see them. ' The Empress has looked, but not 
 seen (vidiela i ne vidala),' he adds, with an un- 
 translatable play on words. This is how she 
 came to be convinced that ' there were no hungry 
 people in Russia.' She gives that assurance one 
 day to Grimm ! 
 
 But the conquest and the arrangement of the 
 Tauric peninsula were, in the hands of Patiom- 
 kine, nothing but a colossal fierie mounted by 
 that prodigious improvisatore and disappearing 
 with him. It was difficult to decide, on seeing 
 him at work, which to admire the most : his 
 extraordinary activity and the fertility of his 
 imagination, or the incredible naivetd with which 
 both Catherine and himself take their creation, 
 part madness, part fancy, part childish mystifica- 
 tion, absolutely au sdrieux. A desert is to be 
 transformed into a cultivated and well-populated 
 land, inhabited by industry and the arts, and 
 this is to be done in a few years, as if by magic. 
 Patiomkine sets to work. He plants forests in 
 the Steppes, imports the seeds of all known 
 vegetables, trains vines, cultivates mulberry-trees 
 for silk- worms, builds manufactories, theatres, 
 palaces, barracks, and cathedrals. He covers the 
 peninsula with magnificent towns. The history 
 of these towns is astounding. The examples
 
 2So CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 which America offers to-day to our astonishment, 
 in the same order of instantaneous improvisa- 
 tions, are outdone. In 1784 a site is wanted 
 for the capital of the province, which is to be 
 named ' lekatierinoslaf ' -glory of Catherine. 
 Two months after the site has been marked out, 
 there is already a project for a university, open 
 not only to natives, but also to the strangers 
 who are expected to flock from all the corners 
 of Europe. Soon an army of workmen appears 
 on the right bank of the Dnieper, at the spot 
 chosen, not far from a humble Tartar village 
 called Kaidak ; Lieutenant Sinielnikof, who has 
 charge of them, receives 200,000 roubles for the 
 first cost, and the work commences. The town 
 is to extend along the river about 25 versts, and 
 to cover 300 square versts with streets 200 feet 
 wide. There is to be a park, with a botanical 
 garden, fish-pond, and different other embellish- 
 ments. In the middle is to be the palace of the 
 Prince of Taurida, Patiomkine the magnificent. 
 Around are the buildings apportioned to the 
 different services of the administration ; then 
 come the dwellings of the workmen employed in 
 building the town, the workshops, the manu- 
 factories, the houses of the coming population. 
 Twelve large factories, one of them for silk 
 fabrics, are planned, and the funds for establish- 
 ing them partly collected. A town-hall in the 
 style of the old basilicas, a great bazaar in the 
 style of the Propylaeum, a Bourse, a theatre, a 
 Conservatoire of music, finally a cathedral on the 
 model of St. Peter's, but larger, will be erected 
 in various parts of the city, suitably chosen. The 
 materials are ready, Patiomkine declares. In
 
 THE ART OF RULING 281 
 
 addition, professors are already summoned for 
 the university and the conservatoire. The cele- 
 brated Sarti is to direct the latter. For the chair 
 of history in the university a Frenchman named 
 Guyenne is appointed, a soldier by profession. 
 But these details must not be looked into too 
 closely. An observatory too is thought of, and 
 a sort of Quartier Latin for the students. 
 
 Such are the plans ; now see the results. The 
 palace of Patiomkine is built of conservatories, 
 one for pine-apples, another for laurels and 
 orange-trees, others again for pomegranates, 
 dates, etc. The silk factory is also built. It 
 costs 240,000 roubles, and works for two years, 
 after which various reasons, the principal of which 
 is a scarcity of material, bring it to an end. The 
 silk-worm industry, for which a manager has 
 been brought from abroad at a considerable 
 salary, produces a maximum of twenty pounds of 
 silk a year ! The remainder of the great city 
 exists only in fancy. But lekatierinoslaf had, all 
 the same, a chance of becoming in time a little 
 provincial town. Kherson, of which Joseph II. 
 laid the first stone in 1787, saying that after him 
 Catherine had laid the last, did not even arrive 
 at this modest result. In other parts of the 
 empire the rapid erection of administrative or 
 industrial centres ran similar risks. In 1787 
 the poet Dierjavine, accompanying the governor 
 of Petrosavodsk in a journey undertaken for the 
 inauguration of a town which had been appointed 
 chief town of the district, never reached the goal, 
 he tells us : the town existed only on paper ! 
 
 Nevertheless the Crimea was conquered and 
 began to be populated.
 
 282 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 'Such, in Russia,' said the Comte de Segur, ' is 
 the double magic of absolute power and of passive 
 obedience, that nobody murmurs, even though in 
 want of everything, and things go on, although 
 nothing has been prepared or looked after in 
 advance.' 
 
 ' Things went on,' in fact, from one end to the 
 other of Catherine's reign, and 'passive obe- 
 dience,' no doubt, had a large share in it. The 
 adventure of Sutherland, the English banker at 
 St. Petersburg, is well known. One day the 
 chief of police, Ryle'ief, presents himself, and, 
 with all sorts of excuses, communicates to him an 
 order of the sovereign which concerns him, an 
 order which he cannot but deplore, despite his 
 respect for the will of her Majesty, but which it is 
 out of his power not to execute. In a word, he 
 has been ordered to stuff the unfortunate banker. 
 Conceive of the poor man's fright ! Happily the 
 mistake is discovered in time. The Empress 
 had spoken of stuffing a favourite dog that she 
 had lost, and the English name had put Ryleief 
 on the wrong track. The English Dr. Dimsdale 
 relates, in the notes he has left on his residence 
 in Russia, that having wished to take the lymph 
 for inoculating the Empress from a child belong 
 ing to poor moujiks, the mother opposed it : 
 according to the general belief, it meant the 
 death of the child. But the father intervened : 
 ' If the Empress ordered us to cut off both the 
 child's legs, should we not do it ? ' Dimsdale 
 adds nevertheless another characteristic. The 
 sick child was placed in an overheated room, in 
 a fetid atmosphere, the opening of a window, 
 according to the parents, meaning certain death.
 
 THE ART OF RULING 283 
 
 But Dimsdale produced a rouble : he could open 
 as much as he liked. 
 
 The anecdote reveals another agent, universal 
 and all-powerful, which the ways of the country 
 put in the hands of Catherine. She did not fail 
 to use it. She used it vigorously and to excess, 
 after her usual style. She gave much, and let 
 even more be taken. The waste of money in 
 every branch of the administration was enormous. 
 One day Catherine, in the midst of a violent 
 headache, could not suppress a smile : ' She did 
 not wonder that she was suffering so much, for 
 she had seen in the accounts that she used a.poud 
 (over thirty pounds) of powder every day for her 
 hair ! ' This detail enables one to judge of the 
 rest. But the accounts that Harris sent to the 
 English court, with the detail of 'tens of thou- 
 sands of pounds sterling' used by his French 
 colleagues in corrupting the functionaries of the 
 Empress, were not less fanciful. The Baron de 
 Breteuil was the sole French minister at this 
 epoch who was empowered to employ in this 
 manner a considerable sum, to the extent of a 
 million of francs ; and he never made use of the 
 permission. His successors had something to do 
 to obtain a few ten thousand pounds intended for 
 the buying over of certain influences or certain 
 secret documents. And these attempts, con- 
 sidered even at Versailles as useless or dangerous, 
 had not as a rule any success during the reign of 
 Catherine. A functionary of the Empress, who 
 had, or appeared to have, a great fancy for a fine 
 coach made in Paris, thought better of it before 
 he had received the present, and informed the 
 sovereign, who dictated to him herself an ironi-
 
 284 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 cally-polite letter of refusal. After the Baron 
 de Breteuil, in the long series of agents repre- 
 senting the French policy who succeeded him 
 at St. Petersburg, the Comte de Segur was 
 the only one who succeeded in exercising any 
 particular influence, and money, which he would 
 have found it very difficult to raise, had no 
 share in this. 
 
 From 1762 to the death of Catherine, there 
 was only one great corrupting influence in her 
 empire and that was herself. It is certain that 
 she used it mainly for the good of the empire, as 
 she conceived it, and that she found in it the 
 resources for the accomplishment of great things. 
 It is not less certain that morality had to suffer 
 for it, and that the influence of ideas and 
 customs thus implanted in the national genius, 
 was destined to exercise on its later development 
 a loner and untoward action. 
 
 O 
 
 We shall now endeavour to pass rapidly in 
 review the results obtained by means of all th,ese 
 resources as they were wielded in the hands of 
 the sovereign. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOME POLICY 
 
 HAPPY is the nation without a history : from 
 1775 the Russian people counted, in point of 
 view of the home policy, among the happy 
 nations. After the great effort which she had to
 
 HOME POLICY 285 
 
 make in putting down the revolt of Pougatchef, 
 Catherine found herself at first fatigued, then 
 disenchanted, and finally absorbed by her foreign 
 policy, by the conquest of the Crimea, the second 
 Turkish war, the second and third division of 
 Poland, and the anti-revolutionary campaign. 
 Up to 1775 she asserted, and had need to assert, 
 her exuberant activity in every direction. She 
 had first to defend her throne against a series of 
 more or less threatening attempts. A series of 
 repressive measures, more or less calculated to 
 add to her glory, corresponded with them. 
 
 In October 1762 a certain Peter Hrouchtchof 
 was accused, with the brothers Simon, Ivan, and 
 Peter Gourief, of having plotted for the re- 
 establishment on the throne of Ivan of Brunswick, 
 shut up since 1741 in prison. Having been 
 condemned, together with his accomplices, to 
 transportation to the government of Oremburg, 
 Hrouchtchof took part in 1772 in the revolt of 
 the exiles in Siberia, under the leadership of the 
 famous Beniowski. He succeeded in escaping, 
 after a series of romantic adventures, reached the 
 west of Europe by way of America, and served 
 in the French army in the rank of captain. 
 
 This conspiracy, true or false, for the reality of 
 the criminal intentions imputed to the accused 
 seems not to have been clearly established, has 
 often been confused with another later event, in 
 which the Princess Dachkof was compromised. 
 In May 1763, during Catherine's visit to Moscow 
 on the occasion of her coronation, fresh arrests 
 for high treason were commanded by the Empress. 
 But the unhappy Ivan, languishing in his prison, 
 was not the cause this time. It was quite
 
 286 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 another affair. There had been a rumour that 
 Catherine intended to marry Gregory Orlof. 
 Some of those who had taken the most active 
 part in the elevation of the new Czarina, Fedor 
 Hitrovo at their head, judged the interests of the 
 empire endangered by this real or imaginary 
 project. They formed a plot to hinder the 
 Empress from carrying it out, or, in case of 
 her persisting, to kill the favourite. Hitrovo, 
 the first to be arrested, named as accomplices, 
 Panine, Hliebof, Tieplof, Passek, the greater 
 part of the heroes of the i2th of July, and the 
 Princess Dachkof. He afterwards contradicted 
 his assertions, and declared that he had only had 
 to do with more obscure friends, the two brothers 
 Roslavlef and Lasounski. Princess Dachkof, on 
 being examined, declared proudly that she knew 
 nothing in the matter, but that, if she had known 
 anything, she would have kept silence just the 
 same. Moreover, if the Empress wished to bring 
 her head to the scaffold, after she had helped to 
 set the crown on hers, she was prepared ! The 
 affair had no very serious consequences. Hitrovo 
 alone was exiled in the government of Orel. A 
 ukase was also proclaimed in the streets of 
 Moscow, to the sound of the drum, a ukase which 
 was merely the repetition of an earlier act of 
 Elizabeth's government (June 5, 1757), by which 
 it was forbidden to the inhabitants to occupy 
 themselves with matters which did not concern 
 them. The affairs of state in general were com- 
 prised in the enumeration of subjects thus denoted. 
 The interdiction was renewed in 1772. 
 
 Almost at the same time, a priest, the Arch- 
 bishop of Rostof, Arsene Matsieievitch, raised
 
 HOME POLICY 2 S7 
 
 the standard of revolt in a much more audacious 
 manner. The policy of Catherine in regard to 
 the orthodox clergy did not fail to give rise to 
 well-established criticisms. On coming to the 
 throne she had pronounced vigorously against 
 the measures by which Peter III. had brought 
 about the disaffection, if not the active opposi- 
 tion, of the church. She had reopened the 
 private chapels, closed by order of the Czar, 
 forbidden the performance of pagan plays at the 
 theatre, reinforced the censorship of books ; 
 finally, she had put an end to the secularisation 
 of ecclesiastical property. Suddenly she changed 
 her mind, and revoked all these measures in 
 protection of interests which she thought it no 
 longer needful to consult. A part of the goods 
 returned to their former possessors was the 
 object of fresh claims. The clergy in general 
 bowed the head, as they had done before. 
 Arsene alone rose in defence of the common 
 rights thus outraged. He went so far as to 
 introduce into the ritual certain new formulas 
 which, under colour of menacing the enemies of 
 the church, were levelled directly against the 
 Empress. Arrested and brought before the 
 sovereign, he broke out into language so violent 
 that her Majesty was obliged to cover her ears. 
 He was condemned to be degraded from his 
 office, and shut up in a cloister, where he was 
 employed, by express order, in the meanest work, 
 in fetching water and chopping wood. Four 
 years later, after a new attempt at revolt, he was 
 removed from the cloister to a better-guarded 
 prison. The fortress of Revel was selected in 
 order that he might not be able to talk in Russian
 
 288 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 with his keepers, who only understood Lithuanian. 
 He changed his name, and called himself the 
 peasant Andr6 Vral, that is to say, liar, or Brodi- 
 g'iaguine, that is to say, brigand. He died in 
 1772. A year afterwards, a shopkeeper named 
 Smoline renewed the protest of the unfortunate 
 bishop against the infringement of the rights of 
 the clergy. In a letter addressed to the Empress, 
 and filled with the most virulent invectives, he 
 openly accused the sovereign of having ap- 
 propriated the goods of the church in order to 
 distribute them to Orlof and other favourites. 
 He ended with this apostrophe : ' Thou hast a 
 heart of stone like Pharaoh. . . . Of what chastise- 
 ment art thou not worthy, thou who every day 
 dost chastise robbers and brigands ! ' Catherine 
 proved that the mad creature calumniated her 
 by showing him mercy. Smoline was only im- 
 prisoned for five years, after which, at his own 
 request, he was made a monk, and nothing more 
 was heard of him. 
 
 Nevertheless, in 1764, the death of Ivan of 
 Brunswick had already added another stain of 
 blood to that which the drama of Ropcha left on 
 the dazzling horizon of the new reign. Ivan, it 
 may be remembered, was the little Emperor of 
 two years old, dethroned in 1741 by Elizabeth. 
 Shut up at first with the rest of his family at 
 Holmogory, on the White Sea, then, alone, in 
 the fortress of Schliisselburg, he had grown up 
 in the shadow of the dungeon. He was said to 
 be weak-minded and to stutter ; but he had 
 reigned, and such another act of violence as the 
 one that had dethroned him might reinstate him 
 on the throne : he remained a menace. He gave .
 
 HOME POLICY 289 
 
 some anxiety to Voltaire himself, who foresaw 
 that the philosophers would not find in him 
 a friend. In September 1764 he disappeared. 
 The incident has given rise to contradictory tales 
 and comments, in which history is quite at a loss. 
 To oblige his imperial benefactress, the patriarch 
 of Ferney was good enough to 'arrange' the 
 incident. Others have done the same, Catherine 
 the first of all. Here are the known facts. An 
 officer of the name of Mirovitch, on guard at the 
 fortress of Schliisselburg, induced a party of men 
 under his command to render him assistance in 
 setting free the 'Czar.' But Ivan had two 
 guardians, to whom the strict command had been 
 given to kill him rather than let him escape. 
 They killed him. Catherine was suspected of 
 complicity in the murder : she was thought to 
 have planned the whole thing with Mirovitch. 
 He, it is true, let himself be judged, condemned, 
 and executed without a word; but had he not 
 been made to believe that he would be reprieved 
 at the last moment ? Precedents existed ; under 
 Elizabeth, several high dignitaries, Osterman 
 among others, had profited by the imperial 
 clemency at the very moment when their head 
 rested on the block. 
 
 There were certain curious details in the 
 trial : on the express command of the Empress, 
 no attempt was made to find other accomplices, 
 likely as they were to be found, in the crime. 
 The relatives of Mirovitch were not interfered 
 with. It would be unreasonable to try to prove 
 an accusation on such vague grounds. Catherine 
 showed once again, in these circumstances, the 
 force of mind which she possessed. She was
 
 296 CATHERINE It. OF RUSSIA 
 
 travelling in Livonia when the news reached 
 her. She did not hasten her return, or make 
 any change in her itinerary. 
 
 But the great crisis in home affairs was that 
 of 1771-1775. At all times, up to the begin- 
 ning of this century at least, Russia has been 
 the home of pretenders. From the first half 
 of the seventeenth century, after the extinction 
 of the dynasty of Rourik, they followed one 
 another at brief intervals. Under Catherine 
 the series was almost interminable. In 1765 
 two deserters, Gavrilo Kremnief and levdokimof, 
 successively assumed the name of Peter III. 
 In 1769 there was a fresh apparition of the 
 murdered Czar, and it was once more a deserter, 
 Mamykine, who assumed the tragic and am- 
 bitious mask. Emelian Pougatchef is thus only 
 the continuation of a series. But this time 
 Catherine has not to do with an obscure plot or 
 a puerile attempt, which a few blows of the knout 
 or the axe will soon set right. A whole tempest 
 is let loose after the wild Samozvaniets, a storm 
 which threaten^ to shake the throne and the 
 foundations of the empire in a general downfall 
 of the whole political and social structure. It 
 is no more a mere duel between usurpers more 
 or less well-armed for the defence or the con- 
 quest of a crown, which has so long been at 
 the disposal of whoever can seize upon it. The 
 contest has another name and another bearing. 
 It is a contest between the modern state, which 
 Catherine is endeavouring to extricate from the 
 unfinished materials left by Peter I. to his heirs, 
 and the primitive state, in which the mass of 
 the people persist in still living ; between organi-
 
 HOME POLICY 291 
 
 sation and the inorganic disorder, which is the 
 natural mode of existence of savage nations ; 
 between centralisation and the centrifugal force 
 
 o 
 
 which is peculiar to that state of nature. It 
 is also the cry of that misery, in which the 
 depths of the populace lie buried, rising against 
 the improvised splendour of a class, how con- 
 fined ! of privileged persons. It is the obscure 
 protestation of the national conscience against 
 the panegyrics of philosophers and poets, of 
 Voltaire and Dierjavine, chanting the splendours 
 of the new reign. For if Catherine, on the 
 heights on which she is surrounded by her 
 crowd of dignitaries and favourites, by all the 
 pomp and majesty of her supreme rank, has 
 done much already to give incomparable lustre 
 to her name, her power, her own greatness, 
 she has done as yet nothing, or almost nothing, 
 for those under her, for the poor, the lowly, 
 who toil and suffer as in the past, who have no 
 share in these triumphs and conquests on high, 
 who know nothing of them, save to be ex- 
 asperated by the reflection which does but light 
 up the depths of their own misery. Among 
 these, the short reign of Peter III. had awakened 
 hopes and left behind it regrets. The seculari- 
 sation of the estates of the clergy, begun by the 
 Emperor, had seemed to lead the way towards 
 the enfranchisement of the serfs, and did indeed 
 point in that direction, for the serfs belonging 
 to the secularised domains became free. We 
 have seen that Catherine put an end to this. 
 Peter had also inaugurated a system of absolute 
 tolerance in regard to religious dissent. He 
 had no wish to keep special watch over the
 
 292 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 welfare of the orthodox church. Legend, as 
 usual, exaggerated his merits. The skoptsi, or 
 mutilators, in particular, venerated in him a 
 saint and martyr of their cause. His affiliation 
 to their sect was, they imagined, the real reason 
 of his death ; and the accidents of his married 
 life lent some colour to these fables. Catherine, 
 as we have seen, did not follow in this respect 
 either the course of her husband, and what had 
 made her victorious now turned against her, 
 The raskol played a considerable part in the 
 movement of insurrection, and with it all the 
 elements of discontent and disorder, even to 
 the turbulent restlessness of the Asiatic races, 
 now in conflict, in the neighbourhood of Kasan 
 and of Moscow, with the Russifying headship 
 of the state : all that entered into conflict with 
 the state and the regime which it made and 
 maintained. Emelian Pougatchef was merely 
 the instrument, the nominal leader of this 
 general uprising of the rancours and appetites 
 of an immense proletariat. Yet earlier, scattered 
 instances of revolt among the serfs attached to 
 the soil had often been seen. In 1768, in the 
 government of Moscow alone, there were nine 
 cases of proprietors killed by their peasants. 
 The following year there were eight more, and 
 among the victims was one of the heroes of the 
 Seven Years' War, General Leontief, taken 
 prisoner on the battlefield of Zorndorf, and 
 married to a sister of the victorious Roumiantsof. 
 Emelian Pougatchef was the son of a Cossack 
 of the Don. He too had taken part in the 
 Seven Years' War, where he had distinguished 
 himself, had served also against the Turks,
 
 HOME POLICY 293 
 
 and had then deserted. He was captured, 
 escaped again, and entered upon the career 
 of an outlaw and brigand, by which he came 
 in time to the sanguinary drama which brought 
 his life to an end. The fact of an accidental 
 resemblance with Peter III., which rendered his 
 imposition more practicable, has been denied, 
 and seems to rest on no serious authority. 
 The portraits of the Samozvaniets which have 
 reached us show no trace of likeness. Peter 
 III. had the face of a grimacing ape; Pou- 
 gatchef s was of the common type of the Russian 
 moujik. He took the name of the deceased 
 Emperor as others had taken it before him. 
 But he had the fatal luck to appear at the 
 hour marked for the social convulsion, whose 
 causes we have indicated. He did not start 
 the movement, which had long been gathering 
 force ; it was rather the movement that bore 
 him with it He did not even try to direct 
 its course. He put himself at its head and 
 rushed forward blindly, urged on by the tumul- 
 tuous and threatening flood. It was a terrible 
 course, covering with smoking ruins a half of 
 the empire. After four years, the disciplined 
 force of the organised element got the better 
 of the savage element. Pougatchef, conquered 
 and made prisoner by one of the lieutenants of 
 Panine, was brought to Moscow in a wooden 
 cage, condemned to death, and executed. The 
 headsman cut off his head before quartering 
 him. Catherine declared that it was by her 
 order : she wished to appear more clement than 
 Louis XV. had been with Damiens. She had 
 nevertheless other injuries and other crimes to
 
 294 CATHERINE IIOF RUSSIA. 
 
 avenge. The victims made by Pougatchef and 
 his band were beyond all reckoning, and Cathe- 
 rine had been greatly terrified, whatever sallies, 
 more or less witty, she may have sent to Voltaire 
 on the subject of the ' Marquis de Pougatchef.' 
 
 An odd characteristic of this incident, but odd 
 in a way which is often seen in similar circum- 
 stances, was that, while revolting against the 
 state, as they saw it under Catherine's organisa- 
 tion, Pougatchef and his companions could only 
 copy this organisation, ape it at least, even to the 
 smallest details of its outer forms. After having 
 married a daughter of the people, the false 
 emperor gave her a species of court of honour. 
 Young peasants, beaten into trim, played the 
 freiline with immense grotesqueness, attempting 
 ceremonious reverences and a respectful way of 
 kissing the hand. To increase the illusion of his 
 supposed sovereignty, Pougatchef even went the 
 length of naming his principal lieutenants after 
 the principal members of the court of Catherine : 
 the Cossack Tchika took the name of Tcherni- 
 chef, with the title of field-marshal ; others were 
 called Count Vorontsof, Count Panine, Count 
 Orlof, etc. 
 
 This comedy cost dear to every one. It took 
 from Catherine the last remains of her former 
 enthusiasm for the redress of social iniquities ; 
 Russia, apart from immense material losses, had 
 probably that of a reign which had seemed to be 
 fruitful in great humanitarian reforms. The home 
 policy of Catherine preserved to the last, as we 
 have intimated, the trace of these terrible years, 
 like the scar of blows received and rendered in a 
 fight which was a fight to the death. There were
 
 HOME POLICY 295 
 
 others among the dead than those who perished 
 by fire or steel. Some of the ideas that Catherine 
 had brought with her to the government of the 
 empire remained behind on the field of battle ; 
 and perhaps they were among the best that she 
 had brought. 
 
 In regard to the department of police, Cathe- 
 rine's regime, from 1/75 especially, was, in a sense, 
 a regime of reaction against that which Peter 
 III. had inaugurated. Peter had suppressed 
 the sinister secret chancellorship, the shameful 
 heirloom of a time which Russia hoped never to 
 see again. Catherine would not re-establish the 
 institution with its hateful obsolete forms, but 
 little by little, without using the name, she re- 
 stored something very like the thing. She had 
 Stephen Ivanovitch Chechkofski. A legend has 
 been formed about this mysterious functionary, 
 whom Catherine was never without. The reality, 
 without equalling the horror of the memories left 
 by the functionaries of Ivan Vassilevich, was 
 doubtless of a kind to cast some shadow on the 
 reputation that the friend of philosophers desired 
 to preserve in Europe. In her hands it was 
 a cunning and hypocritical machine of state. 
 Chechkofski had neither official titles corre- 
 sponding with his position nor apparent organisa- 
 tion of his inquisitorial work. But his hand and 
 eye were everywhere. He seemed to possess the 
 gift of ubiquity. He never arrested any one : he 
 sent out an invitation to dinner, which no one 
 dared refuse. After dinner, there was conversa- 
 tion, and the walls of the comfortable and discreet 
 abode betrayed none of the secrets of these 
 conversations. A particular chair was, it seems,
 
 296 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 set aside for the guest, whom a word, amiable but 
 significant, had induced to cross the formidable 
 threshold. Suddenly the chair, in which he had 
 politely been motioned to be seated, tightened 
 upon him, and descended with him to the floor 
 below, in such a manner, however, that the head 
 and shoulders of the personage remained above. 
 The victim thus preserved his incognito from the 
 assistants of Chechkofski, who subjected the 
 lower part of the body to more or less rigorous 
 treatment. Chechkofski himself turned away at 
 this moment, and appeared to ignore what was 
 passing. The performance finished, and the chair 
 restored to its place, the host turned about, and 
 smilingly took up the conversation at the point 
 where it had been interrupted by this little 
 surprise. It is said that a young man, fore- 
 warned of what awaited him, used his presence of 
 mind, and his great muscular strength, to thrust 
 Chechkofski himself into the place reserved for 
 him on the fatal seat. After this he took to 
 flight. The rest can be imagined. Chechkofski 
 died in 1 794, leaving a large fortune. 
 
 ii 
 
 The great ensemble of laws which Catherine 
 proposed, in 1767, to graft upon Russia, on the 
 model of Montesquieu and Beccaria, was destined 
 never to be achieved, despite certain legislative 
 experiments, done always by fits and starts. 
 The main reason for this, apart from many 
 secondary reasons, is that the work could only 
 be done by beginning at the beginning, and the
 
 HOME POLICY 297 
 
 beginning was the reform, if not the suppression, 
 of serfdom. 
 
 This question, be it said to the honour of 
 Catherine, is one of those that occupied her mind 
 the most. When she was yet Grand Duchess, 
 she had, as we have seen, certain projects, quite 
 impracticable indeed, for the enfranchisement of 
 the peasants belonging to the soil. She had 
 found in books, one knows not where, the history 
 of a general and simultaneous emancipation ot 
 serfs in Germany, France, Spain, and other coun- 
 tries, the work of a council ! She asked herself 
 if a meeting of archimandrites could not produce 
 the same excellent result in Russia. On reaching 
 the throne she inaugurated the great work by 
 reforming the condition of the serfs in the matter 
 of the ecclesiastical estates confiscated by the 
 Treasury : the peasants, included there, were 
 subjected simply to a light poll-tax ; all that they 
 gained in addition was their own property, and 
 they could free themselves altogether for a 
 moderate amount. It was the offer of liberty as 
 a premium on the labour and industry of those 
 concerned ; and it was a fruitful idea. Its carry- 
 ing out was not without inconveniences : the 
 despoiled monks found themselves all at once 
 reduced to beggary. According to the Marquis 
 de Bausset, they had only about eight roubles a 
 year per head to live on ; they were forced to beg 
 on the roads ; and the degradation of the Russian 
 clergy, one of the most melancholy features of 
 modern Russia, may well be derived, in part at 
 least, from this. But there were about a million 
 peasants enfranchised, or about to be. It was 
 a beginning. For further progress, Catherine
 
 298 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 counted on her legislative commission. She had 
 to alter her course, as we have seen. Her In- 
 struction had in this respect to be retouched as 
 we have indicated. The great mass of peasants 
 belonging with the soil had not even a repre- 
 sentative in the assembly, which merely discussed 
 to whom they should belong. Every one sought 
 after this right : the shopkeepers laid claim to it, 
 and also the clergy, and even the Cossacks, 
 jealous of reclaiming their privileges. This re- 
 luctance to admit her humanitarian ideas vexed 
 Catherine. Some notes written at this period 
 give us a curious glimpse of her impressions : 
 ' If it is not possible to admit the personality of a 
 serf, he is not a man. Call him an animal, and 
 we shall win the respect of the whole world. . . . 
 The law of serfdom rests on an honest principle 
 established for animals by animals.' 
 
 But the deputies of the commission did not 
 read these notes, and probably they would have 
 made no difference to their feelings. On all 
 sides Catherine found an invincible opposition. 
 By 1 766 she had already proposed to the Society 
 of Political Economy, founded under her auspices, 
 a question concerning the right of the labourer 
 to the land which he has watered with his sweat 
 A hundred and twenty replies were sent, in 
 Russian, French, German, and Latin. It was 
 Bearde de 1'Abbaye, member of the Academy of 
 Dijon, who won the prize of a thousand ducats. 
 But, by thirteen voices against three, the society 
 opposed the publication of his work. 
 
 Catherine finally persuaded herself that the 
 problem was for the present insoluble and 
 dangerous to approach. The revolt of Pougat-
 
 HOME POLICY 299 
 
 chef confirmed her in this idea. In the course of 
 a conversation which she had at this time with 
 the head of the excise office, V. Dahl, she ex- 
 pressed the fear that in raising the question there 
 might result a revolution like that in America. 
 She had evidently very vague notions as to 
 what was happening at this moment across the 
 ocean. 
 
 ' Who knows, however ? ' she added ; 1 have 
 succeeded in so many other things!' In 1775, 
 writing to her Attorney-General, Prince Via- 
 zemski, she insisted again on the necessity of 
 doing something for the unhappy serfs, without 
 which ' they will sooner or later take the liberty 
 that we refuse them.' Count Bloudof professes 
 to have seen in the Empress's hands, in 1784, 
 a projected ukase ruling that the serfs born after 
 1785 should be free. This ukase never saw the 
 light. In the papers of the Empress, found after 
 her death, there is another project concerning the 
 organisation of freedmen, notably the nine hun- 
 dred thousand serfs who had been emancipated 
 by the secularisation of the ecclesiastical estates. 
 This document has been published in the 2Oth 
 volume of the Recueil de la SocitW d Histoire 
 (of Russia). The numerous corrections on the 
 original, written throughout in Catherine's hand- 
 writing, prove that she worked over it a long 
 time. She only arrived, however, at the some- 
 what odd, and probably impracticable, idea of 
 an application of municipal institutions to the 
 very different conditions of rural life. This con- 
 ception remained equally barren. 
 
 There were many reasons why it should be 
 so. In fact, the elevation of Catherine in 1762
 
 300 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 had been the work of the nobility, or at least 
 of the upper classes, and not that of the people. 
 It was therefore essential that the new Czarina 
 should stand by this element, and be, in the 
 first place, sure of it. Besides, even before her 
 accession to the throne, the ' philosophical mind ' 
 of Catherine, and her liberalism, did not prevent 
 her from a certain preference for the old families, 
 as we see plainly in her memoirs. In course of 
 time she substituted little by little for the old 
 aristocracy of the Narychkines, the Saltykofs, 
 the Galitzines, an aristocracy of recent creation, 
 the Orlofs, the Patiomkines. But this was 
 merely an exchange. On the other side, it is 
 easy to see how a liberal of the stamp of 
 Diderot could easily, after having examined the 
 question of Prussian serfdom with the Princess 
 Dachkof, come to the conclusion that a radical 
 reform on this point would be premature. The 
 observations of the Princess sufficed to shake, 
 in the mind of the philosopher, convictions 
 formed and nourished during twenty years. 
 Probably something of this appeared in the 
 conversations that Diderot afterwards had with 
 Catherine herself. And ten years later, the 
 Comte de S6gur, having doubtless seen the 
 peasants through the windows of the imperial 
 coach, calmly expressed the conviction that their 
 lot left nothing to desire. Catherine was bound 
 to end, as indeed she did, by becoming per- 
 suaded of it herself. In her notes on the book 
 of Radistchef, an avowed and inflexible liberal, 
 who, in 1790, thought it was still possible to act 
 on the principles of philosophy, and paid dear 
 for his error, the Empress goes the length of
 
 HOME POLICY 301 
 
 declaring, as an incontestable fact, that there is 
 no peasant in the world better treated than the 
 Russian peasant, and no master more kind and 
 humane than a proprietor of serfs in Russia ! 
 To know the real truth in the matter, it is need- 
 less to go very deeply into the examination of 
 the facts, facts which resemble those of a martyrc- 
 logy. As an example of the humanity shown 
 by the Russian lords to the serfs belonging to 
 them, the Comte de Segur has pointed in his 
 memoirs to a certain Countess Saltykof. It is 
 an unfortunate instance. The early years of 
 the reign of Catherine were filled with the re- 
 port of the trial and condemnation of a Countess 
 Daria Saltykof, accused of having put to death, 
 by means of refined tortures, a hundred and 
 thirty-eight of her serfs of both sexes. Seventy- 
 five victims, one of them a girl of fifteen, were 
 proved with certainty by the inquiry. And yet, 
 despite the outcry of popular indignation, which 
 has made the name of the Saltytchiha a fearful 
 memory, Catherine dared not do complete justice. 
 The more or less voluntary accomplices of the 
 horrible woman, the pope who presided at the 
 burial of the victims, and the valet who flogged 
 them, received the knout in one of the squares 
 of Moscow ; the Countess Saltykof escaped with 
 penal servitude for life. Even this, however, 
 denoted a progress ; under the reign of Elizabeth, 
 under that of Peter III., these very facts, uni- 
 versally known, remained unpunished. The 
 knout was brought into play merely upon those 
 who had denounced these abominable crimes ! 
 
 The case of the Saltytchiha was exceptional ; 
 the rule, however, was cruel enough. The law
 
 302 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 appointed no limit to the right of proprietors, 
 in regard to the corporal chastisement of their 
 serfs. It authorised them to send them to 
 Siberia. It was a means of peopling the vast 
 solitudes of the land of exile. Catherine added 
 the power of completing the exile by hard 
 labour. For the rest, the law was dumb, as 
 in the past. And the jurisprudence varied. 
 In 1762 the senate sentenced to transportation 
 a proprietor who had flogged a peasant to death. 
 But in 1761 an identical act was punished merely 
 by religious penance. A curious document has 
 come down to us, a list of punishments inflicted, 
 in the year 1751 and onward, on the estates of 
 Count P. Roumiantsof. It is distressing to read ; 
 a very nightmare. For entering his masters' 
 room while they were asleep, and thus disturbing 
 their sleep, a servant is flogged and condemned 
 to the loss of his name : he is to be called only 
 by an insulting nickname, any one infringing this 
 order to suffer Jive thousand blows of the stick, 
 without mercy. Five thousand blows of the 
 stick are, however, far from constituting a maxi- 
 mum. A sort of criminal code, in use on the 
 same estates, includes much severer chastise- 
 ments. It is further provided that the applica- 
 tion of these penalties is not to cause too much 
 inconvenience to the proprietor, by depriving 
 him too long of the labour of the beaten servants. 
 It is ruled that a man who has received seven- 
 teen thousand (sic] blows of the stick, or a 
 hundred blows of the knout the two are con- 
 sidered equivalent is not to remain in bed more 
 than a week. If he is longer in rising and re- 
 turning to work, he will be deprived of food.
 
 tiO ME POLICY 303 
 
 This code was in force during the reicrn of 
 
 o o 
 
 Catherine. It corresponds pretty well with the 
 general practice. In fact, after all her contra- 
 dictory tentatives, Catherine took the initiative 
 in this direction only in two cases, both of them a 
 distinct aggravation of the existing regime. In re- 
 gard to the treatment of the serfs by their masters, 
 by suppressing the right of direct appeal to the 
 sovereign, she suppressed the sole corrective, 
 indeed a very insufficient one, which might, in a 
 certain measure, have attenuated these monstrous 
 abuses. Those who had complaints were sent to 
 their proprietors, that is to say, to the butchers 
 themselves ; and there the lash was applied. In 
 1 765 a ukase of the senate substituted for the 
 penalty of the lash that of the knout and hard 
 labour. In 1779 a French painter of the name of 
 Velly, employed to paint the portrait of the 
 Empress, was near making the acquaintance of 
 this new legislation, having taken advantage of a 
 sitting to present a petition to her Majesty. A 
 diplomatic intervention was required to rescue 
 him from the consequences of his false step. In 
 regard to the law of serfdom itself, the great work 
 of Catherine's reign was the introduction of the 
 Russian common law in the ancient Polish pro- 
 vinces of Lesser Russia, that is to say, the trans- 
 formation of the free peasants into serfs belonging 
 with the soil. 
 
 In 1774, in talking with Diderot, who spoke 
 with some disgust of the dirtiness that he had 
 noticed in the peasants round St. Petersburg, the 
 Empress demanded: 'Why should they look 
 after a body which is not their own ? ' This 
 bitter word, if it was really said, sums up a state
 
 304 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of things with which she had finally come to 
 reconcile her humanitarian aspiration. 
 
 In 1789, in a series of advertisements in the 
 Gazette de St.-Pdtersbourg (No. 36), side by side 
 with the offer of a Holstein stallion for sale, we find 
 that of some copies of the Instruction pour la Com- 
 mission Legislative, and lower down these lines 
 
 ' Any one wishing to buy an entire family, or 
 a young man and a girl separately, may inquire 
 at the silk-washer's, opposite the church of Kasan. 
 The young man, named Ivan, is twenty-one years 
 of age ; he is healthy, robust, and can curl a 
 lady's hair. The girl, well-made and healthy, 
 named Marfa, aged fifteen, can do sewing and 
 embroidery. They can be examined, and are to 
 be had at a reasonable price.' 
 
 This sums up what Catherine left to her suc- 
 cessor by way of result, in regard to her work as 
 legislator. 
 
 ' As she is ambitious of all sorts of fame,' wrote 
 the Comte de Segur in 1 786, ' she wishes to lay 
 claim, during the peace, to that of legislator ; but 
 her subjects have put more obstacles in her way 
 than her enemies, . . . and she has been forced 
 to acknowledge that it is unfortunately easier to 
 make great conquests than good laws.' 
 
 At the same time, sending a memorandum on 
 the general state of the legislation in Russia, the 
 work of his brother, M. d'Aguesseau, he added 
 the following reflections : 
 
 ' The result of his work will be one more proof 
 of this truth, that in a land of slaves there can be 
 neither good laws nor good morals, that every- 
 thing becomes corrupt before being civilised, that 
 there is an inevitable lack of light and help,
 
 HOME POLICY 305 
 
 and that all things betray the irrationality of 
 despotism, even the very measures that are in- 
 tended to restrain and modify it.' 
 
 At the top of his memorandum D'Aguesseau 
 had put this line of Du Bellay : ' Plus je vois 
 1'etranger, plus j'aime ma patrie.' 
 
 in 
 
 In regard to the administration of justice, 
 Catherine's reign is distinguished by several 
 important reforms, whose merit, however, has 
 been very variously appreciated. Mercier de la 
 Riviere expressed great enthusiasm in regard to 
 an organisation of provincial tribunals put in 
 force after the peace with Turkey in 1774. In 
 the memoirs of a contemporary (Vinski), perhaps 
 a better judge, these tribunals are referred to 
 with not nearly so much praise. The reform has 
 merely put 320 judges where there had formerly 
 been 50, that is to say, in a government divided, 
 according to the new regulations, into four districts 
 with 80 judges each. ' The most obvious result of 
 this benefit to the poor farmer is that instead of 
 three sheep he must now bring fifteen a year to 
 the town/ in order to keep in well with justice. 
 All that, adds Vinski, may be good to dazzle 
 strangers, and make them admire the Semiramis 
 of the North ; for us Russians 'it is a mere 
 puppet-play. 
 
 Catherine also did her best to quicken the 
 march of justice, always desperately slow. In 
 1769 a tradesman of Moscow, Popof, having been 
 driven by the exasperating intricacies of procedure 
 into crying aloud in open court that there was no 
 
 u
 
 306 CA THERINE //. OF RUSSIA 
 
 justice in Russia under the reign of Catherine II., 
 the Empress had these audacious words erased 
 from the minutes of proceedings, but she com- 
 manded, at the same time, that the affairs of Popof 
 should be settled with the greatest despatch, 
 ' so that he might see that there was justice in 
 Russia.' 
 
 The sovereign's zeal was praiseworthy ; it pro- 
 duced, as a rule, but little effect. The machine 
 was too cumbersome for any one hand, even as 
 energetic as hers, to regulate the heavy wheels. 
 In 1785 some French shipowners were still 
 awaiting at St. Petersburg the settlement of 
 certain indemnities due to them for the losses 
 they had endured in the first Turkish war. The 
 Comte de Segur, who had exerted himself on 
 their behalf, wrote that he could obtain no more 
 than a postponement from day to day instead of 
 from week to week. He added 
 
 ' As for the actual debts, I will certainly do 
 what I can, but I guarantee in advance that it 
 will be useless. The English minister and I are 
 convinced by sad experience that it is impossible 
 here to get the money for letters of credit when 
 the debtor refuses to pay. The laws are explicit, 
 but the corruption of the judges, the indolence 
 of the tribunals, custom and precedent, are always 
 in his favour. The Empress has at this moment 
 to decide the case of the Sieur Prory of Lyon, 
 and the debtor says openly that if it is possible to 
 make him lose his case, it will be at least quite 
 impossible to make him pay. This inconceivable 
 negligence in the execution of the ukases relative 
 to debts is caused by the general disorder of the 
 principal people here, who are all in a state of
 
 HOME POLICY 307 
 
 ruin, and who protect the knavery of the Russian 
 merchants who prop them up.' 
 
 The initiative of the Empress, and her supreme 
 right of justice, are frequently put in force, and 
 in the most effectual manner, as we have already 
 intimated, in the mitigation of the excessive 
 severities to which the ordinary jurisdictions 
 still cling. Catherine boasted that she had 
 never signed a death-warrant. She nevertheless 
 allowed both Pougatchef and Mirovitch to be 
 brought to the scaffold. But she employed a 
 subterfuge for these exceptional cases : declaring 
 herself directly implicated in the case of those 
 outrages which were to be punished, she would 
 occasionally renounce her prerogative as high 
 justiciary, in order, as she said, that she might 
 not be at once judge and party. In general, she 
 substituted transportation for capital punishment, 
 and even for the lash. She nevertheless allowed 
 the knout to be sometimes used, even as a means 
 of coercion, in order to obtain the confession of 
 the accused. It must be understood what this 
 kind of torture was. The knout was a whip with 
 a leather thong prepared in such a manner that 
 it possessed at once the elasticity of gutta-percha 
 and the hardness of steel. Wielded by an execu- 
 tioner, who took a spring to strike with greater 
 force, the thong cut into the flesh to the very 
 bone, and left at every blow a deep furrow. A 
 hundred blows were considered the limit, beyond 
 which the resistance, that is to say the life, of the 
 patient, even if exceptionally vigorous, could not 
 go. In general, the ' subjects ' lost consciousness 
 at the tenth or fifteenth blow. To continue, was 
 soon to flog a dead body. The skill of the
 
 3o8 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 torturer consisted in taking aim, so as to lengthen 
 out the bloody slashes on the patient's back, one 
 by the side of another, without taking away an 
 inch of flesh. At the moment of striking, the 
 zaplietchnik (so called because he put the whip- 
 hand behind his shoulder to give more force to 
 the blow) cried to the patient : Bieriegis ! (Look 
 out! or, literally, get aside) as a last touch 
 of irony. In the torture-chambers the knout 
 was commonly combined with the strappado ; the 
 patient was flogged after having been suspended 
 in the air by the arms, which had been pinioned 
 behind the back, so as to put the shoulders out 
 of joint, and cause an intolerable pain. 
 
 We know that Catherine was resolutely op- 
 posed to the use of torture. Nevertheless, in the 
 course of a trial which lasted from 1765 to 1774, 
 in connection with some fires, the torture was 
 applied three times to the accused. 
 
 A legend, of which we cannot verify the source, 
 shows the sovereign, in the part of high justiciary, 
 brought into contact with what is called to-day 
 ' un crime passionnel.' The case is very compli- 
 cated. A young peasant, the child of rich parents, 
 is in love with a poor young man. Surprised by 
 the father, she hides her lover under the mattress 
 of the common bed ; promiscuity in sleeping ac- 
 commodation being then general in Russia, even 
 among well-to-do people of this class. The father 
 stretches himself on the bed, and the unlucky 
 man is stifled. A neighbour comes in. On 
 hearing what has happened, he takes the corpse 
 and throws it into the sea. But in return he 
 forces the girl to become his mistress. She has 
 a child, whom he also drowns. Then he becomes
 
 HOME POLICY 309 
 
 in want of money, and demands it from the girl, 
 who, in order to satisfy him, steals from her 
 father. Finally, he makes her go with him to 
 the tavern, so that he may parade his conquest. 
 She goes, but, on coming out of the tavern, she 
 sets it on fire. It burns, with all who are in it. 
 She is arrested, and convicted of theft, infanticide, 
 and incendiarism. The tribunals condemn her. 
 Catherine sets her free, restricting her punish- 
 ment to a religious penance. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is in the domain of administration, properly 
 so called, that Catherine, from one end to the 
 other of her reign, showed the most sustained, 
 and, to a certain point, the most fruitful activity. 
 She concerned herself with everything. We 
 have a very voluminous personal work of hers on 
 the establishment of manufactures. On the other 
 hand, she takes it into her head, in 1783, to 
 reform the toilette of the lords and ladies of her 
 court, in order to render it less costly : this 
 reform is not at all pleasing to the manufacturers. 
 Elizabeth, we are told by Count Galovkine, in 
 his memoirs, forced the beautiful Narychkine to 
 wear her dresses without a hoop, in order that 
 the charms of her figure did not too much outdo 
 her own beauty. For less personal reasons 
 Catherine had recourse to sumptuary laws, and 
 the Grand Duchess Paul, on returning from 
 Paris, is obliged to send back, without even un- 
 packing them, the marvels that the famous 
 Mademoiselle Bertin had put in her boxes. 
 In general, it must be said, notwithstanding
 
 310 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 energy and good intentions, the initiative of 
 the sovereign is shown in this direction, as 
 in others, without either consistency or any 
 particular knowledge of things, fragmentary, 
 capricious, and at the beck of chance. 
 
 4 There are too many undertakings in this 
 empire,' writes the Comte de Segur, in 1787; 
 'the disorder that follows on the heels of pre- 
 cipitation spoils the greater part of the best ideas. 
 At the same time, there is an attempt to form 
 a tiers Mat, attract foreign commerce, establish 
 manufactures of all kinds, extend agriculture, 
 increase the paper currency, raise the rate of 
 exchange, build in towns, people deserts, cover 
 the Black Sea with a new fleet, conquer a neigh- 
 bouring country, bind down another, and extend 
 the influence of Russia over all Europe. Certainly 
 this is undertaking a great deal.' 
 
 Catherine, too, had to fight with enormous 
 difficulties. During the first year of her reign 
 she discovered that in the Senate, where the 
 most complex questions regarding the administra- 
 tion of the country were being debated, there was 
 no map indicating the position of the governmental 
 centres, whose affairs were settled without the 
 least notion whether they were on the Black Sea 
 or the White Sea. She sent a messenger to the 
 Academy of Sciences with five roubles to bring 
 one. She worked energetically at the repression 
 of the many and extravagant abuses which had 
 crept into the procedure of all the branches of 
 local government, and Russia is indebted to her 
 for much serious progress in this respect ; yet 
 there too the task proved to be beyond her 
 strength. One day she sent an officer of her
 
 HOME POLICY 311 
 
 guard, Moltchanof, to Moscow, to give a reversion 
 of judgment, and clear up certain official corrup- 
 tions which had been brought to her notice. 
 Moltchanof required a passport for the journey. 
 Russia has always been the land of passports. 
 He lost three days in going about from office to 
 office in order to obtain one. Meanwhile the 
 delinquents, duly forewarned, had had time to 
 put everything in order. A vast and shameless 
 corruption spreads from top to bottom of the 
 ladder of government. In 1770, during the 
 plague of Moscow, the police officers arranged 
 with the health officers to levy contributions on the 
 rich bourgeois of the city. They were denounced 
 as suspects ; the doctor, under pretence of ex- 
 amining them, smeared nitrate of silver over their 
 hands ; black spots soon appeared, the supposed 
 plague-stricken people were put in quarantine : if 
 they did not buy themselves out, their houses 
 were pillaged. At St. Petersburg even, a trust- 
 worthy witness, the inspector of police, Longpre, 
 sent over from Paris in 1783, on a judicial 
 mission, points out the most shocking disorders : 
 streets unguarded, fires destroying, at every 
 instant, whole quarters of the town, etc. About 
 the same time, the English envoy, Harris, 
 mentions the case of one of his compatriots who, 
 having been robbed of a large sum of money, 
 tries in vain to obtain redress from the under- 
 officers of police, and ends by going to the 
 lieutenant of police in person, whom he finds at 
 ten o'clock in the morning employed in working 
 out combinations with a packet of dirty cards. 
 
 One of the most durable, beneficial, and 
 best managed works of Catherine was the
 
 312 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Foundling Asylum, erected in 1 763. Privileges 
 and favours, such as no benevolent institution 
 ever received before, were granted to this estab- 
 lishment : exemption from taxes and statute-, 
 labour, powers of legal self-government, personal 
 liberty of inmates, and of those employed in their 
 care, monopoly of the lottery, share in benefits at 
 the theatre, etc. A revenue of 50,000 roubles 
 was assigned by the Empress for the mainten- 
 ance of the Asylum, while a philanthropist, 
 Procope Demidof, erected the huge buildings at 
 his cost. Betzky, appointed director, put into it 
 his whole fortune (about two millions of francs) 
 and twenty years of assiduous toil. A work 
 published by him in 1775, under the title, Plans 
 et Statuts des diffdrents Etablissements ordonne"s 
 par I 1 Impe'ratrice Catherine pour Education de 
 la Jeunesse, gives a good idea of the greatness of 
 the scheme. Diderot, who superintended its 
 translation and publication at the Hague, added 
 a note in which we find these lines : 
 
 ' When time and the steadfastness of this great 
 sovereign shall have brought (these establish- 
 ments) to the point of perfection of which they 
 are all susceptible, and which some have reached, 
 people will go to Russia for the purpose of seeing 
 them, as people formerly went to Egypt, Lace- 
 demon, and Crete, but with a curiosity which 
 will, I venture to think, be better founded and 
 better rewarded.' 
 
 By this time people are, indeed, beginning to 
 visit Russia. It is true that it is not precisely 
 with the object that Diderot prophesied. But 
 perhaps we must still wait for the accomplishment 
 of his prophecy.
 
 HOME POLICY 313 
 
 One side of Catherine's administration presents 
 itself before us under the aspect of a problem 
 defying all solution : this is her financial policy. 
 What the finances of Russia were at her acces- 
 sion she has said in a private journal, of which, 
 unfortunately, a fragment only has been pre 
 served : 
 
 ' I found the army stationed in Prussia without 
 pay for the past eight months ; in the Treasury 
 1 7 millions of roubles of unpaid bonds ; a mone- 
 tary circulation of 100 millions of roubles, of 
 which 40 millions were taken in kind abroad ; 
 almost all the branches of commerce monopo- 
 lised by private individuals ; the excise revenue 
 farmed out for two millions ; a loan of two 
 millions attempted in Holland by the Empress 
 Elizabeth, but without success ; no credit and no 
 confidence abroad ; at home, the peasants in 
 revolt everywhere, and, in certain districts, the 
 proprietors themselves ready to imitate their 
 example.' 
 
 This was the result of the regime that Peter I. 
 had found in force, and had not attempted to 
 modify, which came from a conglomeration of 
 ideas and traditions, the direct heritage of the 
 Tartar domination, and of the Eastern habit 
 which was summed up, not so much in the 
 squandering, as in the pillage of all the econo- 
 mical resources of the country, and which we 
 have thus characterised, a few years since, in a 
 study of the financial aspect of the great empire 
 
 ' Everything that could be taxed was taxed, 
 even to the long beards of the moujiki, who
 
 314 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 found themselves obliged to pay toll at the gates 
 of the towns ! To bring in the taxes, those in 
 power resorted to fire and steel, to military 
 warrants, and to ingenuities of torture recom- 
 mended by the experience of centuries. The 
 treasury still remaining empty, the revenues 
 were farmed out, sold, and put up for lottery. 
 Finally, in despair, the whole was taken for the 
 part, the object taxed for the tax, and in 1729 
 there was established an "office of confiscated 
 goods." 1 
 
 What does Catherine do with this state of 
 things ? She begins by trying to palliate it. 
 She puts the resources of her private purse at the 
 disposition of the state. Then she endeavours 
 to amend the organisation of the public treasury. 
 The capital vice of this organisation is the lack 
 of unity : the finances of the empire are in the 
 hands of different institutions, independent one 
 of another, each acting in a different direction, 
 each seeing which can make the most out of the 
 other. Catherine attempts a unification and a 
 centralisation of these services. Isolated reforms, 
 the suppression of monopolies and indivisible 
 privileges in a certain number of commercial 
 societies, the cancelling of the farming out of the 
 excises, furnish a supplement of receipts. But 
 the sum-total of the revenue remains very low : 
 it is not more than 1 7 millions of roubles (about 
 85 millions of francs). Now the question is how 
 to make it even with the new demands of the 
 imperial policy, which would be on a level with 
 that of the great European powers, that of 
 France, which has a budget of five hundred 
 millions of francs, of England, which has one of
 
 HOME POLICY 315 
 
 twelve million pounds. More than this, Cathe- 
 rine desires to eclipse her rivals in the West. 
 By her innumerable enterprises at home, by the 
 pageantry of her court, by her largesses to a 
 whole crowd of adulators, with which Europe is 
 soon filled, by the gold which she showers on her 
 favourites, she desires to efface the memory of 
 the great king, the Roi Soleil, whose dazzling 
 memory haunts her imagination. 
 
 And she well-nigh succeeds ! The first Turkish 
 war costs 47^ millions of roubles. And, after a 
 few years' respite, she follows up again her great 
 enterprises abroad with the annexation of the 
 Crimea, the second Turkish war, the war with 
 Sweden, the conquest of Poland, the expedition 
 to Persia, etc. At home the outlay is not less. 
 Favouritism costs in thirty-four years about 50 
 millions of roubles. The maintenance of the 
 court, with its disorder and extravagance, re- 
 quires enormous sums. From 1762 to 1768 the 
 keeping up of the palace of Peterhof alone is 
 debited to the state in 180,000 roubles (900,000 
 francs), and when the Empress arrives there in 
 June 1768 she finds everything in absolute dila- 
 pidation. The money has all gone elsewhere. In 
 1796 it is with a budget of about 80 millions of 
 roubles that Catherine has to meet her liabilities. 
 
 And meet them she does. From one end of 
 her reign to the other she supplies for all. She 
 pays for everybody and for everything : the 
 apprenticeship of Alexis Orlof on the fleet in 
 the Archipelago, the follies of Patiomkine, and 
 the enthusiasm of Voltaire. She lets the gold 
 slip through her fingers, and she is never in want, 
 or never seems to be in want. How ? by what
 
 316 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 miracle? The explanation is easy to give; but, 
 to understand that explanation, it is needful to 
 penetrate a secret, of which Catherine had (and 
 this was her merit and her great source of 
 strength), if not the profound knowledge, at all 
 events the intuition of genius. In all their 
 struggles with the finances of the empire, it is 
 strange that the governments of the empire never 
 thought, at one time or another, of an expedient 
 which, disastrous as its practice had been in the 
 West, still tempted the fancy. On arriving at 
 power Peter III. did, in fact, decree the founda- 
 tion of a bank, and the issue of bank-notes for 
 the sum of 5 millions of roubles. The idea of 
 the Emperor did not at first attract the Empress. 
 The paper currency, whose workings she did not 
 exactly understand, did not seem of much use. 
 But, in 1769, the exigencies of the Turkish war 
 overcame her repugnances and scruples, and, 
 from that time, the instrument of her financial 
 power, the magic power which, from 1769 to 
 1 796, sustained the fortune and the fame of the 
 great sovereign, fed the colossal and ever-renewed 
 effort of her reign, and made up for all her 
 prodigalities, was born. In twenty-seven years 
 Catherine issued 137,700,000 roubles'-worth of 
 paper money. Adding 47,739,130 roubles on 
 the one part, and 82,457,426 roubles on the 
 other, for the proceeds of home or foreign loans 
 contracted at the same period, we arrive .at a 
 total of 264,665,556 roubles, or more than a 
 milliard of francs, raised on the public credit. 
 That is how Catherine paid.
 
 HOME POLICY 317 
 
 VI 
 
 There is not much to be said respecting the 
 army in the reign of Catherine. Her reign was 
 warlike ; it countenanced neither militarism nor 
 the military spirit. The military spirit lives on 
 discipline, respect for the powers that be, and 
 also ambition. In making Alexis Orlof an admiral 
 and Patiomkine a general in chief, Catherine by 
 no means cultivated these sentiments. In 1772, 
 at the congress of Fokchany, Gregory Orlof, who 
 had never seen a battlefield, assumed the tone of 
 a superior in speaking to Roumiantsof, the con- 
 queror of Kagoul, and was near taking the com- 
 mand in partnership with him. But Roumiantsof 
 only changed rivals. A few years later, he had 
 to retire before a new favourite. When it was 
 no longer commanded by Roumiantsof, and not 
 yet by Souvarof, the army was in general very ill 
 commanded. But the soldier was then as he has 
 since been, as he recently was under the walls of 
 Plewna, and he had before him only the Turks, 
 who were put hors de combat, so to speak, before 
 the combat began, by the European tactics ; or 
 else the Poles, who, like the Turks, were, in point 
 of view of the art of war, two centuries behind 
 the time. Catherine was careful to avoid fighting 
 with the disciplined troops of the West. When 
 she went against the Swedes, who were never- 
 theless a poor adversary for Russia, she had 
 cause to repent of it. Besides, she conquered 
 cheaply, as Prince Henry of Prussia said. Doubt- 
 less, however, her indomitable energy and her 
 audacity contributed to bring victory to her side.
 
 318 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Competent judges have accused her of having, 
 in all that concerns the military administration, 
 spoilt the work of Peter the Great. In 1763 she 
 sanctioned a reform which put the regiments 
 entirely into the hands of their colonels. Peter 
 had confided the cares of administration to in- 
 spectors, employed by a general commissariat, 
 though a commissariat very much centralised. 
 The abandonment of this organisation gave rise 
 to numerous abuses. According to the Comte 
 de S6gur, the Russian army amounted, in 1785, 
 to a fighting force of about five hundred and 
 thirty thousand men, of whom two hundred and 
 thirty thousand were the regular troops. Segur 
 observed, nevertheless, that the disorder which 
 reigned in the War Office made it impossible to 
 get at the exact figures, and that the official 
 numeration was a little dubious. He added : 
 ' Many colonels have confessed to me that they 
 made from 3000 to 4000 roubles annually out of 
 their infantry regiments, and that those of cavalry 
 brought in 18,000 to their chiefs.' The Comte 
 de Vergennes wrote at the same time : ' The 
 Russian fleets were far from gaining fame by 
 leaving the Baltic. The one which was last 
 seen in the Mediterranean has not left a good 
 reputation. Leghorn complains particularly of the 
 officers, who have bought much and paid for little.' 
 
 To sum up, Catherine attempted and began 
 many things ; she achieved hardly any. It was 
 in her nature to go forward without looking at 
 what she left behind her. She left many ruins. 
 
 ' Before the death of Catherine,' some one has 
 said, ' the greater part of the monuments of her 
 reign were already in debris'
 
 HOME POLICY 319 
 
 There was a demon in her which drove her 
 forward, ever forward, beyond the present hour 
 and the result already attained, without leaving 
 her even the satisfaction of a moment's pause to 
 contemplate the finished work. This demon was 
 perhaps only that of ambition, and of an ambition 
 sometimes poor and trivial. When she had 
 settled the plans and laid the foundations of an 
 edifice, she had a medal struck, and, the medal 
 once struck and put away in her cabinet, she 
 thought no more of what was to be built. The 
 famous marble church, begun in 1780, was still 
 only begun twenty years after. 
 
 But perhaps this was the part allotted by Pro- 
 vidence to the Czarina, and was it not hers also to 
 carry with her on this headlong course a people 
 whom Peter I. had not succeeded in shaking 
 entirely out of its sleep of ages a sleeping giant 
 under a shroud of snow and who needed only to 
 be drawn out of this torpor in order to follow the 
 natural course, a torrent that nothing can inter- 
 cept, towards a mysterious destiny ? And perhaps 
 also Catherine was not entirely at fault when she 
 wrote to Grimm, the day after the day on which 
 was unveiled the monument which she had 
 erected to the great Czar, her predecessor 
 
 ' Peter I., seen in the open air, seemed to me 
 to look quite brisk as well as imposing; one 
 would have said he was pleased with the work. 
 For some time I could not look at him fixedly ; 
 I felt moved, and when I looked around me I 
 saw that all had tears in their eyes. The face 
 was turned away from the Black Sea, but the 
 pose of his head seemed to say that he could see 
 well enough either way. He was too far away to
 
 320 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 speak to me, but he seemed to me to have an air 
 of satisfaction, which communicated itself to me, 
 and encouraged me to try to do yet better in the 
 future, if I can.' 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 
 
 THE famous German historian Sybel wrote in 
 1869: ' No burning question arises in Germany 
 in our days without our finding some trace of the 
 policy of Catherine II.' This observation might 
 well be generalised and applied to the greater 
 part of Europe. Very ambitious, very feminine, 
 sometimes almost childish, the foreign policy of 
 Catherine was one of universal expansion. The 
 opening of her reign seemed nevertheless to 
 intimate something quite different. 
 
 On coming to the throne, the Empress an- 
 nounced herself as a peaceful sovereign, disposed 
 to remain quietly at home if she were not inter- 
 fered with, desirous, in consequence, of avoiding 
 all conflict with her neighbours, and determined 
 to employ all her activity in the home govern- 
 ment of an empire which offered a sufficient field 
 for her spirit of enterprise. This programme 
 corresponded, even from the point of view of 
 international relations, with an ambition which 
 abdicated none of its rights, but which was 
 governed by the most generous inspirations. 
 Writing to Count Kayserling, her ambassador at
 
 FOREIGN POLIC Y 321 
 
 Warsaw, Catherine wrote : ' I tell you, in a word, 
 that my aim is to be joined in the bonds of friend- 
 ship with all the powers, in armed alliance, so 
 that I may always be able to range myself on the 
 side of the oppressed, and in this way become 
 the arbiter of Europe.' 
 
 She was not as yet, it is evident, thinking of 
 the spoliation of Poland. She rejected the very 
 idea of conquest. Courland itself did not tempt 
 her. ' I have people enough to render happy,' 
 she said, ' and this little corner of the earth will 
 add nothing to my comfort.' She thought to 
 confirm the treaty of perpetual peace with Turkey. 
 She reduced the fighting force of her army. She 
 was in no haste to fill the vacancies made in her 
 arsenals by the ruinous wars of the preceding 
 reigns. She repeated that it was needful, before 
 all things, to set the country in order and repair 
 the finances. 
 
 How did she come to abandon so soon and so 
 entirely this initial point of view ? We can cite 
 in this respect a most valuable piece of evidence. 
 The man to whom we owe it is one of those who 
 are the honour of their country, and the frankness 
 of his language is calculated to throw light on this 
 obscure side of Catherine's history ; it seems also 
 to indicate that certain sentiments, to-day ignored 
 or discredited in Russia, were not always foreign 
 to noble minds. Some years after the death of 
 Catherine, in a letter addressed to Alexander I., 
 who had just assumed the throne, Count Simon 
 Vorontsof wrote as follows : 
 
 'The late Empress desired peace and desired 
 it to last. . . . Everything was calculated to con- 
 firm it. ... It is Prussia . . . that induced Count 
 
 x
 
 y.2 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Panine to revoke the ameliorations which had 
 been introduced into the constitution of Poland 
 in order to gain possession of the country with 
 more facility. It is Prussia who persuaded this 
 same minister to insist that all the Polish dissi- 
 dents should be admitted to all the posts of state, 
 which was impossible without employing violence 
 against the Poles. It was employed, and it was 
 this which formed the confederations, the number 
 of which was carefully concealed from the 
 Empress. Bishops and senators were arrested 
 in full diet and exiled to Russia. Our troops 
 entered Poland, ravaged everything, pursued the 
 confederates into the Turkish provinces, and this 
 violation of territory caused the Turks to declare 
 war against us. ... It is from the time of this 
 war that we must date the foreign debts, and the 
 creation of paper money at home, two calamities 
 which are the misery of Russia.' 
 
 Thus it was Prussia which, in order to gain 
 the assistance of Russia in its Polish policy, drew 
 Catherine into a career of violent and violating 
 
 o 
 
 enterprises of all kinds in which she found herself 
 caught as in a wheel. This course, nevertheless, 
 was, we incline to believe, inevitable for her in 
 one way or another. Quite apart from Prussia, 
 Catherine had from the first too lofty a notion of 
 her power not to be tempted, one day or another, 
 to make use of it, and too lofty a conception of 
 the part she had to play, not to brush aside any 
 sort of scruples. In October 1762, the court of 
 Denmark having proposed to her to renounce the 
 guardianship of her son, in respect of the Duchy 
 of Holstein, she replied in these characteristic 
 terms
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 323 
 
 ' The case is perhaps unique that a sovereign 
 empress should be guardian in a fief of empire 
 for her son, but it is stranger still that a woman, 
 who has five hundred thousand men ready to do 
 battle for her ward, should be told that she ought 
 not to be concerned with a Schvverdt (sic) which 
 can hardly maintain three hundred men.' 
 
 It is nevertheless probable, if not certain, that 
 in entering upon the course which was to lead 
 her so far from her first projects of collected and 
 peaceful labour, Catherine did not realise whither 
 she was going, nor that the current was bearing 
 her along, that her first successes had intoxicated 
 her, and that she was thus hurried forward, in 
 her own despite, into a state of war-fever, which 
 rose at times almost to madness, and in which 
 she lost all count of the means at her disposal, 
 and of every consideration of prudence, or, alas ! 
 of equity. The Marquis de Virac wrote to the 
 Comte de Vergennes in 1782 : ' Here they snatch 
 at everything, greedily and unthinkingly, which 
 seems likely to add a new glory to the reign of 
 Catherine II. They do not trouble to count the 
 cost ; the first thing is to be moving.' 
 
 To be moving, no matter how, no matter 
 where, to make a great racket, no matter at what 
 cost, such, in effect, seemed to be the constant 
 concern of Catherine from the time of the first 
 Turkish war onward. Helped by her ' luck,' 
 she reposed on the belief that something for her 
 greater fame and the greater grandeur of her 
 empire would come out of everything, ' The 
 good fortune which crowns all the enterprises of 
 the Russians,' writes the Comte de Vergennes in 
 1 784, ' wraps them, so to speak in a radiant
 
 324 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 atmosphere, through which they see nothing.' 
 As for political system or general idea at the 
 back of her enterprises, do not ask the Empress 
 for anything of the sort. She will answer : 
 'Cirumstances, conjunctures, and conjectures.' As 
 for conciliating these enterprises with a higher 
 law of morals, of humanity, or of international 
 right, she has no thought of such a thkig. ' It 
 is as useless to speak to her of Puffendorf or of 
 Grotius,' writes the English envoy Macartney 
 from St. Petersburg in 1770, 'as if one spoke 
 of Clarke or Tillotson at Constantinople.' 
 
 Catherine, moreover, inaugurates, in the conduct 
 of foreign affairs, a rule of personal initiative, 
 which itself cannot but give to them an adven- 
 turous turn, for she flings herself into it with her 
 nervous and excitable woman's temperament. 
 She expends, especially at the outset, an extra- 
 ordinary activity. She dictates herself all the 
 diplomatic correspondence. She soon finds out, 
 it is true, that she cannot manage it all, and that 
 the service suffers by it. She then reserves to 
 herself the most important matters, leaving to the 
 minister, that is to say, to Count Panine, the 
 bulk of the work. She writes on April i, 1763, 
 to Count Kayserling : 'In future I hope secrecy 
 will be better kept, for I do not choose to take 
 any one into my confidence in regard to what is 
 in the air.' Her predecessors had only short 
 extracts communicated to them from the de- 
 spatches of her foreign ambassadors. She insists 
 on seeing the originals ; she reads and annotates 
 them. These annotations are curious. On the 
 margin of a despatch from Prince Galitzine, her 
 ambassador at Vienna, informing her that the
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 325 
 
 courts of Vienna and of Versailles are inciting the 
 
 o 
 
 Porte to meddle in the affairs of Poland, she 
 writes : 'He does not keep his eyes open, for he 
 does not know even what the street children 
 know, or else he says less than he knows.' 
 Prince Repnine, writing from Warsaw, that in 
 the course of a conversation with the Prussian 
 ambassador, Baron Goltz. the latter has recos- 
 
 o 
 
 nised that the orders of the King, his master, do 
 not seem to him in the interests of his subjects, 
 though they are perhaps in those of the sove- 
 reign, she annotates : ' Is there then auy other 
 glory than the good of the subject. These are 
 oddities beyond my pale.' In 1780, on the first 
 visit that he makes to the sovereign, Joseph II. 
 is informed of this method of work, and is amazed 
 at it. Up to the time of this meeting, however, 
 which played a decisive part in the history of 
 Catherine, the influence of Panine, as head of 
 the department of foreign affairs, had been very 
 great. It is this influence which, in spite of 
 wind and tide, in spite even of the personal re- 
 pugnance of the Empress, had kept her policy 
 in touch with the Prussian alliance. The visit of 
 Joseph brings about a sudden change. Catherine 
 promptly brushes her minister aside in order to 
 form, on her own account, the new alliance which 
 opens new horizons before her on the side of 
 the North Sea. And soon Panine is quite out 
 of the reckoning. A mere clerk, obedient in 
 carrying out the inspirations of the imperial mind, 
 will suffice. One is soon found, excellent for the 
 purpose, Bezborodko. ' Properly speaking, the 
 Empress has no longer a minister,' writes the 
 Marquis de Verac in September 1781.
 
 326 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 This personal policy, superior as are the 
 qualities of mind and temper of which Catherine 
 gives proof, is not slow to subject her to numer- 
 ous failures. There are infatuations, followed by 
 disenchantments equally arbitrary. Fancy has 
 full play, and the woman is too often seen in the 
 place of the sovereign. It is a woman, and an 
 angry woman, who from the 4th to the Qth of 
 July 1796 draws up for Count Budberg, Russian 
 minister at Stockholm, a communication intended 
 to take the King of Sweden to task for thinking 
 of coming to St. Petersburg without entering 
 into an engagement beforehand to marry the 
 grand-daughter of the Empress. Let him stay 
 at home, then, this ill-bred prince ! She is tired 
 of all the crotchets that cloud his brain. When 
 one means to do anything, one does not make 
 difficulties at every step. The document, an 
 official document which has to pass through the 
 chancellor's office, is all in this tone. But can 
 it be called a diplomatic communication ? One 
 would say rather, a confidential letter to an in- 
 timate friend, on whom one pours out all one's 
 wrath and impatience, simply and solely to ease 
 one's nerves. And to make the resemblance 
 complete, there is a postscript. There are even 
 four, each of which says something different, 
 and indeed precisely opposite, to what has just 
 been said by the last ; the whole summed up by 
 agreeing, unconditionally and without reserve, to 
 the visit which had been so vigorously objected 
 to at the outset. 
 
 At times Catherine realises the action of 
 her temperament on her state policy, and the 
 unbalanced elements that this influence brings
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 327 
 
 into it. A propos of her declaration of armed 
 neutrality, issued April 28, 1780, she writes to 
 Grimm : ' You will say that it is volcanic, but 
 there was no means of doing- otherwise.' She 
 adds a reflection which we have already found 
 her making, and which seems to intimate that 
 she has not forgotten her German origin, but still 
 desires to make what capital out of it she can : 
 ' Denn die Teutschen' she says, ' kassen mcht 
 so als wenn die Leute ihnen auf die Nase spiel en 
 wollen ; das liebte der Herr Wagner aiich 
 nicht! 
 
 But this is only a way of putting things, or, 
 at the most, a proof that she sometimes mis- 
 judges the transformation which has taken place 
 in her, and which links her to her adopted 
 country by the deepest fibres of her being ; for 
 her foreign and home policy alike are essentially 
 Russian, as is her mode of thinking and feeling, 
 indeed her whole nature. Russian, and not 
 German, are the personal elements of success 
 that she puts at the disposal of her ambition, 
 as are also the defects which hinder their free 
 course. For there is nothing German in this 
 way of rushing forward with one's eyes shut, 
 or dreaming with one's eyes open, which is 
 peculiar to her, this way of leaving reflection 
 and calculation out of the question. It may be 
 said that her success is due to qualities the most 
 precisely opposed to the German temperament. 
 A cold and calculating German would never 
 have undertaken the first Turkish war. ' The 
 army,' writes Count Simon Vorontsof, 'was re- 
 duced, imperfect, and scattered all over the 
 empire. It had to march in the depth of winter
 
 328 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 against the Turkish frontier, and the cannons, 
 mortars, bombs, and explosives had to be sent 
 with the greatest possible speed from the arsenal 
 at St. Petersburg to Kief.' When the second 
 Turkish war and the Swedish war broke out, 
 it was worse still. In 1783 the rupture with the 
 Porte being imminent, a regiment of dragoons, 
 which should have consisted of 1200 to 1500 
 men, was summoned from Esthonia. Only 700 
 men were to be found, with 300 horses, and 
 not a single saddle. Catherine was by no means 
 daunted. She had the faith which scorns ob- 
 stacles, and will not admit impossibilities. This 
 faith, which removes mountains, and sets cannons 
 travelling from one end to the other of an empire 
 some thousand miles in length, is not a German 
 quality. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the domain of foreign politics, 
 Catherine accomplished great things with means 
 which the constant illusion in which she lived 
 doubled or tripled in her eyes, but which were 
 really most moderate. She supplied their lack 
 by her moral force, which was immense. 
 
 From the point of view of the administration 
 of the department of foreign affairs, she brought 
 a distinct progress to Russia. Nothing daunted 
 by the labour of which Frederick alone among 
 contemporary sovereigns showed himself careful 
 and capable, and adding to it the authority that 
 she always carried with her, she gave to the 
 administration of this department a unity of 
 direction that it had never yet had. At the 
 same time she insisted on habits of probity and 
 professional dignity quite alien to the modes of 
 a not very distant past. In f une 1793 the
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 329 
 
 English ambassador Buckingham, urging upon 
 the chancellor Vorontsof the conclusion of a 
 treaty of commerce, thought it quite natural to 
 supplement his demand by the offer of a personal 
 gratuity of ^2000. But Vorontsof at once re- 
 plied : ' I leave it to those who are well versed 
 in these shameful trafficking to decide whether 
 
 O 
 
 2000 or 200,000 pieces would balance the sale 
 of my sovereign's interests.' Bestoujef, the 
 chancellor of Elizabeth, did not speak this 
 language.
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THE FRIEND OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 
 
 I 
 
 COUNT HORDT, a Swede, serving in the Prussian 
 army, has left some interesting notes on his visit 
 to St. Petersburg. The first five months of it 
 were spent in prison. This was under the reign 
 of Elizabeth. Peter, on coming to the throne, 
 liberated the prisoner and invited him to dinner. 
 
 ' Were you well treated in your captivity ? ' 
 asked the Emperor. ' Don't be afraid to tell 
 me.' 
 
 ' Very ill-treated,' replied the Swede. ' I had 
 not even any books.' 
 
 At that a voice was heard, saying loudly : 
 ' That was barbarous indeed.' It was the voice 
 of Catherine. 
 
 We shall endeavour to show what were the 
 relations, so often commented upon, but still so 
 little really known, between the Empress and 
 those who were the main instruments of her 
 European fame. Voltaire and his rivals in the 
 honour and adulation of the ' Semiramis of the 
 
 330
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 331 
 
 North ' demand a separate study. We shall 
 here concern ourselves with Catherine alone. 
 
 She loved books, as she has abundantly 
 proved. Her purchase of Diderot's library is 
 well known. Dorat has celebrated this ac- 
 quisition in an epistle in verse which figures in 
 the edition of his CEuvres Choisis, embellished 
 with a vignette in which are seen little Loves 
 dressed in furs and travelling in sledges. Diderot 
 asked 15,000 francs for his treasure. The 
 Empress offered him 16,000, on condition that 
 the great writer should remain in posses- 
 sion to the time of his death. Diderot thus 
 became, without leaving Paris, librarian of 
 Catherine the Great in his own library. For 
 this he had a pension of 1000 francs a year. It 
 was to commence in 1765. The following year 
 the pension was not paid. This was then the 
 common lot of pensions and pensioners, not only 
 in Russia. On hearing of it from Betzky, Catherine 
 wrote through him to her librarian that she did 
 not wish ' the negligence of an official to cause any 
 disturbance to ker library, and, for this reason, 
 she would send to M. Diderot for fifty years in 
 advance the amount destined to the maintenance 
 and increase of her books, and at the expiration 
 of that period, she would take further measures.' 
 A bill of exchange for 25,000 francs accompanied 
 the letter. 
 
 One can imagine the transports of enthusiasm 
 in the philosophic camp. Later on, the library 
 of Voltaire joined that of Diderot in the Hermi- 
 tage collection. It was Grimm who, after the 
 death of the patriarch of Ferney, arranged with 
 Madame Denis for this new acquisition. The
 
 332 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 conditions were, 'a certain sum ' at the discretion 
 of the Empress, and a statue of Voltaire which she 
 would place in one of the rooms of her palace. 
 Madame Denis relied on the generosity of 
 Catherine, so much belauded by the illustrious 
 dead and by his friends, and Catherine was re- 
 solved, as Grimm expresses it, ' to avenge the 
 ashes of the greatest of philosophers from the 
 insults that he had received in his own country.' 
 The great man's relatives, his grand-nephews 
 particularly, MM. Mignot and d'Hornoy, pro- 
 tested against the transaction, which, they con- 
 sidered, infringed upon their rights and upon 
 those of France. M. d'Hornoy even attempted 
 to procure an official intervention. But the 
 Empress held to her bargain. Voltaire's books 
 now form part of the Imperial Library, to which 
 they have been removed from the palace of the 
 Hermitage. A special room is assigned to them. 
 In the middle is the statue of Houdon, a replica, 
 from the hand of the master, of the one in the 
 foyer of the Comedie Franchise at Paris. There 
 are about 7000 volumes, the greater part half- 
 bound in red morocco. Every volume contains 
 annotations in Voltaire's handwriting. 
 
 One need not be a Frenchman to feel, on 
 entering this room, the indefinable sensation 
 caused by the sight of things which are not in 
 their proper place. These relics, the monument 
 of one >f the greatest glories of France, should 
 assuredly not be here. 
 
 These were not, however, the largest part of 
 the additions to the imposing collection of printed 
 books and manuscripts with which Catherine 
 endowed Russia. The king Stanislas Ponia-
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 333 
 
 towski was, we know, a cultivated man. On 
 arriving at the throne, he endeavoured to satisfy 
 his tastes and to share them with his fellow- 
 citizens. The capital of Poland profited by this. 
 It had already a considerable library, founded in 
 1745 by two brothers, who were distinguished 
 savans and good citizens, the Zaluskis. Ponia- 
 towski enlarged it. On taking possession of 
 Warsaw, Catherine transported the king to St. 
 Petersburg, and the library along with him. 
 Having no longer any political independence, 
 the Poles were supposed to have no longer any 
 need of books. 
 
 Thus Catherine loved books : did she equally 
 love literature ? The question may seem strange. 
 It demands an answer, nevertheless. The reign 
 of Catherine corresponds, in the history of literary 
 development in Russia, to a well-marked epoch. 
 The preceding epoch, dominated by the great 
 figure of Lomonossof, stands out clearly. It was, 
 during the lifetime of Elizabeth and for some 
 years after her death, a period of absorption and 
 assimilation of foreign elements en masse. Euro- 
 pean culture entered into the national life by the 
 door, one might say rather by the breach that 
 Peter the Great had hewed open. A period 
 of reaction and of struggle followed. The 
 national genius, submerged, trampled upon, 
 oppressed, revolted and demanded back its 
 rights. It came finally to treat foreign litera- 
 ture and science as enemies. The poet Dier- 
 javine, and the satirical journalist and thinker 
 Novikof, were the heroes of this campaign of 
 liberation. What part was played in this crisis 
 by Catherine ? We know what she did with
 
 334 CATHERINE 77. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Novikof : she broke his pen and his life ; fifteen 
 years of imprisonment were the last reward that 
 she gave to his labours. She treated Dierjavine 
 worse still : she made him a tchinovnik and an 
 abject courtier. 
 
 For all this there is a reason. Catherine's 
 was an intelligence specially, and, so to speak, 
 solely organised for politics and the government 
 of men. She is a little German princess, who, 
 at the age of fourteen, comes to Russia with the 
 idea that she will be one day the absolute mis- 
 tress of this immense empire, and who has con- 
 scientiously applied herself to prepare for the 
 part she will have to play, a part, judging by the 
 examples before her, which has nothing in common 
 with that of a literary Mecaenas. Consequently, 
 all her ideas, all her tastes, are subordinated to 
 this definite conception of her destiny, and of the 
 rights and duties resulting from it. What she 
 appreciates in Voltaire, when the fame and the 
 books of Voltaire reach her, is not the charm of 
 style does she even know what style is ? but 
 the support that the prose, good or bad, of the 
 author, his poetry, melodious and full of senti- 
 ment, or dry and hard to the ear, might afford 
 to the development of the programme of govern- 
 ment that she has vaguely mapped out in her 
 mind. She has no sense of harmony, and, beyond 
 her family relations and her love-episodes, she 
 pays little heed to sentiment. At one moment, 
 at the beginning of her reign, influenced a little 
 by her reading and a great deal by her friend 
 of soeie years' standing, Princess Dachkof, she 
 is wishful to take part in the artistic, scientific, 
 and literary movement which she perceives about
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 335 
 
 her. She flings herself into the melde with the 
 ardour she puts into everything. She becomes a 
 writer. She becomes a journalist. But we know 
 already the lamentable shipwreck of her liberal 
 ideas. And what happens to her ideas happens 
 also to her tastes. All the love she may have ever 
 had for letters founders in this disaster, which 
 even the glory of Voltaire does not survive. 
 
 But let us first look at her tastes. Voltaire 
 apart, French literature, the only literature with 
 which she is familiar up to a late period of her 
 life, is far from attracting her as a whole. She 
 makes her selection, and what she selects are 
 the works of Le Sage, and those of Moliere and 
 Corneille. After studying Voltaire, she has en- 
 joyed Rabelais, and even Scarron. But she has 
 gone back upon her tastes in this direction, only 
 remembering them with a sort of shame that she 
 has ever had them. As for Racine, she simply 
 does not understand him. He is too literary 
 for her. Literature with him is art for art's 
 sake, and art for art's sake, to Catherine, is 
 nonsense. When she applies herself to the 
 task of writing comedies and tragedies, she does 
 not for an instant dream of making a work of 
 art : what she does is criticism, satire, and, above 
 all, politics. She attacks the prejudices and vices 
 that she perceives in the morals of the country, 
 the ideas, and even the men, that offend her. 
 She makes war upon the Martinists, and occa- 
 sionally upon the King of Sweden. Literature, 
 to her, is merely a branch of her military and 
 repressive powers. Rhetoric, for her, does not 
 exist : she replaces it by logic and her authority 
 as samodierjitsa, ruler of forty millions of men.
 
 336 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 She, nevertheless, makes a solitary choice in the 
 work of Racine : she likes Mithridate. One 
 sees why. 
 
 Still her disputatious instincts and her moralis- 
 ing intentions come in collision with continual 
 obstacles in the surroundings in which she lives. 
 The incident in connection with Sedaine is charac- 
 teristic in this respect. She had liked Sedaine 
 for his simple gaiety, and the easy flow of his 
 couplets, so pleasantly brought out by the music 
 of Philidor. This pupil of Montesquieu and of 
 Voltaire had a taste for comic opera. In 1779 it 
 occurred to her to utilise, after her own fashion, 
 the talent of the witty and prolific writer. Why 
 should he not compose, on her lines, and for her 
 theatre at the Hermitage, a comedy which might 
 follow up her own satirical pieces? Urged on 
 by Grimm, encouraged by Diderot, Sedaine com- 
 poses a piece, UEpreuve Inutile. ' Tell him,' 
 writes Catherine immediately to Grimm, ' that if 
 instead of one, two, or three pieces, he were to 
 do a hundred, I would read them all with the 
 greatest eagerness. You know that, after the 
 Patriarch, there is no one whose writing I like so 
 much as Sedaine's.' But Betzky, who has read 
 the piece aloud to his august benefactress, is 
 much less enthusiastic. He points out 'that the 
 piece, if it were played before the court, would 
 give umbrage to the spectators, and that the 
 master plays a very small part in it.' Catherine 
 at first rebukes these timid objections ; she 
 intends to have the piece acted, ' if it were only 
 to show that she has more credit herself than 
 Raymond.' Betzky insists ; he considers such a 
 tentative not merely useless, but dangerous ; and
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 337 
 
 the Empress finally comes round to his point of 
 view. She tells Sedaine that she thinks his play 
 ' good, very good ' ; she sends him 1 2,000 francs 
 for his trouble, but she informs him that his 
 masterpiece will not be acted, ' from precaution.' 
 L ' Epreuve Imttile does not even receive the 
 honours of print. We are unaware if it was pre- 
 served in manuscript. 
 
 Some years later a polemical writer of quite 
 other range appeared on the scene, before a 
 public at first surprised and terrified, but soon in 
 great part won over, and doing all that could 
 be done to atone for its first scandal by the 
 vehemence of its present applause. Catherine 
 ranges herself on the side of those whom the 
 new work still continues to shock or frighten. 
 
 ' If I ever write a comedy/ she says, ' I shall 
 certainly not take the Mariage de Figaro as a 
 model, for, after Jonathan Wild, I have never 
 found myself in such bad company as at this 
 celebrated marriage. It is apparently with an 
 idea of imitating the ancients that the theatre has 
 
 O 
 
 recurred to this taste, from which it had seemed 
 to be purified. The expressions of Moliere 
 were free, and bubbled up like effervescence from 
 a natural gaiety, but his thought is never vicious, 
 while in this popular play the undertone is con- 
 stantly unworthy, and it goes on for three I"virs 
 and a half. Besides that, it is a mere web of 
 intrigues, in which there is a continual effort, and 
 not a scrap of what is natural. I never laughed 
 once all the time I was reading it.' 
 
 But Catherine's business is not to play the 
 part of a critic, it is to govern Russia, and what 
 Russia needed at this period was assuredly not
 
 338 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 to be set in the van of European progress, intel- 
 lectual and artistic ; it was to follow, at a great 
 distance, those who were ahead, to try to come 
 up with them, not by a servile imitation, but 
 doubtless by finding inspiration in them for the 
 development of the original resources of the 
 national genius. What did Catherine do to help 
 on this event, as was her duty and even her 
 ambition in the radiant days when she accepted 
 the title of ' the Semiramis of the North,' and 
 Voltaire declared that the sun seemed to have 
 taken to shining on the world from another 
 quarter? We hold with thos'e who think that 
 the best way of protecting literature that can be 
 found by a ruler, is to leave it alone without 
 interfering in its concerns. Such was not the 
 opinion of Catherine. She wished to assert, in 
 this as in all other domains, her personal initia- 
 tive and her supreme command. She professed 
 in vain to have ' a republican soul ' ; the republic 
 of letters was transformed in her eyes into a 
 monarchy governed by her despotic will. Did 
 she, however, bring to light a force, a glory, or 
 did she even aid the outcome of a new period in 
 letters, which could balance the merit and the 
 reputation of the writers of whom the reign of 
 Elizabeth could legitimately boast ? We cannot 
 see that she did. No name of the importance 
 'of Lomonossof and Soumarokof, whose fame 
 belongs to the former reign, can be found in hers. 
 Catherine confined herself to making the most of 
 this heritage, always for her own personal interests, 
 which were far from being those of art and 
 literature. Lomonossof, now grown old, served 
 as a sort of figure-head ; Soumarokof, with his
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 339 
 
 imitations of the French dramatists, was suffi- 
 ciently good as a set-off. There was perhaps in 
 Dierjavine the making of a great poet ; she sees 
 nothing of it in him, and in time he ceases to see 
 it in himself. Felitsa, the poem on which his 
 literary reputation rests, is merely a pamphlet 
 done to order, half panegyric, half satire. The 
 panegyric, we need not say, is for the Empress ; 
 the satire for the court nobles, to whom Catherine 
 desires to read a lesson, and to whom she sends 
 copies of the work, with the passages concerning 
 them carefully underlined. At the end of the 
 reign the author of Felitsa is a mere buffoon, 
 wallowing in the antechambers of the favourite, 
 Plato Zoubof. The serious rivals of Lomonossof, 
 those who try to react against the current 
 of foreign importation, by which Soumarokof is 
 carried along, Kherasskof too, in his Rossiade, 
 and Bogdanovitch, in his Douckenka, made up 
 from the insipidities of the centuries on the 
 subject of the loves of Psyche Kniajnine, Von- 
 Visine, Loukine, add some interesting plays to 
 the national drama. Kniajnine writes the Fan- 
 far on, a comedy which remains one of the classics 
 of Russian literature, and, in Vadime a Nov- 
 gorod, attempts the historical drama, drawn from 
 the fresh sources of national tradition. Von- 
 Visine, the Russian Moliere, ridicules in his 
 Brigadier the acquirements of Muscovite Tris- 
 sotins, founded on the reading of French novels ; 
 and, in his Dadais, takes off the educators of 
 aristocratic youth, brought at great expense from 
 abroad. But. this national drama is not that of 
 Catherine. She never visits it, until in her later 
 years, when the whim takes her, or rather she finds
 
 340 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 it good policy, to be interested in the dramatisa- 
 tion of scenes taken from the history of the 
 country. 
 
 Meanwhile, literature, national or otherwise, 
 feels itself so little under her protection, that the 
 contributors to the Sobiessiednik, founded by the 
 Princess Dachkof, dare not sign their articles, 
 even though they are aware that the Empress 
 herself is one of their number. They are not 
 unwise, if one may recall the fate of Prince 
 Bielossielski, who wrote so charming an ' Epistle 
 to France,' won so flattering a reply from Voltaire 
 on ' the laurels thrown to his compatriots and 
 falling back upon himself/ and who, then being 
 Minister at Turin, was recalled in disgrace, for no 
 reason but that he was a man of wit, that he 
 showed it in his despatches, and that he turned 
 agreeable verse. Kniajnine, too, knew what it 
 cost to cultivate the national drama. His Vadime 
 a Novgorod was torn up by order of the 
 Empress, and came near being burnt by the 
 public executioner. 
 
 An Academy, founded in 1783 on the model of 
 the French Academy, under the inspiration of 
 the Princess Dachkof, is the sole monument that 
 Russian literature owes to a sovereign to whom 
 Russia owes so much in other respects. To this 
 Academy was confided the mission of fixing the 
 rules of orthography, the grammar and prosody, 
 of the Russian language, and of encouraging the 
 study of history. It began, one need hardly say, 
 by undertaking a dictionary, to which Catherine 
 herself contributed.
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 341 
 
 II 
 
 ' Tragedy offends her, comedy bores her, she 
 does not care for music, her cuisine is quite 
 unstudied ; in gardens she cares only for roses ; 
 she has, in short, no taste for anything but for 
 building and for domineering over her court for 
 what she has for reigning, and figuring in the 
 world, is a passion." 
 
 It is thus that Durand, the French chargt- 
 d'affaires, summed up, in 1773, the intellectual 
 position of Catherine the Great. His observation 
 was correct, especially from the artistic point of 
 view. Was it lack of knowledge in her, or lack 
 of natural disposition ? It was as much the one 
 as the other. She herself was well aware of it. 
 In 1767, when Falconet submitted to her judg- 
 ment the design for the statue of Peter the Great, 
 she excused herself from passing an opinion ; she 
 understood nothing about it, and she recom- 
 mended the artist to the judgment of his own 
 conscience and of posterity. Falconet was foolish 
 enough to insist 
 
 ' My posterity is your Majesty. The other 
 may come when it will.' 
 
 ' Not at all,' replied Catherine. ' How can you 
 submit yourself to my opinion ? I do not even 
 know how to draw. This is perhaps the first 
 good statue I have ever seen in my life. The 
 merest school-boy knows more about your art 
 than I do.' 
 
 We often find in her mouth, and in her writing, 
 this parti pris of incompetence and self-abnega- 
 tion, so alien from the general tendency of her 
 mind and temperament.
 
 342 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 She has an opera for which the best singers are 
 sought all over Europe. She pays heavy incomes 
 to the 'stars,' whose demands at that time were 
 without limit. But she acknowledges that all 
 this expense is not in the least for her own 
 pleasure. ' In music,' she writes, ' I am no more 
 advanced than formerly. I can recognise no 
 tones but those of my nine dogs, who in turn 
 share the honour of being in my room, and 
 whose individual voices I can recognise from a 
 distance ; the music of Galuppi and Paisiello I 
 hear, and I am astonished at the tones that it 
 combines, but I cannot recognise them at all.' 
 
 Nevertheless, certain comic operas of Paisiello 
 succeed in charming her. She has a sense and 
 taste for the grotesque. She is enchanted by the 
 Pulmonia, and even remembers some of the airs, 
 which she hums over when she happens to meet 
 the maestro. 
 
 Sometimes, too, even in the domain of art, 
 where she feels so out of place, her despotic 
 instincts claim their rights ; and, as if by miracle, 
 she has certain inspirations which are not without 
 a certain savour. Here is a letter, written at the 
 time of her first triumphs over Turkey 
 
 ' Since you speak to me of festivities in honour 
 of the peace, listen to what I am going to say, 
 and do not believe a word of the absurdities of 
 the gazettes. The original project was like that 
 of all festivities : temple of Janus, temple of 
 Bacchus, temple of the Devil and his grand- 
 mother, stupid and intolerable allegories, because 
 they were gigantic, and because not to have 
 common sense was supposed to be an effort of 
 genius. Disgusted with all these fine and mighty
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 343 
 
 plans, which I positively would not have, one fine 
 day I summon M. Bajenof, my architect, and .1 
 say to him : My friend, three versts from the city 
 there is a meadow ; imagine that this meadow is 
 the Black Sea ; that there are two roads leading 
 to it from the city ; well, one of these roads shall 
 be the Tanais, the other the Borysthene : at the 
 mouth of the first you will build a banqueting- 
 hall, that you will name Azof; at the mouth of 
 the other you will build a theatre, that you will 
 name Kinburn ; you will trace out with sand the 
 peninsula of the Crimea ; you will there enclose 
 Kertch and lenicale, as ball-rooms ; on the left of 
 the Tanai's you will place buffets of wine and 
 eatables for the people ; opposite to the Crimea 
 you will have illuminations which will represent 
 the joy of the two empires over the re-establish- 
 ment of peace ; on the other side of the Danube 
 you will have the fireworks, and on the land 
 which is supposed to be the Black Sea you 
 will place illuminated ships and boats ; you will 
 garnish the banks of the rivers which serve as 
 roads with landscapes, mills, trees, houses, all lit 
 up; and there you will have a fete without any- 
 thing imaginary in it, but perhaps as good as 
 many others, and much more natural.' 
 
 There is something, indeed, very natural and 
 charming in this plan of a. fete, but there is also 
 a stroke of policy. There is always this in every- 
 thing that Catherine thinks and does. All her 
 prepossessions, artistic and literary included, tend 
 in this direction. She accumulates in her Her- 
 mitage considerable artistic collections, but she 
 confesses that it is not for love of the things of 
 beauty that are heaped up in the galleries and
 
 344 CATHERINE //. OF RUSSIA 
 
 cabinets that she prepares expressly for them. 
 One cannot delight in what one does not under- 
 stand, and she does not understand in what 
 consists the merit of a fine picture or of a fine 
 statue. She admits that it is part of the glory of 
 a great sovereign to have these things in his 
 palace. All her famous predecessors, all the 
 monarchs in history whose renown she envies or 
 seeks, Louis XIV. at their head, have had them. 
 , But she hits on a word which, coming from any 
 one but herself, would have the air of a cruel 
 epigram, but which characterises the purchases, 
 very extensive during the first part of her reign 
 in particular, to which she submits in order to 
 carry out this part of her programme of imperial 
 magnificence. ' It is not love of art/ she says, 
 'it is voracity. I am not an amateur, I am a 
 glutton.' In 1768 she buys for 180,000 roubles 
 the famous Dresden gallery of Count Briihl, ex- 
 Minister of the King of Poland. In 1772 she 
 purchases, at Paris, the Crozat collection. In 
 reference to this Diderot writes to Falconet : 
 'Ah, my friend Falconet, how things have 
 changed ! We sell our pictures and our statues 
 in time of peace ; Catherine buys them in time of 
 war. The sciences, the arts, taste, and wisdom, 
 all make tor the North, and barbarism .with its 
 attendant train comes down upon the South. 
 I have just carried through an important affair : 
 the acquisition of the collection of Crozat, in- 
 creased by his descendants, and known to-day 
 under the name of the gallery of the Baron de 
 Thiers. There are Raphaels, Guides, Poussins, 
 Van Dycks, Schidones, Carlo Lottis, Rem- 
 brandts, Wouvermans, Teniers, etc., to the
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 345 
 
 number of about eleven hundred. It has cost 
 her Imperial Majesty 460,000 francs. That is 
 not half its value.' 
 
 Her usual good luck accompanied Catherine in 
 these proceedings. Three months later, fifty 
 pictures of not greater worth were sold for 440,000 
 francs at the sale of the Due de Choiseul's 
 collection. She herself paid 30,000 francs to 
 Mme. Geoffrin for two pictures of Van Loo, La 
 Conversation Espagnole and La Lecture Espagnole. 
 It is true that this is, perhaps, on her part, a way 
 of establishing friendly relations with the in- 
 fluential matron, who gains on the bargain two- 
 thirds of the amount. She has one misfortune, 
 in 1771, with the Braancamp collection, bought 
 in Holland for 60,000 ecus, which goes down on 
 the coast of Finland with the vessel that brings 
 it. But, says Catherine, there is only 60,000 
 ecus lost. She can easily make up for the rest. 
 She buys en bloc the engraved gems of the Due 
 d'Orleans. Through Grimm and Diderot she 
 sends order after order to French artists : from 
 Chardin and Vernet she demands landscapes ; 
 from Houdon a Diana (which has been refused 
 admittance at the Louvre, on the ground that it 
 is too little clothed) ; from Vien, a ceiling for the 
 grand staircase at Tzarskoi'e-Sielo ; from the 
 painter on enamel, De Mailly, an artistic inkstand 
 for the room of the Order of St. George, for 
 which he charges 36,000 francs, and which he 
 executes very unwillingly, and only on being 
 forced to do so by an intervention of Government. 
 In 1778 she has copies made at Rome, by 
 Gunterberger and Reiffenstein, of the frescoes of 
 Raphael in the Vatican ; and she has a gallery
 
 346 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 erected at the Hermitage with panels of the same 
 dimension to receive these copies, which, being- 
 done on canvas, have been since utilised in the 
 reconstruction of the palace. They can still be 
 seen there. In 1790, in sending to Grimm her 
 portrait, 'in a fur cap,' she writes : ' Here is some- 
 thing for your museum ; mine, at the Hermitage, 
 consists of pictures, the panels of Raphael, 38,000 
 books, four rooms filled with books and prints, 
 10,000 engraved gems, nearly 10,000 drawings, and 
 a cabinet of natural history contained in two large 
 rooms. All that is accompanied by a charming 
 theatre, admirably adapted for seeing and hearing, 
 and also as to seating accommodation, and with 
 no draughts. My little retreat is so situated that 
 to go there and back from my room is just 3000 
 paces. There I walk about in the midst of a 
 quantity of things that I love and delight in, and 
 these winter walks are what keep me in health 
 and on foot.' 
 
 All that is her own doing. In accomplishing it 
 she has had to fight with serious difficulties, for, 
 though she may make gold at will, her power in 
 this respect is unlimited only within the limits of 
 her empire outside, the paper money loses too 
 much in change. Thus, from the year 1781 she 
 feels obliged to use moderation. She writes to 
 Grimm : ' I renew my resolution to buy nothing 
 more, not a picture, nothing ; I want nothing 
 more, and consequently I give up the Correggio of 
 "the divine." ' That is indeed a 'glutton's ' vow, 
 as valid as a drunkard's ! A veritable conflict 
 commences, from this moment, in the mind of 
 Catherine, between her desires as a collector, now 
 a passion with her, and her forced instincts of
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 347 
 
 economy. It is not the latter that most generally 
 win the day. The letter to Grimm that we have 
 just cited is dated March 29 ; on the i4th of 
 April we find in the correspondence of the 
 Empress with her art-purveyor this passage: 
 'If "the divine" [Reiffenstein] would send her, 
 direct to St. Petersburg, some very very fine 
 old cameos, in one, two, or three colours, in 
 perfect state and keeping, we should be infinitely 
 obliged to those who would procure them for us. 
 That is not to be called a purchase, but what is 
 one to do ? ' And on the 23rd she writes : ' Now, 
 you may say what you like, you may rail at me 
 as you please, but I must have two copies of 
 coloured prints, according to the list I am going 
 to give you . . . for we are gluttons, and so 
 gluttonous for everything of that kind, that there 
 is no longer a house in St. Petersburg where one 
 can decently live if it does not contain something 
 faintly resembling the panels, the Eternal Father, 
 or the whole string that I have enumerated.' 
 
 ' Lord, one would say that the good resolutions 
 of Thine anointed are wavering ! ' observes 
 Grimm maliciously in his reply. He has his 
 doubts, too, as to what has provoked this return 
 of 'gluttony.' In using the collective pronoun 
 'us,' Catherine does not use the plural instead of 
 the singular by a mere trick of speech. The 
 ' gluttons ' of whom she speaks are indeed two at 
 present. After the favourite Korssakof, who 
 was a mere boor, has come, since the end of 1780, 
 the handsome Lanskoi, who is a man of education 
 and refined tastes. And the handsome Lanskoi 
 has a real passion for prints and cameos. In 
 July 1781, sending Grimm new orders for
 
 348 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 purchases, Catherine explains that these are not 
 for her, ' but for gluttons who have become 
 gluttons through knowing me.' The money is 
 certainly hers, that is to say, Russia's. In 1784 
 she renews her resolution of buying nothing more, 
 'being poor as church mice.' But Lanskoi 
 sends 50,000 francs to Grimm 'for the purchase 
 of a cabinet of pictures,' and promises a further 
 amount shortly. This new course of things goes 
 on for some time. In 1784, it is true, there is a 
 momentary pause : Catherine will have no more 
 cameos, nor anything of the kind. Lanskoi is 
 dead, and with him is dead also the taste for 
 things which, as she frankly confesses, she does 
 not understand a bit. But in April 1785 it 
 begins again. What has happened ? Mamonof 
 has taken the place of Lanskoi, and with the 
 place he seems to have inherited the artistic 
 tastes of the deceased. It is not till 1794 that 
 this intermittent fever comes finally to an end. 
 'I shall not buy anything more,' says Catherine, 
 on January 13. 'I must pay my debts and save 
 up money ; so refuse all the bargains that are 
 offered you.' It is Plato Zoubof who reigns now, 
 and Zoubof cares for nothing engraved save the 
 gold circles bearing the effigy of his imperial 
 mistress. 
 
 Up to now the Empress has not merely been 
 increasing her collections ; she has also been 
 building. We should say, she has especially 
 been building. And this time the pleasure has 
 all been her own, as Durand intimated in 1773. 
 We have seen what the Prince de Ligne thought 
 of the sovereign's taste and knowledge in regard 
 to architecture. But in default of judgment and
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 349 
 
 sense of proportion she has at least plenty of 
 spirit. She replaces artistic sense by enthusiasm, 
 and quality by quantity. 'You know,' she 
 writes in 1779, 'that the mania of building is 
 stronger with us than ever, and no earthquake 
 ever demolished so many buildings as we have 
 set up.' She adds in German these sad re- 
 flections : ' The mania of building is an infernal 
 thing ; it runs away with money, and the more 
 one builds, the more one wants to build ; it is a 
 disease, like drunkenness.' 
 
 At this moment she sends to Rome for two 
 architects Giacomo Trombara and Geronino 
 Ouarenghi. She thus explains her choice : ' I 
 want Italians because our Frenchmen know too 
 much, and make horrid houses, inside and out, 
 because they know too much.' Always the same 
 contempt for care, the same penchant for impro- 
 visation ! She nevertheless frequently consults 
 the learned Clerisseau, who sends her plans of 
 palaces in the Roman style. Perronnet furnishes 
 her with the scheme of a bridge over the Neva ; 
 Bourgeois de Chateaublanc, another of a light- 
 house for the shores of the Baltic. In 1765 she 
 demands of Vasse a design for an audience- 
 chamber 1 20 feet long and 62 high. 
 
 With all that, does she give good cause to 
 artists, whether architects, painters, or sculptors, 
 to praise her treatment of them ? Let us not ask 
 Falconet, on his return from St. Petersburg ; his 
 reply would be too bitter. We shall have to speak 
 elsewhere of the visit to the capital of the North of 
 the man to whom the city of Peter the Great and 
 of Catherine owes to this very moment its finest 
 ornament. We shall try also to show what were
 
 350 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 his relations with the sovereign, beginning, on her 
 part, with more than courtesy, and ending with 
 more than indifference. Let us say here that, 
 not having the least comprehension of artistic 
 things, Catherine could not in any way be likely 
 to understand the soul of an artist Falconet 
 pleased her at first by his original and somewhat 
 paradoxical turn of mind, still more perhaps by 
 the oddities of his disposition ; she soon grew 
 tired, and finally impatient of him. He was 
 too much of an artist for her liking. She had 
 always her own way of interpreting the part to 
 be played in the world by the men of talent 
 whom she wished to employ in improving her 
 capital. She frankly confesses it in one of her 
 letters to Grimm : ' Si il signer marchese del 
 Grimmo volio mi fare [sii\ a pleasure, he will 
 have the goodness to write to the divine Reif- 
 fenstein to look me out two good architects, 
 Italians by birth and skilled in their profession, 
 whom he will engage in the service of her Imperial 
 Majesty of Russia for so many years, and whom 
 he will send from Rome to St. Petersburg like a 
 bundle of tools? Tools it is just that; tools that 
 one uses, and then throws away when they are 
 done with, or one finds better and handier ones 
 at hand. It was thus that she did with Falconet. 
 She gives this further piece of advice to Grimm : 
 * He will choose honest and reasonable people, 
 not dreamers like Falconet ; people who walk on 
 the earth, not in the air.' She will have nothing 
 aspiring. 'A Michael Angelo,' it has been justly 
 said, ' would never have remained three weeks at 
 the court of Catherine.' To remain there nearly 
 twelve years, required in Falconet an extra-
 
 LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES 351 
 
 ordinary power of resistance, and a veritable 
 passion for the work he had begun, into which he 
 had put all his soul. But when at last he went, 
 he was broken down. Apart from him, Catherine 
 did not keep by her any foreign artists who were 
 not mediocrities : Brompton, an English painter, 
 a pupil of Mengs, and Koenig, a German sculp- 
 tor. Brompton paints allegories which delight 
 the sovereign, for they are political allegories. 
 ' He has painted my two grandsons, and it is a 
 charming picture : the elder amuses himself by 
 cutting the Gordian knot, and the other has 
 proudly put the flag of Constantine about his 
 shoulders.' Koenig does a bust of Patiomkine. 
 Mme. Vigee-Lebrun, arriving at St. Petersburg 
 in 1 795 with an achieved reputation, meets with 
 a flattering reception everywhere but at the court 
 Catherine finds little pleasure in her society, 
 and considers her pictures so bad ' that one must 
 have a very distorted sense of things to paint like 
 that.' 
 
 And the Russian artists what does she do in 
 this respect ? Does she try to discover native 
 talent, to encourage it, and bring it to the front ? 
 The list of national glories, contemporaneous 
 with her reign, is easy to establish in this sphere. 
 There is Scorodoumof, an engraver, who had 
 studied art in France, and whom she sent for at 
 Paris in 1782, in order to take him into her 
 service ; and whom a traveller, Portia de Piles, 
 found, a few years later, in an empty studio, 
 engaged in polishing a copper plate for a wretched 
 design done to order : he explained that there 
 was not a workman in St. Petersburg capable of 
 doing this kind of work ; was astonished that a
 
 352 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 stranger took any interest in what he was doing ; 
 was quite resigned to the low uses of his pro- 
 fession. There is Choubine, a sculptor, dis- 
 covered by the same visitor in a narrow room, 
 without models, without pupils, with only one 
 order, a bust, for which an admiral has offered 
 him 100 roubles, the marble itself costing 80 
 roubles, which he has to take out of the price. 
 There is, lastly, the painter Lossienko. Here is 
 what Falconet says of him : ' The poor fellow, 
 starving and in the depths of misery, wishing to 
 live anywhere but at St. Petersburg, came and 
 told me all his troubles ; then, sinking into drunk- 
 enness in his despair, he little knew what he 
 would gain by dying : we read on his tombstone 
 that he was a great man ! ' 
 
 The glory of Catherine wanted one great man 
 the more, and she had him cheaply. The artist 
 once dead, she willingly added his apotheosis 
 to all her grandeurs. She had not taken any 
 pains to keep him alive. All her artistic ideas 
 reduce themselves, in the last resort, to a question 
 of show. And, for this object, the ' divine ' 
 Reiffenstein, whose name is known all over 
 Europe, is obviously worth more than the poor 
 Lossienko, though he was no more than a good 
 copyist. National art, in short, owes to Catherine 
 some models furnished by her to the study and 
 emulation of Russian artists. Beyond that, she 
 did not give it so much as a morsel of bread.
 
 CATHERINE AS A WRITER 353 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CATHERINE AS A WRITER 
 
 DURAND certainly made a mistake in his reckon- 
 ing when giving his list of the things in which 
 Catherine took pleasure. He forgot one at least 
 of her favourite pastimes : she liked to write. 
 We do not believe there was anything she liked 
 so much. It was not only a taste in her it was 
 in some sort a necessity, almost a physical neces- 
 sity. It seems that the mere fact of holding a 
 pen in her hand, and having before her a white 
 sheet of paper, on which she can set her fancy 
 roving, gives her a pleasant sensation, not only 
 mental, but like a thrill of physical delight. She 
 says herself, in one of her letters to Grimm, that 
 the sight of a new pen makes her fingers itch. 
 She never dictates. ' I do not know how to 
 dictate/ she says. All that she writes is written 
 with her own hand, and what does she not write ? 
 Besides her political correspondence, which is 
 very active, and her private correspondence, 
 which, with the enormous budgets sent regularly 
 to Grimm, attains huge proportions ; besides her 
 work in regard to signatures, to reports sent in 
 to her, which she covers with marginal notes, to 
 her dramatic and other compositions, she writes 
 much and often for herself, for her own satisfac- 
 tion, sometimes for no apparent reason, unless for 
 that of calming that itching of the fingers. She
 
 354 CATHERINE 1L OF RUSSIA 
 
 makes extracts from old chronicles relating to the 
 life and glorious actions of St. Sergius, in which 
 we cannot imagine that she has any particular 
 interest. She works at copying the old church 
 Sclavonic, an acquaintance with which would not 
 seem to be indispensable to her duties as Orthodox 
 sovereign. She cannot read a book without 
 covering the margins with her great scrawling 
 writing. She draws up plans for fetes and pro- 
 grammes for concerts. Contrary to that statesman 
 of our days who could only think when he was 
 talking, one might say of her that she could only 
 think when writing. So, like the other with his 
 words, she was carried away by what she wrote. 
 Her pen ran away with her thought, and sent it 
 astray. She was well aware of it herself. She 
 wrote to Grimm 
 
 4 1 was going to say that I would write for you, 
 so much in the scribbling mood am I ; but I 
 recollect that I am here and you in Paris. I 
 advise you to dictate, for I have been advised a 
 hundred times to do so myself : happy is the 
 man who can do so ; for my part, it would be 
 impossible to talk nonsense with the pen of 
 another. ... If I said to this other what flows 
 from my pen, he would often not write what I 
 said.' 
 
 How does she find the time to write all that 
 she writes ? She rises at six o'clock in the 
 morning to chat at her ease with her confidant, 
 pen in hand. Despite these laborious habits, the 
 question remains for us an enigma. On May 7, 
 1767, the Empress, on a voyage of inspection, 
 finds herself on the Volga in ' frightful ' weather. 
 She takes the opportunity to write a long letter
 
 CATHERINE AS A WRITER 355 
 
 to Marmontel, who has just sent her his Btlisaire. 
 It is miraculous. Note that, thinking and writing 
 being the same thing to her, and her inaptitude 
 to precede the manual labour of putting things 
 down by the intellectual labour of putting them 
 together being complete, she goes over and 
 over again anything to which she attaches much 
 importance. We have thus two rough drafts of 
 a letter addressed by her in 1768 to the Aca- 
 demy of Berlin, which had offered her the title 
 of honorary member. She sometimes makes 
 more, for she does not like erasures. If the 
 expression or the phrase which comes up does 
 not suit her, she throws aside the sheet 
 generally a large-sized sheet, gilt-edged and 
 begins over again. 
 
 Her phraseology is at times very happy, trans- 
 lating her thought with a single vigorous or 
 picturesque expression. In refusing to evacuate 
 the Crimea, as the cowardice of Patiomkine ad- 
 vises her in 1 788, and looking for arguments to 
 justify her decision, she writes : ' Does a man 
 who is in the saddle get down in order to hold 
 on to the horse's tail?' Her letters, especially 
 her letters to Grimm, are full, at the same time, 
 of words and turns of phrase in which the 
 bonhomie and carelessness of thought and lan- 
 guage alike are unbounded, and sometimes be- 
 come positively gross. Not content with inter- 
 larding her incorrect French with German or 
 Italian words and phrases, she often writes in 
 slang. She puts ' sti-la ' for ' celui-la/ ' ma ' for 
 4 mais/ Probably she speaks in the same way. 
 She is not averse from a certain triviality. We 
 shall not venture to reproduce here the gaul-
 
 356 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 oiseries are they indeed gauloiseries ? which 
 sometimes crop up when she is in the jocose and 
 familiar vein, and we should certainly tire or 
 even disgust our readers with the quips and 
 quibbles which she is for ever sprinkling over 
 her epistolary conversation. 
 
 It is true that this is her 'undress' style, her 
 language of asides. Let us see now what is her 
 style as a writer, her way of writing for the 
 public. 
 
 ii 
 
 It is in her works written for the stage that 
 the pen of Catherine is most prolific. She does 
 something of everything in literature, but espe- 
 cially dramatic writing. 
 
 ' You ask me/ she writes to Grimm, ' why I 
 write so many comedies. I will reply, like 
 M. Pince, with three reasons : primo, because it 
 amuses me ; secundo, because I should like to 
 restore the national theatre, which, owing to its 
 lack of new plays, is somewhat gone out of 
 fashion ; and tertio, because it was time to put 
 down the visionaries who were beginning to hold 
 up their heads. Le Trompeur and Le Trompt 
 have had a prodigious success. . . . The most 
 amusing part of it is that at the first performance 
 there were cries of " Author ! " who, however, 
 kept completely incognito, despite his huge 
 success. Each of these pieces has brought in, 
 at Moscow, 10,000 roubles to the management.' 
 
 It is not needful, we see, to be an author 
 played at Paris to secure the welcome that a 
 happy idea always receives from the public, and
 
 CATHERINE AS A WRITER 357 
 
 the imperial diadem does not preclude happy 
 ideas. 
 
 In Le Trompeur and Le Trompd Catherine 
 has brought Cagliostro and his dupes on the 
 stage. The greater part of her plays are thus 
 polemical or satirical, philosophical, social, or 
 religious. She bravely attacks the ideas or 
 tendencies, or even persons, that she disapproves 
 of or dislikes. One may say that she has put 
 into them her best work as a writer. She has, 
 nevertheless, not the least sense of the dramatic. 
 The dramatic element, properly speaking, is 
 absent from her comedies as from her serious 
 dramas. There is no art of composition, no 
 knowledge of effect, no creative faculty, not a 
 type among all these characters ; .but here and 
 there certain traits caught sur le vif in the 
 manners of the country, a certain wit, good- 
 humour, and a real gift of observation. The 
 general tendency is that of Voltaire, toned down 
 by the respect of certain sentiments, the religious 
 sentiment among others, which she is obliged to 
 treat so carefully in the surroundings in which she 
 is placed. The principal aim is to oppose the 
 current of mysticism which begins to penetrate 
 the upper strata of society, finding in the natural 
 leanings of the Russian mind an element highly 
 favourable to its propagation. It is with Free- 
 masonry and Martinism that she has most often 
 a bone to pick. One day she assimilates the 
 Freemasons to the Siberian sect of Chamanes> 
 whom she tries to turn into ridicule by accusing 
 them of extorting money from the weak-witted 
 folk on whose credulity they trade. This is the 
 theme of Ckamane Szfors&i (Chamane of Siberia),
 
 358 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 a piece for which an article in the Encyclopedic 
 (Theosophy) has furnished her with the canvas ; 
 it is also that of Obmanchtckik (The Deceiver), 
 and Obolchtchenie (The Deceit). But she also 
 attacks occasionally other errors and absurdities. 
 One of the characters of O Vremia ! (translated 
 into French under the title, O temps ! O mceurs /), 
 Madame Hanjahina, in the fervour of her religious 
 devotion, is in the act of performing fifty genu- 
 flections before a holy image. A peasant enters, 
 and, after kissing his mistress's feet, puts a paper 
 into her hand. How dare he trouble her at such 
 a moment. ' Leave me, demon, imp of hell ! ' 
 she cries. ' Fear the wrath of God, and mine.' 
 She nevertheless glances at the paper: it is a 
 petition, on the part of a lover who wishes to 
 marry, and who, in his capacity of serf, requires 
 the authorisation of his mistress. ' The idea of 
 coming and disturbing with such requests a pro- 
 prietress of serfs, who is at her devotions ! ' 
 Mme. Hanjahina turns the luckless importunate 
 out of doors, and returns to her genuflections. 
 But she has lost the reckoning. Must she do 
 them all over again? She begins the task, but 
 before beginning she summons her people, and 
 orders them to give fifty times fifty blows to the 
 peasant, who must have been sent by Satan him- 
 self, and who shall never marry, let him be 
 assured of that, as long as she lives and continues 
 to reverence the holy images. 
 
 Catherine also, it appears, wrote fiction. In 
 the third volume of his History of German 
 Literature, Kurtz includes the Empress among 
 the number of German writers of the eighteenth 
 century, as author of an Eastern romance,
 
 CA THERINE AS A WRITER 359 
 
 Obidach, written in 1786. He attributes to her 
 several other works in her mother tongue, of 
 which he does not mention the titles. 
 
 We have also some fragments of the Empress's 
 work as a fabulist. In writing for her grand- 
 children one of the tales that Grimm published 
 for the first time in 1790, in his Correspondence, 
 Catherine was a little out of her reckoning. The 
 Tsarevitch Chlore, as well as the Tsarevitck Febei, 
 are philosophical tales in the style of Voltaire, 
 with allegorical turns, moralising intentions, and 
 scientific pretensions, quite out of the range of 
 childish minds. Catherine had, nevertheless, 
 what we now call ' a knowledge of children,' the 
 art of putting herself on the level of young, fresh, 
 naive imaginations ; she had also a love of 
 children. But, pen in hand, she sometimes 
 forgot what she knew the best. Nor has she 
 given evidence, in these compositions, of much 
 fertility of invention, or of a particularly in- 
 genious turn of mind, or an original inspiration. 
 She has once again stolen some one's ideas 
 those of Jean-Jacques and of Locke this time. 
 
 Finally, Catherine has had her poetical 
 moments. The taste came to her late in life. 
 'Imagine,' she writes in 1787, to Grimm, 'that 
 on my galley, going down the Borysthene, he 
 [the Comte de Segur] wanted to teach me to 
 write verse ! I have been rhyming for the last 
 four days, but it takes too much time, and I have 
 begun too late.' Nevertheless, the year before, 
 she had already asked Chrapowicki to send her a 
 dictionary of Russian rhymes, if there was one in 
 existence. 
 
 We do not know what success attended her
 
 360 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 secretary's researches in this direction, but after 
 1788 we often enough find the Empress rhym- 
 ing, both in Russian and in French. In August 
 1788 she writes burlesque verses on the King 
 of Sweden, while composing a French comedy, 
 Les Voyages de Madame Bontemps, which she 
 intends to have acted, by way of surprise, in 
 the apartments of the favourite Mamonof on his 
 birthday. In January 1789 she sends to Chrapo- 
 wicki two Russian quatrains on the taking of 
 Otchakof. One of them is somewhat remark- 
 able for its vigour of thought and the energy of 
 some expressions. As for the poetic form, it 
 escapes our estimation. Here is a French qua- 
 train, without date, which will permit the reader 
 to see for himself the skill of Catherine in this 
 branch of literature. It is an epitaph composed 
 by her on the occasion of the death of the Count 
 I. I. Chouvalof, who, since 1777, had been the 
 Empress's high chamberlain 
 
 'Cigit 
 
 Monseigneur le grand chambellan 
 A cent ans blanc comme Milan ; 
 Le voilk qui fait la moue ; 
 Vivant il grattait la joue. ! 
 
 We shall doubtless be excused from giving 
 more. 
 
 Catherine also undertook to translate the 
 Iliad. Three sheets of attempts in her hand- 
 writing are preserved in the archives of the 
 empire. Certainly, she attempted many things.
 
 CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 361 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 
 
 THE institutions founded by Catherine for the 
 furtherance of national education, her educational 
 ideas and writings, hold too large a place in the 
 history of her reign, and in that of the intellectual 
 development of her people, for us to omit some 
 consideration of them in this study, brief as must 
 be the space that we can give them. On arriving 
 at power, Catherine was quick to see what ad- 
 vantage she had derived, in the struggle from 
 which she had come out victorious, from the 
 superiority of her intellectual culture, the relative 
 extent and variety of her knowledge. At the 
 same time, she was able to judge how much it 
 cost in Russia, even on the throne, to arrive at 
 the little knowledge that she possessed. Finally, 
 the handling of power must soon have shown 
 her the enormous difficulties that the best-inten- 
 tioned rulers have always had to meet with from 
 the ignorance of their subjects. The reform, or 
 rather the establishment, of national education is, 
 from the first, one of the principal ideas brought 
 by the Empress to the government of her empire. 
 In this regard she had everything, or almost 
 everything, to do. The lower classes did not 
 count, the middle class hardly existed ; there 
 was therefore nothing to do but to raise the level 
 of studies at the summit of the social ladder.
 
 362 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 But this level was terribly low. The children 
 of the nobility were brought up by serfs or by 
 foreign tutors. We can guess what they had to 
 learn from the former ; as for the latter, we can 
 guess also what sort of people they were French 
 for the most part who at that time entered upon 
 the career of private tutor in the far-distant 
 Russia. Mehee de la Touche tells the story 
 of the governess who, being asked by the 
 parents of her future charge if she spoke French, 
 replied : ' Sacrtdie" ! I should think so ; it is my 
 own language.' She was engaged without further 
 question ; only, the name of Mile. Sacredie always 
 stuck to her. 
 
 As ever, Catherine would do everything, and 
 everything at once. In the second year of her reign, 
 Betzky, the collaborator whom she picked out for 
 this purpose, received the order to set to work 
 on a project, which included a whole new system 
 of education, able to serve as basis for a number 
 of scholastic institutions, to be set on foot sub- 
 sequently. The result was the publication, in 
 1764, of General Regulations for the Education 
 of Children of both Sexes. Betzky has admitted 
 that the ideas developed in this document were 
 those of the Empress herself. They must be 
 considered bold, if not original : they are more 
 or less those of Locke and of Jean- Jacques 
 Rousseau ; those of Jean- Jacques especially, little 
 as Catherine generally professed to think of his 
 genius. It was a project for fabricating men and 
 women not in the least like any that had ever 
 been seen in Russia, taken radically away from 
 the soil which had given them birth, transplanted 
 from their natural surroundings, and developed
 
 CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 363 
 
 in an atmosphere artificially prepared for the 
 culture to which they were destined. They were 
 to be taken at the age of five or six, kept strictly 
 shut up, and removed from all outside influence, 
 to the age of twenty or more. 
 
 Catherine seriously thought of carrying out this 
 programme. If this was not done, at least within 
 the desired limits and proportions that is to say, 
 throughout the whole length and breadth of public 
 education it is because she encountered great 
 difficulties on the way, and that here, too, patience, 
 firmness of resolution, and continuity of effort 
 were once again lacking to her will. Difficulties 
 arose at the outset from the opposition that she 
 met with, not only in her immediate surroundings 
 but little enlightened itself, as a rule, and con- 
 sequently indifferent, if not hostile, to the develop- 
 ment of any programme whatever, relating to this 
 order of ideas but also among even the most 
 open-minded and cultivated of those to whom she 
 could appeal, outside the official sphere, for some 
 amount of help in her enterprise. The ideas of 
 Jean- Jacques were by no means those of Novikof, 
 for example, nor those of the circle in which the 
 influence of the publicist was exercised. Now, 
 this was perhaps the most intelligent circle in 
 the Russia of that time. Novikof had pedagogic 
 views of his own, entirely different, giving a large 
 place, in national education, to local feeling, to 
 custom, tradition, to the ways of the country, 
 averse from the introduction of foreign elements. 
 As for the officials at Catherine's disposal, they 
 were inclined to ask whether public education, 
 and schools in general, were of any real value. 
 In 1785, at one of the Empress's evening recep-
 
 364 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 tions, as Patiomkine was discussing the necessity 
 of starting a large number of universities through- 
 out Russia, Zavadofski, the director of the 
 recently established normal schools, observed that 
 the University of Moscow had not produced a 
 single distinguished man in science during the 
 whole of its existence. 'That,' replied Patiom- 
 kine, ' is because you hindered me from continuing 
 my studies by turning me out.' This was a fact ; 
 the favourite had been sent down, and obliged to 
 enter a regiment, which was the beginning of his 
 fortune. He forgot to say that his idleness and 
 misconduct had quite justified the punishment. 
 Catherine thereupon declared that she herself 
 owed much to the university education : since she 
 had had in her service some men who had carried 
 out their studies at Moscow, she had been able to 
 make out something in the memoranda and other 
 official documents presented for her signature. 
 It was after this conversation that she decided 
 upon founding the Universities of Nijni- Nov- 
 gorod, and lekatierinoslaf. But the latter town 
 had itself yet to be founded. 
 
 Another difficulty presented itself in the selec- 
 tion of a staff of teachers. In organising the 
 establishment of the corps of cadets, Betzky 
 took for director a former prompter from the 
 French theatre, and for inspector of classes a 
 former valet de chambre of Catherine's mother. 
 One of the professors, Faber, had been a lackey 
 in the service of two other French professors, 
 Pictet and Mallet, whose colleague he now 
 became. Pictet and Mallet having ventured to 
 protest, Betzky contented himself with giving 
 Faber the rank of lieutenant in the Russian army,
 
 CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 365 
 
 which, it appeared, put things straight. The 
 master of police in the establishment was a 
 certain Lascaris, a mere adventurer, who after- 
 wards became director, with the title of lieutenant- 
 colonel. 
 
 The greatest liberty reigned in this school, if 
 we may believe the testimony of Bobrinski, the 
 natural son of Catherine, who was brought up 
 there : the ideas of Jean- Jacques were liberally 
 applied. 
 
 Catherine was thus forced to complicate her 
 programme of scholastic organisation ; she had 
 first to think of training the masters for the future 
 pupils that she meant to intrust to them. She 
 sent to Oxford, to the Academy of Turin, to the 
 schools in Germany, young men who were to be 
 prepared for the delicate duties of professorship. 
 But many other things were yet wanting for the 
 founding of national schools, and first, to know 
 how to set about it. She confessed it naively to 
 Grimm 
 
 ' Listen a moment, my philosophical friends 
 you would be charming, adorable, if you would 
 have the charity to map out a plan of study for 
 young people, from A B C to the University. I 
 am told that there should be three kinds of 
 schools, and I who have not studied and have not 
 been at Paris, I have neither knowledge nor 
 insight in the matter, and consequently I know 
 not what should be learnt, nor even what can be 
 learnt, nor where one is to find out unless from 
 you. I am very much concerned about an idea 
 for a university and its management, a gym- 
 nasium and its management, a school and its 
 management.'
 
 366 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 She intimates, however, the means by which 
 she intends to get over the difficulty for the 
 present 
 
 ' Until you accede or do not accede to my 
 request, I know what I shall do : I shall hunt 
 through the Encyclopedic. Oh, I shall be 
 certain to haul out what I want and what I don't 
 want.' 
 
 The philosophers remaining silent, it is the 
 Encyclopedic that has to afford matter for the 
 conceptions to which the universal genius of 
 Catherine betakes itself, in this new order of 
 things. 
 
 ii 
 
 These conceptions were destined to remain 
 sterile, with one exception. Some scholastic 
 establishments date, it is true, from her reign, 
 But these are special schools, that, for instance, 
 of artillery and engineering, founded in 1762, 
 the school of commerce founded in 17/2, the 
 academy of mines in 1773, the academy of 
 Beaux Arts in 1774. In 1781 there was even an 
 attempt at popular schools, and in 1783 Jankovitz 
 was summoned for the foundation of normal 
 schools, after the order of those in Austria. Ten 
 were at once founded at St. Petersburg, and the 
 following year they had 1000 pupils. Catherine 
 was full of enthusiasm on the subject, and wrote 
 to Grimm : ' Do you know that we are really 
 doing fine things, and getting along famously, 
 not in the air (for, from dread of fire, I have 
 expressly forbidden aerostatic globes) but vcntre 
 a terre, for the enlightening of the people.'
 
 CA THERINE AND ED UCA TION 367 
 
 In reply Grimm conferred upon the sovereign the 
 title of Universal-normalschulmeisterin. 
 
 But all that was not the national education 
 according to Locke and Jean-Jacques, of which 
 the Empress dreamed, and which ought, she 
 thought, to regenerate Russia. The dream was 
 unrealised save in the establishment founded in 
 1764 for the education of girls, in the famous 
 Sinolnyi Monastyr, which was one of the favourite 
 achievements of Catherine, the one among all 
 others to which she was most constant ; the 
 majestic edifice on the banks of the Neva is even 
 now the admiration of travellers from the West. 
 Demoiselles nobles are still educated there in the 
 most careful manner, and but lately the two 
 daughters of the Prince of Montenegro grew up 
 within these walls, where so often the Empress 
 was to be seen surrounded by her pupils, 
 following their studies with solicitude, and in- 
 teresting herself in their recreations. Rigorous 
 seclusion, during twelve years, the removal of all 
 outside influences, even family influences, even 
 religious influences : all the details of the plan 
 sketched out in 1764 were to be found in the 
 scheme of this institution. No one was allowed 
 to go out, except to go to the court, whither the 
 Empress frequently summoned the scholars 
 whom she had particularly noticed. There were 
 hardly any holidays. Every six weeks the 
 parents were admitted to see their children, and 
 to witness a public examination which showed 
 what progress they were making. That was all. 
 The lay schoolmistresses never spoke to their 
 pupils of God or the Devil save in general terms, 
 without any attempt at proselytism ; the clergy
 
 368 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 were admitted to this singular monastery, and 
 to some part in the instruction given there, but 
 within prescribed limits. It was a convent having 
 as abbess a philosophising Empress ; monastic 
 life with a door of communication opening on the 
 splendours and seductions of the imperial palace ; 
 St. Cyr, minus Christianity, and not merely the 
 severe and gloomy Christianity of Madame de 
 Maintenon, but Christianity in general. A long- 
 bearded pope was sometimes seen there ; the 
 Christian teaching was absent. The very plan 
 of the establishment was alien to it, for could 
 anything be more absolutely contrary to its spirit 
 than the separation into two divisions of the 
 inmates, kept absolutely apart and distinct, by 
 the very first principles of the undertaking ? In 
 this establishment, in which there is room for 500 
 pupils, there are daughters of the nobility and of 
 the middle classes. They have nothing in com- 
 mon one with another, either in mode of living, 
 of education, or even of costume. The former 
 are indulged with fine clothes, the refinements of 
 the toilette, of the table, and of accommodation, a 
 course of study in which the arts of pleasing hold 
 a large place ; the latter have to put up with a 
 coarse kind of clothing, with simple dishes, with 
 lessons in sewing, washing, and cooking. The 
 colour of the clothes is the same, but the ' corset ' 
 takes the place of the elegant 'fourreau,' and is com- 
 pleted by a pinafore, which denotes the humility 
 of their condition. All that is Pagan, utterly 
 Pagan, as is the plan of the teaching itself, into 
 which Diderot would have wished to introduce 
 thorough instruction in anatomy ; as are the sallies 
 into the frivolous and corrupt world of the court.
 
 CATHERINE AND EDUCATION 369 
 
 As it has been noted, Catherine is the first 
 Russian sovereign to give attention to the educa- 
 tion of women. She gave to her undertaking 
 all the breadth and magnificence that we find in 
 all her creations, and that would seem to be in 
 some sort the natural emanation of herself. But 
 she also put to proof principles which she had 
 not sufficiently gauged. The germs that she thus 
 introduced into the intellectual and moral develop- 
 ment of her sex still bear fruit in Russia, not 
 perhaps always for the best. 
 
 We have had means of judging, in the 
 Empress's confidences to Grimm, what point she 
 had reached, after fifteen years of sway, in her 
 own studies and notions in regard to this delicate 
 and difficult matter : she obviously went right 
 ahead, picking up principles and ideas for her 
 plans of education as she picked up soldiers for 
 her plans of conquest. In the very numerous 
 writings on educational subjects that she has 
 handed down to posterity, some ideas and in- 
 genious intuitions alternate with the most para- 
 doxical assertions, as, for example, that ' the 
 study of languages and sciences ought to hold 
 the last place in education,' or that 'the health of 
 the body and the inclination of the mind towards 
 what is good make up the whole of education.' 
 The idea of enlightened despotism, coming out 
 in the blind subjection of pupil to master, accords 
 as best it can with that of the progressive develop- 
 ment of the spirit of independence, in which one 
 is to endeavour to fortify the child's mind. As 
 a whole it is almost incoherent. Catherine saw 
 clearly that the way in which the youth of 
 Russia in her time was educated was useless 
 
 2 A
 
 370 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 alike to them and to Russia, and she admitted 
 the necessity of a change of system, as an abso- 
 lute necessity of national progress. It was only 
 on this one point that she had quite made up 
 her mind. At her time, and in the place that 
 she occupied, coming after Ann, Elizabeth, and 
 Peter III., it was something already to have made 
 this discovery and cherished this conviction. But 
 the glory of having been the founder of the 
 national education was not to be hers. The 
 judgment of posterity has given this title to a 
 name more humble than hers, that of a man 
 whom she treated as a foe, to whom she gave 
 a dungeon and a chain as the reward of the 
 labours of which Russia reaps the benefit to-day. 
 It was in the educational establishments founded 
 at St. Petersburg by Novikof that the programme 
 of studies and the plan of scholastic organisation 
 now in force throughout the empire were really 
 mapped out.
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 INNER ASPECTS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOME LIFE 
 
 WE shall try to give an account of a single day 
 in the life of the Empress, an ordinary day, one 
 of those which show the habitual course of her 
 existence. We are in winter, let us suppose, 
 and about the middle of the reign, in 1785 for 
 example, a year of peace. The Empress occu- 
 pies the Zimnyi Dvariets, the Winter Palace. 
 The private suite of rooms, on the first story, 
 is not very large. On mounting the little stair- 
 case, we come to a room in which a table, 
 covered with writing materials, awaits the secre- 
 taries and others employed in her Majesty's 
 immediate service. We pass through this first 
 room, and enter the dressing-room, whose win- 
 dows look out on the square of the palace. 
 It is there that the Empress's hair is dressed 
 before a small circle of intimate friends and high 
 functionaries, admitted to the early morning 
 audiences. It is the petit lever of her Majesty. 
 There is no grand lever. Two doors open 
 
 371
 
 372 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 before us : one leads to the Diamond Room, the 
 other to the bedroom. The bedroom communi- 
 cates at the back with a private dressing-room, 
 and at the left with a work-room opening on the 
 Mirror Room, and the other reception-rooms. 
 
 It is six o'clock in the morning, the hour at 
 which the Empress rises. By the side of her 
 bed is a basket, where, on a couch of pink satin 
 ornamented with lace, sleeps a whole family of 
 little dogs, Catherine's inseparable companions. 
 They are English greyhounds. In 1770 Dr. 
 Dimsdale, whom the Empress, as we know, sum- 
 moned from London to inoculate her, brought 
 over for her a couple of these creatures. They 
 have increased and multiplied, so that one sees 
 a greyhound in all the aristocratic houses in St. 
 Petersburg. The Empress always has half a 
 dozen about her, sometimes more. The bell- 
 ringer of the palace having rung the hour of 
 six, Maria Savichna Pierekousihina, the head 
 femme de chambre of her Majesty, enters the 
 bedroom. Formerly Catherine had no one about 
 her at this time ; she rose by herself, and in 
 winter even lit her own fire. Time has changed 
 this habit. But to-day her Majesty is late 
 in waking. The night before she was not so 
 early as usual in going to bed ; an interesting 
 conversation detained her at the Hermitage 
 after ten. Maria Savichna coolly finds a divan, 
 opposite to the sovereign's bed, lies down on it, 
 and seizes the happy chance of a little additional 
 nap. But now the Empress awakens. She gets 
 up, and in her turn awakens the slumbering 
 Maria Savichna. She goes into her dressing- 
 room. A little warm water to rinse out her
 
 HOME LIFE 373 
 
 mouth, and a little ice to rub over her face, are 
 all that her Majesty is in need of for the 
 moment. But where is Catherine Ivanovna, 
 the young Calmuck, whose business it is to have 
 these things ready ? She is always behind her 
 time, this Catherine Ivanovna ! What, already 
 a quarter past six ! The Empress has a move- 
 ment of impatience ; she taps her foot nervously 
 on the ground. Here she is at last : beware of 
 her Majesty's wrath ! Catherine snatches from 
 her hands the silver-gilt ewer, and, hastily 
 making use of it, she apostrophises the lazy 
 girl- 
 
 ' What are you thinking about, Catherine 
 Ivanovna? Do you think you will always be 
 able to go on like this ? One day you will get 
 married, you will leave my service, and your 
 husband, be sure, will not be like me. He will 
 be much more particular. Think of your future, 
 Catherine Ivanovna!' 
 
 That is all, and that is repeated day after day. 
 Meanwhile the Empress goes briskly into her 
 work-room, followed by her dogs, who have 
 waited till now to leave their luxurious bed. 
 It is time for dejeuner. The coffee is waiting : 
 good. Is it strong enough ? It needs a pound 
 of coffee for the five cups that the Empress is 
 accustomed to take. One day one of her secre- 
 taries, a certain Kozmine, coming to make his 
 report, is benumbed with the cold. The Empress 
 rings. 'A cup of coffee for the poor shivering 
 wretch ! ' She insists on his swallowing the 
 steaming cup at a draught. But what is the 
 matter ? He is unwell ; he has palpitations of 
 the heart. He has had the coffee that is pre-
 
 374 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 pared for her Majesty, and which she alone 
 can drink. It never occurred to any one that 
 the cup was for the secretary ; who could imagine 
 that her Majesty would share her dejeuner with 
 a mere tchinovnik like him ? Generally Catherine 
 only shares her dejeuner with her dogs. The 
 imperial coffee is not in their line ; but there is 
 thick cream, biscuits, sugar. The whole con- 
 tents of the sugar-basin go to them, and the 
 biscuits too. 
 
 Her Majesty has now no further need of any 
 one. If her dogs want to go out, she opens the 
 door for them herself. She wishes to be alone, 
 and to give herself entirely to her work or 
 correspondence, till nine o'clock. But where is 
 her favourite snuff-box, which should always be 
 on her work-table? A portrait of Peter the 
 Great, which is on the cover, is there, she says, to 
 remind her that she has to continue the work of 
 the Great Czar. Catherine takes a great deal of 
 snuff. But she never carries a snuff-box. There 
 must be one at hand in every corner of her 
 palace. She uses only a particular kind of 
 tobacco that is specially grown for her in her 
 garden of Tzarskoi'e-Sielo. When writing, she 
 needs to take snuff almost all the time. She 
 rings. 'Will you kindly,' she says to a valet de 
 ckambre who enters, 'look for my snuff-box.' 
 ' Veuillez,' ' Prenez la peine de,' are formulas 
 that she invariably uses in speaking to the 
 people about her, however humble. 
 
 At nine precisely Catherine returns to her 
 bedroom. It is there that she receives the 
 officials who come to give in their report. The 
 prefect of police enters first Her Majesty is
 
 HOME LIFE 375 
 
 dressed, at this moment, in a white dressing- 
 gown of gros de To^trs, with large folds. She 
 wears a cap of white crape, which the vigour of 
 her work or the excitement of her conversation 
 with Grimm has accidentally pushed aside, to 
 right or left. Her complexion is fresh, her eyes 
 bright ; nevertheless, in reading the papers pre- 
 sented for her signature, she puts on glasses. 
 
 ' You don't need this, do you ? ' she says to her 
 secretary Gribofski. ' How old are you ? ' 
 
 ' Twenty-six.' 
 
 'You have not had time, as I have, to lose 
 your sight in the service of the empire.' 
 
 On entering, Gribofski has bowed very low. 
 The Empress has replied with a slight inclination 
 of the head, after which, with an amiable smile, 
 she ends her hand to the secretary. At this 
 moment Gribofski can notice that a front tooth 
 is rrissing from the otherwise well-furnished 
 mouth of the sovereign. On stooping to kiss 
 the imperial hand, a white, plump hand, he has 
 felt a pressure of this august hand, and he has 
 heard the words 'sit down,' which summon him 
 to his task. It is a task often interrupted. 
 Ministers, generals, high officials, who have been 
 granted audiences, are announced, and the Em- 
 press is often considerate enough not to make 
 them wait. Now General Souvarof is ushered 
 in. Without looking at the Empress, he marches 
 with his automatic soldier's step straight to the 
 right, where, in a corner, a lamp is always kept 
 burning before the image of Our Lady of Kasan. 
 He stops short before the icone, and bends three 
 times, striking the ground with his forehead. 
 Having accomplished this rite, he turns sharply,
 
 376 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 as if he were at drill, takes a few steps forward, 
 and a fourth genuflection brings him to the 
 sovereign's feet. 
 
 1 Pray, are you not ashamed ? ' she murmurs. 
 She makes him sit down, addresses two or three 
 questions to him, one after another, to which he 
 replies in the tone of a trooper catechised by a 
 corporal, and she dismisses him after two minutes. 
 Other personages arrive. But, all at once, some 
 one whispers a word in the Empress's ear, she 
 gives a sign of the head, and all retire : it is 
 the favourite, Patiomkine, Lanskoi, or Mamonof, 
 who wishes to come in. For him her Majesty is 
 always visible, and, when he comes, every one 
 else goes. 
 
 This goes on till mid-day, afterwards till one 
 o'clock when the dinner-hour has been changed 
 from one to two. After dismissing her secretary, 
 the Empress retires to her private dressing-room, 
 where she makes a complete toilette, dresses, 
 and has her hair dressed by her old coiffeur Koz- 
 lof. Her costume, except on great occasions, is 
 extremely simple : a loose and open gown, a la 
 Moldave, with double sleeves ; the under ones of 
 a light material, plaited to the wrist, the over 
 ones very long, of similar material to the skirt, 
 and caught up at the back. The gown is of 
 violet or grey silk ; there are no jewels, no 
 indication of supreme rank ; comfortable shoes 
 with very low heels. Catherine puts no coquetry 
 in anything but the arrangement of her hair : she 
 wears her hair drawn back, showing the whole of 
 the forehead, the development of which she per- 
 haps likes to emphasise. Her hair is long and 
 heavy ; when she sits before her toilet-table,
 
 HOME LIFE 377 
 
 it touches the ground. On state occasions a 
 diadem crowns the cunning edifice raised by the 
 skilful hands of Kozlof ; but then the silk dress 
 is replaced by red velvet, and the costume thus 
 transformed, though it keeps much the same easy 
 character, takes the name of ' the Russian dress.' 
 It is obligatory at court, despite the heavy 
 sacrifices it imposes on the young women, who 
 are distressed at not being got up in the Paris 
 fashion. 
 
 Her private toilette over, Catherine goes into 
 the official toilette-chamber, where she finishes 
 dressing. It is the petit lever. The number of 
 those who have the privilege of being present is 
 limited ; but in spite of this, the room is full. 
 There are, first, the Empress's grandchildren, who 
 are invariably brought in; then the favourite ; with 
 a few friends, such as Leon Narychkine. There 
 is also the court fool, who is a person of much 
 wisdom : Matrena Danilevna holds this office, to 
 which she adds that of tale-bearer. She diverts 
 the sovereign by her jokes, and Catherine is 
 kept au courant of all that is going on at court 
 and in the city, the scandals in the air since the 
 night before, and even the best kept family- 
 secrets. Matrena Danilevna has an eye and ear 
 everywhere, and admirable police instincts. One 
 day she is very severe upon Ryleief, the chief 
 of imperial police. Catherine summons him to 
 her, and advises him in a friendly manner to send 
 some fat fowls and geese to Matrena Danilevna, 
 who seems to be in want of them in order to duly 
 celebrate the Prasdnik (Easter). A week passes. 
 'And Ryle'ief?' asks the Empress of the worthy 
 gossip, who is dishing up to her the string of
 
 378 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 daily tattle. Matrena Danilevna has nothing 
 but praise for the official, for whom, a week 
 before, she had nothing but abuse. ' Ah ! ah ! ' 
 interrupts Catherine. ' I see what it is : he has 
 sent you some fowls and geese.' 
 
 But now the Empress is seated before her 
 toilet- table, a superb table in massive gold. Her 
 foux fetmttes de chambre approach her. They are 
 four old maids, whom she has had in her service 
 since her accession to the throne, and who have 
 passed their heyday in her service. They were 
 all of them very plain. One of them, Maria 
 Stiepanovna Aleksieievna, paints her face in the 
 most preposterous way. They are all Russian. 
 To give her subjects an example that they have 
 never, up to the present time, followed, Catherine 
 has absolutely none but Russian servants. Now 
 Maria Stiepanovna presents to the sovereign a 
 piece of ice, which she rubs over her cheeks in 
 public, to prove that she herself has no recourse 
 to the coquettish tricks employed by her femmede 
 chambre ; the old Palakoutchi places on her head 
 a little crape cap, this time carefully adjusted ; 
 the two Zvieref sisters add some pins, and her 
 Majesty's toilette is over. The whole ceremony 
 has lasted about ten minutes, during which 
 Catherine has spoken to several of those present. 
 
 And now to table. Up to the time of the 
 Swedish war, dinner was at one o'clock. At that 
 time the pressing occupations with which Cathe- 
 rine was burdened made her put off the hour of 
 dinner, which remained afterwards at two o'clock. 
 On ordinary days there are generally about a 
 dozen guests at her Majesty's table : the favourite 
 first of all, as a matter of course, a few friends,
 
 HOME LIFE 379 
 
 Count Razoumofski, Field-Marshal Prince Galit- 
 zine, Prince Patiomkine, the Count of Anhalt, 
 the two Narychkine brothers, the General 
 Aide-de-Camp, Count Tchernichef, Count Stro- 
 gonof, Prince Bariatinski, Countess Bruce, Coun- 
 tess Branicka, Princess Dachkof, and, later on, 
 during the last years of the reign, the General 
 Aide-de-Camp Passek, Count Strogonof, the 
 Maid of Honour Protassof, Vice-Admiral Ribas, 
 the General Governor of the Polish provinces, 
 Toutolmine, and two of the French emigres, 
 Comte Esterhazy and the Marquis de Lambert. 
 Dinner lasts about an hour. The dishes 
 are very simple. Catherine cares nothing 
 about elaborate cookery. Her favourite dish is 
 boiled beef with salted cucumber; her drink, 
 water with gooseberry sirup. Later, on the 
 advice of physicians, she takes a glass of Madeira 
 or Rhine wine. For desert, some fruit, apples or 
 cherries by preference. Among her cooks there 
 is one who cooks abominably. For years she 
 has never noticed it. When it has been pointed 
 out to her, she has refused to dismiss the 
 man, saying that he has been in her service 
 too long. She merely inquires when his turn 
 comes, and then says on sitting down to 
 table : ' Ladies and gentlemen, we must exer- 
 cise our patience ; we have a week's fast before 
 us.' 
 
 Twice a week her Majesty keeps jour maigre, 
 and on these occasions she has only two or three 
 people to dinner. 
 
 It should be added that her guests are not 
 obliged to go beyond the palace to find better 
 cheer. Her Majesty's table is poorly served,
 
 380 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 and Catherine sees that the expenses are kept 
 down ; but the table of the favourite, Zoubof, 
 that of his protector, the Count N. J. Saltykof, 
 and that of the Countess Branicka, Patiomkine's 
 niece, which are all three paid for out of the 
 imperial treasury, come to 400 roubles (2000 
 francs) a day in 1792, without counting the 
 drink, which, with tea, coffee, and chocolate, 
 comes to 200 roubles a day extra. 
 
 After dinner there are a few minutes' con- 
 versation ; then every one retires. Catherine 
 takes up her embroidery, at which she is very 
 skilful, and Betzky reads aloud to her. When 
 Betzky, now growing old, begins to lose his 
 sight, she does not have him replaced ; she reads 
 herself, with the aid of her glasses. An hour 
 passes in this way, and now her secretary is 
 announced : twice a week he comes with the 
 courier, who is immediately despoiled. The 
 other days, it is the officials who come, one 
 after another, handing in reports, demanding 
 instructions. All the while the Empress gener- 
 ally has with her her grandchildren, with whom 
 she plays in the intervals of her business. By 
 four o'clock she has well earned the rest and 
 recreation which she now allows herself. She 
 betakes herself to her favourite Hermitage, 
 through the long gallery which connects it with 
 the Winter Palace. Lanskoi or Mamonof or 
 Zoubof accompanies her. She examines her new 
 collections, sees to their arrangement, has a game 
 of billiards, and sometimes amuses herself with 
 turning ivory. At six o'clock she returns to the 
 reception-rooms. Slowly she makes the round of 
 her salons, giving an amiable word here and
 
 HOME LIFE 381 
 
 there, and then sits down to her whist-table. 
 She plays whist at ten roubles the rubber, 
 rocambole, piquet, and Boston ; always very 
 cheaply. Her usual partners are Count Razou- 
 mofski, Field-Marshal Count Tchernichef, Field- 
 Marshal Prince Galitzine, Count Bruce, Count 
 Strogonof, Prince Orlof, Prince Viazemski, and 
 the foreign ministers. Catherine gives the pre- 
 ference to the two first, because they play well, 
 and do not try to make her gain. She herself 
 plays her very best. The chamberlain Tchert- 
 kof, whom she sometimes admits to make up 
 a party, generally gets in a rage, reproaches her 
 with not playing fair, and, sometimes, in his 
 vexation, throws the cards in her Majesty's face. 
 She never loses her temper, defends her way 
 of playing as best she can, appealing to the 
 bystanders. One day she calls on the two 
 French exiles, who are of the party, to give 
 their opinion. 
 
 'Fine arbiters!' cries Tchertkof. 'They be-^ 
 trayed their own king ! ' 
 
 This time Catherine has to impose silence on 
 the too reckless player. One sees that she has 
 no easy task to maintain at her court the tone 
 that should reign there. Another time, as she 
 is playing at whist with Count Strogonof, General 
 Arharof, and Count Stackelberg, Strogonof con- 
 stantly loses. At last, unable to contain himself 
 any longer, and forgetting all the convenances, he 
 rises in a heat, leaves the party without finishing 
 it, and, with purple cheeks, begins to stride to 
 and fro in the Diamond Room, giving free course 
 to his irritation 
 
 ' I shall lose all my money ! As for you, it
 
 382 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 makes no difference for you if you lose. But 
 as for me, I shall soon be in destitution.' 
 
 Thinking that this is going too far, Arharof 
 would interfere, but Catherine stops him : ' Let 
 him be ! He has been just like that for fifty 
 years. You will never change him, no more 
 shall I.' 
 
 The play invariably stops at ten o'clock. Her 
 Majesty then retires. Except on reception-days, 
 there is no supper, and even on these days 
 Catherine only sits down to table as a matter 
 of form. Returning to her private suite of rooms, 
 she goes immediately to her bedroom, drinks 
 a large glass of boiled water, and goes to bed. 
 Her day is ended. 
 
 ii 
 
 This is a quiet enough course of existence, 
 and the picture that we have just presented will 
 not, perhaps, be much in agreement with the 
 very different pictures presented to us by the 
 usual legend. We have, however, drawn from 
 the best sources ; but we find a very natural 
 explanation of the contrast between legend and 
 history. The former draws its inspiration, for 
 one thing, from what was really reprehensible, and 
 might well have justified the most ill-natured sup- 
 positions in regard to one side of the Empress's 
 private life, on which we shall enlarge later. 
 Legend and ill-feeling have also made capital out 
 of certain periods of dissipation which were never- 
 theless only accidental and occasional in the history 
 of the great Empress, such as that which followed 
 the great crisis of despair after the death of
 
 HOME LIFE 383 
 
 Lanskoi. The general course of life of Catherine 
 appears under quite a different light, and, if we 
 can make up our minds to throw a veil over 
 certain pleasures, which, for the rest, never dis- 
 turbed, in a permanent fashion, the harmonious 
 balance of her faculties, nor the wisely planned 
 programme of her occupations, the other distrac- 
 tions, associated with them, were quite mild and 
 innocent. Those who, on the strength of certain 
 reports, have looked upon her existence as one 
 continual orgy, would find it hard indeed to 
 justify such a conception by the testimony of 
 fact. History gives no support to it. But is 
 this history well informed ? Did not the more 
 or less edifying outside of the Empress's private 
 life hide something far more scandalous under- 
 neath ? Were there not, in ' the palaces of St. 
 Petersburg and Tzarskoie-Sielo, in the rooms of 
 the Hermitage, certain hidden corners, conceal- 
 ing more unmentionable pleasures ? We do not 
 think so, for reasons founded as much on the 
 character of Catherine as on the very organisa- 
 tion of her private life, itself, in one way, so 
 much a scandal, but a scandal which was official, 
 cynically but frankly avowed. The Empress 
 has given the lie, for the rest, not in words but 
 in actions, to the greater part of the infamous 
 accusations that were brought against her during 
 her lifetime. The Englishman Harris wrote in 
 January 1779 : 'The Empress becomes from day 
 to day more disordered and dissipated, and her 
 society is composed of the lowest set among the 
 courtiers ; the health of her Majesty is certainly 
 tried by the life she leads.' And the Foreign 
 Office concluding that the sovereign, ' worn out
 
 384 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 by debauch,' had only a short while to live, all 
 Europe soon found out, rather at its expense, 
 that Catherine was quite alive, healthy in body 
 and mind. Never was she in better health, 
 physically and mentally, than at this time. 
 
 Catherine was certainly sensual, licentious if 
 you will, but she was nothing of a Bacchante. 
 Insatiably amorous, as she was infinitely ambi- 
 tious, she accommodated her love affairs, as she 
 accommodated her ambition, to certain rules of 
 conduct, from which she never varied. Favour- 
 ites had always a large place in her palace and 
 in all the material, moral, and even political 
 organisation of her life ; but the sovereign always 
 held her own, and, strange as it may sound, the 
 quiet housewife as well. 
 
 Catherine was passionately fond of children ; 
 it was one of her favourite pastimes to play with 
 them. In a letter addressed to Ivan Tchernichef 
 in 1769 she brings herself before us, with the 
 usual company of her leisure hours, and we see 
 her, Gregory Orlof, Count Razoumofski, and 
 Zahar Tchernichef, Ivan's brother, playing with 
 the little Markof, whom the sovereign has just 
 adopted, gambolling, rolling on the ground, com- 
 mitting a thousand absurdities, and all the time 
 in fits of laughter. The little Markof, then six 
 years old, is afterwards replaced by the son of 
 Admiral Ribeaupierre. The child is hard to 
 tame, having got into his little brain the idea 
 that he has been brought to the palace that he 
 may have his head cut off. But Catherine 
 gradually wins him over, cutting out paper 
 figures, making toys for him. One day she tears 
 a ribbon out of her collerette to make the reins
 
 HOME LIFE 385 
 
 of a horse and pair that she has cut out of card- 
 board. She has him with her for hours together, 
 sends him away when any one comes to her on 
 business, then sends for him again ; at the age of 
 five she makes him an officer of the Guards. 
 He is not the only one to be thus favoured : two 
 little Galitzines, four grand-nephews of Patiom- 
 kine, the son of the Field-Marshal Count Salty- 
 kof, the son of the hetman Branicki, the young 
 Count Chouvalof, who afterwards accompanied 
 Napoleon to Elba, and young Valentine Ester- 
 hazy, all have their share. Little Ribeaupierre 
 lives under her Majesty's roof till the age of 
 twelve. On sending him away, Catherine wishes 
 him to write to her, and she replies to his letter 
 in her own handwriting. But her letter is so full 
 of erasures she has not, this time, taken the 
 trouble to begin over again that she has it 
 copied out by her secretary, Popof, who after- 
 wards sends on the original. 
 
 After children, we dare not say before, but it 
 would perhaps be more correct, dogs, and ani- 
 mals in general, play a large part in Catherine's 
 private life. The family of Sir Tom Anderson 
 is certainly, of all the families of the empire, the 
 one whose position at court is most solidly 
 established. Here is the list, in one of the 
 Empress's letters 
 
 ' First comes the head of the race, Sir Tom 
 Anderson, his spouse, Duchess Anderson, their 
 children, the young Duchess Anderson, Mr. 
 Anderson, and Tom Thomson : the last is 
 established at Moscow under the guardianship of 
 Prince Volkonski, Governor- General of the city. 
 There are also, besides these, whose reputation 
 
 2 B
 
 386 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 is made, four or five young people of infinite 
 promise, who are being brought up in the best 
 houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as for 
 example that of Prince Orlof, MM. Narychkine, 
 and Prince Toupiakine. Sir Tom Anderson has 
 taken as second wife Mile. Mimi, who has since 
 taken the name of Mimi Anderson. But up to 
 now there is no family. Besides these legitimate 
 marriages (since the faults as well as the virtues 
 of people must be told in their history) M. Tom 
 has had several illegitimate attachments : the 
 Grand Duchess has several pretty bitches who 
 have greatly taken him, but up to the present no 
 bastards have been seen, and it would seem that 
 there are none ; anything to the contrary is a 
 mere calumny.' 
 
 But Catherine was not content with dogs 
 alone. In 1785 she takes a fancy to a white 
 squirrel, which she brings up herself, and feeds 
 out of her hand with nuts. And about the same 
 time she gets a monkey, of whose cleverness and 
 pretty ways she often boasts. ' You should have 
 seen/ she writes to Grimm, ' the amazement of 
 Prince Henry ' (brother of the King of Prussia) 
 ' one day when Prince Potemkin let loose a 
 monkey in the room, with which I began to play, 
 instead of going on with the conversation we 
 were engaged in. He opened his eyes, but in 
 spite of all, he could not resist the tricks of the 
 monkey.' At that time she had also a cat, the 
 present of Prince Patiomkine : ' the most tom-cat 
 of all tom-cats, gay, witty, not obstinate.' The 
 present is in return for a service in Sevres 
 porcelain, which she has had made for the 
 favourite, saying that it was for her, 'so that it
 
 HOME LIFE 387 
 
 should be finer.' The Anderson family, however, 
 loses none of its rights. 'You will excuse me,' 
 says the Empress in one of her letters, ' if all 
 the preceding page is very badly written. I am 
 extremely hampered at the moment by a certain 
 young and fair Zemire, who of all the Thomassins 
 is the one who will come closest to me, and who 
 pushes her pretensions to the point of having her 
 paws on my paper.' 
 
 Let us quote also this fragment of the Sou- 
 venirs of Madame Vigee-Lebrun : ' When the 
 Empress had returned to town, I used to see her 
 every morning open the shutters and throw out 
 crumbs to hundreds of rooks who came every 
 day at the same hour to seek their pittance. In 
 the evening, about ten, when the rooms were lit 
 up, I used also; to see her send for her grand- 
 children and some persons of the court, to play at 
 hot cockles and hide-and-seek.' 
 
 Madame Vigee-Lebrun lodged in a house op- 
 posite to the imperial palace. Regardless of local 
 colour, legend has since transformed the rooks 
 into pigeons ; but, legend or history, does not all 
 that the one and the other tell us of the tastes 
 and habits of Catherine stand out in anything 
 but the colours of a Messalina ? Doubtless the 
 objection that we have ourselves raised retains 
 its force. Is what we know of the interior of a 
 palace in which Catherine dwelt in company with 
 an Orlof or a Patiomkine the whole truth, the 
 true truth, as the Italians say? Doubt is the 
 first virtue of the historian, and we would not 
 forget it. Nevertheless, as we have already said, 
 Catherine was no hypocrite ; she lived openly 
 before the world, and she had the pride, or the
 
 388 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 shamelessness, to seek no disguise, and to defy 
 rebuke, at the point where our respect and admira- 
 tion must needs forsake her. 
 
 in 
 
 From the outside, the Empress's life offers 
 little material for the chronicler, favourably in- 
 clined or the reverse. 
 
 Apart from the great tours which stand out in 
 the history of her reign, that in the Crimea for 
 instance, she preferred generally to keep within 
 the bounds of her vast and luxurious palaces. 
 Sometimes, during the carnival, on a tine sunny 
 day, she would make a longer expedition. Three 
 great sledges, drawn by ten or twelve horses, 
 carried her and her ordinary retinue. To each of 
 these sledges a dozen smaller ones were fastened 
 on behind with ropes, and into these the lords 
 and ladies of the court crowded pell-mell, and the 
 strange cavalcade set out at a gallop. They have 
 dinner in the suburbs of the capital, in the 
 Tchesme Palace, and afterwards cross the Neva 
 and go on as far as Gorbilevo, an imperial villa 
 where there are montagnes russes ; returning to 
 the Taurida Palace for supper. On one of these 
 excursions, after having dined and returned to 
 her place in one of the large sledges, which she 
 has all to herself, Catherine inquires of her squire 
 if the drivers and lackeys have had their dinner. 
 On his replying in the negative, she gets down 
 from the sledge. ' They want dinner as much as 
 we do/ she says. And, as there is no meal ready 
 for them, she waits patiently until the hunger of 
 the poor servants is appeased.
 
 HOME LIFE 389 
 
 But these escapades are rare. The sovereign 
 does not care to be seen too often, except in her 
 palace, in the midst of the decorative mise-en- 
 scene that surrounds her ; she fears to lessen her 
 prestige. One day when she has a headache, 
 and a walk in the open air has done her good, 
 she is recommended to try it again next day, the 
 headache having returned. ' What would the 
 people say,' she replies, ' if they saw me in the 
 street two days following ? ' Twice in the course 
 of the winter she goes to the masked ball. 
 Those whom she invites to accompany her find 
 masks and costumes at the court. Generally, on 
 these occasions, in order the better to preserve 
 her incognito, Catherine goes in some one else's 
 coach. She likes to put on a man's costume, and 
 to puzzle the women, to whom she pays court, 
 and whose curiosity she puts off the track. Her 
 voice, rather deep, lends itself to this disguise. 
 One of those whose fancy she takes, carrying her 
 imaginary conquest to some lengths, is so curious 
 that she ends by violently tearing off the mask of 
 the mysterious cavalier. Catherine is very angry, 
 but she merely reproaches the too susceptible 
 fair one of having broken the etiquette in usage 
 at/dtes of this kind. 
 
 She accepts no invitations. The opulent 
 Prince of Taurida, Count Razoumofski, Prince 
 Field -Marshal Galitzine, the two Narychkines, 
 the Countess Bruce, and Madame Batiouchkine 
 are almost the only persons who have sometimes 
 the honour of having her as guest. But as a rule 
 she will not have herself announced, delighting 
 in the confusion caused by her unexpected ap- 
 parition.
 
 39 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 In spring she leaves the Winter Palace for the 
 Taurida Palace, when that magnificent abode, 
 built by Patiomkine, has been bought by her 
 from the wealthy favourite. She generally goes 
 there on Palm Sunday, and pays her Easter 
 devotions. She remains there till the month of 
 May, when she returns to the shades of Tzar- 
 skoie-Sielo. This abode that she has built, in 
 place of the residences of Peterhof and Oranien- 
 baum, about which there cling too mournful 
 souvenirs, is the spot where she is most happy. 
 There, no more reception, no more court cere- 
 mony, no more tiresome audiences. Affairs even 
 are in some sort suspended, or at least reduced to 
 what is strictly necessary. The Empress rises 
 at six or seven, and begins her day with a walk. 
 Lightly dressed, a cane in her hand, she strolls 
 through her gardens. The faithful Pierekousihina, 
 a valet de ckambre, and a huntsman, are the 
 only ones who accompany her. But the Anderson 
 family, one may be sure, is of the party, and the 
 sovereign's presence is known from afar by the 
 joyous barking of the band that gambols before 
 her on the grass. Catherine is passionately fond 
 of gardening, and plantomania, as she calls that 
 taste, rivals with her the taste for building. She 
 follows, in this respect, the fashion of the age. 
 
 ' I am madly enamoured at present,' she writes 
 in 1772, 'of gardens in the English manner, 
 curved lines, gentle slopes, pools in the form of 
 lakes, archipelagos in terra firma, and I have a 
 profound scorn for straight lines. I hate foun- 
 tains that torture the water to make it take a 
 course contrary to nature : in a word anglomania 
 dominates my plantomania.' And five years
 
 HOME LIFE 391 
 
 later : ' I often enrage my gardeners, and more 
 than one German gardener has said to me : Aber, 
 mein Gott, was wird das werden ! I found that 
 the greater part were mere pedantic followers of 
 routine : the departures from routine that I often 
 propose to them horrify them, and, when I see 
 that routine is too strong for me, I employ the 
 first docile young gardener that comes to hand. 
 There is no one who laughs at my plantomania so 
 much as Count Orlof. He spies on me, mimics 
 me, makes fun of me, criticises me, but, on going 
 away, he asked me to look after his garden 
 during the summer, and this year I am going to 
 play pranks there after my own fashion. His 
 land is close to mine ; I am very proud that he 
 has recognised my merits as a gardener.' 
 
 The gardens of Tzarskoie are public. One 
 day, sitting on a bench with la Pierekousihina, 
 Catherine sees a man pass, a citizen of St. Peters- 
 burg, who, seeing the two old women, and not 
 recognising the sovereign, casts a scornful look 
 upon them, and goes on his way. La Pierekousi- 
 hina is indignant, but Catherine replies : ' What 
 would you have, Maria Savichna? Twenty 
 years ago that would not have happened to us ; 
 we have aged : it is our fault.' 
 
 After her walk, at nine, Catherine begins 
 work, and till six o'clock the rest of the day goes 
 on much as it does in town, except that there are 
 fewer officials and tedious clerkly people, and 
 that the private retinue is lessened. One or two 
 invited guests from the capital sometimes appear 
 at dinner. At six o'clock, another walk, this 
 time in larger numbers, but in the most complete 
 liberty. The Empress's grandchildren play at
 
 392 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 base-ball, with Count Razoumofski as umpire. 
 If it rains, Catherine gathers together her people 
 in the famous gallery of colonnades covered with 
 glass, in which one sees the busts of the great 
 men, ancient and modern, for whom she has a 
 particular admiration. 
 
 The foreign ministers are sometimes admitted 
 to share the pleasures of the imperial villegiatura\ 
 The Comte de Segur, who had this honour, thus 
 recounts his recollections of it : 
 
 'Catherine II. had the extreme kindness to show 
 me herself all the beauties of this magnificent 
 pleasure-house, whose limpid waters, fresh groves, 
 elegant pavilions, noble architecture, priceless 
 furniture, cabinets panelled in porphyry, in lapis- 
 lazuli, in malachite, had a fairy-like air, and recalled 
 to those who admired them the palace and gardens 
 of Armida. . . . The entire liberty, the gaiety of 
 conversation, the absence of all ennui and con- 
 straint, might have made me believe, had I 
 turned away my eyes from the imposing majesty 
 of the Palp.ce of Tzarskoie-Sielo, that I was in 
 the country among the pleasantest of private 
 people. . , . M. de Cobenzel manifested his 
 unquenchable gaiety ; M. Fitz-Herbert, a fine and 
 finished wit ; General Potemkin, an originality 
 that made him always new, even during his 
 frequent moments of moroseness or dreaminess. 
 The Empress chatted familiarly on all subjects, 
 politics excepted ; she liked to hear amusing 
 stories, and to tell them, and if by chance the 
 conversation flagged, the chief equerry, Narych- 
 kine, recalled the laughter and gaiety by his 
 mad humour. Catherine worked almost all the 
 morning, and we were all free to write, read,
 
 HOME LIFE 393 
 
 walk, or do whatever we felt inclined. The 
 dinner, very limited as to dishes and guests, was 
 good, simple, without display ; the time after 
 dinner was devoted to play and conversation. 
 In the evening the Empress retired early, and 
 after that we met together, Cobenzel, Fitz- 
 Herbert, and I, either in the room of one of our 
 number, or in Prince PotemkinV 
 
 Catherine rested in this pleasant retreat from 
 the fatigues of her position, from those especially 
 which came from the necessity of her presence in 
 the court festivities and ceremonies. We owe 
 our readers a few words on the celebrated soire'es 
 of the Hermitage. 
 
 In the amplitude of its proportions, the magni- 
 ficence of its interior decoration, the palace thus 
 called did not by any means answer to its name. 
 A series of rooms and galleries led to a circular 
 salle de spectacle, a reduced copy of the ancient 
 theatre at Vicenza. The receptions were of 
 three different kinds, the great receptions, the 
 medium, and the small. To the first were ad- 
 mitted generally all the persons of distinction and 
 the foreign ministers. Balls alternated with 
 performances, in which all the famous artists took 
 part : Sarti, Cimarosa, Paisiello conducted the 
 orchestra; Biotti, Puniani, Dietz, Lulli, Michel, 
 displayed their talents on different instruments; 
 la Gabrielli, la Todi, the baritone Marches}, 
 the tenor Majorletti, sang ; in pantomime there 
 were Pic, Rossi, Santini, Canucciani. After the 
 concerts and Italian operas came the performances 
 of Russian comedies and plays, with Volkof, 
 Dmitrefski, Choumski, Kroutitski, Tchernikof, 
 Sandounoff, la Trepolska'ia. The French drama
 
 394 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 and opera also had their place, with Sedaine, 
 Philidor, Gretry, whose works found elegant 
 interpreters, such as the famous Aufresne. At 
 the ball, each lady had two cavaliers, who supped 
 with her. After supper one more polonaise was 
 danced, and the ball was over before ten. 
 
 The medium receptions differed from the 
 grand receptions merely by the smaller number 
 of guests. 
 
 Quite different was the character of the small 
 receptions. As a rule no one was present except 
 the members of the imperial family and some 
 special friends carefully selected a score of 
 people in all. An invitation to a stranger was a 
 mark of exceptional favour, to which the greatest 
 value was attached. In the orchestra, when 
 there was a play, as was often the case, there 
 were sometimes only three or four picked musi- 
 cians, Dietz with his violin, Delfini with his 
 violoncello, Cardon with his harp. After the 
 play, every one did as he liked. In the rooms 
 thrown open to the guests there was really no 
 longer un soupfon dimpe'ratrice, as she is made 
 to say to the Baron Grimm in a passage of 
 his memoirs. On the walls is a notice : it is 
 forbidden, among other things, to rise before the 
 sovereign, even if one is sitting down, and the 
 Empress comes over, and chooses to enter into 
 conversation while standing. It is forbidden to 
 have an ill-tempered air, to exchange unkind 
 words, to speak ill of any one whatever. It is 
 forbidden to remember the quarrels or the friend- 
 ships that one may have out of doors : they must 
 be left at the door, with sword and hat. It is 
 forbidden also to lie and to talk idly. A fine of
 
 HOME LIFE 395 
 
 ten kopecks, which is received in a poor-box, is 
 inflicted on those who break these rules. Bez- 
 borodko is appointed cashier. Among the habitues 
 there is one who, by his constant blunders, con- 
 tinually has the cashier after him with his money- 
 box. One day when the bore has gone before 
 the other guests, Bezborodko says to the Empress 
 that she ought to refuse him admission to the 
 Hermitage, otherwise he will ruin himself in 
 fines. 'Let him be,' replies Catherine, 'after 
 having passed the day in hearing your reports 
 and those of your colleagues, I need some rest, 
 and such idle talk is quite pleasant.' ' Then, 
 Matouchka,' says Bezborodko, 'come and pay 
 us a visit in the senate : you will get as much 
 of it as ever you want.' 
 
 Games are all the rage in these gatherings, 
 and Catherine herself is the life and soul of the 
 company, stirring up the gaiety of her guests, 
 and authorising every liberty. The forfeits are, 
 to drink a glass of water at one draught, to recite 
 a passage of the Tttimachide of Trediakofski 
 without yawning, etc. The evening ends with a 
 game of cards. Often, in the middle of a rubber, 
 the sovereign is interrupted to execute some 
 forfeit. ' What must I do ? ' she asks meekly. 
 'Sit on the ground, Matouchka.' She obeys at 
 once. 
 
 All that is far enough from the imaginary 
 orgies which haunted the minds of her contem- 
 poraries. In a way, it is true, Catherine afforded 
 some excuse for suppositions of this kind, which 
 have done some harm to her reputation. She 
 had from the first, and she kept to the last, 
 ways and manners which are unusual enough in
 
 396 CATHERINE IL OF RUSSIA 
 
 sovereigns. In 1763 the Baron de Breteuil, 
 just as he was leaving his post, received from her 
 the following letter, the style of which might 
 have surprised a diplomatist accustomed to the 
 ceremonious forms in use in courts : 
 
 ' Monsieur le Baron de Breteuil will have the 
 kindness to be at the cottage, on whose beauty 
 he has promised to keep eternal secrecy, on 
 Sunday at eleven o'clock in the morning, and if 
 he will be so good, he will remain till after supper 
 on the pretext of paying a visit to Count Orlof.' 
 
 The note, without date or signature, was in 
 the Empress's handwriting. The cottage referred 
 to was a villa newly built in the neighbourhood 
 of Moscow. Breteuil answered as follows : 
 
 'The Baron de Breteuil renews his vows ot 
 secrecy in regard to the cottage, where he looks 
 forward to the pleasure of being publicly admitted 
 on Sunday at eleven o'clock. He will be there, 
 in all respect and gratitude, and he will take 
 advantage of the kind permission to remain all 
 day, but M. le Comte d'Orlof will excuse him 
 from making the pretext of paying him a visit.' 
 
 One would say that this was written at the 
 dictation of the Baroness. But if she really 
 saw anything dubious in the sovereign's invita- 
 tion, she was well deceived, and her husband 
 well taken aback, when he found out the real 
 cause of it.
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 397 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 
 
 CATHERINE did not show a very profound affec- 
 tion for her parents ; she seemed to forget that 
 she had a brother ; she was on bad terms with 
 her husband, if she had not even some share, 
 direct or indirect, in his tragic end ; finally, her 
 son, the only one of her legitimate children who 
 survived her, had not much cause for gratitude 
 to her, if even, as it has been supposed, she did 
 not think of disinheriting him. These are facts. 
 It has been inferred from this that she had no 
 sort of family feeling, and that even the maternal 
 feeling, found in the lowest of the low, and even 
 among the animals, was alien to her cold and 
 corrupt heart, depraved by ambition and by vice. 
 These are questions to be considered. 
 
 What were the relations of Catherine with her 
 husband, we have already said. Her relations 
 with the heir to the throne have been variously 
 interpreted. Some have imagined them to have 
 been excellent up to the time of Paul's first 
 marriage. From this moment the presence of a 
 stranger may have exercised, in their regard, 
 a jarring influence, such as one finds in the 
 history of many families. Besides this, in the 
 first year of this union, in 1774, a conspiracy 
 is said to have been discovered, the aim of which 
 was to raise the Grand Duke to the throne in 
 place of his mother, and at the head of this plot
 
 398 CA THER1NE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 was the new daughter-in-law of Catherine, the 
 Grand Duchess Nathalie Aleksieievna, nte Prin- 
 cess of Darmstadt. A secretary of Count Panine, 
 Bakounine, betrayed the secret to the Empress, 
 who threw the list of conspirators in the fire : 
 among the names she had found that of her 
 Prime Minister, side by side with her former 
 friend, Princess Dachkof. 
 
 This story, which is founded merely on a family 
 tradition, has been doubted by many. It raises, 
 in fact, many objections. Plots, real or imagin- 
 ary, having for object the support of the incon- 
 testable rights of the son of Peter III., were 
 frequent throughout the whole reign of Catherine. 
 In his despatch of June 26, 1772, Count Solms 
 notifies to Frederick the discovery of an intrigue 
 of this kind set on foot by some officers of the 
 Preobrajenski regiment. But he speaks also of 
 blows of the knout distributed, of noses and ears 
 cut off. Such was the natural order of things. 
 The fact admitted of an almost hostile tension 
 between mother and son, in place of the former 
 harmonious, if never very intimate and affec- 
 tionate, relations, another explanation has been 
 given and another date attributed to this change 
 of things. The tour that Paul wished to make in 
 Europe, in company with his second wife, the 
 Grand Duchess Maria of Wurtemberg, brought 
 about the crisis. Having authorised this excur- 
 sion only against her will, Catherine wished her 
 son, at all events, not to stop at Berlin. She was 
 on the point of breaking with the court there. 
 Paul took no heed of all that. He let himself 
 be feted, flattered, and cajoled by Frederick, and 
 when he made his appearance at Vienna, people
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 399 
 
 were astonished to find that he knew nothing, 
 or professed to know nothing, of the alliance 
 which had already linked that court with his. 
 He put himself forward everywhere as a severe 
 critic of his mother's policy. At Florence, 
 talking with Leopold, the brother of Joseph, 
 he expressed himself in the most unguarded 
 manner in reference to the principal assistants 
 of Catherine, Prince Patiomkine, Bezborodko, 
 Panine himself, declaring that they were all 
 without exception in the pay of the Emperor. 
 ' I will stamp them all out/ he repeated wrath- 
 fully. 
 
 This second version seems to us as arbitrary 
 as the first, and neither appears to have any 
 foundation ; it remains to be proved that at 
 any period whatever Catherine treated her son 
 better than she did after his marriage, or after 
 the 'grand tour' which separated them for a 
 time. Doubtless, in her letters to Madame Bielke, 
 which date from 1772, it pleases the sovereign 
 to paint in the most agreeable colours the life 
 that she leads at Tzarskoie, in company with 
 Paul ; but we know already what Catherine's 
 epistolary sincerity is worth. Doubtless also, 
 in the course of the September of that year, 
 the Prussian ambassador, Count Solms, mentions 
 several times a revival of tender demonstrations 
 of the Empress to the Grand Duke. ' She 
 cannot make a step without having him with 
 her,' he writes. But this is at the very height 
 of the crisis which, in separating the sovereign 
 from her first favourite, and thus putting her at 
 variance with the powerful tribe of the Orlofs, 
 causes her serious misgivings as to the security
 
 400 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 of her throne. ' I know on sure authority,' adds 
 Solms, ' that the Grand Duke is not too sure 
 himself of the meaning of this excess of friend- 
 liness on the part of his mother.' And not 
 without reason. About the same time, writing 
 to her son, and beginning her letter twice over, 
 Catherine first wrote these words : 
 
 ' It seems to me that you were either afflicted 
 or sulky during the day ; both would distress 
 me as a mother ; but as for the sulkiness, I 
 confess I am not much concerned about that, 
 either as mother or as Empress.' 
 
 She tore up the page, and began again thus : 
 
 ' It seems to me that you were either afflicted 
 or sulky during the day; if you were in affliction, 
 I should be distressed by it ; if it was sullenness, 
 I leave you to imagine what attention I should 
 pay to that.' 
 
 But the first draft probably rendered her 
 thought more exactly, and it does not indicate, 
 to our view, very cordial relations. Catherine 
 supposed that the affliction or sulkiness of the 
 Grand Duke came from her refusal to admit 
 him to her council, and this refusal was assuredly 
 not in itself a proof of confidence or affection. 
 As early as 1764 Berenger wrote from St. Peters- 
 burg to the Duke of Praslin 
 
 ' This young Prince gives evidence of dark 
 and dangerous dispositions. It is known that 
 his mother does not love him, and that, since 
 her accession, she shows. him none of the marks 
 of tenderness that she showered upon him be- 
 fore. ... He asked, a few days ago [Berenger 
 had this detail from one of the Grand Duke's 
 valets de chambre\, why his father had died, and
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 401 
 
 why the throne which belonged to him had been 
 given to his mother. He added that when he 
 was grown up, he would get at the bottom of 
 all that They say that the child makes too 
 many such remarks for them not to reach the 
 ears of the Empress. Now, no one doubts that 
 this Princess takes all possible precautions against 
 such an event.' 
 
 It is possible, however, that the tour under- 
 taken by Paul against the wish of his mother, 
 and the attitude that he often assumed on that 
 occasion, may have helped to bring about some 
 ill-feeling on the part of the Empress, and to 
 urge her forward on a path on which her ac- 
 cession to the throne, that is to say, properly 
 speaking, her usurpation of the rights of her 
 son, had made her enter. 
 
 But the intimacy and affection had ceased 
 before this. They were incompatible with the 
 respective position of these two beings, one of 
 whom had violently taken the place of the other. 
 Had these affectionate feelings and relations 
 ever existed? Could Catherine ever have had 
 a mother's heart for the child who had been 
 torn from her arms as soon as he was born, 
 whom she had never nursed, whom she had 
 never brought up, whom she had never even seen 
 except at rare intervals ? Did she ever really 
 shower upon him those caresses of which Beren- 
 ger speaks ? Perhaps, before she had become 
 Empress, when the child, her son, might one day 
 become her Emperor and her master. If there 
 was a change in her demeanour, the event must 
 have been simultaneous with that of July 5, 1762, 
 as indeed the report of the French chargt- 
 
 2 c
 
 403 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 d'affaires clearly indicates, and the reason is 
 sufficiently apparent. 
 
 ii 
 
 We have already spoken several times of the 
 tour of the Count and Countess du Nord. The 
 departure, which took place on October 5, 1781, 
 produced a great sensation at St. Petersburg. 
 The people surrounded the carriage which bore 
 the heir to the throne, with tears and sobs and 
 every sign of the warmest affection. Some 
 enthusiasts threw themselves under the wheels 
 of the carriage to hinder it from advancing. This 
 alone might well have alarmed Catherine. She 
 was, however, at first well pleased, rather than 
 otherwise, by the homage with which Paul 
 was greeted at Berlin. A conversation that 
 she had with her son, after his return, changed 
 her feelings on the subject. Then only she be- 
 thought herself that he had been made too much 
 of by Frederick. As Paul made no disguise of 
 his opinions and sympathies, she grew angry, 
 declaring in her wrath that after she was dead 
 ' Russia would become a Prussian province.' 
 
 The Grand Duke's travels were in the strictest 
 incognito. Their Highnesses refused even the 
 apartments that had been prepared for them, 
 putting up in furnished lodgings with all their 
 suite, which must have been considerable, since 
 it required sixty horses at every posting station. 
 Paul and his wife consented, however, to be 
 guests at Versailles for a few days, and their 
 visit seems to have left a favourable impression. 
 ' The Grand Duke,' wrote Marie Antoinette, the
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 403 
 
 day after their departure, ' has the air of an ardent 
 and impetuous man who holds himself in. ... 
 The King has not noticed that he professed ex- 
 travagant opinions/ There was a mythological 
 and allegorical fete at Trianon, where a young 
 Hebe particularly charmed the august spectators. 
 It was how can one record it without a pang ? 
 Madame Elizabeth ! The royal family wished 
 also to make good the reputation of French 
 hospitality. At Mouceaux (sic], in the gardens 
 of the Due de Chartres, ' after having traversed 
 a thousand winding byways, arched over with 
 sycamores, lilac-trees, Italian poplars, and a thou- 
 sand shrubs of the Indies ; after having breathed 
 the fresh air, and rested on plots of grass and 
 wild thyme, visited rustic huts and crumbling 
 Gothic manor-houses, the Comte and Comtesse^ 
 du Nord partook of the simple repast of the 
 labouring shepherds.' 
 
 At Paris the passage of their Highnesses, 
 coinciding with the effervescence of Russian 
 sympathies that we have noted above, had almost 
 the air of a triumphal progress. Everywhere 
 agreeable surprises were in store for the visitors. 
 At the Royal Library, a number of Russian 
 books were taken down for the Grand Duke's 
 benefit from the shelves, where no doubt they 
 found few readers, and the librarian, Desolnais, 
 called his attention to a volume that had served, 
 said he, in the education of a prince whom Paris 
 had long learned to admire, and was now learning 
 to love. It was a manual composed for the use 
 of Paul himself by the Archbishop Plato. Their 
 Highnesses did their utmost to repay all this 
 courtesy. After having reviewed Marshal Biron's
 
 404 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 regiment of Gardes-frar^aises, the Grand Duchess 
 sent to the marshal a gracious letter, enclosing 
 ten bank-notes of 1 200 francs, for the soldiers to 
 drink the health of their chief. The parsimony, 
 a forced parsimony indeed, of Paul in 1776 was 
 still remembered at Berlin, where the Grand Duke 
 had come to marry his second wife. Imperious 
 orders from St. Petersburg had cut short his 
 generous intentions. The proceeding was much 
 criticised, even at Paris, and the present differ- 
 ence was all the more appreciated. There was, 
 however, the painful incident of Clerisseau. 
 Paul, naturally, was surrounded in the capital 
 of arts and letters by the literary clique with 
 which his mother was connected. He did not 
 always give it satisfaction, or consider all its 
 susceptibilities. But for the distance which separ- 
 ated Paris from St. Petersburg, Catherine herself 
 might not have succeeded. Madame d'Ober- 
 kirch relates this scene in her memoirs, much as 
 follows. The scene took place at the house of 
 M. de la Reyniere, now occupied by the Cercle 
 de 1' Union Artistique. M. de la Reyniere was 
 a wealthy fermier-gdndral, and his house, which 
 was decorated by the best artists in Paris, 
 Clerisseau at their head, was famed as one of 
 the wonders of the city. Paul wished to see it. 
 He had already been introduced to the irascible 
 architect, and he had not been too attentive to 
 him : so at least Clerisseau thought, and he had 
 written a letter to Prince Bariatinski, the Grand 
 Duke's aide-de-camp a very dignified letter, 
 according to Grimm in which he had stated 
 that he would acquaint the Empress with the 
 reception that persons honoured by her esteem
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 405 
 
 met with from her son. A few days after, the 
 artist and the prince met in the dining-room 
 of de la Reyniere's house, one of C16risseau's 
 masterpieces. On entering, the Comte du Nord 
 perceived a man who bowed without speaking. 
 Paul returned the bow, but the man barred the 
 way. 
 
 ' What do you want, Monsieur ?' 
 
 'You do not recognise me, Monseigneur? ' 
 
 ' I recognise you perfectly ; you are the Sieur 
 Clerisseau.' 
 
 ' Why then do you not speak to me ? ' 
 
 ' Because I have nothing to say.' 
 
 ' Then you are going to be here as you were 
 at home, Monseigneur, slight me, treat me as a 
 stranger ; I, the architect of the Empress, and 
 in correspondence with her ! And I have written 
 to her, to complain of your unworthy treatment 
 of me.' 
 
 ' Write her also, then, that you are hindering 
 me from passing, Monsieur. She will certainly 
 thank you for it.' 
 
 The version that Grimm gives of the incident, 
 in his correspondence with Catherine, is quite 
 different, and it seems to us more probable. It 
 was Paul who first made overtures to Clerisseau, 
 wishing to repair the wrongs he might have done 
 him, showing himself most amiable, and recalling 
 the flattering words that he had used on their 
 first meeting. But Clerisseau cut short these 
 tardy demonstrations 
 
 ' Monsieur le Comte, you may have intended 
 to say all that to me, but I heard nothing of it.' 
 
 ' You must have neither ears nor memory, 
 then,' said Paul, with some heat.
 
 406 CA THERINE II, OF RUSSIA 
 
 With this, some people coming up just then, the 
 conversation ended. ' Never was I so uncivilly 
 used,' said the Grand Duke, laughing, to those 
 about him; 'it gave me quite a shock.' The 
 Grand Duchess tried to smooth over matters ; 
 but Clerisseau was unmanageable, and ended 
 by becoming rude. The Princess having asked 
 him to send her the plan and sketches of a salon 
 that she had admired, he replied dryly 
 
 ' I will send them to my august benefactress, 
 where Madame la Comtesse can have them.' 
 
 Catherine did not, in this circumstance, attempt 
 to justify her architect against the heir to her 
 throne; she knew too well the interests of her 
 rank and dignity ; but the incident doubtless 
 left an unpleasant impression on her mind : 
 she was only too much disposed to think her 
 son and heir a clumsy creature. The letters that 
 she sent to the travellers, during their absence, 
 were, however, always affectionately maternal. It 
 would seem even as if this separation exercised 
 a calming influence over her mind. When he 
 was present, and by her side, Paul became a 
 menace and a source of perpetual uneasiness. 
 Had it not been publicly stated that she was 
 only awaiting his coming of age to restore to 
 him his own, that is to say, the place that she 
 herself occupied ? 
 
 in 
 
 After his return these disagreements grew 
 worse. Paul and his wife complained that the 
 Empress took out of their hands the education of 
 their children. At the time of the Crimean tour,
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 407 
 
 Catherine had wished to take with her the little 
 Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine. This 
 time the parents' objections were so strong that 
 she hesitated to go against them. But questions 
 of policy played a considerable part in the 
 quarrel, which grew worse from day to day. In 
 July 1783 the Marquis de Ve>ac, then French 
 minister at St. Petersburg, wishing to prevent a 
 conflict between Russia and Turkey, renewed the 
 representations that the Court of Versailles never 
 ceased to urge, and complained of the unfavour- 
 able, almost scornful, reception that was given 
 them on the part of the Empress and her 
 ministers ; he insisted in these terms on an 
 antagonism in which he saw some hope for the 
 future : ' The Grand Duke is entirely opposed to 
 all this system of ideas ; this Prince, brought up 
 in the wise principles of the late Count Panine, 
 regards with mortal dissatisfaction the deplorable 
 state to which the empire has come through the 
 boundless prodigality of the Empress. He con- 
 siders the plan of campaign against the Turks a 
 project likely to lead Russia to utter ruin, and he 
 is personally much incensed against the Emperor, 
 whom he regards as the prime mover in the 
 matter.' 
 
 When the war had broken out, Catherine 
 objected to the Grand Duke's taking part in it. 
 ' It would be a fresh inconvenience,' she wrote to 
 Patiomkine. She allowed him to go to Finland, 
 during the Swedish war ; but Knorring, who 
 commanded the army in the field, declared after- 
 wards that he had been commanded not to 
 communicate to his Highness any plan of opera- 
 tions. In 1789, when there was question of a
 
 408 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 rupture with Prussia, the situation of Paul 
 assumed a certain likeness, irritating for Catherine, 
 but still more threatening for him, with that 
 occupied by Peter during the last years of 
 Elizabeth's reign. Dark rumours were in the 
 air. The famous Greek project of the Empress 
 was yet another source of continual conflict : on 
 the part of the Grand Duke it met with open 
 opposition. Finally, in the course of the changes 
 which came about from year to year in those who 
 were about the Empress, Paul sometimes went 
 so far as to forget his duty as a son, and, in 
 return, the favourites, whether Patiomkine or 
 Zoubof, did not feel obliged to be very respectful 
 to his Highness. One day, at table, the Grand 
 Duke having approved of an idea put forward 
 by Zoubof, ' Have I said anything stupid ? ' said 
 he. 
 
 The young count was frequently in difficulties 
 about money. In 1793, when Catherine was 
 engaged in looking through the accounts of the 
 court banker, Sutherland, who had made some 
 bad speculations, and was on the point of sus- 
 pending payment, her secretary, Dierjavine, 
 comes, in his enumeration of the assets, to a sum 
 due to the banker 'from a person in high position, 
 but who has the misfortune not to be loved by 
 the Empress.' Catherine was not long in dis- 
 covering who was meant. ' How absurd ! ' she 
 cries ; ' what does he want with such sums ? ' 
 Dierjavine ventures to observe that the late 
 Prince Patiomkine had been accustomed to borrow 
 much larger sums ; he points out some in Suther- 
 land's assets. The Empress pays no heed, and 
 the examination of the accounts goes on. They
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 409 
 
 come to another item of the ' person in high 
 position.' ' Another !' cries Catherine, furiously. 
 ' No wonder, after that, Sutherland became 
 bankrupt ! ' Dierjavine thinks the occasion 
 favourable to pay a bad turn to the new favourite, 
 Plato Zoubof, by whom he does not consider 
 himself sufficiently well paid. He turns to a 
 long sum recently put to his account. The 
 Empress, without replying, rings a bell. ' Is 
 there any one in the secretary's room ? ' she asks. 
 There is Vassili Stiepanovitch Popof. ' Send 
 him in.' Popof enters. ' Sit down there, and do 
 not leave me till the end of this report. This 
 gentleman ' (pointing to Dierjavine) ' wishes to 
 come to blows with me, I think.' 
 
 At this period the Grand Duke lives with his 
 wife at Gatchina or Pavlovsk, entirely apart from 
 his mother and also from his children, who are 
 with her, and whom he sometimes does not see 
 for months together. To see them he requires 
 the permission of Count Saltykof, their governor. 
 We have already spoken of the opinion, general 
 enough during the last years of Catherine's reign, 
 according- to which she intended to disinherit her 
 son. This measure was hoped for by a large 
 number of persons. A manifesto deciding this 
 important point was anxiously expected. It was 
 thought that it would appear on January I, 1797. 
 According to one version, the manifesto was 
 already drawn up, and was intended to inaugurate 
 constitutional government in Russia under the 
 sceptre of Alexander, the character of Paul being 
 utterly opposed to the adoption of this form of 
 government. In the memoirs of Engelhardt, in 
 a fragment of the memoirs of Dierjavine, which
 
 410 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 has been preserved, there is, on the other hand, 
 some reference to a testament of the Empress, 
 having the same object, except for the enigmatic 
 and doubtful introduction of constitutionalism, so 
 little in accord with the ideas then prevailing in 
 the mind of Catherine. The Ode written by 
 Dierjavine for the coronation of Alexander seems 
 to allude to it, as well as a curious document 
 which circulated after the death of the Empress 
 under the title, Catherine II. in the Elysian 
 Fields. The sovereign reproaches Bezborodko, 
 to whom the testament in question was supposed 
 to have been confided, with having inflicted the 
 reign of Paul on her country. 
 
 It is certain that in alluding, frequently enough, 
 in her correspondence, to the future of Russia 
 after her death, Catherine never speaks of the 
 reign of her son. It is always Alexander whom 
 she speaks of as her heir. According to certain 
 authorities, she finally took stringent measures 
 against the difficulties that she anticipated on the 
 part of the natural heir. 
 
 Mother and son now met only in official 
 ceremonies. They exchanged ceremonious 
 letters. During the very short visit of the Grand 
 Duke to the army in Finland, where he soon 
 discovered that he had nothing to do, the cor- 
 respondence is almost daily. It recalls a little 
 that of the King of Spain with Maria of 
 Neubourg, in the version that Victor Hugo has 
 given of it. Here is a specimen : 
 
 1 My dear Mother, The letter of your Imperial 
 Majesty has caused me the greatest pleasure, 
 and I am deeply touched by what is said in it. 
 I beg her to accept the expression of my grati-
 
 FAMIL Y LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 411 
 
 tude, and at the same time that of the respect 
 and affection with which I am . . .' 
 
 Here is Catherine's reply : 
 
 ' I have received, my dear son, your letter of 
 the 5th, with the expression of your sentiments, 
 to which mine respond. Good-bye. I hope 
 you are well.' 
 
 The letters are all after this fashion, almost 
 without variation. 
 
 IV 
 
 What bears witness against Catherine in these 
 unhappy events the seamy side of the splen- 
 dours of the great reign is the way in which 
 she acted in regard to another son, in whom 
 there was nothing to alarm her ambition or her 
 responsibility as a sovereign. She had, as we 
 know, a second son, a love-child, who was known 
 as Bobrinski. Did she love him? It does not 
 seem so. Did she look after his welfare? She 
 gave him enough to live comfortably, to travel 
 abroad, and even to commit some extravagances. 
 He carried them to excess : she hears of it, 
 and betrays an astonishing indifference on the 
 subject. 
 
 ' What,' she writes to Grimm, ' is this affair of 
 Bobrinski? The young man is singularly un- 
 concerned. ... If you could manage to find 
 out the state of his affairs at Paris, you would 
 oblige me. . . . However, he ought to be well 
 able to pay his way ; he has 30,000 roubles a 
 year.' 
 
 Two years afterwards she writes 
 
 ' It is tiresome that M. Bobrinski will get into
 
 4 i2 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 debt ; he knows the amount of his income, 
 and is quite honest. Beyond that, he has 
 nothing.' 
 
 It is thus that she announces her resolution 
 not to meet the debts of this son ; beyond the 
 modest quota that she allows him, he and his 
 creditors must not count upon her. And she 
 keeps her word. At the end of 1787 young 
 Bobrinski is in Paris, in the greatest distress, 
 several million francs in arrears, besides the 
 amount that he owes in London, whence he has 
 just fled his creditors. For one thing, he has 
 given the Marquis de Ferrieres a bill of credit 
 for 1,400,000 francs. Catherine up to now has 
 made no attempt to arrest this disordered career. 
 She now makes up her mind to act ; she recalls 
 the young man to Russia, and confines him to 
 Revel, where she has all his movements carefully 
 watched, without, however, caring to see him or 
 to know what becomes of him. As long as he 
 leaves her in peace, and does not ask her for 
 money, and she does not hear him referred to, 
 she is quite satisfied. 
 
 Nothing could be more definite than that. 
 But is there no touch of nature in the heart of 
 this insensible mother? How can we maintain 
 the contrary ? But how also can we affirm it ? 
 We have seen her relations with her son. But 
 now let us see her relations with her grand- 
 children. From 1779 onwards, every day at half- 
 past ten, the little Alexander is brought to her. 
 ' I have said it to you before and I say it to you 
 again,' she writes to Grimm, ' I dote on the little 
 monkey. . . . Every day we make new acquaint- 
 ances, that is to say that of every toy we make
 
 FAMIL Y LIFE THE GRAND D UKE PAUL 413 
 
 ten or twelve, and we try which of the two can 
 best develop his talents. It is extraordinary how 
 industrious we have become. . . . After dinner 
 my little monkey comes back as often as he likes, 
 and he spends three or four hours a day in my 
 room.' The same year she begins to teach his 
 ABC to 'Mr. Alexander, who cannot yet talk, 
 and who is only a year and a half old.' As we 
 have seen, she makes his clothes for him. ' This 
 is how he has been dressed ever since he was six 
 months old,' she says, when sending to Grimm 
 the facsimile of a costume of her invention. ' All 
 that is sewn together, and goes on at once, and 
 fastens behind with four or five little hooks. . . . 
 There is no ligature anywhere, and the child 
 scarcely knows that he is being dressed : his 
 arms and legs are put into the dress at once, and 
 it is all done ; it is a stroke of genius on my part, 
 this dress. The King of Sweden and the Prince 
 of Prussia have demanded and received a pattern 
 of the dress of Mr. Alexander.' Then come the 
 inevitable anecdotes that we find in the letters of 
 all mothers, in which are narrated day by day 
 the great deeds of the infant prodigy, the clever 
 sayings, the indications of intelligence, 'wonder- 
 ful for his age.' One day when the precious 
 ' little monkey ' is ill and shivering with fever, 
 Catherine finds him at the door of her room, 
 wrapped up in a great cloak. She asks what that 
 is for, and the child replies, ' It is a sentinel dying 
 of cold.' One day he asks one of the Empress's 
 femmes de chambre whom he is like. ' Your 
 mother,' she replies ; ' you have all her features, 
 her nose, her mouth.' 'No, not that; but my 
 temper, my ways, what are they like ? ' ' Oh, in
 
 414 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 that you are more like grandmamma than any- 
 body.' Thereupon the little Grand Duke throws 
 his arms round the old woman's neck, and kisses 
 her effusively. ' That is what I wanted you to 
 say ! ' 
 
 This story is very significant in regard to the 
 place that Paul and Catherine occupied respec- 
 tively in this family, in which the widow of 
 Peter III. usurps all the supremacy. Read one 
 more passage from a letter to Grimm, referring to 
 the adored little being : ' He will, to my thinking, 
 become a most wonderful personage indeed, 
 provided the secondaterie does not hinder his 
 progress.' 
 
 Secondat, secondaterie, are words after the 
 manner of Catherine, used by her to describe her 
 son and her daughter-in-law, as well as the 
 educational, political, and all kinds of ideas that 
 prevail at Pavlovsk, and are in general entirely 
 opposed to her own. 
 
 The little Constantine does not at first get into 
 the good graces of his grandmother to the same 
 extent as his brother. Catherine finds him too 
 frail, too delicate, for an Empress's grandson. 
 ' As for the other,' she says, after having spoken 
 enthusiastically of Alexander, ' I would not give 
 ten sous for him ; I am very much mistaken if he 
 is likely to live very long.' But by and by the 
 younger wins his way. With time the child 
 grows and becomes stronger, and, dreams of 
 Byzantine sovereignty showing themselves on 
 the horizon, the affection of Catherine awakens 
 little by little for the nursling of the Greek 
 Helen. 
 
 Alas ! it must needs be said that her state
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 415 
 
 policy plays its part, and even a main part, in 
 this chapter of the great sovereign's history. 
 Policy ! we are sure to find that wherever we 
 follow Catherine: in her feelings as in her 
 thoughts, in her likes as in her dislikes, and her 
 family feelings themselves make no exception to 
 the rule. It is there, to our mind, that we must 
 seek the starting-point and the solution of all the 
 doubts, all the enigmas, to which the study that 
 this book is devoted to may give rise. Naturally, 
 as we think, in this woman, who, in certain sides 
 of her character and certain details of her conduct, 
 deserves all reprobation, as on other sides she 
 merits all the praise, the moral sensibility, without 
 being of a high order, was neither absent, as 
 some have fancied, nor yet deadened, nor vitiated 
 and reduced to the level of the lowest instincts. 
 Her heart was on a level with her mind, which, 
 as we have intimated, never reached a very great 
 elevation. She could love, but she subordinated 
 love, as she subordinated everything else, to the 
 motive force of her life, which was of exceptional 
 force and vigour : she lived, above all things, by 
 and for politics. At one time she loved the 
 handsome Orlof because he was handsome, but 
 also because he declared that he would risk his 
 life to give her a crown, and she believed him 
 capable of carrying out his word. She was cold 
 and even harsh towards Paul, a little because she 
 had not had the leisure to develop the maternal 
 sentiments, thwarted from the cradle, but very 
 much because she saw in him a dangerous riva) 
 in the present, and a pitiful successor in the 
 future. She manifested a passionate affection for 
 the little Alexander under the influence of just
 
 416 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 opposite causes, in the same category of ideas 
 and feelings. 
 
 The letters that she wrote to her grandchildren 
 when she was away from them, in 1783, during 
 her stay in Finland, in 1785, when she spent 
 some time in Moscow, and in 1787, during her 
 Crimean tour, are full of freshness, of communi- 
 cative warmth, of loving abandonment. It was a 
 great trial to her not to have them with her on 
 the fairyland roads of Taurida. It was a reason 
 of economy that decided her to cut short the 
 endless negotiations, on this subject, between St. 
 Petersburg and Pavlovsk : every day's delay cost 
 her 12,000 roubles. One may judge from that 
 what must have been the total expense of the 
 tour, which all Europe looked on in wonder- 
 ment. 
 
 Catherine had the opportunity, in directing 
 the education of Alexander and Constantine, of 
 applying her own theories in the matter. Her 
 success seems to have been doubtful. The sove- 
 reign was almost alone, it would seem, in being 
 satisfied with the progress of her scholars. La 
 Harpe, among others, did not share her opinion. 
 He had often to complain of the bad instincts and 
 defects that he found in the elder. He gives 
 several unpleasant enough traits. In 1796 the 
 visit of the young King of Sweden caused 
 comparisons to be made, not to the advantage of 
 the two boys. Catherine, however, did her best, 
 not allowing her affection to hinder her from a 
 sometimes necessary severity. One day she 
 noticed that in changing the squad on guard 
 under the windows of the palace the men were 
 kept under arms longer than was needful : it was
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 417 
 
 a sight intended for the little Grand Dukes. She 
 immediately sent for their tutor, and reprimanded 
 him severely. The service of the state, the 
 military service in particular, was not made for 
 the amusement of children. If the Grand Dukes 
 complained, they were to be informed that grand- 
 mamma had forbidden it. This was an accidental 
 instance of a very wise principle. But perhaps 
 the system as a whole was less wise. 
 
 Catherine was much concerned, and she was 
 the only one to concern herself, as to the marriage 
 of her grandchildren. The parents were not even 
 consulted. Paul was scarcely consulted, indeed, 
 in regard to his own marriage. Eleven German 
 princesses were successively brought to Russia 
 by the sovereign, solicitous as to the well-being of 
 her son and her grandchildren : three Princesses 
 of Darmstadt, three Princesses of Wiirtemberg, 
 two Princesses of Baden, and three Princesses of 
 Coburg. Choice was to be made from the lot. 
 The Princesses of Wtirtemberg only went as far 
 as Berlin, Frederick having insisted on Paul being 
 sufficiently gallant to come half way to meet his 
 fiancte. It was Prince Henry of Prussia, who 
 was at St. Petersburg in 17/6, who arranged the 
 marriage. The eldest of the Princesses was 
 already promised to the Prince of Darmstadt, but 
 it was understood that he would give her up if, 
 as Prince Henry wrote to his brother, 'he had 
 the least good feeling,' and did not desire to 
 trouble the happiness of two states.' The Prince 
 of Darmstadt did indeed prove his ' good feeling.' 
 Being deprived of the eldest, he turned his 
 attention to the younger, ' because, at bottom, 
 that came to the same thing.' Besides, as 
 
 2 D
 
 4i 8 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Frederick gave him to understand, the father of 
 the Princess had not waited to consult him before 
 ' playing for the biggest stake that presented 
 itself to his daughter.' He had had no difficulty 
 beyond that of finding a Lutheran minister suf- 
 ficiently ' enlightened ' to make the future Grand 
 Duchess understand that she would please God 
 by changing her religion. But, as the court of 
 St. Petersburg had sent 40,000 roubles for the 
 cost of the Princess's journey, 'a real help,' as 
 their mother said, to the rickety finances of the 
 family, that difficulty was soon overcome. 
 
 Two years later, the Princesses of Darmstadt 
 went all the way to St. Petersburg. Then came 
 the turn of the two Princesses of Baden- Durlach. 
 As they were orphans, the Countess Chouvalof, 
 widow of the author of the Epitre a Ninon, was 
 sent to bring them over ; and she was accom- 
 panied by a certain Strekalof, who appears to 
 have conducted himself like a Cossack who had 
 been ordered to carry off girls into Georgia. But 
 the German courts were not susceptible at this 
 time. On the arrival of the Princesses, the 
 Empress asked to see their trousseau. Having 
 examined it, she said, ' My friends, I was not so 
 rich as you when I arrived in Russia.' 
 
 The elder remained in Russia, and married 
 Alexander ; the younger returned to her own 
 country : Constantine would not have her. She 
 was only fourteen, and not yet developed. Later 
 on she married the King of Sweden. The/2/^.y 
 which were given on the occasion of the marriage 
 of Alexander mark the last brilliant and happy 
 moment of the reign of Catherine. The following 
 epithalamium was composed :
 
 FAMILY LIFE THE GRAND DUKE PAUL 419 
 
 ' Ni la reine de Thebes au milieu de ses filles, 
 Ni Louis et ses fils assemblant les families, 
 Ne formerent jamais un cercle si pompeux. 
 Trois generations vont fleurir devant elle, 
 Et c'est Elle toujours qui cbarmera nos yeux. 
 Fiere d'etre leur mere et non d'etre immortelle : 
 Telle est Junon parmi les dieux ! ' 
 
 The year after, the arrival of the Princess of 
 Saxe-Coburg with her three daughters produced 
 less effect. This time Catherine considered that 
 the belongings of their Highnesses were quite 
 too mean. Her own penury at the time of her 
 arrival in Russia was exceeded. The wardrobe 
 of the family had to be renewed before it was 
 presentable to the court, and Constantine, in 
 spite of all, was still unsatisfied. He ended, 
 however, by deciding on the youngest. 
 
 Catherine, then, resolutely disregarded certain 
 family affections and responsibilities imposed on 
 her both by nature and the proprieties ; she 
 entered into others with at least equal intensity. 
 We have pointed out the most admissible solu- 
 tion, in our eyes, of this moral problem ; we do 
 not profess that it answers every objection. 
 But, with regard to the great figures of history, 
 there are many of these insoluble enigmas, in 
 which no one can say the last word. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 
 
 I 
 
 THERE is a whole legend in regard to the love 
 affairs of Catherine. We shall try to replace it
 
 420 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 by a few pages of history. It is certainly not in 
 the character of historian that Laveaux has re- 
 corded Catherine's first taste of intrigue, at a 
 time when she had not yet arrived in Russia. 
 Even at Stettin she would have had as lover a 
 Count B., who imagined that he was marrying 
 her, when leading one of her friends to the altar. 
 It is an absurd fabrication. The small courts of 
 Germany were certainly not temples of virtue ; 
 nevertheless, at the age of fourteen, princesses 
 were not exactly on the streets. Afterwards, at 
 Moscow and at St. Petersburg, Laveaux shows us 
 Catherine abandoning herself to the first comer, 
 in the house of a Countess J., where she had in- 
 numerable lovers, who had no idea who she was. 
 Saltykof gives place to a Venetian actor named 
 Dalolio, who, in turn, arranges new rendezvous for 
 his mistress of a day in the house of lelaguine. 
 In all this Laveaux echoes mere on dits without the 
 slightest shadow of proof. Sabatier de Cabre is a 
 witness really well informed and really serious, and 
 one, too, who cannot be suspected of partiality. 
 Now, in a memorandum drawn up by him in 1772, 
 we read : ' Though not free from reproach, she is 
 far from the excess of which she has been accused ; 
 nothing has been proved beyond the three known 
 connections with M. Saltykof, the King of 
 Poland, and Count Orlof.' 
 
 On arriving in Russia, Catherine finds a court 
 and society, we dare not say more debauched than 
 those of the other great European centres, but at 
 least equally so, and, to crown it all, a form of 
 regal debauchery, similar also, though with an 
 inversion of roles, to the examples afforded 
 elsewhere by the morals of the time, by French
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 42 1 
 
 royalty among others. This is favouritism. 
 Since the death of Peter I. the throne of Russia 
 has been constantly occupied by women ; they 
 have lovers, as Louis XV. has mistresses, and, 
 when the imperial lover is called Biron, he is as 
 powerful in Russia as a royal mistress, when she 
 is called Pompadour, can be in France. As 
 Louis XIV. married Madame de Maintenon, so 
 Elizabeth marries Razoumofski. He is only the 
 son of a little Russian peasant, once choir-boy in 
 the imperial chapel ; but Scarron's widow is of 
 no very illustrious line. Choubine, who had 
 preceded Razoumofski, was a mere soldier in 
 the Guards : he was at all events the equivalent 
 of the du Barry. And, going back a little further, 
 when, by the cradle of Louis XIV., royalty had 
 provisionally fallen to the female line, the presence 
 of Signor Mazarini on the steps of the throne 
 must have seemed not less extraordinary to the 
 people who are easily astonished than, a hundred 
 and fifty years later, that of Patiomkine. Need 
 one even, to parallel the favourites of Catherine, 
 go back so far ? Struensee, Godoy, Lord Acton, 
 are contemporaries. 
 
 Favouritism in Russia is what it is or has been 
 elsewhere, allowing for the difference of scale. It 
 is just this which gives it, under the reign of 
 Catherine, a place apart. This time it is a 
 woman who has the gift of going to extremes 
 in everything. She has favourites, as Elizabeth 
 and Anne have had ; but urged by her tempera- 
 ment, her character, her inclination to do things 
 grandly, she gives unparalleled proportions to 
 this usual, traditional order or disorder of things. 
 Anne merely made Biihren the groom a Duke of
 
 422 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Courland ; Catherine makes Poniatowski King of 
 Poland. Elizabeth was content with two ad- 
 mitted favourites, Razoumofski and Chouvalof; 
 Catherine has them by dozens. Nor is this all. 
 Her mind is not only of vast reach, scorning the 
 ordinary limits, passionately desirous of what lies 
 beyond ; it is also, and especially, imperious, 
 absolute, disregardful of established rules, but 
 readily turning into rule or law the inspiration of 
 the moment, will or caprice. With Anne and 
 Elizabeth, favouritism is a mere caprice ; with 
 Catherine it becomes almost an institution of state. 
 It is only gradually, however, that things reach 
 this height. Up to 1772 Catherine is merely a 
 sovereign who takes her pleasures as all those 
 who preceded her on the same throne have done. 
 Her caprices are talked of just as were those of 
 Elizabeth, in the most unconcerned way. Writ- 
 ing to Frederick, the Comte de Solms does, it 
 is true, a propos of Gregory Orlof, make this 
 observation, that ' one might find to-day artisans 
 and lackeys who have been seated with him at 
 the same table ' ; but he adds, ' One is so ac- 
 customed to favouritism in Russia, so little sur- 
 prised at any rapid ascent, that one can but 
 applaud the choice of a young man who is mild 
 and polished in his manners, who betrays neither 
 pride nor vanity, who lives with his old acquaint- 
 ances on the same terms of familiarity, and never 
 loses sight of them in the crowd, avoiding mixing 
 himself up in affairs, except sometimes to recom- 
 mend a friend.' Gregory Orlof, it is true, does 
 not long content himself, or rather Catherine is 
 not contented on his behalf, with this modest and 
 retiring part, and the Comte de Solms writes
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 423 
 
 later on : 'Her Majesty's passion having in- 
 creased, she has wished to bring Orlof into 
 affairs. She has put him into the commissions 
 established for the reform of government.' And 
 it is then, if we may believe the Prussian am- 
 bassador, that discontent breaks out. The 
 hetman Razoumofski, Count Boutourline, both 
 generals aides-de-camp, do not willingly suffer 
 that a man who has been so far below them, 
 just before, should now become their equal. 
 Other lords, princes, and generals are scandal- 
 ised at being obliged to wait in the Sieur Orlof's 
 antechamber, to be admitted to his lever. Count 
 Cheremetief, the high chamberlain, one of the 
 first and wealthiest lords of the land, as well as 
 all whom their offices oblige to accompany the 
 Empress's carriage on horseback, see with dis- 
 satisfaction the favourite seated in the coach 
 beside their sovereign, while they trot by at 
 the side. 
 
 But that is an old tale, and those of the great 
 Russian lords who remember the favouritism of 
 Biron under the reign of the Empress Anne, the 
 Bironovchtchina, as the detested period has been 
 called, must find the present state of things very 
 acceptable in comparison, especially as Gregory 
 Orlof rarely shows much inclination to avail him- 
 self of the somewhat forced part that the loving 
 attentions of Catherine impose upon him in the 
 government of the country. His ambitious fits 
 are few and far between. Generally, as we have 
 pointed out, he merely obeys the exigencies of 
 the sovereign in this respect, and with a con- 
 strained and unwilling air. He is backward and 
 retiring, a lover of voluptuous ease, careless and
 
 424 CA THERINE 1L OF RUSSIA 
 
 inoffensive. On the giddy heights, in the intoxi- 
 cating atmosphere, where the stroke of fortune 
 has suddenly raised him, he lives in a half dream, 
 and a day comes when his reason gives way 
 altogether, sinking into the black abyss of 
 madness. 
 
 With him the weakness of Catherine has an 
 excuse, a defence ; the man has risked his life 
 for her, the man has given her a crown, and she 
 loves him, or imagines she loves him, with a love 
 not only of the senses. Separated from him, she 
 will suffer in all his sufferings, and at his death 
 she will shed real tears, tears coming from the 
 heart. 
 
 The scandal really commences only after the 
 disgrace of this first favourite. With Vassiltch- 
 kof, in 1772, it is the mere lust of the flesh, gross 
 and shameless. With Patiomkine, in 1774, it 
 is the division of power with mere chance lovers 
 that enters into the history of the reign. Then 
 comes the long procession of passing favours : in 
 June 1778 the Englishman Harris announces the 
 elevation of Korssakof ; in August, he speaks of 
 competitors who are already canvassing his suc- 
 cession, some supported by Patiomkine, others 
 by Panine and Orlof acting in concert ; in Sep- 
 tember, it is a certain Strahof, ' a low buffoon,' 
 who seems to win the day ; four months after, 
 it is a major of the Siemionofski Guards, a 
 certain Levachof, a young man protected by the 
 Countess Bruce, Svieikofski, stabs himself in 
 despair at seeing a rival preferred to himself. 
 Then Korssakof seems once more to gain the 
 upper hand. He struggles with a new com- 
 petitor, Stianof, then is blotted out entirely by
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 425 
 
 Lansko'i, who is replaced by Mamonof, who 
 struggles in turn with Miloradovitch and Mik- 
 lachefski ; and so on, and so on. It is the rising 
 of a tide that is to go on for ever ; in 1792, at 
 sixty-three years of age, Catherine begins again 
 with Plato Zoubof, and probably also with his 
 brother, the same old story that has been gone 
 over with twenty predecessors. 
 
 Is it, nevertheless, even in this last descent into 
 nameless depths, sheer shameless sensuality on 
 her part ? and is her reason, the reason of a 
 woman of genius, carried away, along with her 
 modesty and her dignity, by the impetuous 
 current which bears her forward ? In our belief, 
 no. A phenomenon of another order is to be met 
 with, raising the old and ever new problem which, 
 now once more, is being passionately discussed. 
 The question in regard to Catherine and her 
 favourites is the broad question of 'sexuality,' 
 from the material and moral point of view, and 
 this question resolves itself, we can almost say, 
 in the clear light of historical experiences. Here 
 is an exceptional woman, exceptionally endowed 
 with aptitudes and energies, both intellectual and 
 moral, even physical, exceptionally exempt also 
 from the bondage common to her sex. She has 
 all liberty, all independence, and all power, an 
 absolute power. How does she make use of it ? 
 No, it is not alone the imperious and unwearying 
 appeal of the senses that throws her, now into 
 the arms of a Zoubof, now into the arms of a 
 Patiomkine. Another need, another imperative 
 demand, comes into play, by its side, in the 
 amorous Odyssey whose changing fortunes we 
 are about to sketch. And ir the first place,
 
 42ft CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 whatever may be the energy of her character, the 
 firmness of her mind, and the good opinion that 
 she has of her own abilities, Catherine does not 
 profess that they can suffice to themselves and to 
 her for the accomplishment of her task ; she feels 
 the need of support from a virile mind and re- 
 solution, however inferior these may be to hers 
 in actual value. And she proves this necessity ! 
 When she writes to Patiomkine that without 
 him ' she is without arms,' it is not a mere phrase. 
 In 1788, when the favourite is in the Crimea, the 
 letters that her confidential agent, Garnofski, 
 sends to him from St. Petersburg are full of 
 pressing objurgations, showing the urgent need of 
 his return, as much on account of the disorder 
 into which his absence has thrown affairs, as of 
 the state in which the Empress herself is, 'de- 
 jected, subject to constant terrors, and vacillating 
 from lack of support.' And it is here, too, that 
 the part played in history by the conqueror of 
 the Crimea and his fellows differs from the ex- 
 amples given at the same time, at the other end 
 of Europe, by feminine favouritism : Louis XV. 
 simply endures the influence of his mistresses 
 and their intervention in affairs of government : 
 Catherine encourages and demands it. 
 
 Nor is this all. Lanskoi, Zoubof, are twenty- 
 two when they succeed to the place of Patiom- 
 kine. Now Nicholas Saltykof, who retains his 
 freedom of speech with the Empress, expressing 
 his astonishment at a choice so utterly out of 
 keeping with the age of the sovereign, she makes 
 this reply, which may perhaps cause a smile, but 
 which contains a characteristic trait of the 'eternal 
 feminine ' : ' Well ! I am serving the empire in
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 427 
 
 the education of such capable young men.' And 
 she believes it! In her anxiety to initiate these 
 young ' scholars ' of a particular kind into the 
 handling of the great interests of the state, there 
 is really a sort of maternity. And it is thus that 
 in her the irremediable weaknesses of a woman's 
 nature join with her highest vocation in necessi- 
 tating the presence and assistance of the male, 
 near this proud and headstrong female autocrat. 
 
 Naturally, for without this Catherine would 
 not be herself, political calculation has its share 
 in this particular complication of her existence, 
 strange as it may seem to say so. The statement 
 is verified by the facts, and, so fantastic as a 
 whole is the fortune of this great handler of men, 
 the facts decide in her favour even on this point. 
 Her intentions, extravagant as they may seem, 
 are not entirely unjustified ; ' educated ' by her, 
 trained, rough-hewn, raised from step to step, 
 rapidly it is true, in the hierarchy of high civil 
 and military functions, Patiomkine finally cuts a 
 certain figure as all-powerful minister. When a 
 whim of the sovereign installs him for a few 
 months in the special suite of rooms communi- 
 cating with the Empress's by an inner staircase, 
 Zovitch is merely a major in the Hussars. He 
 comes afterwards to fill an important place in the 
 history of national education. We are not in- 
 venting : this favourite was the first to conceive 
 of a military school modelled on the foreign 
 establishments of the kind. At Chklof, a magni- 
 ficent estate near Mohilef, which was given him 
 as a residence after his disgrace, a school founded 
 by him for the children of poor gentle-folk served 
 as nucleus for the establishment of the Corps de
 
 428 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Cadets of Moscow, now the principal military 
 gymnasium of the city. 
 
 Doubtless, such miracles came about through 
 a peculiar concourse of circumstances presiding 
 over the material and moral development of the 
 great empire, become so entirely her own. But 
 the complete history of her life is unintelligible ; 
 indeed, none such is possible, when it is not seen in 
 this light. With Zovitch, Patiomkine, Mamonof, 
 and ten others, the court of Catherine is quite 
 that of Gerolstein, but a Gerolstein in which the 
 comic, the grotesque, and the extravagant com- 
 bine with serious elements, which make of this 
 amalgam one of the most singular pages in the 
 annals of the world. The Russia of to-day is 
 still a unique country, existing, so to speak, on 
 the verge of the European community ; and 
 Catherine was also a most extraordinary woman. 
 These two conditions were required in order that 
 it might be possible for operatic heroes to thus 
 enact by her side, on one of the great stages of 
 the universe, the great parts of the human drama. 
 But these conditions being realised, and the 
 history of the Russia of that day being thus played 
 out amid pantomime scenery, it would be idle to 
 try to explain it on the ordinary lines of analysis, 
 which belong to the ordinary run of things. 
 
 Lastly, from a final point of view, favouritism 
 such as Catherine practised was by no means the 
 reign of sensuality pure and simple, blindly 
 reaching after ever new pleasures. There was 
 method in the madness of Hamlet ; and in the 
 veins of Catherine there was a little Danish blood. 
 As we have said, she made of favouritism an 
 institution.
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VOURITISM 429 
 
 II 
 
 We read, under date September 17, 1778, the 
 following lines in the despatch of the day sent 
 from St. Petersburg to the Comte de Vergennes 
 by M. de Corberon : 
 
 ' We may observe in Russia a sort of inter- 
 regnum in affairs, caused by the displacement of 
 one favourite and the installation of his successor. 
 This event eclipses everything else. On it hang 
 all the interests of a certain side of things, and 
 even the cabinet ministers, succumbing to the 
 general influence, suspend their operations until 
 the choice has been made, and things fall back 
 into the accustomed groove, and the machine is 
 once more in proper order.' 
 
 All this is an essential part of the machinery of 
 government, and, this once lacking, everything 
 comes to a dead stop. The interregnums are, 
 however, as a rule of very short duration. Only 
 one lasts for several months, between the death 
 of Lanskoi (1784) and the succession of lermolof. 
 Generally it is a matter of twenty-four hours, and 
 the slightest ministerial crisis is a much more 
 serious inconvenience to-day. There is no lack 
 of candidates. The place is good, and those 
 whose ambition it tempts are legion. In the 
 regiments of the Guards, the traditional home of 
 vremienchtchiks (favourites), there are always two 
 or three handsome officers who turn their eyes in 
 the direction of the imperial palace with a hope 
 and longing more or less concealed. From time 
 to time one of them makes his appearance at 
 court, introduced by some great personage, who 
 tries his chance of making a ' creature ' for him-
 
 430 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 self, and in a post which is the source of all riches 
 and honours. In 1774 a nephew of Count Zahar 
 Tchernichef, a Prince Kantemir, young, dissolute, 
 deep in debt, beau garfon, prowls for some weeks 
 around the Empress. Twice, pretending to have 
 lost his way, he reaches the private apartments of 
 the Empress. The third time, he finds her, falls 
 on his knees, and begs her to use him as she will. 
 She rings, he is seized, put in a kibitka> and sent 
 back to his uncle, who is advised to teach his 
 nephew a little wisdom. Catherine is indulgent 
 for this kind of folly. Patiomkine, more for- 
 tunate, makes his way by a bold stroke almost 
 exactly similar. In general, however, this post, so 
 much sought after, is the price of some intriguing. 
 After 1 776 it is Patiomkine, now honorary favourite, 
 who brings forward deputies discovered, trained, 
 and managed by him, and offers them to the 
 choice of the sovereign. But both they and 
 he have no easy task to keep the position, once 
 attained : an absence, an illness, a momentary 
 default, are enough to ruin all their chances. 
 The very name, so expressive in Russian (yremia 
 means time, moment ; vremienchtchik, the man of 
 the moment) tells the chosen ones that the favour 
 is fleeting. In 1772 it is at Fokchany, where he 
 has gone to negotiate peace with Turkey, that 
 Gregory Orlof learns of the installation of Vassil- 
 tchikof in the place that he has imprudently 
 quitted. He sets out at full speed, covers 2000 
 miles without stopping, travelling post, without 
 sleep, almost without food, in order to reach the 
 capital as quickly as he can. In spite of all, he 
 arrives too late. In 1704, Lanskoi, fallen ill, has 
 recourse to artificial stimulants, which irreparably
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 431 
 
 ruin his health. Sometimes, too, on the height 
 
 o 
 
 by the throne, reached at a bound, these spoilt 
 children of fate grow giddy : Zovitch thinks he 
 may even defy her who has raised him from 
 nothingness. Mamonof even imagines that he 
 can share her favour with a court lady, for whom 
 he sighs. It is over in an instant : at an evening 
 reception, it is noticed that the Empress has 
 gazed attentively at some obscure lieutenant, 
 presented but just before, or lost sight of till 
 then among the crowd of courtiers ; next day, it 
 is reported that he has been appointed aide-de- 
 camp to her Majesty. What that means is well 
 known. Next day he finds himself in the special 
 suite of rooms, in which the abode of the favourite 
 is as brief as, in our days, are those of the heads 
 of departments in the ministerial quarters. The 
 rooms are already vacated, and everything is pre- 
 pared for the new-comer. All imaginable comfort 
 and luxury, a splendidly appointed house, await 
 him ; and, on opening a drawer, he finds a hundred 
 thousand roubles (about 500,000 francs), the 
 usual first gift, a foretaste of Pactolus. That 
 evening, before the assembled court, the Empress 
 appears, leaning familiarly on his arm, and on the 
 stroke of ten, as she retires, the new favourite 
 follows her. 
 
 He will never leave the palace except at the 
 side of his august mistress. From this moment 
 he is a bird in a cage. The cage is fine, but 
 it is carefully guarded : the Empress is on her 
 guard against accidents, such as the generally 
 far from reassuring antecedents of the chosen 
 ones might reasonably lead her to fear. And 
 it is for this reason, among others, that we can
 
 432 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 give no credit to the stories that represent the 
 favours of Catherine as shared by casual comers 
 and goers. No doubt the place to which Patiom- 
 kine, Lanskoi, and so many others have found 
 their way is not an inviolate sanctuary ; still, it 
 is by no means accessible to the first comer. 
 At the outset of her reign, Catherine certainly 
 committed some imprudences, which caused her 
 no little inconvenience. In 1762 an officer of 
 the name of Hrastof, charged with the inventory 
 of the wardrobe of the late Empress Elizabeth, 
 was accused of making away with 200,000 
 roubles'-worth. A woman had been seen wear- 
 ing jewels that had belonged to the deceased 
 sovereign. She was recognised as one of the 
 innumerable mistresses of the favourite, Gregory 
 Orlof, who probably shared the fair lady's favours 
 with Hrastof. Now, the latter, according to the 
 report of the French charge"- cC affaires Be>enger, 
 had been living for some time in considerable 
 intimacy with the new Czarina. 
 
 Since then, Catherine has put all that in order : 
 the favourite is a person whose slightest move- 
 ments are subjected to an invariable routine and 
 a minute scrutiny. He pays no visits, accepts no 
 invitations. Once only was Mamonof authorised 
 to accept a dinner, to which he had been invited 
 by the Comte de Segur. Even then Catherine 
 became uneasy, and the French minister and his 
 guests, on rising from table, see the Empress's 
 coach under the windows : it goes slowly back- 
 ward and forward, with a persistence which 
 betrays all the distress of the momentarily aban- 
 doned lover. A year later, the vremienchtchik 
 nearly loses his place through a very natural
 
 PRIVA TE LIFEFA VO URITISM 433 
 
 and a very innocent infraction of the severe 
 discipline to which he is subjected. On his 
 birthday the Czarina has authorised him to pre- 
 sent her with a pair of earrings, which she her- 
 self has purchased for the sum of 30,000 roubles. 
 The Grand Duchess sees the earrings and 
 admires them greatly : upon which Catherine 
 makes her a present of them. She puts them 
 on, and next day she summons Mamonof to her, 
 to thank him for having, however indirectly, 
 contributed to this unexpected liberality. He 
 is on the point of going, considering himself 
 bound to obey a command from one so high 
 in position ; but the Empress, on finding it out, 
 falls into a violent rage ; she apostrophises him 
 in violent terms, and sends to the Grand Duchess 
 the most severe of reprimands : let her take care 
 never to do it again ! Paul thinks to make 
 himself agreeable by sending to the favourite a 
 snuff-box set with diamonds; Catherine allows 
 Mamonof to go and thank the Grand Duke, but 
 not by himself: she designates the particular 
 person who is to accompany him. Paul refuses 
 the visit. 
 
 We must add that, on their side, the favourites 
 do their best to guard against the danger of an 
 unfaithfulness, even accidental, which would put 
 them into competition with a rival perhaps 
 capable of supplanting them. Their power, and 
 it is great, is employed in a vigilance not less 
 active than that of Catherine herself. So long 
 as Patiomkine is in favour, and he is in favour, 
 ' honorary ' after a certain time, for fifteen years, 
 from 1774 to 1789, his imperious will raises an 
 insurmountable barrier against every caprice that 
 
 2 E
 
 434 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 he does not choose to sanction. He can even, 
 at need, use violence to her who, in giving her- 
 self to him, has found a master indeed. 
 
 Catherine's choice, it should be noted, falls, 
 without exception, on men in the prime of life, 
 and, for the most part, of Herculean build. As 
 she grows older, she chooses them younger and 
 younger. Of the two brothers Zoubof, one was 
 twenty-two and the other eighteen at the time 
 when she was first attracted by them. We know 
 the age of Lanskoi, and the circumstances of his 
 premature end. 
 
 What was the actual number of favourites, 
 from the day of Catherine's accession to the day 
 of her death ? It is not easy to say with absolute 
 precision. Only ten officially occupied the post, 
 with all the privileges and responsibilities of the 
 post: Gregory Orlof, from 1762 to 1772; Vas- 
 siltchikof, from 1772 to 1774; Patiomkine, from 
 1774 to 1776; Zavadofski, from 1776 to 1777; 
 Zovitch, from 1777 to 1778; Korssakof, from 
 1778 to 1780; Lanskoi, from 1780 to 1784; 
 lermolof, from 1784 to 1785 ; Mamonof, from 
 1785 to 1789; Zoubof, from 1789 to 1796. But 
 at the time when Korssakof was in favour, a 
 crisis came about which called forth several 
 aspirants, and brought at least one of them, 
 Strahof, very much into the good graces of the 
 sovereign. Strahof never occupied the special 
 apartments of the favourite ; it is almost certain, 
 however, that he took the place, for a short time, 
 of the official favourite. Very likely something 
 similar happened on various occasions. On visit- 
 ing the Winter Palace, shortly before the death 
 of Catherine, a traveller was particularly struck
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 435 
 
 by the decoration of two little rooms close to 
 the Empress's bedroom : the walls of one of 
 these rooms were completely covered with minia- 
 tures of great price, set in gold, and representing 
 different lascivious scenes ; the other room was 
 similarly decorated, but the miniatures were por- 
 traits, portraits of men whom Catherine had 
 known or loved. 
 
 Among these men, some showed themselves 
 singularly ungrateful for the excess of favours 
 which Catherine heaped indiscriminately upon 
 them all. She herself behaved well to every one 
 of them, and not one, even of those who were 
 unfaithful to her, had to suffer the weight of her 
 wrath and vengeance. For she was betrayed 
 and abandoned like the most vulgar of mistresses : 
 all her power, all her fascination, and the im- 
 mensity of the price set on her favour, could not 
 shield her from the mishaps that have tortured the 
 hearts of empresses and of grisettes alike since 
 the beginning of the world. In 1780 she sur- 
 prises Korssakof in the arms of the Countess 
 Bruce. In 1789 it is Mamonof who gives her up 
 to marry %.freiline. Taking everything into con- 
 sideration, it is she who was the least changeable. 
 Referring to the departure of Mamonof, simply 
 sent to Moscow with his lady, with whom he is 
 soon in disagreement, the Comte de Segur wrote 
 in a despatch to the Comte de Montmorin 
 
 ' One can shut one's eyes indulgently on the 
 errors of a woman who is a great man, when she 
 shows, even in her weaknesses, such mastery 
 over herself, such mercy, and such magnanimity. 
 It is rarely that one finds in union absolute 
 power, jealousy, and moderation, and such a
 
 436 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 character could only be condemned by a man 
 without a heart, or a prince without a weakness.' 
 Perhaps the Comte de S6gur was too in- 
 dulgent. Perhaps, too, Saint- Beuve was not 
 sufficiently so, when he observed that Catherine's 
 way of treating her lovers, when she got tired of 
 them, so different from that of Elizabeth of 
 England and Christina of Sweden, really told 
 against her. That she should load them with 
 gifts, instead of having them assassinated, ' is too 
 much, betrays too openly the scorn that she has 
 of men and of nations.' There is, at all events, 
 an error of fact in this severe judgment : Catherine 
 was not tired of either Korssakof or Mamonot 
 when she learned how they had deceived her. 
 She clung to them still, to the latter especially, 
 and her pride was not alone in suffering from 
 the disgrace that they inflicted upon her. Her 
 weaknesses were often, too often, those of a 
 woman who takes her pleasure where she finds 
 it ; but the English statesman who wrote ' she 
 was a stranger to love,' understood very little, to 
 our mind, of the psychology of a woman. 
 
 in 
 
 Before making up her mind to abandon Gregory 
 Orlof, Catherine endured from him what few 
 women would have endured. In 1765, seven 
 years before the rupture, BeVenger writes from 
 St. Petersburg to the Due de Praslin : 
 
 ' This Russian openly violates the laws of 
 love in regard to the Empress. He has mis- 
 tresses in town, who, far from calling down the 
 indignation of the sovereign through their com-
 
 PRI VA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 437 
 
 plaisance to Orlof, seem, on the contrary, to gain 
 her favour by it. The senator, Mouravief, who 
 had found his wife with him, attempted to make 
 a sensation by demanding a separation : the 
 Empress appeased him by giving him some land 
 in Livonia.' 
 
 But at last things get to such a pitch that 
 Catherine can endure it no longer, and she 
 profits by the absence of the favourite to break 
 her chain. At the moment when Orlof, travelling 
 post, is coming to reclaim his rights, he is stopped 
 by command a few versts from St. Petersburg, 
 and banished to his estates. But he will not 
 admit that he is beaten ; now suppliant, now 
 menacing, he begs to be allowed to see the 
 sovereign again, if only for a moment. She has 
 only to say the word to be rid for ever of his 
 importunities : Patiomkine is already at hand, and 
 he would willingly make away with all the Orlofs 
 at once. But this word is never said. She 
 parleys, comes to an agreement, and finally sends 
 to the lover, how lightly punished for a part 
 that might justify quite other measures ! a plan 
 of agreement which is a very poem of supreme 
 tenderness of heart ; the past forgotten, an appeal 
 to the reason of the guilty one that painful 
 mutual explanations may be spared, the necessity 
 of separation for a time, indicated how mildly, 
 almost imploringly nothing is wanting. He is 
 to take leave of absence, to settle at Moscow, or 
 on his estates, or elsewhere, if he will. His 
 allowance of 150,000 roubles a year will be con- 
 tinued, and he will receive 100,000 roubles in 
 addition, to furnish a house. Meanwhile he 
 may make use of any of the Empress's houses
 
 438 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 near Moscow, use the court equipages as before, 
 and keep the servants in the imperial livery. 
 Catherine remembers that she has promised him 
 4000 peasants for the victory of Tchesme, in 
 which it happens he took no part ; she adds 6000 
 more, whom he can pick out as he likes, in any 
 of the domains of the crown. And as if she were 
 afraid of not doing enough for him, she multiplies 
 the proofs of her munificence : now a silver 
 service, and then another ' for ordinary use/ and 
 then a house at the Tro'itskaia Pristagne, furni- 
 ture, and everything that is found in the apart- 
 ments that had belonged to the favourite in the 
 imperial palace, the value of which escapes her 
 reckoning. In return, Catherine exacts only a 
 year's absence. At the end of a year the ex- 
 favourite will be better able to realise the situa- 
 tion. As for Catherine, ' she will never forget all 
 that she owes to the family of Gregory Orlof, nor 
 the talents with which he is personally endowed, 
 and how useful they may be to the nation.' She 
 desires only 'a mutual repose, which she will do 
 her best to preserve.' 
 
 It may be that in this way of accommodating 
 things there is a little fear of what might be the 
 result of hostility on the part of a family to which 
 she herself has given such power in her empire ; 
 but is there not also a genuine tenderness? 
 Eleven years later, on hearing of the ex-favourite's 
 death, Catherine wrote 
 
 ' The loss of Prince Orlof put me into a fever, 
 with such delirium during the night, that I had 
 to be bled.' 
 
 It is in June 1783 that she hears the fatal 
 news, and two months after, on her way to
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 439 
 
 Frederikshamn to meet the King of Sweden, 
 she stipulates beforehand that he will not speak 
 to her of this catastrophe, which still moves her 
 to the very depths of her being. She is the 
 first to speak of it, with an effort to conceal the 
 agitation which so distant a past never fails to 
 awaken in her mind. Nevertheless, she has 
 found several successors to the lover whom she 
 had replaced even before his death. Is it a mere 
 infatuation, as Grimm at first supposes, which, in 
 1778, throws her into the arms of Korssakof? 
 
 'Infatuated? infatuated?' she replies to her 
 confidant. ' Do you not know that this term is 
 out of place in speaking of Pyrrhus, King of 
 Epirus' (the name she gives to the new favourite), 
 'a peril to painters, a despair to sculptors ? It is 
 the admiration, sir, it is the enthusiasm, that the 
 masterpieces of nature inspire ! Things of beauty 
 fall and are dashed to pieces like idols before the 
 ark of the Lord, before the character of this 
 mighty man. Never does Pyrrhus make a move- 
 ment which is not either noble or graceful. He 
 is radiant as the sun, he radiates light. All that 
 is not effeminate, but male, all that one would 
 have it : in a word, it is Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. 
 It is all in harmony; nothing is out of place : it 
 is the effect of a mingling of the priceless gifts 
 of nature; art is not absent, but artifice is a 
 thousand leagues away.' 
 
 We may admit that the sentiment which in- 
 spires this language in her is neither very deep 
 nor very delicate. And indeed Korssakof is a 
 mere hector. But take another actor in this 
 drama of passion, Patiomkine, the man of genius, 
 and read what follows. It is a letter from the
 
 440 
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 In Catherines 
 
 handwriting 
 
 ' The sooner the better. 
 Do not be concerned. 
 
 favourite, written after a lover's quarrel of a few 
 days' duration. Catherine replies in the margin, 
 point by point. A sort of treaty of eternal peace 
 and love is thus signed and sealed by the re- 
 conciled lovers : 
 
 In Patiomkine's 
 
 handwriting 
 ' Permit me, dear love, to 
 tell you how I think our 
 quarrel will end. Do not 
 be surprised that I am 
 concerned in regard to our 
 love. Besides the number- 
 less favours you have 
 showered upon me, you 
 have also given me a place 
 in your heart. I would be 
 there alone, and above all 
 who have gone before, for 
 none has loved you as I 
 love you. And as I am 
 the work of your hands, I 
 would find rest in you also ; 
 I would have you delight 
 in doing me kindness; I 
 would have you toil for 
 my happiness, and find in 
 it a solace from the serious 
 tasks that are laid upon 
 you by your high position. 
 Amen.' 
 
 Hand washes hand. 
 Sure and firm. 
 
 He is and will be. 
 I see and believe it. 
 I rejoice at it. 
 That is my greatest joy. 
 
 That will come of itself. 
 
 Let calm return to your 
 mind, and your feelings 
 have free course ; they are 
 loving, and will find the 
 best way themselves. End 
 of the quarrel. Amen.' 
 
 This is no commonplace exchange of vows, 
 and the two beings who, placed at the summit of 
 human greatness, speak of their love in these 
 terms are no vulgar debauchees. All the dreamy, 
 troubled, and imperious disposition of Patiomkine 
 manifests itself in these lines, as does the tempera- 
 ment, at once practical and exalted, of Catherine.
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VOURITISM 441 
 
 It is by her judgment that the sovereign generally 
 rules the favourite, it is by his ardour that he 
 often carries her away. A great part of their 
 correspondence has been published. There never 
 was such a correspondence between two persons 
 so linked by a common destiny. The turns of 
 phrase generally employed by Catherine, especially 
 during the early years of their connection, could 
 not be paralleled, perhaps, in their excessive 
 familiarity, in the correspondence of no matter 
 what jeune galante of the time. We will not 
 dwell on, ' I embrace you a thousand times, my 
 friend,' ' Forgive me if I am troubling you, my 
 heart,' 'Do you see, my soul?' little as one 
 expects to find these tender expressions from the 
 hand of an Empress. But here is a note which 
 ends, ' Good-bye, my bow-wow.' ' Good-bye, my 
 gold pheasant,' we read elsewhere. Or again, 
 ' Good-bye, papa.' There are frequent squabbles : 
 Patiomkine has a troublesome disposition, and is 
 sulky or furious at the least excuse. She writes to 
 him thus : ' If you are not more amiable to-day 
 than you were yesterday, I I I well, I really 
 won't eat my dinner.' Is there an allusion, in this 
 other note, to the project that this irascible lover 
 professed at one time of going into a monastery ? 
 We know not. 'A plan,' writes Catherine, 
 ' which had been formed four or five months ago, 
 with which even N. B., the town and suburbs, 
 were acquainted ; a plan for plunging a dagger 
 into the breast of his friend, on the part of one 
 who loves us the most, who has our happiness 
 always at heart ; does such a plan do credit to the 
 mind and heart of him who has conceived it and 
 would put it into execution ? '
 
 442 CA THER1NB II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 The favourite, as one may imagine, is him- 
 self not behindhand in tender flowers of speech. 
 Only, and it is a curious trait of this astonishing 
 idyl, in all the abandonment of his amorous 
 warmth, he never for a single instant forgets the 
 distance between them. His turns of phrase, often 
 more passionate and intense, always preserve a 
 certain solemnity, never follow those of Catherine 
 in their rather trivial freedom. 'If my prayer is 
 heard, God will prolong your days to the utmost 
 limit, O thou merciful mother ! ' That is his 
 most customary style. He never, as a rule, uses 
 the tutoiement except in this form of invocation, in 
 which he seems to address her, the work of whose 
 hands he feels himself to be, as he would address 
 God. We have other fragments of love-letters 
 of Patiomkine, not addressed to Catherine, in 
 which he reveals himself as an accomplished 
 virtuoso, mingling Oriental fantasy with the 
 reverie of the North, and the delicacy of the most 
 exquisite models that the West has furnished. 
 
 ' O my life, O sister soul of mine, how can 
 words tell thee of all my love ? Come, O my 
 mistress (soudarka mata), hearken, O my friend, 
 my joy, my treasure without price, gift un- 
 paralleled that God has given me ! . . . Darling 
 (matouchka goloubouchka), give me the joy of 
 seeing thee, the delight of rejoicing in thy heart. 
 ... I kiss with all my love thy pretty little hands 
 and thy pretty little feet.' 
 
 It is not to Catherine that Patiomkine 
 writes that. Matouchka she is, indeed, but 
 at the same time, and always, gossoudarinia 
 (sovereign), before whom one bows with his 
 forehead, in the dust, even when speaking of
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 443 
 
 love ; never goloubouchka (darling) nor soudarka 
 (mistress). 
 
 Called to the post of favourite in 1774, 
 Patiomkine makes way, two years later, for 
 Zavadofski. The lover gives place, but the friend 
 remains ; and the engagement entered into at the 
 beginning is not broken as yet. It will scarcely 
 be so, even when, just before the death of the 
 Prince of Taurida, Zoubof, installing himself as 
 master in the palace as well as the heart of the 
 sovereign, leaves no room for one who had 
 formerly ruled alone. Till that time there is 
 scarcely a difference to be traced in Catherine's 
 manner towards the brilliant adventurer, whom 
 she allows to rule over her court, command 
 her armies, govern her empire, though she has 
 already broken off her more tender relations with 
 him ; and she accepts from him new lovers, while 
 showering upon him not only riches and honours, 
 but the most unmistakable signs of an unbroken 
 affection. 
 
 ' Good-bye, my friend ; take care of yourself ; 
 I embrace you with all my heart. Sacha sends 
 greetings.' 
 
 This is dated June 29, 1789, and Sacha is 
 Mamonof, the reigning favourite, and the creature 
 of Patiomkine. 
 
 ' Sachenka greets you and loves you as his 
 own soul,' we read in another letter, dated May 
 5, 1784 ; * he often speaks of you.' 
 
 In September 1777, Patiomkine receives from 
 the sovereign a present of 150,000 roubles. In 
 1779 he receives an advance of 750,000 roubles as 
 his annual pension of 75,000. In 1783 Catherine 
 pays to his account 100,000 roubles to. hasten on
 
 444 CA THERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 the erection of a palace that he is building, which 
 she will buy from him for several millions, and 
 of which she will make him a present immediately 
 after. He is Field- Marshal, he is Prime Minister, 
 he is Prince, he has all the distinctions, all the 
 posts, all the honours, all the powers, that there 
 are to be bestowed. At the time of the annexa- 
 tion of the Crimea, during the second Turkish 
 war, he acts as master, without guidance and 
 without control. He does as he pleases, follows 
 his own devices, and Catherine is like a little 
 girl who bows before the decree of a superior 
 genius. He leaves her without news for months 
 together; he does not even trouble to reply to 
 her letters. Then she complains, but timidly, 
 almost humbly : 
 
 ' I have been between life and death all the 
 time that I have had no news of you. . . . For 
 God's sake and for mine, take more care of 
 yourself than you have done in the past. I 
 am afraid of nothing, except that you may be ill. 
 ... At this moment, my dear friend, you are 
 no longer a private person who lives as he likes 
 and does as he pleases : you belong to the state, 
 to me.' 
 
 Tender appellations, that of 'papa' among 
 others, find their place once more in the former 
 lover's letters. The Empress is herself again in the 
 frequent moments of discouragement into which 
 the conqueror of the Crimea is always thrown 
 by a momentary reverse. In 1787 an attack 
 of the Turks on Kinburn makes him think of 
 resigning his command. Catherine will not hear 
 of it. 
 
 c Strengthen your mind and soul against all
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO VRITISM 445 
 
 that may befall, and be assured that you will 
 overcome everything with a little patience, but 
 it is a weakness indeed to wish to quit your post 
 and hide yourself away.' 
 
 A few weeks later a storm destroyed part 
 of the fleet brought together by Patiomkine at 
 Sebastopol. This time he would not only 
 abandon the army, but evacuate the Crimea. 
 
 ' What is it you say ? ' writes Catherine. ' No 
 doubt you thought so at the first moment, fancy- 
 ing that all the fleet had perished, but what 
 would become of the rest of this fleet after the 
 evacuation ? And how can you begin a campaign 
 by the evacuation of a province which is not even 
 threatened? It would be better to attack Otcha- 
 kof or Bender, thus substituting the offensive 
 for the defensive attitude, which you yourself say- 
 is less politic. Besides, it is not only against us 
 that the wind has blown, I imagine ! Courage ! 
 courage ! I write all this to you as to my best 
 friend, my pupil and scholar, who at times shows 
 more resolution than I, but at this moment I have 
 more courage than you, because you are ill and 
 I am well. ... I think you are as impatient 
 as a child of five, whilst the affairs under your 
 charge at this moment demand an imperturbable 
 patience.' 
 
 She adds that he may return for a time to 
 St. Petersburg. Is he afraid that some one will 
 play him an ill turn during his absence ? ' Neither 
 time, nor distance, nor any one in the world will 
 ever change my way of thinking in regard to 
 you, nor the feelings I have for you.' 
 
 This freedom of action that Catherine allows 
 to the man in whom she has placed her confi-
 
 446 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 dence, this way of closing her eyes on his pro- 
 ceedings, in order to pay him the greater com- 
 pliment, is only the application of a system that 
 we know already. Occasions are not wanting, 
 however, on which the will of the Empress and 
 her personal intervention are exercised in a direct 
 and effectual manner. There are then frequent 
 disagreements between the two, and neither 
 friendship nor love hinder Catherine from insist- 
 ing on her authority being obeyed. The ill- 
 temper of the favourite comes out plainly enough : 
 he is now sharp, now sulky : ' I tell you,' he 
 writes, ' what is for your interest ; after that, do 
 as you please.' ' You may get angry if you like,' 
 replies Catherine, ' but you must admit that I am 
 right.' The causes of disagreement are some- 
 times of a rather delicate nature. An inspector 
 of the troops has been nominated by Patiom- 
 kine. Catherine opposes the choice, which 
 she conceives to have been made for a parti- 
 cular reason. This is how she reasons the matter 
 out : 
 
 ' Allow me to tell you that the miserable face 
 of his wife is not worth the trouble you will have 
 with such a man. Nor have you any chance 
 there, for madame is charming, but there is 
 nothing to be gained by paying court to her. 
 That is a well-known fact, and an immense 
 family watches over her reputation. My friend, 
 I am accustomed to tell you the truth. You do 
 the same with me when there is occasion for it. 
 Oblige me in this instance by choosing some one 
 more suitable for the post, one who knows the 
 work, so that the approval of the public and of 
 the army may crown your choice and my nomina-
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO UR1TISM 447 
 
 tion. I like to give you pleasure, and I do not 
 like to refuse you anything, but I should like that 
 in a post of that sort, every one might say, what 
 a good choice, and not, what a wretched choice, 
 of a man who does not know what he has to do. 
 Make peace, after which you can come here and 
 amuse yourself as much as you like.' 
 
 Catherine forgot to add that meanwhile she 
 was amusing herself on her side, and that this 
 time she had not consulted her ' friend ' on the 
 nature of the new amusement that she had found 
 for herself. Zoubof appeared on the horizon 
 and proclaimed himself a formidable rival in 
 the conquest of the imperial favour, and even of 
 the part that friendship had left to his pre- 
 decessor. Tied to the other extremity of the 
 empire, Patiomkine bounded with rage ; he de- 
 clared that he would soon return to St. Peters- 
 burg, ' to have a tooth taken out ' (zoub means 
 tooth in Russian) which troubled him. He did 
 not succeed in his attempt. He came back only 
 to witness the definite triumph of the enemy. 
 He returned to the South, chafing at his fate ; 
 he was struck to the heart, and soon death came 
 to spare him the last humiliations of disgrace. 
 Catherine, nevertheless, had taken all the trouble 
 in the world to make him look favourably upon 
 her new choice, and the letters in which she 
 gives voice to this anxiety are not the least 
 curious of the collection from which we have 
 already made many extracts. Compliments, kind 
 attentions, delicate flatteries, even unexpected 
 outbursts of tenderness, follow one another, 
 coming to the friend already sacrificed, on the 
 part of the victorious lover, of 'the child, the
 
 448 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 ' little blacky,' as she delights in calling the new 
 favourite, with the caressing ways that age has 
 not taken from her. 'The child,' she writes, 
 'thinks you are cleverer and more amusing and 
 more amiable than all those about you ; but keep 
 this quiet, for he does not know that I know 
 that.' 
 
 But Patiomkine is not to be wheedled. He 
 sees his prestige escaping him, he feels that 
 this time the place is taken altogether, and not 
 only the corner of the imperial palace, near her 
 Majesty's private rooms, which he had let go so 
 lightly, but that other sanctuary as well, which 
 the vows of bygone days had led him to hope 
 would retain a place for him for ever. That too 
 he was going to lose ! 
 
 Once already he had had a serious cause for 
 anxiety. Among his rivals there had been one, 
 before Zoubof, whom Catherine seemed to have 
 loved as she never loved before or after. It 
 seems to have been the fate of this extraordinary 
 woman to exhaust, in all their diversity, the 
 whole range of sentiments and sensations, and 
 the entire order of the phenomena of passion. 
 The love that she experienced for Lanskoi was 
 utterly different from that which she had for 
 Patiomkine, or for any of those who filled her 
 life, so rich in varied impressions. But Lanskoi 
 was not ambitious, and it was not given to Cathe- 
 rine to keep him long. On June 19, 1784, the 
 young man who for the last four years had made 
 the joy of her existence, in whom all her thoughts, 
 all her affections, and all her desires were con- 
 centrated, the most petted, the most caressed, the 
 most feted of favourites, was attacked by a
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO UR1TISM 449 
 
 mysterious disease. The German physician 
 Weikard was hastily summoned from St. Peters- 
 burg to Tzarskoi'e-Sielo. He was a savant of 
 the pure Teutonic breed, little used to delicate 
 discretion in his dealings. Sitting on the patient's 
 bed, Catherine anxiously questioned him. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' A bad fever, Madame, and he will die of it.' 
 
 He insisted that the Empress should leave the 
 patient, judging the malady to be contagious. 
 So far as we can conjecture, it was a quinsy. 
 Catherine never hesitated an instant between the 
 counsels of prudence and those more imperious 
 ones of her heart. She was soon taken with 
 a troublesome uneasiness of the throat. She 
 braved it all. Ten days later Lanskoi expired 
 in her arms. He was only twenty-six. Hear 
 the lament of the lover from whom the loved 
 one has been taken by death : 
 
 ' When I began this letter, I was in hope and 
 joy, and my thoughts came so swiftly that I knew 
 not what became of them. It is so no more : I 
 am plunged into the depths of sorrow, and my 
 happiness has fled : I thought I should have died 
 of the irreparable loss that I have just had, a 
 week ago, of my best friend. I had hoped that 
 he would be the support of my old age : he was 
 attentive, he learnt much, he had acquired all my 
 tastes. He was a young man whom I was 
 bringing up, who was grateful, kind, and good, 
 who shared my sorrows when I had them, and 
 rejoiced in my joys. In a word, I have the mis- 
 fortune to have to tell you, with tears, that 
 General Lanskoi is no more, . . . and my room, 
 so pleasant before, has become an empty den, in 
 
 2 v
 
 450 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 which I can just drag myself about like a shadow. 
 Something went wrong with my throat the day 
 before his death, and I have a raging fever ; 
 nevertheless, since yesterday, I have got up 
 from bed, but so feeble and sorrowful that at 
 the present hour I cannot look on a human face 
 without my voice being choked with tears. I 
 cannot sleep or eat ; reading wearies me, and 
 writing is too much for me. I know not what 
 will become of me ; but I know that never in 
 my life have I been so unhappy as since my 
 kind, my best friend has quitted me. I have 
 opened my drawer, I have found this sheet that 
 I have begun, I have written these lines, but I 
 can no more.' 
 
 This is on July 2, 1784. Only after two 
 months does Catherine resume her correspond- 
 ence with Grimm. 
 
 ' I confess to you that all that time I was 
 incapable of writing to you, because I knew that 
 it would make us both suffer. A week after I 
 had written to you my letter of July, Count 
 Fedor Orlof and Prince Potemkin came to me. 
 Up to then I could not endure to see any one ; 
 these took me just in the right way : they began 
 to howl with me, and then I felt at my ease with 
 them ; but it took a long time to come to it, and 
 thanks to my sensibility, I had become insensible 
 to everything but this one sorrow ; and this 
 seemed to increase and take fresh hold at every 
 step, at every word. Do not think, however, that 
 despite the horror of the situation, I neglected 
 the least thing which required my attention. In 
 the most awful moments I was called upon to 
 give orders, and I grave them, in an orderly and
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 45 1 
 
 sane manner : which particularly struck General 
 Saltykof. More than two months passed without 
 any respite ; at last some calmer hours have 
 come, and now calmer days. The weather having 
 become wet, the rooms at Tsarsko-Selo have 
 had to be heated. Mine have been heated with 
 such violence that on the evening of the 5th 
 September, not knowing where to go, I called 
 out my coach, and came straight here without 
 any one's knowing it ; I have put up at the Her- 
 mitage, and yesterday, for the first time, I went 
 to mass, and consequently, for the first time also, 
 I saw everybody and was seen by everybody ; 
 but, in truth, it was such an effort that on getting 
 back to my room I was so overcome that any one 
 but I would have fainted. ... I ought to re-read 
 your three last letters, but I really cannot. ... I 
 have become a most sad creature, and speak 
 only in monosyllables. . . . Everything distresses 
 me . . . and I never liked to be an object of 
 pity.' 
 
 An English orator, Lord Camelford, has said 
 that Catherine honoured the throne by her vices, 
 while the King of England (George III.) dis- 
 honoured it by his virtues. The expression is 
 somewhat strong ; but it may be admitted that 
 vices capable of manifesting themselves in so 
 touching a form deserve something other than 
 absolute condemnation. 
 
 IV 
 
 Favouritism, as practised by Catherine, was 
 not without its serious inconveniences. On 
 December i, 1772, the French minister at St.
 
 452 CATHERINE 11. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Petersburg, Durand, writes to the Due d'Aiguillon 
 that, according to reports coming from the palace, 
 ' the Empress is so singularly occupied with the 
 affair of M. Orlof, that for nearly two months she 
 has attended to nothing else, she reads nothing, 
 and scarcely ever goes out.' Two months after, 
 the crisis is not yet over. ' This woman does 
 nothing,' says one of the courtiers to Durand ; ' so 
 long as the Orlof faction is in power, there is 
 nothing to be done.' Now these crises are 
 frequent. In February 1780 the English am- 
 bassador Harris, coming to Prince Patiomkine 
 to question him in reference to an important 
 memorandum which has been in the Empress's 
 hands for some time, is told that he has come at 
 a wrong time : Lanskoi is ill, and the dread of 
 his death so paralyses the Empress that she is 
 unable to fix her attention on anything. All her 
 thoughts of ambition and of glory are forgotten ; 
 all care for her own interest or her own dignity 
 leaves her ; she is completely absorbed in this 
 one anxiety. And Prince Patiomkine expresses 
 his fear lest Count Panine should profit by the 
 occasion to bring his ideas into play, and give a 
 new direction to the foreign policy. Three years 
 later, it is an illness of the Prince himself that 
 throws the Sovereign into a state of such dis- 
 tress, that the Marquis de Verac, on the point 
 of leaving St. Petersburg, cannot obtain his fare- 
 well audience. Those about the Empress, seeing 
 her eyes red with the tears that she cannot 
 restrain, beg her not to appear in public. The 
 audience is put off. 
 
 When favouritism does not bring affairs to 
 a standstill, it sometimes puts their guidance
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 45 3 
 
 into hands as little suitable as possible to manage 
 the helm, those of Mamonof or Zoubof, for 
 example. And it is not merely the hasty advance- 
 ment of the favourites themselves, becoming 
 generals, marshals, ministers, from one day to 
 another : the high personages thus created with a 
 wave of the wand have in turn their dependants. 
 They have also their enemies whom they seek to 
 put in the background as Patiomkine did with 
 the illustrious Roumiantsof, thus depriving the 
 empire of its finest soldier. Sometimes they 
 push forward an ambitious man in order to get rid 
 of a rival. In 1787 Mamonof is alarmed by the 
 appearance at court of a young Prince Kotchou- 
 bey : he arranges to have him sent as ambassador 
 to Constantinople! The favourite gone, the 
 consequences of his elevation still last. After 
 the death of Patiomkine, his secretary, Popof, 
 replaces him as head of the government of 
 lekatierinoslaf. He settles everything off-hand 
 by the magic formula : * Such was the will of the 
 late Prince.' He inherits the secret of this will, 
 and remains the instrument of his ' maker,' as he 
 calls the deceased. Now, Count Rastoptchine, 
 a good judge, declares that this man, though, 
 during the lifetime of Patiomkine, he had 
 governed the whole empire in his name for ten 
 years, had no aptitude for affairs. Besides, he had 
 other engagements. Rastoptchine never noticed 
 in him more than one quality : the strength of 
 his physical constitution, which enabled him 
 regularly to pass his days and nights in gambling. 
 Meanwhile, he is appointed general, chevalier of 
 three orders, and incumbent of posts which bring 
 him in 50,000 roubles a year. In February 1796 
 
 2 F 2
 
 454 
 
 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 Rastoptchine writes : ' Never were crimes so 
 frequent as they are now. Impunity and 
 audacity are pushed to their utmost. Three 
 days ago, a certain Kovalinski, who had been 
 secretary of the War Commission, and had been 
 dismissed by the Empress for pillage and cor 
 ruption, was appointed governor at Riazan, 
 because he has a brother blackguard like himself 
 who is in favour with Gribolski, Plato Zoubof 's 
 chancellor. Ribas alone steals 500,000 roubles 
 a year.' 
 
 Favouritism is expensive. Castera has made 
 out a formidable sum-total on account of ten 
 principal heads of affairs, adding a doubtful 
 supernumerary, Vysotski. 
 
 Amounts received 
 
 The five Orlofs, 
 
 Vysotski, . 
 
 Vassiltchikof, 
 
 Patiomkine, 
 
 Zavadofski, 
 
 Zovitch, 
 
 Korssakof, 
 
 Lanskoi, 
 
 lermolof, . 
 
 Mamonof, . 
 
 The brothers Zoubof, 
 
 Expenses of the favourites, 
 
 Roubles. 
 I7,OOO,OOO 
 3OO,OOO 
 I,IIO,OOO 
 5O,OOO,OOO 
 1,380,000 
 I,42O,OOO 
 92O,OOO 
 7,26o,OOO 
 550,000 
 88o,OOO 
 3,500,000 
 8,5OO,OOO 
 
 Total, 92,820,000 
 
 This comes, at the then rate of exchange, to 
 more than 400 millions of francs. This is much 
 the same as the calculation of the English am- 
 bassador Harris. 
 
 From 1762 to 1783 the Orlof family received, 
 according to him, 40,000 to 50,000 peasants and 1 7
 
 PRIVA TE LIFE FA VOURITISM 455 
 
 million roubles in money, houses, plate, and jewels. 
 Vassiltchikof, in twenty-two months, received 
 100,000 roubles in cash, 50,000 in jewels, a fur- 
 nished palace with 100,000 roubles, plate worth 
 30,000, a pension of 20,000, and 7000 peasants ; 
 Patiomkine, in two years, 37,000 peasants, and 
 about 9,000,000 roubles in jewels, palaces, pen- 
 sion, and plate ; Zavadofski, in eighteen months, 
 6000 peasants in Ukraine, 2000 in Poland, 
 1800 in Russia, 80,000 roubles'-worth of jewels, 
 150,000 roubles in cash, plate worth 30,000, and 
 a pension of 10,000; Zovitch, in a year, an 
 estate worth 500,000 roubles in Poland, another 
 worth 100,000 in Livonia, 500,000 roubles in 
 cash, 200,000 in jewels, and a commandership in 
 Poland, with an income of 12,000 roubles; Kors- 
 sakof, in sixteen months, 1 50,000 roubles, and, on 
 his leaving, 4000 peasants in Poland, 100,000 
 roubles to pay his debt, 100,000 for his equip- 
 ment, 20,000 roubles a month to travel abroad. 
 
 These figures need no comment. In July 1778 
 the Chevalier de Corberon wrote from St. Peters- 
 burg to the Comte de Vergennes 
 
 ' The new favourite Corsak ' (such appears to 
 have been the individual's original name) 'has 
 just been made chamberlain. He has received 
 150,000 roubles, and his fortune, which will not 
 last, will be at least brilliant for him and burden- 
 some for the state, which has to suffer for it. 
 This nuisance, so often repeated, spreads dissatis- 
 faction and discontent in the public mind, and 
 the result might be dangerous if Catherine II. 
 were not more powerful and more farseeing than 
 those about her. There are murmurs, but she 
 rules through all, and the ascendency of her mind
 
 456 CA THERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 is her salvation. . . . Lately, in a Russian house, 
 some one calculated how much had been spent on 
 favouritism during the present reign : the total 
 came to 48 million roubles.' 
 
 But it was not merely a question of money. 
 Prince Chtcherbatof has excellently characterised 
 the demoralising influence of an institution which 
 brought into prominence excesses of this kind at 
 the highest point of society. The favourites ot 
 Catherine might well, from the absolute point of 
 view, seem only the equivalent of the mistresses 
 of Louis XV., but the absolute is out of place 
 both in morals and in politics, the difference of 
 the sexes will probably always make, in this con- 
 nection, an enormous difference in the relative 
 bearing of the same facts, and if Marie- Antoinette 
 found painful surprises awaiting her at the court 
 of her father-in-law, these were probably nothing 
 to the impression made on the second wife of 
 Paul, Maria Fedorovna, when her residence at 
 St. Petersburg had brought her in contact with the 
 official scandal of the imperial palace. Besides, 
 the mistresses of Louis XV. were not supposed, 
 in France, to transact the business of royalty. 
 
 One of Kosciuszko's campanions in arms, 
 Niemcewicz, speaks in his memoirs of having 
 visited in 1794 the houses constructed for the 
 passage of the Empress on her tour in the 
 Crimea, in 1787. The Empress's bedroom was 
 everywhere made after a uniform plan. Beside 
 the bed was a square of glass ; on touching a 
 spring it moved, and another bed, that of 
 Mamonof, appeared. Catherine was then fifty- 
 nine ! Shamelessness carried to this height was 
 surely a school of vice.
 
 PRI VA TE LIFE FA VO URITISM 457 
 
 There was certainly, in this strange woman, a 
 colossal disregard of her situation in regard 
 to the eternal laws of womanhood. For it 
 must be observed that there was in her in no 
 sense an affectation of cynicism, nor even an 
 obliteration of the moral sense, nor even deprava- 
 tion of mind. Favouritism with all its conse- 
 quences once excepted, Catherine is severe in 
 regard to moral questions, and very susceptible 
 in regard to outward decency. She values 
 chastity, and at times is even prudish. One day, 
 on the way to Kief, she requests the Comte de 
 Segur, who is in her carriage, to repeat some 
 verses. He recites a piece, ' a little free and gay," 
 he tells us, 'but nevertheless decent enough to 
 have been well received at Paris by the Due de 
 Nivernais, the Prince de Beauveau, and ladies 
 as virtuous as they are amiable.' Catherine 
 at once frowns, stops him midway by a question 
 on quite another subject, and turns off the conver- 
 sation. In 1788, the Admiral Paul Jones, whom 
 she has summoned to her service from England, 
 is accused of having taken liberties with a girl 
 belonging to the court. He is immediately 
 dismissed, notwithstanding the dearth of men 
 capable of taking the command. For a similar 
 reason the English ambassador Macartney is 
 obliged to leave his post. In 1790, chatting with 
 her secretary over the events that have been 
 taking place in France, Catherine inveighs 
 against the actresses, whom she accuses of having 
 depraved the morals of the nation. ' What has 
 ruined the country,' she declares, ' is that the 
 people fall into vice and drunkenness. The 
 comic opera has corrupted the whole nation.'
 
 458 CA THER1NE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 She is conscious of not having taken to drink 
 herself, and of having done nothing to corrupt 
 the morals of her country. But she thinks it 
 quite natural to write to Patiomkine that his 
 successor Mamonof Sacheiika, as she calls him 
 'loves him, and looks upon him as a father.' 
 And she is in nowise embarrassed in asking her 
 son and daughter-in-law for news of the King 
 Poniatowski, whom they have seen in passing 
 through Warsaw. 'I think,' she writes, 'that 
 his Polish Majesty would have some difficulty 
 in remembering my face as it was twenty-five 
 years ago by the portraits you showed him.' 
 
 'One could never venture,' writes the Prince 
 de Ligne in his portrait of the sovereign, ' to 
 speak ill of Peter I. nor of Louis XVI. before 
 the Empress, nor the least thing in regard to 
 religion or morals. Scarcely could one venture 
 on anything in the least risky, however glossed 
 over ; at which, however, she would laugh 
 quietly. She never permitted trifling, either of 
 this kind or in reference to any one." 
 
 A ukase instructing keepers of public baths 
 to have separate compartments for the two sexes, 
 and not to allow any men in the women's quarter, 
 except those required for attendance, and doctors, 
 bears the signature of Catherine. An odd ex- 
 ception is made in favour of painters, who would 
 study their art in the feminine compartments. 
 
 Certain accusations have nevertheless been 
 brought forward, associating the last years in 
 particular of the Empress with infamous tastes 
 and habits. Besides the 'set' admitted to the 
 private receptions at the Hermitage, another 
 more limited ' set ' had been formed, comprising,
 
 PRIVATE LIFE FAVOURITISM 459 
 
 in addition to the two brothers Zoubof and Peter 
 Saltykof, some women whose names we prefer 
 to omit. The name of Lesbos has been uttered 
 in regard to these gatherings, and the name of 
 the Cybele of the North affixed to the other 
 glorious titles of Catherine the Great. We are 
 averse to discuss such imputations. We cannot 
 believe that Catherine has ever justified them, 
 though we dare not say that she has not, in a 
 sense, deserved them. Is not this outrage to 
 her memory a just expiation ? Maria Theresa 
 was not a woman to give credence to calumnies 
 without proper examination. She could also be 
 indulgent, needing no indulgence on her own 
 account. Nevertheless she wrote in 1778 
 
 ' The Grand Duke, it is well known, like his 
 supposed father and the Empress, is utterly 
 debauched.' 
 
 From the sovereign and mother, by way of 
 the lover, the scandal thus attained the son also. 
 
 The sudden death of Catherine, coming as it 
 did, was perhaps another expiation. For a long 
 time past her excesses had been thought to 
 be telling on her robust health. In a despatch 
 of May 1774, Durand, the French charge- 
 d' affaires, speaking of the anxiety of the favourite 
 on account of the Empress's health, wrote 
 
 ' He is well aware of what few people know, 
 that the Empress had a fainting-fit a day or two 
 ago, lasting more than half an hour, just as she 
 was about to take a cold bath ; that her most 
 trusty servants have noticed curious twitches 
 and movements that she has been subject to for 
 some time ; that by the use of cold baths and of 
 tobacco she has moments of absence of mind and
 
 460 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA 
 
 ideas quite opposed to her natural ones. All 
 that I infer at present from these symptoms is 
 that she is affected with hysteria.' 
 
 In 1774 these conjectures were premature. 
 Twenty years later Catherine justified them. 
 
 We ask the pardon of our readers for having 
 raised the veil cast by time and oblivion over 
 these details. For all we have done we have had 
 but one reason, and we desire but one excuse 
 the sincerity that, in default of other merit, we 
 have brought to our task, a task whose difficulties 
 and dangers we have by no means ignored, but 
 one which has appealed to us in spite of all, as it 
 has interested, we hope, others as well, by reason 
 of the variety, the complexity, and the originality, 
 perhaps unique, of facts which are purely a 
 matter of history, and which yet might challenge 
 the best attempts of the most fertile imagination. 
 
 FINIS 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press.
 
 00 233 792 7