3>K 
 
 no 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Frof . Jolrin D. Adsjns 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DK 170.W17A9 1895 
 
 Story of a throne 
 
 3 1924 028 401 747 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028401747 
 
THE STORY OF A THRONE 
 
Uniform with this Volume. 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS 
 
 (Catherine II. of Russia). From the French of 
 K. pya/isssietvski. Second Edition. JVith Portrait. 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE B^UEEN 
 
 (Marie Antoinette — Count Fersen), From the 
 French of Paul Gaulot^ by Mrs. Cashel Hoey. 
 Second Edition. With Portraits. 
 
 London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 
 
Catherine 11. 
 
 'a^^/'Ui/i> 
 
THE 
 
 Story of a Throne 
 
 (CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA) 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 K. WALISZEWSKI 
 
 mitb ipoi-ti-alt 
 
 LOND ON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 189s 
 
 [Ail rights rescrved\ 
 
 "^ 
 
SJ 
 
 -T- '-^J/ ■■ — » ^^^_ 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 First Edition, November, 1894. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The readers of The Romance of an Empress will be 
 .aware that the author intended to complete that work 
 by the one which now appears. It does not seem to 
 him that this course requires any justification. Always 
 important, whatever may be the figure to be evoked, 
 the historical value of the entourage, of surroundings, 
 becomes intensified by the importance of that figure. 
 With a powerful personality, it seems to spread and in 
 some sort reproduce the action of one motive force, in 
 direct continuation of this exuberance of power. 
 
 Catherine was notably an individuality of this excep- 
 tional kind. [Out of all that went to make up her 
 personal greatness, her prestige, and her charm, nothing, 
 it may be said, came to her by heritage : she conquered 
 or created everything about her 2_^the palaces that she 
 lived in were for the most part built by herself, the men 
 that she made use of were not merely chosen by her, 
 they were fashioned to her purposes, and thus to some 
 extent after her own image. Even those among her co- 
 workers who brought to her service the greatest amount 
 of real worth and originality, were rightly called by her 
 " her pupils." Patiomkin, with all his genius, was that. 
 Among her admirers some allowed themselves to be so 
 absorbed in their devotion as to abdicate, even to anni- 
 hilate, their own personality : such was the case of 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 Grimm. Thus, in speaking of him and of others, it is 
 always of her that I shall really be speaking. Not 
 that all these are not interesting in themselves ; for the 
 entourage that I shall endeavour to call up is not merely 
 the Russia of that day, but all Europe, in its political, 
 literary, and philosophical aspects, seen there, on the 
 confines of Asia, in the persons of some of its most 
 illustrious representatives ; and I shall show the contact 
 of these two worlds, in the picture that I hope to pre- 
 sent of the great Catherine in the midst of those who 
 helped to make her great. 
 
 Before doing so, I wished to see once more the scenes 
 in which this unique life was lived. I hoped to find 
 some traces of her passage^ more expressive, nearer to 
 life itself, than those which the dead letter of documents 
 can give to the historian. Alas ! what I found was 
 little more than the emptiness of things that were no 
 more. In the palaces of St. Petersburg, at the Hermit- 
 age even, nothing, or how little ! The gorgeous edifices 
 of Rastrelli, burnt under the reign of Nicholas, have 
 been rebuilt from top to bottom. Scarcely anything 
 even at Tsarskoie ; the lordly or delightful decor that 
 once charmed Segur has vanished ; the very scenes are 
 changed where once the wit of the Prince de Ligne, the 
 extravagance of Patiomkin, the coarse buffoonery of 
 Naryshkin, acted themselves out under the indulgent 
 eye of Voltaire's divinity. All that has been swept 
 away, and its place taken by the newer fashions of 
 more recent reigns. Peter the Great, more favoured by 
 destiny, still has his little wooden house, so heroically 
 poor, so historically suggestive in its poverty, intact on 
 the banks of the frozen river whose currents his genius 
 knew how to set in motion. The very toilet utensils 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 of Catherine's grandson are religiously preserved at 
 Tsarskoie. Between the grandson and the great 
 ancestor ther-e is a wide gulf: the rages of Paul I., the 
 remorse of Alexander I., are buried there. The palace 
 of Paul is now a school, and the room where the luck- 
 less Emperor slept on the night of the I2th of March, 
 1801, has been turned into a chapel of penitence. 
 
 Nor is there anything at Moscow, and, near by, at 
 Tsaritsino, there is only to be seen a heap of ruins, 
 marking the site of one of the favourite residences that 
 Catherine built for herself. 
 
 jMen and things, in Russia, pass out of sight quickly : 
 coming late into history, and as if in a hurry to live, 
 this nation seems to precipitate even the destroying 
 work of time ; for its greatness and its civilization, 
 scarcely a century and a half old, are already in ruinsj 
 
 I have, however, found some traces of the great 
 Empress in the memory of certain lovers of the past, 
 certain pious collectors of legend and tradition, which 
 are themselves slipping into oblivion. History must 
 needs hasten its work of reconstruction, if it is to avail 
 itself even of these. 
 
 I have no need to lay claim, on behalf of my own 
 attempt, to the share of interest which my readers have 
 already been good enough to find in it. I have but 
 to crave, for my own part, the continuance of that 
 indulgence which I have already experienced, and for 
 which I have already had cause to be grateful. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART \— CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE STATESMEN 3 
 
 II. THE SOLDIERS 49 
 
 III. THE CHIEF MEN : THE ORLOFS, PATIOMKIN, THE 
 
 ZUBOFS 75 
 
 I. THE ORLOFS ...... 75 
 
 II. PATIOMKIN ...... 109 
 
 III. THE ZUBOFS ...... 154 
 
 PART \\—THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 THE PHILO- 
 
 I. CATHERINES INTELLECTUAL CIRCLE. 
 
 SOPHERS 
 
 I. VOLTAIRE .... 
 
 II. DIDEROT ..... 
 
 III. d'aLEMEERT — ROUSSEAU — VOLNEY 
 
 IV. PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN RUSSIA — VON VISIN, 
 
 NOVIKOF, RADISHTCHEF . 
 
 II. MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 
 
 III. THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 
 
 IV. THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 
 V. ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES. — PRINCESS 
 
 TARAKANOF 
 
 169 
 169 
 191 
 212 
 
 218 
 
 228 ^ 
 
 256 
 
 273-^ 
 
 298 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART \l\— PRIVATE LIFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE FAVOURITES 
 
 V II. THE CORRESPONDENTS. — GRIMM 
 
 III. CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS. — PRINCESS DASHKOF 
 
 IV. THE COURT OF CATHERINE . 
 
 V. THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 
 
 321 
 
 347 
 371 
 391 
 419 
 
PART I. 
 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE STATESMEN. 
 
 During the course of the Swedish war which was 
 so rashly entered upon and so courageously carried 
 through, Catherine the Great, or, as Voltaire called 
 her, Catherine le Grand, had, as we know, her moments 
 of anguish and suspense. At one time, no news 
 had been received from the seat of war, and it 
 seemed that the fleet of Greigh had come to utter and 
 irreparable ruin. At last a courier from the admiral 
 arrived. Catherine hastened to read the dispatches. 
 Had the two forces joined battle .'' Was the enemy 
 beaten .'' Not yet, but an engagement was imminent : 
 the two .squadrons were only twelve marine leagues 
 distant. Catherine looked around her in perplexity : 
 how long was a marine league .■" No one spoke. The 
 handsome Mamonof was there, and he, as she was 
 always saying, knew everything without having learnt 
 anything ; but he too was silent. An inquiry was sent 
 to the Admiralty, but the court was at Tsarsko'ie, and 
 the answer could not come back till the evening. By 
 night it was discovered that a marine league made 
 seven versts. Catherine was greatly disappointed ; she 
 was furious with her admiral : she had hoped that the 
 two fleets were close together, and the fanciful calculation 
 of the Admiralty had increased by about a half the real 
 
4 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 distance indicated by Greigh.^ This was the way in 
 which she was served, and the kind of information that 
 was given her. 
 
 " I have made war without generals, and peace with- 
 out ministers," she said, after coming out of this 
 terrible crisis. Despite its tinge of bitterness and of 
 pride, the statement was no more than the truth, and 
 might even be applied to almost any period of her 
 reign ; but Catherine had small cause for making it 
 an accusation against fate, for she was almost always 
 indifferent as to the choice of those who were to 
 carry out her designs, and, to her, one man was the 
 same as another. This is the typical characteristic of 
 her history, from the point of view with which we are 
 at present occupied. Really superior men were rarely 
 to be met with about her, and, among these few, not a 
 single one succeeded, during her reign, in arriving at the 
 full measure of his capacities. All this was undoubtedly 
 due to the very personal ideas and principles according 
 to which she governed, as well as to certain special 
 points in her character. There was only one quality 
 which she could really appreciate in a helper : flexi- 
 
 ^-^ilijj:„- It is a quality which is not often found in^umoli 
 with a truly original mind. She had all the taste for 
 despotism which went naturally with her position as 
 samodierjitsa, and all the taste for whimsicalness and 
 caprice which belonged to her as a woman ; there was 
 
 Vthe radical failing in her intellectual organization. But 
 it was one of her merits to make capital out of her 
 defects, and for this very reason she was able to make 
 the most of whatever value there might be in the 
 people whom she employed. It was not long before 
 she found out that knowledge of men, the divination 
 of their merits and capacities, was not her specialty. 
 Her very first choice in regard to an important office 
 of government was unfortunate : she selected Tieplof, 
 an absolute rogue. With her characteristic haste in 
 jumping to conclusions, she immediately made up her 
 1 A verst is 1067 metres, a marine league 5555. 
 
THE STATESMEN 5 
 
 mind that she would find Tieplofs everywhere, and that 
 it was therefore best to rely on herself for the carrying 
 out of her own affairs. 
 
 Those affairs being also Russia's, she found that they 
 were after all too complex and too extensive for her 
 to be able to realize, in an absolute manner, the plan 
 of personal government which was already sketched 
 out when she found herself on the throne ; a plan 
 more exclusive, absorbing, and comprehensive than 
 any one had ever formed before. She therefore had 
 her ministers as she had her commanders-in-chief. 
 She had even, in Patiomkin, a sort of vice-emperor, 
 apparently himself half ruler. The appearance of all 
 this, however, was deceptive. These ministers and 
 generals, this imposing alter ego, even, were not only 
 the instruments of her will — handled freely and roughly 
 enough, and in danger of being at any moment broken 
 and flung aside, without a possibility of resistance — they 
 were also, for the most part, literally her tools, put 
 together, so to speak, piece by piece, by this over-ruling 
 hand, and bearing the signs of it in their every motion. 
 And it is thus that the history of the notable statesmen 
 and .soldiers of the reign of Catherine is, in large 
 measure, part of her own history. 
 
 But this historical interest is not the only one which 
 might lead us to make their acquaintance. As I have 
 tried to show elsewhere, in many respects the Russia 
 of to-day is merely the direct and all but intact heritage 
 of the great reign. And this is particularly true, or has 
 been until very lately, of the principal officers of 
 state. The names and faces have changed, the types 
 remain unalterably fixed. It is these types which I 
 shall here try to exhibit, and in passing them in 
 review we shall find ourselves in a world really just at 
 our doors. 
 
 Statesmen and soldiers may all be divided into three 
 categories : pure-blooded Russians, inhabitants of Little 
 Russia and of Poland, and foreigners ; the differences 
 of origin corresponding with very marked diversities of 
 
6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 character and of capability. There are certain traits in 
 common between the first two groups, natures at once 
 rudely primitive and singularly complicated, with an 
 odd mixture of extreme savagery and extreme refine- 
 ment, consequent upon a particular superposition of 
 distinct races and influences, in which the strain of 
 Western culture had here and there asserted itself in 
 the Asiatic blood with which the young Muscovite stock 
 had been impregnated in the course of an hereditary 
 bondage. There is the same voluptuous indolence, 
 side by side with sudden bursts of spurious and spend- 
 thrift energy ; the same Eastern contempt for rule and 
 order ; the same disregard of time ; the same subtlety 
 of mind also, and the same finesse associated with a 
 deceptive naivete ; the same curiosity of every form of 
 pleasure, the same exuberance of temperament, and the 
 same fertility of imagination in the pursuit of voluptuous 
 delights ; the same flexibility also, bending to every 
 change of fortune and of occupation, pliable to all 
 the purposes, docile to all the whims, of the master ; 
 prepared to go blindly, imperturbably, to the furthest 
 point of passive obedience, and yet always liable to 
 revolt, to recover at a bound the whole height from 
 which so deep a descent had been made, and to take 
 a terrible revenge. On one side, the side of Little 
 Russia, there is a yet greater and more varied wealth of 
 natural resources, thanks to a yet more complicated 
 amalgam of original elements — a Cossack agglomer- 
 ation made up in part of the waifs and strays of all 
 the races of European adventurers, a certain Greek 
 and Polish infiltration slowly oozing through the older 
 Ruthenian soil — in short, one finds more stability of mind, 
 less of character, more intelligence and more corruption, 
 i As for the foreigners, however numerous, they have 
 j relatively less importance during this reign. Not a 
 i single personage of the first importance is a foreigner, 
 not a single minister in power, not a single favourite ; 
 with one or two exceptions, they hold merely sub- 
 ordinate positions. The moment is not ripe for them. 
 
thR statesmen 7 
 
 To succeed, to attain the first rank, there is that one 
 sovereign quahty required, that one quahty which they 
 all lack, that resistant and yet manageable flexibility 
 which makes the fortune of Patiomkin and the rest. 
 Germans for the most part, mercenary and " domestic- 
 able," they serve according as they are paid, bowing the 
 head, indeed, but not with grace, stiff and spiritless at 
 once, gloomy and severe in a sort of inner circle of their 
 own, where they rear an astonishing garden-growth of 
 Germanic soil : sentimentalism and fierce pride, brutal- 
 ity and poetry, bourgeois virtue and philosophic esprit ; 
 the whole fitting in oddly enough with the career of 
 tchinovnik and of courtier. Let us not, however, condemn 
 them too severely, as the Russia of to-day is disposed 
 to do. It is a mistake, for it is they who made the 
 Russia of to-day. Yes, it is they who, with laborious 
 hands, built up the instructed, well-regulated, industrial 
 Russia which Europe is now beginning to know. They 
 laid down its roads, they dug its canals, they peopled its 
 schools. They did it, truly, as mercenaries, as people 
 who are paid and sent about their business as soon as 
 their work is done. But it is only just, in discharging 
 them, to take into account the service they have ren- 
 dered. And then also, while Catherine was reigning 
 over the great Sclavonic empire, there was a very con- 
 siderable part very admirably played by a person of 
 foreign, of German, origin : herself. To overlook the 
 fact would be to commit a singular injustice to herself 
 and her country. 
 
 II. 
 
 The great statesman of the first half of the reign, so 
 far as there was one, was Panin, a pure-blooded Russian, 
 in spite of certain attempts to attribute to him Italian 
 blood. There were not wanting certain Pagninis at 
 Florence, as, a little earlier, there had been certain 
 Birons in France, ready to advertise their own merits 
 
8 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 by means of a family connection which they were clever 
 enough to discover for themselves. We have already 
 spoken elsewhere of the political debuts of Nikita Panin, 
 and of his part in the court intrigues which disturbed 
 the reign of Elizabeth. Among the ministers employed 
 by Catherine, he was almost the only one who had a 
 past, who brought into the direction of public affairs 
 both ideas and ways of thinking which were anything 
 but the mere reflection of her own thought. Thus 
 his ~ ministry formed a period of transition, which 
 prepared the way for the progressive absorption of 
 power which she desired and knew how to realize, with 
 the aid of other helpers. It was a task carried out with 
 extraordinary patience, science, and imperturbability, 
 and kept in view from the first moment. At the very 
 time of the coup d'Etat, the nth (22nd) July, 1762, a 
 courier was sent to Field-Marshal Sal'cykof, with an 
 order from the ministry of Foreign Affairs, countersigned 
 by the Empress, instructing the commander-in-chief of 
 the Russian forces to quit Prussian soil without delay, 
 in consequence of the treaty which Peter III. had 
 decided upon making, and which Catherine, on the 
 advice of Panin, apparently upheld. But the same 
 courier was the bearer of a note in the hand of Catherine 
 herself, dated the same day, and announcing to the 
 field- marshal that he is to carry out the orders which 
 she had herself given him, after the events which had 
 happened at St. Petersburg ; that is to say, that he was 
 to march forward with his troops, and complete the 
 occupation of the conquered provinces. Panin, it is true, 
 carried the day that time ; he was not always equally 
 fortunate. There came a time when he was no more 
 than a decorative figure-head, constantly at the mercy 
 of the imperious humours of the samodierjitsa and the 
 wrangling humours of her favourites. It was much 
 to have been able to hold such a position to the 
 end, if not brilliantly, at all events decently. Panin 
 owed this measure of success partly to his remarkable 
 sang-froid tact, and tenacity, but even more perhaps to 
 
THE STATESMEN 9 
 
 his defects than to his qualities. His proverbial in- 
 dolence, the life of pleasure to which he abandoned 
 himself so forgetfully, the heedlessness, made up equally 
 of scepticism and of sluggishness of mind, which it 
 pleased him to raise to the dignity of a system ; these 
 were his best aids. 
 
 And, though Catherine was for a long time bent on 
 checkmating him on every occasion, with a view to 
 gradually dislodging him from the position which she 
 had herself given him, she was convinced, all the same, 
 that he was an indispensable man. " What am I to 
 do ? " she answered sharply, when Orlof complained to 
 her of the pranks that Panin was playing at the feet 
 of the Countess Stroganof, for whom he was neglecting 
 state affairs ; " I cannot yet do without him." " The 
 Empress needs me more than I need her," said Panin, 
 on his side, to Count Sheremetief, whose daughter he 
 was anxious to marry, in spite of the fact that Catherine 
 had allotted the rich heiress to a brother of the favourite 
 of the day. The Orlofs had to give way yet further ; the 
 Empress herself dictated a letter of renunciation to the 
 head of the family, and Mademoiselle Sheremetief 
 would have become Countess Panin had not death 
 suddenly ended the little domestic drama. 
 
 " M. de Panin has natural wit, easy and distinguished 
 manners, and a certain stock of honesty, which he 
 develops to his honour, and in a manner of veritable 
 sensibility. He has talent and intelligence, and is 
 pleasant of access, despite his extreme difficulty in 
 speaking consecutively for any time, and a sprightliness 
 which is much too constant, and far too often indiscreet. 
 But with these advantages he is far from being a great 
 minister. His indolence and sloth are beyond expres- 
 sion. He passes his life with women, and with courtesans 
 of the second order. No promptness in affairs, those 
 even of the first importance ; all the tastes and the 
 caprices of an effeminate and licentious young man, 
 little learning, a very imperfect knowledge of the 
 different states of Europe, an obstinately-rooted pre- 
 
lo CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 judice in regard to all things, inconstancy in his liking 
 and disliking of persons, joining the petty pre-occu- 
 pation of minute detail to the desire to see everything 
 in large, so that the greater things are overlooked . . . 
 given over into the hands of underlings who take ad- 
 vantage of his easiness while sneering at his unthrift . . .; 
 in a word, having stability and sincerity only in his' 
 slavish devotion to His Majestj^ of Prussia." 
 
 It is Sabatier de Cabre, writing from St. Petersburg 
 to the Due d'Aiguillon, in 1772, who draws so little 
 flattering a portrait. And there is no prejudice in it, 
 for he declares that the prime minister is incorruptible, 
 adding, "Perhaps he is the only Russian who is so." 
 The following year his successor, Durand, follows suit 
 to much the same effect : 
 
 " This Panin is a good sort of man, but indolent, 
 slothful, and libertine ; without force of body, without 
 vigour, and without courage of mind. ... I know the 
 Panins ; I have known them when they were in very 
 poor circumstances. The minister was a private soldier 
 in the horse guards . . . ; the Empress Elizabeth wished , 
 to put him to some other use, and he proved incapable 
 of any other use. He was then sent into Sweden. He 
 remained there twelve years. Sleeping, feeding, and , 
 going after women were his state affairs." ' 
 
 " Voluptuous by temperament, and slothful on system," 
 writes the Chevalier de Corberon, another French citarge. 
 d'affaires, and he punctuates his appreciation with a 
 piquant anecdote. The Swedish ambassador, Nolken, 
 invited to dinner by the minister, excuses himself on 
 the ground that he has important dispatches to send 
 off. Panin puts on his most nonchalant air as he 
 replies : " It is evident, my dear Baron, that you are not 
 accustomed to affairs of state, if you let them interfere 
 with your dinner." 
 
 We have, besides, in further confirmation of these 
 testimonies, the minister's daily routine, as it was noted 
 in 1781 by the Marquis de Verac. According to him, 
 Count Panin is accustomed to go to bed at five or six 
 
THE STATESMEN 11 
 
 in the morning, " on account of uneasiness in his legs." 
 He gets up at two, and begins his toilet, which his 
 infirmities always render a very long one. At four he 
 is ready to receive the people who are usually in attend- 
 ance, but dinner is served immediately, followed by a 
 drive or a siesta of an hour. At half-past seven the 
 minister receives his usual boon companions, and his 
 day is over. " The interval between half-past six and 
 seven or half-past seven," declares V^rac, " was the 
 only moment when it was possible to talk business 
 with him, and the state of his health always afforded 
 him a plausible excuse for not giving a definite 
 answer." 
 
 It is almost the same story which we find in the 
 Memoirs of Laveaux (not that they arc worthy of much 
 confidence) : " He loved greatly the table, women, and 
 gaming ; by reason of eating and sleeping his body had 
 become a mass of fat. He rose at noon ; his courtiers 
 entertained him with facetious stories until one ; then 
 he took chocolate, and commenced his toilet, which 
 lasted till three. About half-past three he sat down to 
 table, and the dinner lasted till five. He went to bed 
 at six, and slept till eight. It was not without difficulty 
 that two valets de chambre could succeed in waking 
 him, in dragging him from his bed, and in setting him 
 straight on his legs. When the second toilet was 
 over, play commenced, and did not end before eleven. 
 Supper followed play, and play recommenced after 
 supper. About three hours after midnight the minister 
 retired, and consulted with Bakunin, first commissary 
 of his department. Generally M. Panin went to bed at 
 five o'clock in the morning." 
 
 At the time when the Marquis de Verac was at St. 
 Petersburg, Panin was still the man on whom the care 
 of the foreign relations of the great empire officially 
 rested, and Joseph II., who visited the capital about the 
 same time, was filled with amazement, as he thought of 
 Kaunitz. " This man," he wrote to his mother, " is all 
 words, and very little actions. ... It is a web of ideas 
 
12 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 and phrases through which it is impossible to make 
 headway." 
 
 French and Austrians, it is true, might be suspected 
 of a certain malice in regard to so resolute a partisan of 
 the Prussian alliance. A testimony, however, which, 
 from this point of view, is above suspicion, is that of 
 the English envoys. Panin is as friendly to them as 
 he is to Prussia. Well, they tell precisely the same tale. 
 Cathcart, in 1771, complains of the extreme difficulty 
 of getting a word with the prime minister ; he is not 
 visible in the morning, and he is driving in the after- 
 noon. The Empress herself only sees him once a week. 
 CDie very reason, indeed, which induces her to retain 
 ' this indolent minister in his post lies precisely in his 
 indolence. She is confident that he does not possess 
 activity enough to attempt a revolution in favour of 
 Paul."^ Harris, in 1778, writes, in a dispatch to the 
 Foreign Office : " You will not credit me if I tell you 
 that, out of the twenty-four hours, Count Panin only 
 gives half-an-hour to the discharge of his official duties." 
 
 Catherine herself, too, is equally expressive. We 
 have seen her, on one occasion, amusing herself with the 
 somewhat ghastly game of guessing what the persons 
 of her retinue are likely to die of. Against the name of 
 Panin she puts : " If he were ever to be in a hurry." 
 
 Nfevertheless, in the lengthy list of ministers which 
 she employed, it is Panin who seems, taken all round, 
 to be best able to face the ordeal of posterity. Harris, 
 who at one moment had a personal grudge against him, 
 who even accused him of trying to poison him with a 
 salad, cannot but bear witness to the integrity and 
 /honour of his conduct in all those transactions in which 
 he was solely concerned. And he states him to be incor- 
 iruptible. " Because better paid by Frederick," adds the 
 editor of his correspondence. That was the opinion at 
 Versailles. The matter is at least doubtful. A real 
 elevation of ideas and sentiments is seen more than 
 once, both in the private and public life of this singular 
 man, through all his undoubted weaknesses, his only too 
 
THE STATESMEN 13 
 
 evident degradations. Something of it is seen even in 
 the correspondence of Frederick himself with his envoy 
 at St. Petersburg, Baron Solms. In 1764 Frederick 
 insists that the Poles should be prevented from getting 
 rid of their libermn veto. And Panin objects : why 
 hinder this nation from emerging from "the kind of 
 barbarism in which it is kept by this abuse of liberty " ? 
 A Poland which should be strong in itself, and strongly 
 attached to Russia, that is his ideal. In 1774, Frederick 
 having won his way, Panin receives his share of the 
 spoils of the poor dismembered republic : ten thousand 
 " head " of Poles, in gift from the Empress. He hands 
 them over to his commissaries, refusing to profit by a 
 proceeding of which he has disapproved. At the 
 moment of that terrible crisis, the Pugatchoftshina, 
 when the ever-increasing influence of Patiomkin has 
 already removed him from the sway of power, when he 
 is forced to suffer daily humiliation at the hands of so 
 worthless a rival as he considers him to be, he has his 
 chance of revenge. The favourite, " who understands 
 nothing, who prefers to understand nothing," is not the 
 man to make headway against such a storm. The 
 audacity and the cleverness of which he is capable 
 are as yet only to be seen in ante-room intrigues and 
 alcove successes. Panin has nothing to do but fold his 
 arms and preserve the passive attitude which he has been 
 forced to keep, and he will be cruelly revenged. He 
 never thinks of such a thing. " We must save the 
 state," he writes to his brother, " after which it will be 
 time to make way for the favourites of the day, and 
 go one's way for good." 
 
 He does not go his way at the appointed moment, 
 and for lack of doing so his memory has suffered some 
 wrong. It is from this moment that the degradation of 
 his character really begins, the moment after victory, 
 when he resumes the position of minister without official 
 functions. Catherine becomes impatient at his solicitude l^ 
 in regard to the family of his pupil, the Crown Prince. 
 " One would think my children and grandchildren 
 
14 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 belonged to him more than they do to me." The 
 management of the department of Foreign Affairs, of 
 which he remains nominally the head, is in 178 1 officially 
 handed over to Ostermann, the foreign ministers being 
 advised of it. He receives no more dispatches, is not 
 even present at the council, discharges his secretaries, 
 and only lives at St. Petersburg, he declares, so that the 
 Empress may have constantly before her eyes a monu- 
 ment of her ingratitude. He dies two years afterwards, 
 and Catherine, in her correspondence with Grimm, 
 writes his epitaph, an ideal epitaph for such a monu- 
 ment. The man whom she had considered indispensable 
 in 1767 is stripped by her of every talent but that of 
 having known how to make capital out of merits which 
 did not belong to him. " No one was more able in this 
 art ; he tricked himself out superbly in other people's 
 fine feathers, and the less they were his, the more he 
 made of them, so that he was held to have a father's 
 heart for the child that some one else had begotten for 
 him." 
 
 Some one else ? One of the Orlofs, doubtless, or 
 Patiomkin. Undoubtedly the adventurous turn of the 
 former, the impetuous genius of the latter, harmonized 
 ill with so cold and calculating a mind as that of 
 Panin, who was bound to give way before them ; but 
 Catherine herself was not without her active part in it. 
 " She has got rid of him," wrote the Marquis de V6rac 
 in 1781, " out of jealousy and amour propre, lest it should 
 be said that he counted for anything in the triumphs 
 she was set on gaining. The moment she felt she could 
 do without him, his fate was decided." 
 i The effacement and disappearance of Panin coincided 
 i" with the triumph of the Austrian policy on the banks 
 of the Neva, and the final collapse of the Prussian 
 alliance. There was not, however, any really direct 
 relation of cause and effect between these two events. 
 Panin was, it is true, the open champion of this alliance. 
 "Fear nothing," he said in 1763 to Solms, "so long as 
 you do not hear that my bed has been removed outside 
 
THE STATESMEN 15 
 
 the palace." His bed remained in the palace till 1783, 
 but his influence was gone long before then. In spite 
 of his repugnance to it, the spoliation of Poland figures 
 among the annals of his career ; the other two notable 
 events being, as some one has maliciously said, the 
 exchange of Holstein for six vessels which Denmark 
 never handed over, and — the education of Paul. This 
 is an epitaph worthy of Catherine's. 
 
 A secondary cause in the disagreement which always 
 existed between Empress and minister lies in the liberal 
 ideas brought into power by the latter. Catherine, it is 
 true, had her own ; but we know what she made of them. 
 Panin refused to follow her in this rapid evolution. 
 There was some talk of a plan of reform which he drew 
 up in 1776 in company with the Gi'and-Duke. In the 
 course of that year the Grand-Duchess Nathahe died in 
 childbirth, and there were strange rumours in the air 
 connecting her death with the midwife who had assisted 
 her. " It is certain," said Prince Dolgorukof in his 
 Memoirs, " that this woman became very rich, and that 
 Patiomkin visited her." 
 
 What is more certain is that Catherine, in her gradual \ 
 abandonment of her early philosophic and humanitarian 
 ideas, and the gradual taste which grew upon her for 
 direct and personal power, became less and less dis- 
 posed to tolerate about her men of the character and 
 calibre of Panin. In their place she conceived and 
 realized, to a certain point, a type of functionary abso- 
 lutely new, at all events in Russia : simple, laborious 
 men, concerned only with their appointed task, averse 
 to any new conception of their powers and privileges 
 honest (at least comparatively) and a^solutely_dii£ile. 
 When she had made her choice in Prince Viaziemski, 
 and had installed him in the place of Procurator- 
 General of the empire, she seemed to herself to have 
 attained her end. 
 
1 6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 III. 
 
 This place was one of extreme importance. Pro- 
 curator-General meant head of all the under-procurators 
 connected with the different departments of the Senate, 
 and there representing the immediate action of supreme 
 power ; that is to say, of the sovereign. Now, as these 
 departments were concerned with almost the whole of 
 the direct administration of the country, any one at the 
 head of them found himself at once Minister of Finance, 
 Chief Justice, and all but Home Minister. 
 
 Viaziemski's predecessor, Hliebof, was a tool of Peter 
 III. When he held the post, at the time of Elizabeth's 
 death, he had already committed all the misdeeds which 
 afterwards caused his dismissal. Among other things, 
 he had arranged, in concert with an under-agent, Krylof, 
 a merciless pillage of the merchants of the government 
 of Irkutsk. As a means of extortion, Krylof employed 
 torture. A merchant, who had undergone the strappado 
 for three hours, died of the torture, after disbursing 
 30,000 roubles, which Hliebof and his accomplice shared 
 between them. Krylof was brought to justice in 1760, 
 received the knout in one of the public squares in 
 Irkutsk, and was condemned to hard labour for life ; 
 but Hliebof became Procurator-General. It was only 
 in 1764, two years after her succession, that Catherine 
 discovered what had been going on in her province of 
 Siberia, or, at all events, what part her Procurator had 
 played in it. She confined herself to depriving him of 
 his post. He re-entered her service in 1773, was in 
 1775 a member of the tribunal which sat in judgment 
 on Pugatshof, obtained in the same year the chief 
 government of Smolensk, had in a short time raked 
 together a half-million of roubles, and was again dis- 
 charged. He died a member of the Senate. Catherine 
 was not particularly careful in the choice of her senators. 
 Prince Viaziemski was an exception. He was supposed 
 
THE STATESMEN 17 
 
 to have retired from service twice or thrice millionaire, 
 after having entered it with six pieces of plate for his 
 whole belongings ; but he took his time in making his 
 fortune. Hliebof went too fast. 
 
 Son of a naval lieutenant, brought up in the corps des 
 cadets, having served in the army and gained the rank 
 of quartermaster-general, Viaziemski might have seemed 
 scarcely the man for the administration of those judicial 
 functions which were assigned to him by Catherine. The 
 certificate which he received on leaving school, the only 
 one he ever obtained in his life, runs thus : " He knows 
 geometry and the art of fortification, paints landscape 
 in colours, speaks and writes German, has some ac- 
 quaintance with ancient and modern history, and with 
 geography according to the tables of Homann, can fence 
 a little, and dance the minuet." This minuet-dancer 
 had, however, one kind of knowledge which won for him 
 the confidence and the favour of his imperious mistress 
 during a quarter of a century : he knew how to obey. 
 He did better still : he personified, in the eyes of 
 Catherine, a certain way of looking at the question of 
 government, which was not indeed hers at the moment 
 of her rise to power, but to which she inclined more and 
 more as she came to realize the actual meaning of her 
 own position as supreme autocrat. He was heart and 
 soul with the conservative and retrograde party, in the 
 vanguard of the old Russian element, the firm opponent 
 of all reforms, the sworn foe of all foreign influences. 
 Science, literature, and the arts found in him the very 
 opposite of a Maecenas. He had terrible conflicts with 
 Princess Dashkof, whose academic budget he cut down, 
 and whose publications he pro.secuted. Of any bad 
 workman, he would say ^" He's a poet," or "He's a 
 painter." All this did not hinder Catherine from pro- 
 tecting, after her own fashion, painting and even poetry ; 
 she seemed to think that it was enough for her merely 
 to be in power, and she was grateful to Viaziemski 
 for the support that he gave her in not doing more 
 than she did. He allowed her to declare and to feel 
 
 C 
 
1 8 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 that she was still liberal, by comparison, at heart; he 
 re-established her in her own eyes when she began 
 to feel that she had fallen away from her early ideas 
 and inclinations, and, in the moral crisis which she had 
 to pass through in the process, he helped her over the 
 most difficult steps of the way. She retained him in 
 her service for thirty years. 
 
 Viaziemski was a true Russian, like Panin and 
 Hliebof, like the Tshernishofs also, whose problematic 
 Polish origin at all events dates from the fifteenth 
 century. They were an old family, which long remained 
 obscure, a family which was a whole tribe in itself 
 The three brothers, Zahar, Peter, and Ivan, who came 
 into celebrity under the reign of Catherine, belonged to 
 the younger branch. It was not till afterwards that the 
 elder branch came into notoriety, with that Alexander 
 Tshernishof, who, entrusted with a diplomatic mission 
 to Paris in 182 1, took advantage of the occasion to pay 
 a private visit to the pigeon-holes of the War Office. 
 Baron Bignon, who, on his return, accompanied him on 
 the way to Warsaw, and joked him on the extraordinary 
 fullness of his pockets, had little notion of what they 
 really contained. This double-handed, or, one might 
 rather say, double-bottomed diplomat, became a minister 
 under the reign of Nicholas. The head of the younger 
 branch, Gregory Pietrovitch, owed his elevation to his 
 marriage with Eudoxia Ivanovna Rjevski, who was the 
 last mistress of Peter I., and who, it was rumoured, was 
 responsible for the premature death of the Tsar. On 
 realizing the first symptoms of the illness from which he 
 died, and suspecting its origin, Peter contented himself 
 with calling the husband to him and telling him to " go 
 and flog Eudoxia." Eudoxia had her flogging, but the 
 Tsar received no benefit from it. Gregory Pietrovitch 
 had four sons. The eldest was in succession minister 
 at Copenhagen, at Berlin, at London, where he had the 
 celebrated encounter with M. du Chatelet, who, seeing 
 his place usurped, re-seated himself on the shoulders of 
 the intruder ; finally at Paris, where he was not more 
 
THE STATESMEN 19 
 
 successful than elsewhere. Of the three others, Andre, 
 after having gained the favour of Catherine when she 
 was still Grand-Duchess, disappeared from the scene 
 before her accession ; Zahar, who also figured among 
 the future Empress's intimates, came very near to a 
 similar eclipse. In July 1762, finding himself in the 
 neighbourhood of Frederick, where he had been sent by 
 Peter III., with propositions of peace and alliance, he 
 lost his head at the news of the coup d'Etat, and sent in 
 his resignation. Catherine accepted it, " since he would 
 no longer serve her, her and his native land." She 
 overlooked his foolishness, however, gave him a regi- 
 ment of the Guards, and appointed him vice-president 
 of the War Department. Two years after, in 1764, 
 he once more compromised himself, by writing on 
 a certain proces-verbal, " The Empress ought to pardon." 
 Catherine was not accustomed to have her will and 
 her clemency thus dictated to her. Panin, who con- 
 sidered that the old favourites, the Tshernishofs, were 
 good to set off against the new favourites, the Orlofs, 
 had to interpose in his favour. In 1772 Zahar and his 
 brother Ivan joined with him in bringing about the 
 downfall of Gregory Orlof ; they lost no time, however, 
 in turning against the Prime Minister himself, who 
 seemed to bar the way to their new ambitions. The 
 conflict went on till 1780, when a third person, Patiom- 
 kin, stepped in and put matters straight, taking from 
 Zahar Tshernishof the vice-presidency of the War 
 Department, from Panin everything but the empty 
 honour of a title, and avenging and replacing Gregory 
 Orlof at the same moment. Zahar was appointed 
 governor of Moscow, where he died four years later. 
 Ivan came better out of the affair. Catherine appointed 
 him, she certainly could not have explained why, to the 
 presidency of the Admiraltj' Department. He had 
 made the sea-voyage to London, when secretary to his 
 uncle Peter : that was his sole qualification. The navy 
 was, it is true, as before, governed by Alexis Orlof, who 
 knew no more about it than he did, but who knew how 
 
!o CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 :o choose his subordinates. Being an accomplished man 
 Df the world and an agreeable talker, Ivan Tshernishof 
 Decame one of the ornaments of the court of Catherine. 
 Paul, who wished the navy to be in the hands of 
 seamen, appointed him field-marshal. " Seaman in soft 
 Abater, and marshal in salt water," was the saying. 
 
 Ambition, a restless, turbulent, aggressive ambition, 
 was the motive-force of all the family. " These people," 
 ivrote Durand in 1773, "are always wanting to be what 
 :hey are not. When one of them becomes procurator 
 :o the Senate, he wants to be in the Admiralty ; when 
 le is there, he longs to be an ambassador ; once ambas- 
 sador, he will leave no folly untried in his anxiety to 
 jet back to the navy. If he were to succeed, he 
 would want to be sovereign." For all this Catherine 
 ;ared not a jot. She held these place-seekers, doubt- 
 less, at their real valuation, and was probably not far 
 From being of the same mind as Harris, who said of 
 Lhem, in 1782, in drawing a picture of the court of St. 
 Petersburg, for the benefit of the Foreign Office : " The 
 bhuvalofs, Stroganofs, and Tshernishofs are what they 
 lave always been, gargons perruquiers de Paris." Saba- 
 :ier nevertheless attributed to Zahar certain qualities as 
 in ambassador, by which he " redeemed the horrors of a 
 Dad heart." As for his pretensions to be a "Russian 
 Choiseul," they seemed to him as impertinent as they 
 lad seemed to Cathcart, Harris's predecessor. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The successor of Panin was a man of totally different 
 jrder, so far, that is, as it can be said that Panin had a 
 accessor. One day (it was in 1775, at the time of the 
 :arnival), having a particularly exquisite dish of bliny (a 
 ;ort of pancake) at d(jeuner, Catherine had the generous 
 vhim of sharing it with her secretaries. Not one was 
 be found ; the carnival had dispersed them all. 
 ' What ! no one ? " said Catherine, in some discontent. 
 
THE STATESMEN 21 
 
 Yes, indeed, there was some one in the antechamber, 
 but it was the new-comer, the hahol. 
 
 Hahol ! — the unifying work of time has softened the 
 scornful meaning of this nickname, which the pure- 
 blooded Russian might still, however, apply to the 
 Russian from the neighbourhood of the Bug or the 
 Dnieper, whom he would recognize by his accent. 
 
 " Bring him in then ! " said Catherine. The hahol 
 entered. He was twenty-eight years old, awkward, 
 common in face, spoke only Russian, and that with the 
 terrible provincial accent. But he ate the bliny with 
 such greedy absorption, his thick lips and roving eyes 
 bespoke so frank a sensuality, that a current of sympathy 
 at once instituted itself between him and Catherine. As 
 she watched him eat, she happened to speak of a law, of 
 which the precise text escaped her memory. Without 
 losing a mouthful, and without a moment's hesitation, 
 he cited the text. She wished to verify the quotation. 
 He calmly indicated the volume and the page. She was 
 amazed. Here was an invaluable man. She demanded 
 his assistance that very morning, and the mornings 
 following. He had an accent, but he corrected the 
 faults that his flying pen discovered in the writing of 
 Her Majesty's ordinary secretaries. He knew grammar 
 and orthography : he was a perfect treasure ! 
 
 The man was called Bezborodko. He was descended 
 from a family of Polish refugees, the Ksiejnitskis. One 
 of his ancestors, having had his chin cut off by the blow 
 of a sabre, received the name of Bezborody, or Bez- 
 borodko (chinless), which his descendants inherited. It 
 was their only heritage. The future Chancellor of State 
 had nevertheless been brought up in the corps des cadets 
 at St. Petersburg, but the jests of his comrades, directed 
 against that provincialism from which he could never 
 free himself, seemed to point out for him an obscure 
 future. He vegetated, indeed, in various subocdinate 
 positions, in his own province, far from the capital 
 and its large horizons. In 1764, on leaving college, he 
 succeeded in gaining admission, not without difficulty, 
 
!2 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 :o the chancellor's office of Rumiantsof, recently ap- 
 pointed governor of Little Russia. Ten years later, 
 Catherine observed that the reports which came to her 
 rom this quarter were better put together than those 
 vhich came to her from other quarters. "You might 
 ;end me some of your secretaries," she wrote to 
 R-umiantsof. Rumiantsof sent Zavadovski and Bez- 
 )orodko. Zavadovski soon pushed himself tothe front ; 
 he position he attained was a dazzling, but a brief one : 
 rom 177s to 1776 he held the post of favourite. Bez- 
 )orodko was for a time left in the shade ; he was only 
 I hahol. A happy chance, as we have just narrated, 
 lecided his fate. From that moment he made himself 
 ndispensable. His official position was the presentation 
 )f the petitions addressed to the Empress ; he soon had 
 lis hand in everything that went on, and particularly in 
 inything of a delicate nature. In her correspondence 
 vith Grimm, Catherine always refers to him at this 
 ime as " my factotum," or simply " factotum." He 
 bund means also to ingratiate himself with the favourite 
 )f the day, who, by an exception unique in the life of 
 Catherine, was to be also the favourite of the morrow : 
 le was under the protection of Patiomkin. In 1778, 
 he Journal de la Coiir represents him as having been 
 wenty times invited to dinner at the Empress's, in 
 lompany with persons of distinction. Once even he is 
 eated at the Empress's table. But it is only after the 
 all of Panin that he finally takes his place in the 
 ligher spheres of the court, and plays an active part 
 n politics. In face of Ostermann, who is an absolute 
 lullity, the control of the department of Foreign Affairs 
 alls in reality upon Patiomkin, who is only able to 
 ope with the difficulties of the situation by making use 
 if Bezborodko, now appointed Secretary of State. All 
 legotiations requiring any dexterity pass through his 
 lands ; all the expedients, to which the sovereign 
 .nd the favourite have such frequent recourse in their 
 oreign policy, spring from his imagination. Large 
 onceptions are not much in his line ; still, it is he who 
 
THE STATESMEN 23 
 
 puts forward (and at a very early date, in 1776) the idea 
 of the annexation of the Crimea, and proves its possibility. 
 
 This situation lasts till 1791, when the death of 
 Patiomkin and the ascendancy of Zubof consign this 
 priceless co-worker to a secondary position. Mean- 
 while, the hahol has become Count of the Holy Empire, 
 and has rapidly made his fortune. Among other 
 sources of revenue, he has had the funds of the postal 
 department, which he managed without rendering an 
 account. At the death of Catherine he possessed 
 16,000 peasants, salt works in the Crimea, fisheries in 
 the Caspian Sea, wealth in abundance. 
 
 Endowed with a prodigious facility of work and an 
 equally remarkable presence of mind, Bezborodko had 
 constant need of both, for he carried on simultaneously 
 the life of a man of affairs and that of an unbridled 
 dSbaudiL He has, it need scarcely be said, been 
 pointed out, among others, as having had the passing 
 favours of Catherine. He was, however, without beauty, 
 grace, or wit, and he possessed none of the qualities 
 which usually determined the choice of the Empress. 
 As a lover, he was copious and brutal. The romance of 
 his life was his harem, always well-stocked and frequently 
 reinforced. In June 1787, Garnovski notes in the sort 
 of journal which he sends to Popof, the confidant of 
 Patiomkin : 
 
 " In virtue of a firman received by her, the first in 
 rank in the seraglio of Reis-Effendi (Bezborodko), Marie 
 AleksieTevna Grekof, has deigned to set forth about this 
 time for Moscow, under the conduct of Kislar-Aga (black 
 eunuch), M. Ruban, and a numerous following, con- 
 tained in two coaches that seat four each, and a quantity 
 of Russian vehicles." 
 
 Two months after, he writes again : 
 
 " Four days ago the singer Capascini returned from 
 Italy, bringing with him two young Italians for Bez- 
 borodko. They have been tried, but I know not if 
 both have been admitted into the seraglio." 
 
 Catherine tolerates it all. She signs with her own 
 
24 CATHERL\E THE GREAT 
 
 hand a ukase conferring the cross of St. Vladimir on 
 M. Ruban. She merely smiles when Ostermann, one 
 day, in full council, reproaches his colleague, with whom 
 he has had some difference, with his continual orgy of 
 y^oung beauties, kept at such great cost. Bezborodko 
 shrugs his shoulders, and, alluding to the conjugal mis- 
 fortunes of the minister, which are of public notoriety, 
 he replies that he does indeed go after loose women 
 because they are easier to get rid of than a legitimate 
 wife, even when she is known to be a whore. He has, too, 
 the resource of frequently changing his Italians. And 
 Catherine sometimes aids him. She sends from St. 
 Petersburg the singer Davia, to whom he gives 8(X)0 
 roubles (40,000 francs) a month, and who is unfaithful 
 to him with every new-comer. Nor has Italy his ex- 
 :lusive preference. He covers with gold the famous 
 Russian actress, Sandunova, who is followed by the 
 Janseuse Karatyguina, by whom he has a daughter. 
 He marries this daughter to a councillor of state, giving 
 ler in dowry a house at St. Petersburg, and an estate 
 ivith 80,000 roubles of revenue. La Karatyguina for a 
 ^ong time does the honours of the datslia, near the 
 ;apital, where all the friends of the minister are invited 
 with their mistresses to magnificent /?^«j, and where, by 
 1 special authorization of the Empress, the cannon is 
 ired in honour of the gay company. One evening, as 
 Bezborodko is playing at whist with Rogerson, he 
 imuses himself in announcing by a salvo every revoke 
 3f which Her Majesty's physician is guilty. 
 
 But the hahol who was, and is, in him, in the inmost 
 "astnesses of his soul and flesh, is not content with all 
 :his splendid debauchery. Every Saturday he quits 
 :he sumptuous costume constellated with diamonds, in 
 .vhich he is seen at court, and sets out in search of other 
 Dleasures. Dressed in a simple blue frock-coat, with a 
 -ound cap, without a peak, on his head, and furnished with 
 in invariable sum of one hundred roubles, he disappears 
 'or thirty-six hours. In winter he is very likely to be 
 found, about five o'clock in the morning, at the masked 
 
THE STATESMEN 25 
 
 ball of the French Lion, the haunt of the lowest dregs 
 of St. Petersburg. On one occasion a courier of the 
 Empress, after looking for him all night long, discovers 
 him dead drunk. In the twinkling of an eye he has 
 recovered his senses ; he has himself carried home, in- 
 undated with cold water, bled in both arms, dressed, and 
 then he jumps into his coach and drives to the palace. 
 On his arrival, his mind is perfectly clear. But the 
 Empress questions him about a projected law for 
 which she is impatiently waiting. He replies that it 
 is ready, draws a paper from his pocket, and com- 
 mences reading, frequently interrupted by the marks 
 of approbation of the sovereign. " It is perfect," she 
 says at last, "but give me the MS ; I will look over it 
 at leisure." 
 
 He turns pale, stammers, and, falling on his knees, 
 implores the forgiveness of the Empress. The MS 
 does not exist ; the paper that he holds in his hands is 
 a blank sheet of paper ; he has not read, he has impro- 
 vised. She forgives him ; but at last her indulgence, 
 mingled with admiration, is worn out. As he grows 
 older, it seems to her that he should abandon these 
 tours de force. Doubtless he feels that she does not 
 practise what she preaches, and he makes no change 
 in his habits. Embarrassed by the official rigidity and 
 ceremony which his functions demand, ill at ease in his 
 court habits, the French costume setting awkwardly on 
 his square and heavy peasant's build, the silk stockings 
 slipping down his ill-made legs, always gauche, slovenly, 
 and taciturn in the midst of the court splendours in 
 which he is called upon to take part, he requires a 
 periodic relief to the tension upon his jolly peasant 
 nature. And, at root, he is good-nature itself. His 
 ante-room is thronged every morning with a crowd of 
 people from Little Russia, drawn by his star to St. 
 Petersburg, in search of a situation or a favour. One 
 day, as he is getting rid of his audience, he is struck by 
 an unusual noise and movement in a waiting-room, where 
 he had ordered that no one was to be admitted. A 
 
26 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 foolish countryman of his, a fresh candidate for some 
 vacant place, had made his way there, and, no doubt 
 finding the time pass slowly, was filling up the interval 
 by pursuing a moth. Little by little he had got excited 
 over the fruitless chase, and was rushing hither and 
 thither, upsetting the furniture, pulling about the 
 hangings. The moth had just settled on a precious 
 Sevres vase. A blow of the fist, and the vase lay in 
 fragments, while the moth fluttered away untouched. 
 At the same instant a mocking voice inquires: 
 
 " So you missed your aim, eh .'' " 
 
 The luckless candidate turns, and sees behind him 
 the all-powerful councillor of the Empress. He fancies 
 his last hour is come, but the voice continues : 
 
 " Well, let's have a talk ; we must see that at all 
 events you don't miss your place." 
 
 Strange as it may seem, this Boeotian is an amateur 
 and a zealous protector of the arts and letters. The furni- 
 ture contained in his various houses at the time of his 
 death was estimated at 4,000,000 roubles, independent 
 of a gallery of pictures, one of the finest in Russia. 
 He had bought in 1796 a collection of canvases and 
 marbles of great price, brought together at Paris during 
 the revolutionary upheaval by Count Golovkin. It 
 contained the Cupid sculptured by Falconet for Madame 
 de Pompadour. A close friendship linked Bezborodko 
 with three writers of talent, to whom he always showed 
 encouragement, and whom he frequently aided with his 
 purse. First of all there was Lvof, the Russian Chapelle, 
 as Grot called him, the translator of Anacreon, and the 
 author of some agreeably- rhymed erotic poems. The 
 muse and the manners of the poet agreed admirably > 
 with the tastes and habits of the " factotum." Through 
 Lvof, Bezborodko came to know Dierjavin. In the- 
 correspondence of this last, which has been published, 
 there are nine letters addressed to Bezborodko, all of 
 them either requests, or thanks for favours already 
 obtained. All his life Dierjavin was in straits, though 
 helped and helping himself on all hands. It was at the 
 
THE STATESMEN 27 
 
 request of Bezborodko that Catherine rewarded the 
 singer of Felitsa by a sum of 4000 roubles, and it 
 was through his intervention that she consented, in 1795, 
 to overlook the ode, To the Masters and Judges, in which 
 the censorship had discovered Jacobin tendencies. In 
 spite of all this, Dierjavin was quite ready to thunder 
 out his alexandrines from time to time against the 
 Sardanapalesque existence of the great ones of his day, 
 that of Patiomkin and Bezborodko in particular, in 
 which he was the first to claim his share ; quite ready 
 also to insist, not without a certain ingratitude, on the 
 blind sway of fortune in its elevation of this or that man 
 to power. Finally Chemnitzer, the first Russian fabulist 
 in the European style, the precursor of Krylof, who died 
 in 1784 at the age of less than forty years, was indebted, 
 during his short career, to the favour of this provincial 
 Maecenas. 
 
 A keen observer, and, in general, a severe judge of 
 things and men connected with the government of 
 Catherine during her later years. Count Rastoptshin 
 is more indulgent than Dierjavin to the talents and 
 merits of Bezborodko. The most he has to blame in 
 him is his unruly retinue. The persons who compose 
 it have, he says, no other occupation than that of eating, 
 drinking, and constantly standing about in the presence 
 of their master, who has come to look upon them as 
 part of the furniture of his house. Rastoptshin, it is 
 true, is on terms of friendship with Simon Vorontsof, 
 the London exile, who, on his part, is quite prepared to 
 make use of Bezborodko, after having made himself 
 useful to him to begin with. Garnovski, in one of his 
 letters to Popof, describes Bezborodko as " the riding- 
 horse of Simon Romanovitch." And some weight must 
 be attributed to the judgment of the Marquis de Verac, 
 who writes of Bezborodko and his colleague Bakunin : 
 " When one has before his eyes, as I have, the life of 
 dissipation to which they are abandoned all day long, 
 the matter for surprise is, not that affairs are transacted 
 ill, but that they are transacted at all." 
 
28 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 The argument which pleads most in favour of the 
 factotum, in the presence of these contradictory wit- 
 nesses, is the manner in which he is replaced in office. 
 Catherine has no fault to find with his services until 
 she has made up her mind to welcome those of Zubof. ] 
 At first Bezborodko holds his own against the favourite. 
 One day, at Tsarskoife, as the Empress affects an air of 
 abstraction during the reading of one of his reports, he 
 stops, picks up his papers, and turns to go. Catherine 
 apologizes, and peace is made. But the favourite makes 
 rapid progress. Markof, Bezborodko's French secretary, 
 leaves him for Zubof. It is a great loss. Markof has 
 spent a considerable time in Paris, and has there 
 acquired all the delicacies of diplomatic speech in use 
 in European courts. He gains in a brief time, by his 
 change of master, the title of count, the Cross of St 
 Alexander and of St. Vladimir, 4000 peasants in 
 Podolia, and a large sum of money, which he greatly j 
 needs in order to supply the extravagant demands of 
 Mademoiselle Huss, the very famous, very pretty, and 
 very lively French actress, with whom he lives. 
 
 In 1792, after the death of Patiomkin, Bezborodko 
 is appointed to negotiate peace with Turkey, and once 
 more, for a moment, he has his moment of triumph.! 
 The fetes which he gives on this occasion recall the| 
 magnificence of those which swelled the pomp of the 
 conqueror of the Crimea. But on his return from 
 Jassy, he finds that the title of Vice-Chancellor, which 
 he now possesses, means nothing, while his own depart- 
 ment has been scattered among the creatures of Zubof 
 during his absence, a way of doing things peculiar to 
 Catherine, iie. humbles himself before his rival, demand- 
 ing his aid in obtaining the vacant post of inattre 
 de cour. He works under him, as he formerly did 
 under the Empress, and lends a respectful ear to the 
 divagations and impertinences of this young man of 
 twenty-four. The hahol has a supple backbone under 
 his rough and rude exterior. He talks, it is true, of 
 sending in his resignation ; he announces to Vorontsof 
 
THE STATESMEN 29 
 
 his intention of entirely effacing himself before the new 
 " universal master " whom Catherine has taken ; but he 
 is in no haste to make his decision, and for a very 
 sufficient reason : Poland is now being dismembered, 
 there is spoil to be had, and he means to have his share. 
 Spendthrift as he is, the peasant of the Dnieper is keen 
 enough after a bargain ! 
 
 - Of course there is not a very large amount to be had ; 
 the big pickings are for Zubof and his friends, on whom 
 the Empress manages to confer alike the glory and the 
 benefits of the proceedings on the banks of the Vistula. 
 At this he is furious. Was it not he who advised the 
 direction of affairs to be put into the hands of old 
 Rumiantsof .-' Was it not he who discovered the 
 forgotten Suvorof, to carry it out .? Still, however, he 
 is humble and submissive as ever. He is even careful 
 of appearances, running after the shadow of his vanished 
 power ; he sends his empty coach every day to the gates 
 of the palace, which he rarely enters. Sometimes he 
 makes his way to the Empress's dressing-room, which 
 serves as chamber-in-waiting ; he is announced, but he 
 declines the honour : he has nothing particular to com- 
 municate to Her Majesty. Catherine, who is also ready 
 enough to make profit out of the small change of 
 appearances, insists on receiving him, and the famous 
 bedroom, which has so often seen the Empress and her 
 councillor discussing the gravest interests of state, sees 
 them once more in a tete-a-tete which puts the court and 
 the city in suspense, though they have nothing after all 
 to say to one another. As before, Bezborodko takes a 
 paper from his pocket, but it is a boyish letter of his 
 young friend. Prince Kotchubey, whom he has had 
 appointed ambassador at Constantinople, and who 
 concerns himself with everything but the reconstruction 
 of the Greek empire. 
 
 Things go on much after this fashion until a certain 
 day, when, in this same room, filled now with the sudden 
 and disturbing terror of death, the startled courtiers bow 
 before a new master. Sure of the good-will of Rastop- 
 
30 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 tshin, who springs at once into power, Bezborodko is 
 one of the first to make his appearance. Paul receives 
 him cordially. Does he imagine that he is the bearer 
 of the terrible document of which so much has been 
 spoken, the testament of disinheritance ? Does such a 
 document exist, and is it through handing it over that 
 Bezborodko wins the favour of the future Emperor? 
 We shall return to these questions later on. Suffice it 
 to say, that they have not as yet been satisfactorily 
 settled. Paul, at all events, behaves with great generosity 
 towards his mother's faithful servant, now in disgrace ; 
 perhaps simply for the sake of securing the services of 
 a man of long experience, who is also the enemy of 
 Zubof. Bezborodko receives the post of Grand Chan- 
 cellor, the title of prince and hereditary highness, five or 
 six square leagues of land belonging to the Crown in 
 the government of Voron^je, the town of Dmitrief with 
 an enormous estate in the government of Orel ; and 
 finally, after coming to possess no less than 45,000 
 peasants, he dies in debt. 
 
 His death took place in 1799. He left behind him 
 the memory of a man who was able, honest, but little 
 estimable, happily gifted, though without talents of a 
 really superior order, and of character but indifferent, ^ 
 In his conduct of affairs he showed no leading idea, 
 personal to himself. He detested France, and resolutely 
 opposed any alliance with that country ; but in this 
 respect his antipathy — the instinctive recoil, perhaps, of 
 a gross nature at the contact of a culture which annoys 
 and distresses it — was in entire accordance with the 
 equally sincere, though very differently grounded, 
 inclinations of Catherine herself. His personal lack of 
 elegarice, which no doubt caused him to tolerate with 
 impatience the elegance of an ambassador such as the 
 Comte de Segur, deprived him of a certain amount of 
 prestige, and it was this, no doubt, which caused the 
 final variance with Catherine. His creased stockings i 
 were inimical, not only to the French alliance, but to his 
 own fortunes. 
 
THE STATESMEN 
 
 V. 
 
 In the retinue of Catherine there was yet another 
 inhabitant of Little Russia, who, though playing a far 
 inferior role, was yet a person of some importance. 
 Count Cyril Razumovski was a younger brother of 
 Alexis, the favourite, and supposed husband, of Elizabeth. 
 The son of a peasant of the Ukraine, Gregory Razum, 
 Alexis had made his d^hUs in the choir of the imperial 
 chapel (which had nothing in common with that of 
 another celebrated chapel), where his beautiful voice 
 attracted the attention of the Empress. Cyril followed 
 the fortunes of his elder brother. At the age of fifteen, 
 after a few brief studies at Berlin under the mathema- 
 tician Euler, he became one of the gentlemen-in- 
 waiting ; at sixteen, Count of the Holy Empire ; at 
 seventeen, chamberlain and knight of the Order of St. 
 Anne ; at eighteen, grand-master of the Order of St. 
 Alexander, and — president of the Academy of Sciences ! 
 In the following year he married Catherine Naryshkin, 
 cousin of the Empress Elizabeth, and the richest heiress 
 in Russia. He still continued to rise in rank ; was 
 lieutenant-general, aide-de-camp general, colonel of a 
 regiment of Guards, and, at twenty-two, hetman of the 
 Cossacks of Little Russia. The post had been vacant 
 for six years, since the death of the last hetman, 
 appointed by the Cossacks themselves. Elizabeth 
 re-established the office in favour of Cyril, and handed 
 over to him the whole of the enormous revenues which 
 had accumulated during the vacancy. Peter III. was 
 equally generous to this spoilt child of destiny. In 
 spite of all, however, at the time of the coup d'Etat Cyril 
 put himself heart and soul on the side of Catherine. 
 He had sighed discreetly after the Grand-Duchess's be- 
 witching eyes ; with the same discretion he acted in her 
 interests without compromising her. The Ismai'lovski 
 regiment, which he, commanded, had been decided on 
 
32 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 as the one which was to proclaim the future Empress. 
 Razumovski was aware of it, said nothing, and refused 
 to take any measures. The boldest and fieriest of the 
 four Orlofs, Alexis, tried in vain to win over his careful 
 and calculating prudence ; and even, one night, went so 
 far as to make his way into the hetman's bedroom, in 
 order to talk him into agreement. Razumovski let 
 him talk, seemed to take a moment's reflection, and 
 then, shaking his head, advised him to go and take 
 some one else's advice, "some one who knows more 
 about it than we do." Upon which he blew out his 
 candle, and began to snore loudly. Finally, however, 
 he did take an active part in the plot, as a printer. 
 The manifesto announcing the accession of Catherine 
 was printed in the cellars of the Academy of Sciences. 
 
 The new Empress was in difficulty to know how to 
 recompense this assistance. The wealthiest man in 
 Russia could not be paid in money. She gave him a 
 place in the Senate ; that was little enough, and as 
 such Razumovski esteemed it. He made no secret of 
 his discontent, looked askance on the favourite Orlof, 
 and opposed the project of marriage which Catherine 
 took up in 1763. In the following year he claimed as 
 the price of his services the position of hereditary 
 hetman. His emissaries induced the Cossack chiefs to 
 sign a petition in his favour. Catherine was surprised 
 and discontented ; the project was in entire variance 
 with the policy of unification which she had in view. 
 The Orlofs seized the occasion to satisfy their grudges, 
 and at the same time render vacant a place which 
 would doubtless fall to the lot of one or other of them. 
 They bestirred themselves frantically, and Catherine let 
 them have their own way. They managed so well that 
 Razumovski, who was not conspicuous for his courage, 
 took fright, and sent in his resignation. This was what 
 Catherine was waiting for ; but the Orlofs had a disap- 
 pointment : the vacant hetmanat was simply suppressed, ' 
 and replaced by an administrative body. This form ofl 
 organization was particularly favoured by Catherine, 
 
THE STATESMEN 33 
 
 and is still popular in Russia, as giving the best sort of 
 guarantee. At the present day it may be seen in the 
 very railway carriages, where the ticket-collector is 
 invariably accompanied by two assistants ; there you 
 find the principle of colleagues in its most rudimentary 
 form. At the head of the administrative body to whose 
 care she confided the government, Catherine placed 
 Count Rumiantsof, bidding him have " wolves' teeth 
 and fox's tail." 
 
 If we may credit the historian of Little Russia, 
 A. Lasarevski, the country gained by the change. The 
 ex-hetman was not a bad sort of man, but he was 
 indolent, he allowed his subordinates to do as they 
 pleased, and it pleased them to rule with a rod of iron. 
 Alike in character and in intelligence, he was essentially 
 mediocre. Nevertheless, after the forfeiture of his high 
 official station (now immensely wealthy since the death 
 of his brother, who, in 1771, had left him a hundred 
 thousand peasants) he assumed an attitude of haughty 
 independence which was not without its impressiveness, 
 isolating him in the midst of the obsequious crowd, 
 giving him a place apart, whose loftiness Catherine 
 herself seemed to respect. In 1776 Gregory Orlof 
 having, in defiance of the law, married his cousin- 
 german, Mademoiselle Zinovief, Razumovski refuses, 
 as a member of the Senate, to countersign the order 
 which decrees the separation of husband and wife, and 
 their claustration in a monastery. To do so, he declares 
 to his colleagues, would be to violate another law : that 
 which forbids a man to strike his fallen adversary. He 
 happens to sign his name awry at the foot of a sentence 
 which Catherine herself has dictated. " I sign as she 
 has judged," he is heard to say. A flatterer one day 
 expressed his surprise that, in spite of his rank of 
 field-marshal, the command of the armies sent against 
 the Turks has been confided to mere generals, Ru- 
 miantsof and Galitzin. " The reason is," he replies, 
 " that we have to beat the Turks, and not be beaten by 
 them." 
 
 D 
 
34 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 He expects to be taken at his just valuation ; he 
 affects also to have his origin always in mind. A 
 professor of the Academy of Kief comes to him with a 
 vast genealogical work concerning his family. He is 
 amazed : How can there be so much to say on so simple 
 a subject ? On this the professor refers him to the 
 diploma of the chancellor's office at Vienna, which has 
 created his brother count by connecting his house with 
 that of the Princes Rojinski. He cuts him short. 
 " Enough ! My father, a good honest man, was a private 
 soldier ; my mother, a sainted woman, to whom God 
 give long life, is a peasant's daughter ; as for myself, I 
 am count and hetman of Little Russia on both banks 
 of the Dnieper. Write that in your genealogy, and you 
 have said all." He drives his sons to distraction by his 
 frequent references to their obscure origin, and if he 
 finds them putting forward contrary pretensions, he 
 rings for his valet de chantbre. " Here, bring me the 
 peasant's clothes in which I came to St. Petersburg ; I 
 want to recall the happy time when I drove my cattle, 
 crying, ' Tsop ! tsop ! ' " 
 
 But if he refuses to ignore from what he started, 
 he declines equally to allow any one to forget to what 
 point he has risen. Having been received by Prince 
 Patiomkin in his dressing-gown, he returns the com- 
 pliment by attending a ball at the favourite's in the 
 same costume. He himself, however, practises that 
 unconstraint in attire which certain Parisians have 
 recently had occasion to observe in one or two great 
 nobles of Sclavonic origin. He will sometimes preside 
 at his table, at state dinners, with only the addition of 
 the order of St. Andre to his invariable dressing-gown. 
 But his table is royally hospitable, and daily open to all 
 comers, according to a custom which was still perpetu- 
 ated, till a few years since, in certain houses which 
 many Parisians have frequented. The daily ration of 
 his kitchens consists in an entire ox, ten sheep, .a 
 hundred fowls, and the rest according to need. His 
 chef is the famous Barideau, whom La Chetardie had 
 
Thk Statesmen 35 
 
 left in Russia, and who has the reputation of being 
 superior even to Duval himself, the French cook of 
 Frederick II. Besides the recipes of Barideau, Russia 
 owes to the marquis the introduction of champagne, of 
 which he is supposed to have brought 16,800 bottles 
 in his diplomatic baggage. Up to then, at the tables of 
 the great Muscovite lords, toasts were always drunk in 
 Hungarian wine. The other servants of Count Razu- 
 movski numbered about three hundred ; an intendant, 
 a master of ceremonies, a head valet de chambre, two 
 dwarfs, four valets de chambres who had the office of 
 hair-dressers, a billiard-marker, a butler, two coffee- 
 servers, five valets who had charge of the plate, an 
 usher, six valets de pied, two chasseurs, a Cossack, four 
 lackeys, two Hungarian foot-soldiers, three accountants, 
 two soldiers and four grooms connected with the 
 counting-house, two surveyors, six under-surveyors, ten 
 stokers, three housekeepers, etc. 
 
 " Uncle," said his niece, the Countess Apraksyn, one 
 day, " it seems to me that you have a lot of people that 
 you could very well do without." 
 
 " Quite so ; but they could not do without me." 
 A Russian noble of our day, on being reproved for 
 the facility with which he let his partners at cards win 
 from him, replied in similar fashion : 
 
 " If I gained oftener I should lose my players." 
 To the end of his life Razumovski carried on this 
 imposing existence, varied by certain relapses into the 
 rustic habits which had once been his, and which he 
 preserved in his fondness for certain gross and simple 
 provincial dishes, such as borshtch, buckwheat oatmeal ; 
 the sound of a Cossack bandura set his legs a-tingle. In 
 his estate of Pokrovskoie, near Moscow, he supported a 
 whole population of his compatriots, whom he employed 
 in digging pools, but whom he kept chiefly in order to 
 recall to mind his distant country, and with whom he 
 had long talks which brought back the memory and 
 the speech of his early years. He outlived Catherine, 
 but, after her death, wishing only to return to his 
 
36 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 native soil, he retired to his Ukranian estate of Baturyn. 
 Paul having sent in 1800 to learn what had become 
 of him, " Tell His Majesty," he said to the messengers, 
 "that I am dead." He died three years later, aged 
 seventy-four. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Of a quite different type were the foreign statesmen 
 whom Catherine was obliged, to some extent, to make 
 use of. She would otherwise have found it difficult to 
 fill up the diplomatic positions which have always, in 
 Russia, depended so largely on foreigners. With 
 Bestujef she managed very adroitly. Old and worn, 
 helpless, in presence of the new situation of affairs, 
 this condottiere, Russian only in the borrowed ending 
 of his name, was of little practical use. But she was 
 indebted to him for past services, and she did her 
 best to discharge the debt. On his return from exile, 
 she sent Gregory Orlof himself to meet him in state. 
 She furnished a house for him with great splendour. 
 Frederick's envoy, Solms, was quite alarmed at the 
 Empress's incredible weakness "for that old fumbler, 
 who drowns in strong drink the little reason that 
 is still left him." Bestujef, as we know, was all 
 his life a staunch " Austrian." Catherine did not fail 
 to make use of his long experience. At first, not 
 a single step was taken in the home or foreign 
 policy without his advice having been taken. From 
 time to time a note, hastily scrawled by Catherine her- 
 self, summoned him to the palace : " Come, batiushka 
 Aliexsiei Pietrovitch, we require your counsel." The 
 "little father" came, gave his advice, sometimes even 
 succeeded in getting it taken ; but he had hoped, and 
 others had feared, a return of his official position and 
 his supreme power ; and this never came. The chan- 
 cellor of Elizabeth belonged to the past, and Catherine 
 never dreamed of calling him back. But, careful of her 
 
THE STATESMEN 37 
 
 first movements, not having entire confidence in Panin, 
 who was himself, too, a beginner in the rdle of prime 
 minister, she was glad to have at hand such an old 
 stager in politics, though, indeed, merely as a guide 
 whom one dismisses at the first turning, as soon as 
 one is sure of the way. It is for this reason that she 
 does not choose to restore to him a position in which 
 his past career might inspire him with too ambitious 
 ideas. And how quickly she gets rid of him, the 
 moment she feels secure in doing so ! How little 
 scruple she has in bidding him keep his advice to 
 himself when no one asks him for it ! Does he not 
 venture, too, to give advice which tells directly against 
 her pet theories .'' He takes her to task for her treat- 
 ment of the clergy ; he takes up the defence of 
 Arsene Matsieievitch, the troublesome prelate. " Has 
 he forgotten that in Russia people have had their 
 heads cut off for much less insolence } " He makes 
 a stand against the employment of violent measures 
 on behalf of Biihren in Courland. Finally, in regard 
 to Poland, he takes the side of the house of Saxony 
 against Poniatowski in the question of hereditary 
 rights. That is the final stroke. Immediately after- 
 wards, in December 1763, Mercy, the Austrian envoy, 
 has to inform the Prince von Kaunitz that there 
 is no more use in counting on the influence of the 
 ex-chancellor. That influence is now irreparably lost. 
 " He might as well have paid some attention to the 
 Orlofs!" 
 
 Bestujef dies in 1766. The career of this Scotch- 
 man 1 — that astonishing career, in the course of which 
 he is now attache of the Russian Legation at Utrecht, 
 now chamberlain of the Grand Duchess of Courland at 
 Mittau, and now minister of the King of England at 
 St. Petersburg — does not come into the history of the 
 reign of Catherine, which saw only its decline. The 
 same may be said of that of Miinich, the other con- 
 
 1 His real name, the name of his father, an officer in the High- 
 landers, appears to have been Best. 
 
38 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 dottiere, whom Elizabeth made a marshal, and Catherine 
 an engineer of canals. It is too long to relate here how 
 this man, a Bavarian by birth, took service in the Hesse 
 infantry ; fought under the orders of Prince Eugene at 
 Oudenarde and at Malplaquet ; was taken prisoner by 
 the French at Denain ; entered the ranks of the Saxo- 
 Polish army; found himself, in 1 721, at the age of 
 thirty-eight, side by side with Peter the Great ; was 
 commander-in-chief of the armies of his successors ; and, 
 after having led them on to victory after victory, was 
 brought at last to the foot of the scaffold. Saved from 
 the scaffold, his penalty was commuted into exile for 
 life. He was sent to Siberia, where he was allowed a 
 rouble a day to live on, and had to give lessons in 
 mathematics to keep from starvation. Recalled by 
 Peter III., he did his best to save the throne. Catherine 
 showed him no ill-will, but did not restore him to his 
 former rank. She wished to have neither Germans nor 
 octogenarians in command of her army. She sent him 
 to Reval, where he was called upon to utilize his know- 
 ledge as an engineer. He seemed to take to his 
 new occupation, and wrote to "his benefactress" the 
 most astonishing letters, full of the most monstrous 
 flattery. 
 
 " You know, most gracious sovereign, that the epithet 
 which I add to your mighty name is that of: 
 
 " Empress of Peace, 
 
 " Princess of Learning, 
 
 " Restorer of Public Happiness, 
 
 " The salvation and the joy of Nations, 
 
 " The admiration of the Universe, etc. 
 
 " In particular, my star and my morning star. 
 
 " Never do I awake but the splendour of Your Majesty 
 rejoices my soul." 
 
 Then comes a parenthesis : 
 
 " Do not, most glorious Empress, put the charge of 
 the canal of Lodoga into the hands of any one but me." 
 
 Then the dithyramb continues : 
 
 "Never has picture seemed to me more magnificent, 
 
THE STATESMEN 39 
 
 or more perfect, than that in which I admire, at all 
 times, the divine and heroic attributes of Your Majesty. 
 
 " What diligence in the affairs of state ! 
 
 " What penetration ! 
 
 " What justice in sentencing ! 
 
 " What promptitude in instructing the Senate ! 
 
 " What sweetness ! 
 
 " What evenness of temper ! 
 
 " What majestic carriage ! 
 
 " What imposing beauty ! 
 
 " What splendour ! 
 
 " What vigilance ! 
 
 " What condescension ! 
 
 " What affability ! 
 
 "What transcendent mind, what entrancing manner!" 
 
 In another message, the courtier's eloquence of the 
 old mercenary becomes more tender, and assumes quite 
 a tone of romance : 
 
 " Let me, goddess of my soul, celebrate as my weak- 
 ness can the divine qualities of Your Majesty, and offer 
 on the altar of my heart the offerings of my fervour and 
 love before your divine charms . . . ." 
 
 The goddess was quite willing for people to sacrifice 
 to her divine charms, but the offerer of the sacrifice 
 seemed to her to be past the age. She complained to 
 Orlof of " the old man's childishness," and replied : 
 
 " Monsieur LE Marechal, — We seem to be begin- 
 ning in joke the greatest undertaking that has been set 
 on foot for long, and your letters would have the air of 
 billets-doux if your connection with the patriarchs did not 
 lend them dignity. But, to return to our business . . . ." 
 
 Then follow three pages of technical details con- 
 cerning the projected works at the port of Reval. Alas ! 
 only a few months later, the exile of Reval had other 
 reasons for renouncing his madrigals, besides this some- 
 what curt reminder. By the end of the year we find him 
 writing in so different a fashion as this ; 
 
40 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 " In what strange times we live ! I long ardently to 
 serve Your Majesty, to revive the genius and glory of 
 Peter the Great, and to immortalize your name, already 
 divine, and it is you yourself who insist on tying me 
 hands and feet. You refuse me aid and support. You 
 prefer to me the Razumovskis and the Buturlins. I 
 know these heroes ! With four words I could draw 
 their portrait to the life. I envy them neither their 
 grandeur nor their high estate, but never will I submit 
 to be placed in subordination to them . . . ." 
 
 And complaints, lamentations, and invectives follow 
 one another after this order. The old soldier recalls to 
 the widow of Peter III. that he has returned from exile 
 with six shirts and a cloak in holes, and that he still 
 awaits the carrying out of the promises which she gave 
 him by word of mouth at the time of her accession, 
 saying : " I hope we shall both be satisfied with one 
 another." When his patience and his arguments are 
 equally exhausted, he pretends that he shall be obliged 
 to set out again on his life of wandering ; he declares 
 his intention of going to Germany to find support for 
 his declining years, and he demands his passports. 
 Then, after a long silence on the part of Catherine, 
 comes this letter — 
 
 "Field-Marshal, — I confess that your last letters have 
 not tempted me to reply. I have told the Chancellor 
 to send you your passport, so that you can return to 
 your estates in Germany. I do not wish to retain any 
 one against his will, nor to cause bitterness to any one. 
 I particularly dislike all squabbling. No one ever gains 
 anything from me by that means. I have no ill-will to 
 any one. I know how to forget when need be, and am 
 grateful and obliged for all the kind expressions which 
 you use in your letters. 
 
 " Your affectionate 
 
 " Catherine." 
 
 This time the cunning and choleric old man feels that 
 all is said and done. The allusion to the estates in 
 
THE STATESMEN 41 
 
 Germany, the remains of his ancient wealth, shows him 
 that the Empress is not taken in by his affectations of 
 poverty since his return from Siberia, and her silence 
 in regard to the Razumovskis and Buturlins makes it 
 quite clear to him that the reign of this German is to be 
 something quite other than he and his compatriots have 
 imagined. He comforts himself by writing the Sketch 
 of the Form of Government in Russia, which was 
 printed at Copenhagen in 1774, seven years after her 
 death, and which for some time took rank as a classic. 
 
 VII. 
 
 There were, however, certain Germans in Catherine's 
 retinue who were able to make headway against those 
 Russians to whom it so greatly revolted Miinich to be 
 subordinated. In the Foreign Affairs there was Oster- 
 mann, the son of the Chancellor of the Empress Anne, 
 whom Kaunitz called " the automaton," and of whom 
 the Comte de Segur spoke as " the poor vice-chancellor 
 who knows nothing of anything that is going on," but 
 who was at home in at least the official language of his 
 office, who bore with dignity the powdered wig, the 
 frilled coat, and the rest of the court accoutrements, and 
 who looked quite in keeping in a glass coach drawn by 
 six white horses ; of all of which Bezborodko was in- 
 capable. There was Saldern, a Holsteiner, who had 
 been a small cashier in his native country, and who left 
 his country carrying the cash-box with him ; he united, 
 according to Rulhiere, the brutality of a peasant and the 
 pedantry of a professor of his native country, but he 
 was of considerable assistance in Poland in connection 
 wit h t he first^jpartition of the^ country. Frederick and 
 Solms refer to him as a mere rascal, a person who 
 arranged for loans which were simple swindling, and 
 who stole snuff-boxes ; they did not refuse, however, 
 to make use of his services. There were Keyserling 
 and Stackelberg, envoys, like Saldern, at Warsaw. 
 
43 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 There was, in particular, Sifii!S£5> the most perfect 
 specimen of the kind. 
 
 A writer has devoted four thick volumes to the 
 biography of this statesman : a curious monument 
 of the serene, and, as it were, ecstatic unconsciousness 
 with which a German is capable of speaking of German 
 men and things. Of this man — at one time used by- 
 Catherine for her lowest offices, those whose details she 
 refused to look into, and which she could not, perhaps, 
 have found a single Russian to carry out — of this imperial 
 overseer of works on the banks of the Vistula and the 
 Niemen, his biographer has made a paragon of all the 
 virtues, public and private, a hero, almost a saint. 
 
 He is a curious figure certainly, this German scarcely 
 tinged with Muscovite blood, this faultless functionary 
 and accomplished courtier ; active, learned, sentimental, 
 and ferocious, varying humanitarian aspirations with 
 acts of savagery, and bourgeois habits with the appetites 
 of a bandit. He too was a Holsteiner. One of his uncles, 
 who had come to Russia to seek his fortune, had the 
 honour of playing a part in the first chapter of the 
 romance which made Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst the 
 heiress of Peter the Great : he was employed, in 1742, 
 to bring to Elizabeth the portrait of the ivXvxe. fiande of 
 Peter HI. The nephew, at the age of seventeen, found 
 a protector in Peter Tshernishof, whom he accompanied 
 to London, and under whom he served his diplomatic 
 apprenticeship. He then entered the army, and took 
 part in the victories of Gross-Jaegerdorf and Zorndorf 
 But the career was not to his liking. Catherine discovered 
 his talents as an administrator, and, in 1764, appointed 
 him governor of Novgorod, a province 1700 versts long, 800 
 wide, a very desert, with neither police, nor postal service, 
 nor roads ; in the capital there was a palace in ruins 
 and a prison with 2000 convicts. Sievers manifested the 
 utmost activity in his new post. Three years later, 
 Catherine advised him, in one of her letters, not to forget 
 to get married, in the midst of his incessant journeys. 
 He was on the point, in fact, of leading to the altar one 
 
THE STATESMEN 43 
 
 of his compatriots. But he went and came continually. 
 He built high-roads, and suggested to the Empress a 
 project for a monument which the nobles of the country- 
 wished to raise to the great Catherine. If we may credit 
 his biographer, he was frequently in St. Petersburg, 
 where he discussed with the Empress those projects of 
 reform which were at that moment so completely filling 
 the attention of the " friend of the philosophers." He 
 was the principal initiator of most of her experiments in 
 this direction. He collaborated over the famous " In- 
 struction '' for the legislative commission, and received, 
 kneeling, its signature still wet, the imperial ukase 
 which decreed that all governors of provinces were to 
 pay heed to Article 9 of this Instruction, that de- 
 claring torture to be useless. He had his share also, 
 about the same time, in the establishment of the bank 
 of paper-money of which Catherine made the keystone 
 of her financial system, and it was he who suggested 
 utilizing a stock of old table-cloths and worn-out 
 serviettes, which had been discovered in the attics of the 
 palace. Finally, Catherine consulted him, and him 
 alone, in 1775, over that organization of governments, 
 which, to believe his biographer, was the great achieve- 
 ment of her reign. It was undoubtedly an incomplete 
 one, especially in regard to its foundations, leaving on 
 one side the enormous mass of unenfranchised serfs, and 
 elevating, without support, a paradoxical superstructure 
 of privileged classes ; but Sievers was governor-general 
 of the two provinces of Novgorod and Tver, united by 
 the new organization ; he had therefore a kind of little 
 royalty of his own. 
 
 He was not long in enjoyment of it. There were 
 too many Russians at St. Petersburg who looked with a 
 jealous and distrustful eye upon this German sovereignty. 
 Sievers possessed in the capital, it is true, a zealous, 
 vigilant, and marvellously resourceful defender, his wife, 
 a very intelligent, very bustling, very well-informed and 
 energetic little person. Some of her letters have been 
 preserved ; in one of theni there is an account of an 
 
44 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 evening at the court which is a positive masterpiece. 
 The Empress is playing cards with Viaziemski and 
 Gahtzin, two sworn foes of Sievers ; not without 
 malice, no d-oubt, she chooses this moment to address 
 some amiable words to the wife of the governor-general, 
 who, answering as best she can, and bowing as low as 
 her condition (for she is constantly enceinte) allows her, 
 sees the carnivorous teeth of Viaziemski, and the sharp 
 glance of Galitzin glitter, as if both of them would like 
 to devour her. " Ah, if I had them both in my hands ! " 
 she writes next day to her husband. " You would never 
 think what I could be capable of doing to them." 
 Sievers was far from thinking the contrary. Two years 
 later, when, having magnificently restored his residential 
 palace, he invited his beloved and highly useful spouse 
 to come and join him, he was met with an absolute 
 refusal. She had met at the court a Russian whose 
 glances were quite different from those of Galitzin, and 
 soon, after an easily obtained divorce, she exchanged her 
 name for that of Princess Putiatyn. 
 
 The consequences of this defection were not long in 
 being felt by Sievers. The hostility of Viaziemski and 
 Galitzin having now no obstacle in its way, finding too 
 a new support in the increasing favour of Patiomkin, 
 in the increasing lack of interest on the part of Catherine 
 in regard to the problems of home policy, he was obliged, 
 in 1781, to resign his post. He was allowed to retain 
 the direction of the river-ways recently opened up in his 
 province. A year after, this too was taken away from 
 him, to be given to Bruce, a Scotchman, the husband of 
 a confidante of the Empress. After that he lived ten 
 years in complete oblivion, in his domain of Bauenhof 
 in Livonia. The last episode of his history, and the 
 most brilliant of all, was to come after the death of 
 Patiomkin, when, for the second time, Poland was 
 spoiled and divided. 
 
 After a last attempt to rise from the dust, a last 
 appeal to arms (May— July 1792), the unhappy republic 
 was at the end of all its forces. A man of iron hand and 
 
THE STATESMEN 45 
 
 a man, also, of discretion, was wanted to cut short these 
 final attempts at revolt. Catherine thought of Sievers. 
 He had known the luckless Poniatowski at London, 
 when he was a mere younger son. He had been his 
 boon-companion. He found him now at Warsaw, a half- 
 dethroned king, whose ruin it was his business to con- 
 summate. The meeting of the two men, under the gilded 
 ceilings of the old palace of the Wazas, must have been 
 curious and touching. Curious and touching too, in 
 their way, are the letters written at this time by Sievers 
 to one of his daughters, Madame de Giintzel. His life 
 is a torture ! How terrible to look on at the extinction 
 of a great and noble nation, at the degradation of a king 
 worthy of a better fate ! The honour and homage paid 
 to him as ambassador of Russia are odious to him. How 
 happy he would be to return to his solitude at Bauenhof, 
 to his shady alleys and garden-beds ! The flowers that 
 they send him, which he tries to cultivate in the hot- 
 houses of his palace, alone give him a little pleasure. How 
 he would hasten to quit this odious task if he were not 
 conscious that he was serving the cause of humanity and 
 that of Poland itself I He writes that in so many words ; 
 perhaps he believes it. And with the same pen he 
 signs arrest after arrest ; carrying out implacably the 
 orders which come to him from St. Petersburg ; electing 
 at the point of the bayonet the deputies called upon to 
 vote in the Diet of Grodno for the dismemberment of 
 their own country ; torturing the unhappy king, so 
 "worthy of a better fate," in order to extort from him 
 his consent to that lamentable journey to Grodno in 
 which he was to meet his end ; sparing none of them 
 a single anguish, a single violence, a single humiliation, 
 till at length he drags them all down in the dust before 
 him, the dust of the slaughter-house. 
 
 And thereupon new professions ! New flowers that 
 must be made to grow in his palace garden ! Always 
 that bleeding heart, as at Warsaw, at the sight of the 
 sufferings that he would fain assuage ! Always his 
 conscience, anxious to bring some little good out of 
 
46 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 all this evil, on behalf of the country confided to 1 
 care ! And the melting moments, the crocodile's tea 
 while he hears the singing of Camelli, the adventui 
 ex-favourite of the king, who gives a concert before h 
 at the Papal Nuncio's ! During this time, in obe( 
 ence to his orders, the soldiers of Igelstrom point thi 
 cannon at the Diet Hall, and keep the deputies prison 
 a whole day and night, not allowing one to leave t 
 place until all have given the vote that is expect 
 of them. 
 
 Is he unconscious of all this, as his biographer wou 
 have us think ? Has he indeed left the wooded wa 
 of Bauenhof without realizing what is expected of hin 
 Not at all ! There is another letter to his daught( 
 in which he congratulates himself, frankly and witho 
 disguise, on the work he has carried through. And 
 there not also the gift of three thousand Polish peasan 
 his share in the spoil, which he is far from refusing ? 
 better argument, or at least special pleading, in h 
 favour, comes from another quarter. A time com 
 when those at St. Petersburg consider that he has n 
 done enough, that his hand is not heavy enough. He 
 recalled sharply, ignominiously, required even to rendi 
 account of his pecuniary expenses, to justify his person 
 expenses, a considerable sum ; his table at Warsaw hi 
 cost 8000 francs a month. But he defends himself; 1 
 asserts that he has done all that was required of hii 
 all that was needed ; he accuses the new favourit 
 Zubof, of having caused his recall, bribed by a diamon 
 sent to him, along with 20,000 ducats, by the Polii 
 nobles. The letter, inconceivably violent and aud; 
 cious, which he sends on this subject to the Empres 
 gives a new view of his character. His campaign : 
 Poland seems to have awakened a new man in hir 
 the German dragoon who had so long slumbered und^ 
 the punctilious tchinovnik. Catherine pretends to S( 
 nothing. She merely sends her discontented functional 
 to Bauenhof, where he dies in 1808. 
 
 Sievers is neither hero nor saint, but he is not a mi 
 
THE STATESHfEN 47 
 
 without his value. So much could not be said of the 
 greater number of his foreign colleagues, salaried at 
 immense expense, brought over from all the neigh- 
 bouring courts which are unable to bid so high for 
 their services ; the Comte de Rechtern from Holland, 
 the Baron d'Assebourg from Denmark. A propos of one 
 of them, consul-general at Constantinople, where he 
 employs himself in countermining the action of his 
 chief, the ambassador Bulhakof, pretending to the 
 Turks that he is appointed to succeed him, the Comte 
 de Segur writes, in 1786: "This Ferieri is one of that 
 sort of men who make their fortunes so rapidly in 
 Russia ; buffoonery, women, the table, gaming : these 
 are the steps by which he has risen." 
 
 But Catherine is in no position to be particular in her 
 choice. Such as they are, and such as she succeeds in 
 finding them, these mercenaries serve her better than 
 the natives by whom she can replace them ; better 
 than Ryleief, for instance, whom she persists in keeping 
 at the head of the police in St. Petersburg, and of whom 
 the memoirs of the time tell such amazing tales. One 
 of them, related by Garnovski, throws some light on 
 the whole surroundings of the Minister of Police. The 
 banker, Sutherland, from whom some one has stolen 
 a valuable watch, and whom his friends have been 
 joking on the subject, declaring that Jupiter himself 
 has taken it in order to do honour to his place in 
 Olympus, amuses himself by passing on the joke, and 
 so mystifying the head of police. 
 
 " Don't look for my robber any more," he says, pre- 
 senting himself at his office ; " my friends have found 
 him. It is Jupiter." 
 
 " Who is that ? Jupiter .' Where does he live .' " 
 
 " In Olympus." 
 
 " Where is that } Olympus ? I don't know the 
 neighbourhood. Oh yes, perhaps .... isn't it in the 
 Pietiersburskaia storona (a quarter of old St. Peters- 
 burg)?" 
 
 " No," puts in a clerk, " I fancy I know this Jupiter ; 
 
48 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 he is a jeweller who lives in the Mieshtchanska 
 street." 
 
 And so the dialogue goes on. 
 
 There is another reason, too, for Catherine's accept- 
 ance, without too close a scrutiny, of all this adventurous 
 race of fortune-seekers, German and Italian : she belongs 
 to it herself. And even her Russian retinue shows 
 signs of it. The ancient nobility of the country, the 
 actual elite, is but poorly represented there. The two 
 brothers Vorontsof, one of whom is shortly to be 
 relegated to a sort of half-exile in London, are its 
 brightest ornaments. The Comte de Segur says of the 
 other brother, who is Minister of Commerce : " The 
 Empress does .not love him, his colleagues fear him ; 
 but, as he has a will of his own, he generally gets the 
 ascendancy over those who have less .... He has 
 little wit, plenty of information, no large ideas, but a 
 great deal of pride, and an unconquerable obstinacy." 
 He adds : " This minister, they say, would refuse any 
 offer which was at all direct, and any present which, by 
 its prominence, might seem suspicious ; but one of the 
 reasons which attaches him to the interests of England 
 is, so they say, that he owes a great deal to the English 
 merchants ; he gives them endless commissions, and 
 never pays. This way of giving presents to himself 
 seems to him less dangerous and just as lucrative as 
 any other." 
 
 With Russian gentlemen of this quality, and native 
 parvenus of the order of Tieplof, it was only natural that 
 Catherine should have sometimes given the preference 
 to people of the calibre of Sievers. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SOLDIERS. 
 I. 
 
 "How did you succeed in conquering Frederick II..?" 
 Catherine asked Saltykof one day. 
 
 "I, matu'hka?" replied the hero of Kunerdorf, with 
 a feigned surprise. " It was not I ; it was your little 
 soldiers." 
 
 One might, without doing any great injustice to any- 
 body, unless perhaps to Suvorof, apply the old soldier's 
 words to the whole military history of the reign of 
 Catherine, glorious as that was. The great Rumiantsof 
 himself is by no means of unquestioned or unquestion- 
 able capacity. The famous field-marshal was the son of 
 a private soldier in the Guards, whom Peter I. rewarded 
 for an exceptional service by marrying him to one of 
 his mistresses. The reward was worthy of the service. 
 This first Rumiantsof had been charged to discover 
 and bring back to Russia the luckless Alexis. He 
 came upon the fugitive at Naples and brought him 
 back to his death. Half a century later, Alexis Orlof 
 was to make himself famous by a similar exploit. 
 Equally tragic is the origin of most of the great for- 
 tunes at that time in Russia. 
 
 The mother of the future conqueror of'Kagoul sur- 
 vived her husband forty years, and lived on at St. 
 Petersburg, a living monument of the great reign whose 
 tradition Catherine desired to continue. She died at 
 the age of ninety, in the city whose first stones she had 
 
 49 E 
 
so CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 seen laid. Retaining all her lucidity and all hef vivacity 
 of mind, she would call up souvenirs that seemed 
 like dreams : the dinner of Louis XIV., at which she 
 had been present ; the toilet of Madame de Maintenon, 
 of which she remembered every detail ; her visit to the 
 camp of Marlborough, and the attentions which had been 
 paid her in London by Queen Anne. She spoke too of 
 the attentions with which she had been honoured by the 
 great Tsar, and was quite willing to have it believed 
 that she had not been insensible to them. 
 
 Born in 1725, Peter Rumiantsof passed for a posthu- 
 mous son of the Emperor. He was captain at nineteen, 
 commanded the reserve of the victorious army at Gross- 
 Jaegerdorf and the centre of the one which triumphed 
 at Kunerdorf. Fifteen years after, on July 21, 1774, 
 he signed on a drum the peace of Kutchouk-Kainardji. 
 Catherine prepared to welcome him at Moscow with 
 a pomp worthy of such success, worthy also of her 
 own passion for the grandiose ; she wished to meet 
 him under a triumphal arch, whence, without descend- 
 ing from his horse, he was to accompany her side 
 by side to the Kremlin. His timid and retiring dis- 
 position made him refuse this apotheosis ; she thereupon 
 conferred upon him a good equivalent under a less 
 theatrical form : he had the honorary surname of Zadu- 
 nafski (of beyond the Danube), the order of St. Andr6, 
 a sword of state decked with diamonds, a marshal's 
 baton similarly decorated, a hat crowned with laurel, 
 and peasants by thousands, and roubles by millions. 
 Alas ! a few years after, the recipient of so many 
 honours and so many favours was a mere waif afloat 
 on the whirlpool from which only the fortune of Patiom- 
 kin was to escape. On the declaration of the second 
 Greek war, the conqueror of Kagoul was indeed ap- 
 pointed to a command, but Patiomkin managed that 
 it should be a profitless one, refusing him trOops, 
 provisions, munition, and occasions of combat. A 
 part of the correspondence between the two generals 
 during this campaign has recently been published. The 
 
THE SOLDIERS 51 
 
 conclusion has been drawn from it that Rumiantsof 
 recognized the superiority of his rival. As a matter of 
 fact, it proves no more than that, in spite of his affecta- 
 tions of savagery, he knew how to play the courtier. 
 His letters are more than courteous, they are quite 
 affectionate ; those of Patiomkin are full of apparent 
 deference, but destitute of any real consideration for the 
 situation of the old soldier. The latter does indeed, at 
 one moment, seem to admit that there is need of such a 
 man as the favourite of Catherine for the proper conduct 
 of a campaign in such a country as the one to which 
 his caprice has transported the seat of war, where he, 
 Rumiantsof, seems to himself but "a reed shaken by 
 the wind in a desert." In 1789, tired of commanding an 
 imaginary army against an unfindable foe, unable to 
 break the circle in which he is confined by some sudden 
 stroke of genius, he tenders his resignation, which is 
 immediately accepted ; retires to his estate of Tashan, 
 in Ukraine, builds himself a castle which looks like a 
 fortress, shuts himself up there in a room which he 
 never leaves, and where he receives no one, feigning not 
 to recognize his own children, and dies there in 1796, 
 only a few days after the death of Catherine. He is 
 reported, however, to have inspired, as late as 1794, the 
 rapid campaign of Suvorof, which ended in the capture 
 of Warsaw. As a soldier he was victorious only against 
 the Turks ; but perhaps he required another scene of action 
 for the due display of his strategic talents, for which the 
 operations on the Danube gave him little opportunity. 
 
 Never was the prodigality of fortune more marked 
 in its dealings with Catherine than in the appearance of 
 Suvorof in place of the neglected Rumiantsof And 
 the future prince of Italy was himself for a long time 
 kept in the background. Meanwhile, Catherine had 
 some difficulty in finding commanders for her army in 
 the ranks of her handsome guardsmen, where she so 
 easily found favourites. She found Kamienski, a savage 
 brute, who would bite his men at the manoeuvres, 
 carrying away pieces of flesh between his teeth, and 
 
52 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 who would force his prisoners to strip in thirty degrees 
 of cold, and dash cold water over them until they were 
 literally frozen ; later on he held command contre 
 Napoleon, with anything but success. She found Rep- 
 nin, a soldier much more lucky than able, a venal 
 diplomat, a d^baucM and a coxcomb, making up for his 
 lack of prominence on the field of battle by his satrap- 
 like airs in the streets of Warsaw, acting only on behalf 
 of himself and his own passions, but taking what he can 
 get from all sides, the roubles of Catherine, the ducats 
 of Stanislaus-Augustus, the favours of the Princess 
 Czartoryska. At the Congress of Teschen (1778), where 
 he figures as plenipotentiary, the Baron de Breteuil dis- 
 arms his hostility by depriving his table of a piece of 
 silver-gilt plate which Repnin has set his heart on. 
 He is a man of some education, and of good manners, 
 with a varnish of literature which causes him to enter 
 into correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot, with a 
 touch of liberalism which causes him to enter a lodge 
 of freemasons ; in short, he is the true half-civilized 
 Russian of the transition period. 
 
 Panin, the brother of the minister, whom Catherine 
 was only too glad to make use of in 1774 against 
 Pugatshof, after having held him cheap enough when 
 she wished to please Orlof, was at least a man of 
 decision. At Moscow, in the midst of the general 
 consternation caused by the approach of the terrible 
 samozvaniets, he was almost the only one to preserve 
 his sang-froid, with an attitude worthy of a hero of 
 antiquity. To those who came to him before he had 
 received his orders, asking what there was to do, he 
 replied, unmoved : " To die ! " The letters which he 
 wrote to his brother at this trying time are a monument 
 of nobility of soul and devotion to the country. One 
 cannot but recognize, in the greater part of these men 
 — the children of a society in process of formation, and 
 "rotten before it was ripe," as it has been said, not 
 without some reason — a faith in its destiny and a spirit 
 of self-sacrifice on its behalf, which it would be impos- 
 
THE SOLDIERS S3 
 
 sible to meet with elsewhere at this period. They are 
 often gross and savage, they are sometimes even vile ; 
 but they love their Russia, and, from general to soldier, 
 ' they serve it without stint and without reserve, giving 
 their labour, giving their life, giving especially what is 
 still rarer, a whole-hearted, blind obedience to the word 
 of order, an absolute, invariable obedience to the flag. 
 There is not a single traitor known to history among all 
 those whom Catherine sends to their death in unknown 
 lands, under haphazard leaders ; and Patiomkin himself, 
 the indolent and fantastic general, finds no lack of 
 discipline among his soldiers. 
 
 When the conquered Pugatshof is brought before 
 Panin, chained hand and foot, Panin puts to him the 
 question : 
 
 " How have you dared wage war against me t " 
 
 " Batiushka, I have done it rather against the 
 Empress herself ! " 
 
 A roar, a bound, and the general has leapt upon his 
 prisoner, is buffeting him and tearing out the hair of 
 his beard. The action is quite in keeping with the 
 character of this half-civilized Asiatic, who, next day, 
 forgetting his anger, gives to the outraged captive the 
 familiar and affectionate name of lemelka (diminutive of 
 Emilien), telling him to have confidence in the clemency 
 of the Empress. The same man is equally capable of a 
 great-hearted and generous action. Three years later, 
 in 1771, the authorities of Moscow having refused to 
 send a military escort to the funeral of Saltykof, the 
 hero of the Seven Years' War, fallen into disgrace 
 before his death, Panin puts on his parade uniform, 
 takes up his place on the tomb of his old companion in 
 arms, and declares that he will remain there on guard 
 until relieved by the picket of honour to which the dead 
 man has a right. 
 
 The merit of the defeat and capture of Pugatshof 
 has been attributed, and with justice, it seems to me, to 
 one of his subordinates, a man named Michelsohn, whose 
 only reward was complete oblivion. 
 
54 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 II. 
 
 With Suvorof a more complicated type makes its 
 appearance. By his Swedish origin, he has root in the 
 old cultivated soil of Western Europe ; by his early 
 youth, passed in the house of his grandfather, high-priest 
 {protoieret) of the church of Blagovieshtchensk at the 
 Kremlin, he comes in contact with the religious mysti- 
 cism of orthodox Russia ; by his obscure beginnings, a 
 mere non-commissioned officer in the Seven Years' War, 
 he remains of the people, with the mixture of naivete, 
 finesse, savagery, and fancifulness which distinguishes 
 the race. All this, amalgamated in a vivid but restless 
 mind, in an ardent and disturbed soul, in a singularly 
 nervous temperament, produces an odd, disconcerting 
 ensemble, a silhouette now heroic, now ridiculous, with 
 sojnething of an unintelligible enigma, and an air of 
 perpetual mystification. Many attempts have been made 
 to explain the eccentricities in which he indulges, some 
 finding in them a deliberate aim at passing for an 
 original in the eyes of Catherine, who is so partial to 
 originality ; others, an attempt to disarm the suspicion 
 of the favourites. Langeron, who has occasion to 
 observe him at close quarters, considers that he began 
 by simulating a sort of madness which afterwards 
 became second nature. In the morning, at the camp, he 
 comes out of his tent stark naked, and turns somersaults 
 on the grass. Rastoptshin one day finds him in this 
 state, as he comes to bring him some dispatches sent 
 by Patiomkin. With the utmost unconcern Suvorof 
 receives the message, sends for writing materials, writes 
 his answer, and then returns to his exercises. Presented 
 to the general on the day after the sack of Ismail— a 
 bloody triumph, a headlong assault followed by an 
 eight days' massacre and pillage — Langeron himself 
 meets with a curious reception. 
 
 " Where did you gain that cross .' " 
 
THE S@LBIERS 55 
 
 " In Finland, with the Prince of Nassau." 
 
 " Nassau ! Nassau ! He is a friend of mine." 
 
 And he embraces him on the spot. Then : 
 
 " Do you know Russian ? " 
 
 " No, general." 
 
 " That's a pity. It is a fine language." 
 
 He begins to recite some lines of Dierjavin, then 
 interrupts himself to say : 
 
 "You Frenchmen, you have fallen from Voltairianisme 
 into Jean-Jacquisme, and from that into Raynalisme, 
 and from that into Mirabeautisme, and that is the end of 
 all . . . But you are limping .' " 
 
 " My foot was sprained in falling from the rampart." . 
 
 " Why didn't you say so .-' " 
 
 He seizes the young officer round the waist, lifts him 
 on his shoulders, deposits him at the foot of the stair- 
 case, and leaves him there in the mud, without even 
 saying good-bye. 
 
 Wounded one day before Otchakof, after a fruitless 
 assault, he shuts himself up in his tent and refuses all 
 assistance. To all the exhortations of the French 
 surgeon, Massot, whom Patiomkin has sent him, he 
 replies by shaking his head with an air of despair, and 
 saying over and over again, " Turenne ! Turenne ! " 
 He considers that there are only three great generals in 
 the history of modern warfare, Turenne, Laudon, and 
 himself! Later on he declares that God has sent 
 Bonaparte into Egypt on purpose to deprive him, 
 Suvorof, of the glory of conquering the " Corsican 
 ogre." At last Massot, losing all patience, tells 
 him : 
 
 " Well, well ; when Turenne was wounded he let his 
 wounds be seen to." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 And immediately he flings himself on the bed, and 
 leaves himself entirely in the hands of the surgeon. 
 
 In battle he has the air of a drunken man, but he is 
 always accompanied by a Cossack, who carries a can 
 filled with very strong punch, which he calls his lemon- 
 
S6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 ade, and which he demands every moment. Does he 
 use it elsewhere than on the field of battle ? One 
 would be tempted to believe so. One day the Comte de 
 Damas, a volunteer in the Russian army, who has been 
 commissioned by the Prince of Nassau to conduct two 
 ships, of which the general has need, to the walls of 
 Otchakof, is awaiting the orders of his new chief. 
 Suddenly an unknown man appears before him, and, 
 without preamble, asks him sharply : 
 
 " Who are you .■" " 
 
 " That is for me to ask." 
 
 " I am Suvorof. Who are you writing to ? " 
 
 " My sister." 
 
 " I'll write to her too." 
 
 And, to the astonishment of the young man, his 
 unexpected visitor takes the pen from his hand and 
 improvises in French four pages of unintelligible 
 rhodomontade. The visit concludes with an invitation 
 to dinner. At the hour named Damas appears. 
 
 " The general is in bed," replies the orderly. 
 
 " But the dinner " 
 
 " The general dines at six o'clock in the morning." 
 
 In 1794 the general is appointed marshal. On this 
 occasion he orders the Te Deuin to be sung, and places 
 in the church, in double file, as many chairs as there are 
 officers in the army older than himself; arrives dressed in 
 a simple vest, and sets to work to jump over the chairs 
 one after another, as if he were playing at leap-frog. 
 It is only after arriving at the end of this symbolic 
 course that he puts on the uniform of his new rank, and 
 requests the astonished priests to commence the office. 
 In 179s Catherine writes to Grimm : 
 
 " You are not perhaps aware that he (Suvorof) signs 
 his name in very small letters : prinio, out of humility ; 
 secundo, in order that no one should suspect him of 
 using glasses. Further, if he puts a question to any 
 one, it must be answered at once, without hesitation, 
 and he gets in a terrible rage if any one says ' I don't 
 know ' ; but he will tolerate the most absurd reply." 
 
THE SOLDIERS 57 
 
 The memoirs of Prince Galitzin represent him as 
 asking one of his aides-de-camp how many stars there 
 are in the sky, and accepting without question a mere 
 guess by way of answer ; and Count Rastoptshin men- 
 tions his indignation at seeing the Grand-Duke Paul 
 making use of a lorgnette at the theatre, after he 
 has forbidden the use of magnifying-glasses in the 
 army. 
 
 " Suvorof is said to be a man of talent," we read in 
 one of the recently-published letters of the future 
 governor of Moscow ; " but I conceive that he owes 
 more to his good fortune than to his talent. He has 
 had to leave St. Petersburg, where his absurdities put 
 the Empress to confusion. He is now in Poland ; he 
 lives in the house of the Countess Felix Potocka ; he 
 dines at seven in the morning ; wears coarse canvas 
 clothes, and a cap on his head ; sings in church, and 
 assures everybody that he has a fine bass voice, whereas 
 one can hardly hear him." 
 
 The man is by no means, however, without wit. He 
 proves it sometimes at the expense of his companions in 
 arms, and bitterly enough. Of one of them he says : 
 " He is a very polished gentleman ; I hope he will some 
 day remember that he has cavalry in his army." After 
 the defeat at Ziirich, of which he assigns the responsi- 
 bility to Rimski-Korssakof, he sends for this luckless 
 lieutenant, and prepares a solemn reception for him. 
 When those about him observe that the defeated man 
 would doubtless rather be spared such a ceremony, he 
 replies : " What ! he is a courtier, a chamberlain ; he 
 presents arms to the enemy even on the field of battle ! " 
 When Korssakof makes his appearance, he seizes an 
 officer's spontoon, and places himself before him with 
 arms presented. 
 
 "Alexander Mikailovitch, was it like this that you 
 saluted Massena at Zurich ? Yes, like this, eh .-' but, by 
 God, not like a Russian, not like a Russian ! " 
 
 Certain fragments of his correspondence, published 
 in 1866, and more recently (1893), in the collection of 
 
58 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 M. Maslovski, represent him under yet a different light. 
 Pen in hand, he is always raving, whether in French or 
 in Russian, which he writes with equally fantastic incor- 
 rectness, with an incoherence of ideas and expressions 
 which seem to betoken drunkenness or madness, eccen- 
 tric and frequently incomprehensible, even in the official 
 bulletins which he sends to his superiors. Here is an 
 autograph fragment, dated June 20, 1788, and addressed 
 to Patiomkin : 
 
 " Monseigneur, grand homme ! recompenses Pole- 
 taiew, Kroupenikov du Blokfort: rien du gros n'^chapa 
 des I'aparition de la Lune. Le H^ros est epris de sa 
 nouvelle frigate, donne lui le nom. Prince Charle ! 
 Emulation commune. P.S. etait cochon : k la premiere 
 entree il me felicita par sa defensive . . . ." 
 
 But at the same time he is full of policy, is a shrewd 
 and docile courtier, whatever the greater part of his 
 biographers may say, always on the look-out for occa- 
 sions of advancement, quite au courant with court 
 intrigues and questions of precedence, very anxious 
 about the future, and very much concerned lest any one 
 should get ahead of him. If he is attentive to Ru- 
 miantsof in the presence of Patiomkin, for which some 
 would give him great credit, it is because the favourite 
 sets him the example. He loses no occasion of bowing 
 before the " great man " ; he kisses his hands in his 
 letters. No one can fawn better, and no one be more 
 lofty with those of his rivals from whom he has nothing 
 to fear. In 1793 the action of the Empress in putting 
 above him the old general-in-chief. Prince Dolgorukof, 
 sets him beside himself. In the following year he is 
 never tired of lamenting at being left inactive instead 
 of being sent to fight " the regicides of France." For 
 he is an ardent anti-revolutionary. In 1795 he writes 
 to General de Charette : 
 
 " Hero of La Vendue, illustrious defender of the faith 
 of thy fathers and of the throne of thy kings, hail! 
 May the God of battles keep watch over thee for 
 ever . . ." 
 
THE SOLDIERS 59 
 
 This letter is not in his handwriting, nor, certainly, of 
 his composition. His personal style, which we know 
 already, is very different. Here is another example 
 taken from a letter written to the Comte Ribas, the day 
 after the taking of Warsaw : 
 
 " Excellency, dear and familiar friend, Ossip Mikailo- 
 vitch! Besides, you cannot help knowing it. But would 
 you have presumed upon it 1 For me, I shall be 
 a sceptic to the day of my death. Greet my friends : 
 time fails me to write to them, or rather health weakened 
 by work, worries, and excessive joy. In the front. Isle- 
 view and General, entry everywhere, permanent table and 
 company. Next day Te Deum, two hundred volleys, the 
 august sovereign on her knees, most gracious welcome 
 to my daughter, Warsaw bread and salt tasted and pre- 
 sented to my daughter with her own hand ; table, in 
 the middle of which am declared ... I weep, my health 
 standing, two hundred volleys, I am ashamed to say 
 what was said ; humble servant of God and the Empress. 
 Her magnanimity condescends to charge Tiszczenko, at 
 her departure, to look after me. Gorczakof overwhelmed 
 with bounties, then sent packing with the .... I fear 
 to name. God be with you ! I embrace you." 
 
 All this of course refers to the marshal's baton that 
 the Empress has just sent him, and the toast that she 
 drinks to him on that occasion. Nor is there anything 
 exceptional in his tears at the news of the honours which 
 are paid to him : this implacable soldier, hardened as 
 we must believe him to be, without the commonest 
 human feelings ; this haughty spectator of suffering and 
 death, this unmoved organizer of monstrous massacres, 
 has his sense of sensibility and even of poetry. He is_ 
 quite given to tears. He weeps after his first victory in 
 Poland ; he weeps amidst the smoking, ruins of the 
 suburb of Praga, where his soldiers fling women and 
 children into the flames, roasting them alive before his 
 eyes ; he weeps in saying farewell to the King of 
 Poland, whose crown and throne he has just rent from 
 his grasp. Is it all a comedy, a'mere farce t We can- 
 
6o CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 not say. He has a daughter whom he educates at the 
 convent of Smolna, whose education he looks after with 
 the most tireless solicitude, and to whom, between 
 two battles, he writes the strangest and most incom- 
 prehensible letters, which breathe a passionate ten- 
 derness, and blossom into the most delicate flowers of 
 poetry. 
 
 " Suvorotchka, my soul, good-morning . . . Here 
 the bustards cry, the hares race, the starlings flutter in 
 the air. I took one in its nest, I let it feed from my 
 mouth, and it went back to its nest again. The nuts 
 and hazels are already ripe in the woods. Write to me 
 often ; however busy I am, I shall always read your 
 letters. Pray to God that we may see each other again. 
 I write to you with an eagle's feather : I have an eagle 
 which lives with me, and eats out of my hand. Do you 
 remember the last time we met .'' I have not danced 
 since. Here we have games on horseback ; we play 
 with great iron balls, which you could hardly lift in your 
 little hands, and with pellets of lead. If one strikes you 
 in the eye, your head is done for. I should like to send 
 you some wild-flowers ; they are very pretty here, but 
 they would wither on the way. Adieu, dear soul, my 
 sister. The Christ be with you." 
 
 For this daughter, this beloved Suvorotchka, whom 
 he frequently calls his sister, A^-hen he does not salute her 
 under the title of " Countess of the Two Empires," he 
 does not hesitate to risk disgrace. He refuses to allow 
 her, when her education is finished, to take up her abode 
 in the imperial palace, where Catherine has reserved 
 for her a room by the side of her own. His reason may 
 easily be understood. And he proudly declares to his 
 friends that he is resolved to quit the service in order to 
 save his own honour and that of his child. The close 
 of the reign sees him far from the court, almost in exile, 
 a stranger to the affairs of war, whose direction is now 
 taken by the two young Zubofs. 
 
 Is he, in spite of all these oddities, really a great 
 captain .' The fact has been contested. Some of the 
 
THE SOLDIERS 6i 
 
 qualities which belonged to the chiefs with whom he 
 loved to compare himself, a Turenne or a Laudon, 
 he certainly lacked. Langeron has noted in his 
 memoirs : " His adjutants, the directors of his chancellor's 
 office, his clerks, are composed of all that is lowest and 
 most scandalous in Russia. He concerns himself with 
 neither the sustenance nor order of things." Professing, 
 on his own part, an absolute scorn for learned com- 
 binations and manoeuvres, taking up the defence of 
 routine against the more modern conceptions of his rivals, 
 reducing his art almost to one formula — which was, to 
 go straight against the enemy, and let drive upon him 
 with all the force of which one is capable — the con- 
 queror of Rymnik and the Trebia seems to have set 
 himself the task of showing how very different was his 
 own genius. Perhaps, it is true, he was not quite 
 conscious of it himself. He once wrote these lines : 
 
 "Never in retreat: danger is inevitable; the best 
 thing to do is to be always at full speed." 
 
 And it is a retreat which has inscribed the most 
 notable page of his history in the Golden Book of the 
 greatest military exploits. 
 
 Commanding soldiers of incomparable physical vigour, 
 of exceptional stamp, souls of children in cases of iron, 
 he knew exactly how to bring out, to exalt, this double 
 energy, and to intensify its impetus. He was severe, 
 but on no one more than on himself, writing : " There 
 must be exercises in all weathers, even in the winter ; 
 cavalry in the mire, marshes, ravines, ditches, heights, 
 depths, even on ramparts of sabred earth ! " Knowing 
 how to put himself in the place of those whom he had 
 to carry with him, making his eccentricities serve to 
 heat their imagination, he seemed to become, as it were, 
 one body with his armies, and so convert them into 
 formidable machines of war, impelled by his own will, 
 and driven forward by his own spirit, which was a spirit 
 of very fire. He went on his way, upsetting Turks and 
 Poles, disintegrated forces which he threw into confusion 
 by acting always on the offensive, disarming them 
 
62 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 with his first shock, always carried sheer forward. He 
 needed no more than this in order to triumph, in 1799, 
 over the incapacity of Scherer and the weakness of 
 Macdonald. All was changed when Massena and 
 Moreau came in his way ; then he had need of all his 
 talent for manoeuvres, that talent which he was so ready 
 to laugh at in the Austrian generals during the second 
 Turkish war. Hemmed in in the valley of the Reuss, 
 he extricated himself by an effort of which no other 
 man would have been capable ; but there was an end 
 now of the straight march forward, the blind, head- 
 long rush of the bull. The bull had been taken by the 
 horns. 
 
 For all this, Russia has no less reason to be proud of 
 such a soldier, who personified her pride and her race, 
 and who owed his successes in part to the assurance, 
 which he kept to the end, of being the first captain of 
 Europe at the head of the first soldiers of the world. 
 
 HI. 
 
 He retained this conviction even in the presence of 
 Bonaparte and the soldiers of Marengo. Did he know 
 that there was a moment when the conqueror of 
 Marengo was on the point of becoming his rival in 
 the ranks of that Russian army, which he set above 
 all other armies 1 Yet this was so indeed, if we may 
 believe the story of General Zaborovski, one of the 
 lieutenants of Patiomkin, sent in 1788 to the shores 
 -of the Mediterranean. A young oflScer of artillery 
 from a French school, living for the moment in 
 Corsica with his family, had presented himself one day 
 at the general department of the expeditionary corps, 
 asking for an enrolment. A question of grade, oil 
 which the young officer was immovable, and to which 
 Zaborovski could not agree, prevented the engagement. 
 The officer was called Napoleon Buonaparte. The 
 
THE SOLDIERS 63 
 
 career of Napoleon in Russia : what endless, what 
 wondrous horizons it opens up before the imagination ! 
 
 In default of a recruit of such an exceptional order, 
 among the soldiers of fortune whom she borrowed 
 from foreign armies, Catherine possessed many men 
 of sterling merit, who rendered her considerable services, 
 but of whom she thought but little, and one hectoring 
 bully who cost her dearly, and whom she took at his 
 own valuation. As we have said, she had a genuine 
 liking for this adventurous race, with which she felt a 
 certain kinship. Alike by his origin, the accidents of 
 his career, and, to some extent, by the characteristics of 
 his talent, the Prince of Nassau-Siegen was certainly 
 of her kin. 
 
 A book which has lately been published on the 
 subject dispenses us from enlarging upon the career 
 of this personage, which would otherwise be likely to 
 exceed the narrow limits of this chapter. The last 
 notable condottiere of Europe, a soldier without country, 
 without home, and almost without family, his very 
 name is the first of his conquests. Emmanuel Ignatius, 
 his grandfather, whom the Princess Palatine, Duchess 
 of Orleans, "the implacable gossip," represents in her 
 letters prowling about Paris in quest of a morsel of 
 bread, had, in 171 1, married Charlotte de Mailly- 
 Nesle, with whom, according to Dangeau, he lived on 
 anything but the best terms ; so that at last the too 
 vagabond beauty's own family intervened to incarcerate 
 her, if not in the Bastille, at all events in a convent. 
 The gay and adventurous princess had had, no one 
 quite knows how, a son, whose birth she did not think 
 it advisable to announce till after the death of her- 
 husband. The Aulic Council of Vienna refused to ratify 
 this tardy declaration, and it was thus that the future 
 admiral of Catherine had a bastard for father. In 1756 
 the parhament of Paris restored to the young Otho, 
 then eleven years of age, the name of his ancestors, 
 but was unable to do as much for his patrimony. A 
 volunteer at fifteen, the young prince did all he could 
 
64 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 on his own behalf; was in turn heutenant of infantry, 
 captain of dragoons, then, all of a sudden, sailor, 
 accompanying Bougainville on his famous voyage round 
 the world (1766 — 1769), and then explorer, endeavour- 
 ing, with the Chevalier d'Oraison, to penetrate the 
 black continent. In 1779 he is colonel of French 
 infantry, and makes an unsuccessful attempt upon 
 Jersey. In the following year he is in the service of 
 Spain, and once more naval officer, in command of the 
 floating batteries before Gibraltar. Meanwhile he has 
 seduced the Queen of Tahiti and fought with a tiger. 
 He has not yet, however, made his fortune. The King 
 of Spain, it is true, has made him a present of three 
 millions in ships' cargo, besides the title of Spanish 
 grandee of the first order, and the brevet of major- 
 general ; but the millions have gone to his creditors. 
 Fortune comes to him at last, just where and when he 
 expects it the least. At Spa, the favourite rendezvous 
 of all the elegants of Europe, where he has gone 
 for his pleasure, he finds his fortune in the Princess 
 Sanguszko, nee Charlotte Gozdzka, who becomes Prin- 
 cess of Nassau. He has now turned Pole, he has 
 wealth, and in his wife (apart from her domains in 
 Podolia and the Ukraine) a perfect treasure, if not of 
 beauty, at all events of goodness, tenderness, and inex- 
 haustible devotion. He draws largely on all these re- 
 sources. Constantly travelling from one end of Europe 
 to another, now in conflict with the Czartoryskis in the 
 Polish Diet, now emulating the splendours of the great 
 Austrian nobles at Vienna, where a horse is sent to him, 
 by carriage, from Warsaw, he is almost never with his 
 wife ; he contents himself with writing to her, giving 
 her endless and far from easy commissions, which she 
 carries out to the best of her ability. But this wander- 
 ing life does not suffice for his devouring activity ; and 
 as, at the moment, he finds no scope for his fighting 
 talents, he once more changes his career. It was inevit- 
 able that he should be a diplomatist at a time when a 
 diplomatist was to be found, at a moment's notice, in 
 
THE SOLDIERS 65 
 
 every court in Europe. Now we see him in the Crimea 
 with Patiomkin, now at St. Petersburg with Catherine 
 in a confidential mission from the French cabinet, of 
 which M. de Segur himself, the official representative of 
 that cabinet, is for a time in ignorance — after the fashion 
 of the duplicate diplomacy of Louis XV. He soon 
 finds his way into the good graces of the Empress and 
 her favourite, and persuades them both to agree to 
 a treaty of alliance. But Versailles makes difficulties : 
 this was going much too fast in the matter. There is, 
 in, particular, an insistence on the claims of the luckless 
 Turks, whom the Empress herself has driven to arms. 
 He consoles himself by making his way to Otchakof, in 
 order to offer his services against those very Turks 
 whom he had been charged to protect. He is now 
 heart and soul a Russian, and this time he is in his 
 element. With such men as he is about to command, 
 and against such men as he is about to contend with, 
 it is impossible for him to come off other than well. 
 Admiral Paul Jones may endeavour to prove to him 
 that it is unwise to run the risk of a naval battle when 
 you have unseaworthy ships : he proves the contrary in 
 the most conclusive way ; in four combats he attacks 
 and destroys the fleet and the flotilla of the Captain- 
 Pasha ; takes, according to Langeron, more prisoners 
 than he has soldiers, sets fire to nine great warships, 
 captures the admiral's ship, forces the rest of the fleet 
 to take refuge in Constantinople, the rest of the flotilla 
 to retire into the port of Otchakof, and well deserves 
 the rank of vice-admiral, which Catherine hastens to 
 confer upon him. But the Swedish war, which breaks 
 out shortly afterwards, recalls him to the North. There 
 he meets with other adversaries. He begins by fresh 
 triumphs ; in two encounters with the enemy's fleet, 
 June 13 and August 14, 1789, he gains a decisive 
 victory, though at a heavy cost. At this moment he 
 seems to Catherine a demi-god, and to himself the 
 greatest sea-captain of the past, present, and future. 
 His self-confidence and audacity, shaken for a moment 
 
 F 
 
66 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 by the encounter with other enemies than the Turks, 
 once more gain the upper hand, and become bound- 
 less. Having succeeded in hemming in the King of 
 Sweden himself in the bay of Svenskund, he sees him 
 already his prisoner, prepares for his reception on board, 
 and awaits the anniversary of the Empress's coronation 
 in order to put his design into execution : a kind of 
 flattery quite usual among Catherine's generals, and 
 the cause of not a few disasters to them and to her. 
 On the day fixed (July 12, 1790) he gives the signal for 
 attack, and meets with a fearful disaster, loses fifty- 
 three vessels, one thousand four hundred cannons, six 
 thousand prisoners. On the following day, even Sievers 
 himself, a man of German sang-froid, is disposed to 
 look on him as "a traitor and a rogue." Catherine is 
 almost the only one at St. Petersburg who takes up 
 his defence ; but she hastens to make peace with the 
 conqueror. 
 
 Reports are at variance in reference to the attitude 
 assumed by the luckless admiral on the occasion of this 
 disaster ; some representing him as absolutely discoun- 
 tenanced, others as having lost none of his customary 
 swagger. The one thing certain is, that, a year after, he 
 is once more thinking of changing his nationality. In 
 June 1 79 1 an emissary of the ancient governing body of 
 the United Provinces, disbanded by William V., arrives 
 at St. Petersburg. The French charg^ d'affaires, Genet, 
 confers with him, and inquires " whether, in case an 
 illustrious general, the sworn foe of the House of Orange, 
 powerfully supported by Russia, favourably looked upon 
 by the courts of Vienna, Paris, and Madrid, should 
 consent to take up their interests, he himself might be 
 empowered to offer him, in the name of the patriots, to 
 put himself at their head, overturn the throne which 
 William has raised on the ruins of Batavian liberty, 
 and take into his own hands the supreme, but legal, 
 command of the forces of the seven provinces." The 
 illustrious general uniting all these conditions is evi- 
 dently Nassau, and Genet aims at nothing less than 
 
THE SOLDIERS 67 
 
 uniting Russia in a coalition against England and 
 Prussia, that old dream of French diplomacy. Nassau 
 ilings himself heart and soul into the project. Ac- 
 cording to G6net, he " electrifies in the most definite 
 manner " Patiomkin, Bezborodko, and Cobenzl, the 
 Austrian envoy. The " march backwards," as Genet 
 calls it, of England and Prussia destroys at once all 
 these schemes. 
 
 In order to make some use of her hero, Catherine 
 sends him to Coblenz. He is now in the service of the 
 French princes and the refugees. He runs through the 
 800,000 roubles which the Empress allows him, and is 
 otherwise not conspicuous. He serves in the campaign 
 of 1792 as a volunteer in the Prussian army, and has no 
 chance of winning fresh laurels. His career seems to 
 be at an end. Some of those about him are, however, 
 still in expectation of some extraordinary move. In 
 1796 Langeron writes : " M. de Nassau will not end 
 like others. I know not how or where it will be ; but 
 should it be obscurely, it will be to the astonishment 
 of all who have known him." It was his destiny to 
 astonish his contemporaries. Far away in one of the 
 estates of his wife, in Podolia, living with some difficulty 
 on the remains of two or three squandered fortunes, he 
 dies in 1809, obscurely, forgotten by all, a stranger, as 
 his biographer says, to the great events which were 
 shaking the world, with scarcely an interest in the very 
 causes for which he had himself fought. 
 
 The perfect type of what is now a thing of the past, 
 condottiere without fear and without reproach, it was 
 not in his character, as such, to live or to die for any 
 great cause. A contemporary, Langeron, an excellent 
 judge, thus sums up his merits as a captain : " He has 
 the natural instinct of a general, but little theoretic skill, 
 his natural genius supplying the lack of instruction. 
 .... He never thinks of retreat. If he is the con- 
 queror, the victory is complete ; if the conquered, he is 
 annihilated. His defect is to surround himself with 
 adventurers. The violence of his character rarely per- 
 
68 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 mitting him to moderate his expressions, a man of 
 breeding can with difficulty accustom himself to 
 him." 
 
 Nevertheless, according to Madame Vigee-Lebrun, 
 who meets with him at Vienna, he has " the gentle and 
 retiring manner of a girl who has just come out of a 
 convent." Nothing in his person, tall and well-made as 
 he is, indicates the hero of so many adventures. On 
 the field of battle he is transfigured. He has the heroic, 
 impetuous, showy bravery of his ancestors, the paladins 
 of the Middle Ages. At Svenskund he escapes death 
 by a miracle, " showing off," relates an eye-witness, " in 
 his white uniform and cordon bleu, shouting and rest- 
 less, a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other, in his 
 long boat rowed by six oarsmen all in white, with 
 orange plumes and sashes." A few weeks afterwards, 
 knowing that peace has been signed, he still obstinately 
 seeks to avenge his defeat by falling upon the Swedes. 
 " I see," says the King of Sweden, " that I have made 
 peace with Russia, but not with M. de Nassau." In the 
 following year, anchored at Cronstadt, he fires upon an 
 English ship which does not " salute him sufficiently 
 low," and forces the captain to declare himself prisoner 
 of war. 
 
 With such an imagination and such a temperament, 
 doubting nothing, aspiring after all things, his life is a 
 long series of deceptions, in which his wife to some 
 extent shares, whose dream it is to sit by his side, if not 
 on the throne of Poland, at all events on that of Cour- 
 land. The airs of superiority, the wrangling spirit, 
 which she affects at St. Petersburg, displease Catherine, 
 who accuses her of " taking her republic about with 
 her everywhere." However, the princess has the conso- 
 lation of ruling Paris for two years. Paris, not without 
 amusement at her whims and pretensions, makes her, 
 for its moment, the mode. 
 
 Although born far from Russia, Nassau is scarcely 
 looked upon by Catherine as a foreigner, thanks to the 
 oddity of his birth and career. " I hope," she says to 
 
THE SOLDIERS 69 
 
 him a year after his arrival, "that you are now quite 
 a Russian." Times have changed since the German 
 Biihren, who only later called himself Biron, said, in 
 the presence of the Empress Anne, before the highest 
 nobles of the court, the Galitzins and the Dolgo- 
 rukis : "You Russians, you have audacity enough for 
 anything ! " The Hessian Bauer is supposed to have 
 contributed largely to the successes of Rumiantsof, 
 as the Livonian Michelsohn did to those of Panin. 
 Neither, however, succeeds in coming very prominently 
 forward, either in the military career or in the favour 
 of the sovereign. They are Germans. And then they 
 lack too that something, an art or a faculty, which in 
 Catherine's eyes is more than everything ; which, in 
 Patiomkin, the great stage-director of the imperial 
 transformations, is carried to the supreme degree, and 
 which is seen also in Nassau. It is this which mani- 
 fests itself especially in the history of the Russian navy 
 during the great reign. 
 
 IV. 
 
 On June 8, 1765, on board the yacht which has 
 conveyed her to the mouth of the Neva, where she is 
 to inspect the fleet, Catherine writes confidentially to 
 her prime minister, Panin : 
 
 " Our voyage has been so prosperous that we arrived 
 the day after our departure from St. Petersburg, at 
 eight o'clock in the morning, in sight of the fleet. Say 
 this to my chief admiral, assuring him of my affection. 
 But keep this to yourself, it will be as distasteful to you 
 as it is to me. We have ships, and men on them to 
 abundance, but we have neither fleet nor sailors. When 
 I displayed my flag, and the vessels passed and 
 returned the salute, two of them nearly came to grief 
 through the fault of their captains, who entangled the 
 poop of one in the rigging of the other, within a hundred 
 fathoms of my yacht. They were a good hour in dis- 
 
70 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 entangling themselves, and finally succeeded, to the 
 great detriment of their masts and riggings. Then the 
 admiral wished to bring them into line, but not a single 
 vessel could succeed in doing so, though the weather 
 was excellent. Finally, at five o'clock, they drew up 
 to the imaginary town, at the side, in order to bombard 
 it ; a shell-boat was sent in front, and when a second 
 was wanted, it was only found with great difficulty, as 
 no one was in line. Shot and shell were fired till seven 
 o'clock, without doing any damage, till at last I got out 
 of patience, for my ears were ringing with this useless 
 and ridiculous hubbub, and I sent for the admiral, and 
 bade him farewell, begging him not to trouble about 
 burning what remained of the town, for he had taken 
 the precaution, before firing, to set trains of powder in 
 various places, which made more effect than the shot 
 and shell. This expedition, which all went off in 
 smoke, is all that we saw. The admiral himself was 
 extremely sheepish. ... It must be confessed that they 
 look like the herring-fleet which sets out every year 
 from Holland, and not at all like a fleet of war." 
 
 This fleet was the inheritance which had been left 
 to his successors, the year before, by the Grand Admiral 
 appointed by Elizabeth, rejected by Peter III., and 
 reinstated by Catherine. The elder brother of the 
 marshal who had won fame under Peter I., Prince 
 Michael Galitzin commenced his career under the 
 Empress Anne as president of the College of Justice, 
 was then sent as ambassador to Persia, immortalized 
 his expedition in the annals of national horticulture and 
 gastronomy by bringing back the peach-tree, which he 
 acclimatized in his lands at UsskoYe, since the residence 
 of the Counts Tolstoi, and, by way of reward, was placed 
 at the head of the Admiralty. A perfect gentleman, 
 honest and loyal, he justified in other respects a popular 
 tradition, which certainly could not be applied to all 
 the members of the illustrious family, according to 
 which the eldest member of the family, at the birth of 
 a new scion of the stock, took the child in his arms and 
 
THE SOLDIERS 71 
 
 said : " Don't forget that you are Prince Galitzin ; be 
 stupid, be miserly, live in Moscow in the neighbourhood 
 of the Tverskaia, and you will be buried in the monastery 
 of Donskoi." 
 
 On his death in 1764, Catherine chose as his suc- 
 cessor one of the brothers Tshernishof, and naval 
 affairs remained in much the same state up to the 
 time of the first Turkish war. It was only then, four 
 years after the experience at Cronstadt, that the 
 Empress remembered that she had need of real sailors 
 to command her ships ; and as there were none to be 
 found in Russia, she had to look elsewhere. She did 
 indeed make trial of Spiridof, who, setting out from 
 Cronstadt on the 26th of July, 1769, with a squadron 
 of fifteen ships, came in sight of Minorca towards the 
 end of December with only eight ships, the others 
 having been left on the way. In despair, Catherine 
 turned to London. She discovered Elphinstone. At 
 first she was enchanted : " Here is one who will know 
 how to overcome all difficulties ! " Her content was 
 not of long duration ; two years later, Sabatier wrote 
 from St. Petersburg : " M. Elphinstone is completely 
 forgotten, no one speaks to him at the court ; he waits 
 vainly in the ante-room of M. Panin." And, two 
 weeks later : " M. Ivan Tshernishof has just written to 
 Elphinstone, in two words, that the Empress has no 
 further need of his services." 
 
 Why this disgrace ? Because, having destroyed the 
 Turkish fleet in the bay of Tchesmd, in combination 
 with Greigh and Dugdale (a victory of which Alexis 
 Orlof gets all the credit), Elphinstone transgresses 
 another order of the favourite, which would have com- 
 promised the success of the victory. Nor was he 
 content to keep himself in the background as much as 
 was expected of him. More docile and more modest, 
 mere captains, moreover, and content to remain so, 
 Greigh and Dugdale keep their positions, the first 
 even arriving eventually at the rank of admiral. But 
 Catherine's great desire is to find a substitute for him 
 
72 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 in the ranks of the young Russian navy. When 
 Tchitchagof, the father of the famous admiral of the 
 succeeding reigns, succeeds in obtaining a few trifling 
 advantages over the Swedes, she cannot contain her 
 pride and joy. The bust of the hero is placed at 
 Tsarskole, in the gallery of great men, and Catherine 
 inscribes on it some Russian verses after her fashion, 
 which Dierjavin has no little difficulty in bringing into 
 agreement with the rules of prosody. He himself is 
 invited to tell the story of his exploit before the 
 Empress. He hesitates, stammers, pronounces some 
 incoherent phrases, then, in his excitement, shouts 
 and swears, using the grossest terms of his sailor's 
 vocabulary, till suddenly, seeing the terror depicted on 
 the faces of those present, he stops dumfounded. He 
 falls on his knees ; the Empress motions to him to 
 rise. " Go on, I beg of you ; I do not understand all 
 the technical terms that you use, but your story is very 
 interesting." 
 
 Without learning, but a bold navigator, a very sea- 
 wolf, Tchitchagof does in some degree justify the favour 
 which Catherine shows him. And the feeling which 
 made her give him the preference, would have been, 
 in general, quite justifiable had she remained constant 
 to it. But the sovereign who thought little of the 
 services of an Elphinstone, and scorned those of a Paul 
 Jones, had, among her admirals, besides Nassau, a 
 certain foreigner, on whom she heaped up every kind of 
 favour ; his name was Ribas. 
 
 Under date June 25, 1776, we read in a dispatch of 
 the Marquis de Juigne sent from St. Petersburg to the 
 Comte de Vergennes : " There is a young man here, 
 M. Ribas, of Spanish origin ... a good fellow, who has 
 talent, honesty, and with whom I am on the best of 
 terms. ... He has just married a lady-in-waiting of the 
 Empress, and her favourite. Her Majesty has conferred 
 all sorts of bounties on M. Ribas. She would like 
 also to accord him certain distinctions, but she wishes, 
 for the sake of the public, to be able to justify her 
 
THE SOLDIERS 73 
 
 private favours, and it appears that a recommendation 
 from the King of Spain would have the best sort of 
 effect." 
 
 The Marquis de Juignd had his reasons for saying he 
 was on good terms with this young man ; in praising 
 him he had need of considerable indulgence. I3orn, as 
 it happened, at Naples, and under a casual name (his 
 father seems to have been called Boujon, and was a 
 native of Barcelona), Joseph Ribas entered upon his 
 career by certain pranks, such as the theft of a passport 
 and the falsification of bills of exchange, which obliged 
 him to leave Italy. He had the good fortune of coming 
 across Alexis Orlof at Leghorn, whom he assisted in the 
 carrying out of a piece of dirty work, to which we have 
 already referred, and which we shall refer to again : the 
 abduction of the famous Princess Tarakanof. He arrived 
 at St. Petersburg with the rank of naval lieutenant, and 
 played a second masterly stroke in marrying a pi'ofeg^e 
 of the Empress, a natural daughter of Betzki. 
 
 " This woman," says Langeron, " was pretty, witty, 
 and intriguing, uniting the insolence of a parvenu of all 
 the countries with the cunning of a courtesan. She 
 came to Paris with the wife of Prince Galitzin, since 
 ambassador at Vienna. . . . This princess made friends 
 with Mademoiselle Clairon, and it is from her that 
 Madame Ribas learnt all the verses of Voltaire which 
 she has by heart." 
 
 The verses of Voltaire, obligingly recited, other more 
 private obliging acts, made her the favourite confidante 
 of Catherine, and her husband, in consequence, a great 
 personage. He had charge of the corps des cadets, and of 
 the education of the young Bobrinski, the natural son 
 of Catherine. The journal of the latter, annotated by 
 Lechner, one of his tutors, shows us what kind of an 
 education this was. Mademoiselle Davia, the favourite 
 sultana of Bezborodko, the temporary mistress of Joseph 
 Ribas, and also of his brother Emanuel, played a con- 
 siderable part in it. The pupil divided his time between 
 the drawing-room of this lady and a masonic lodge that 
 
74 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Kibas had set up in his house. This did not prevent 
 the Spaniard from commanding, in 1789, a fleet in the 
 Black Sea under the orders of Patiomkin. It is true 
 that he had meanwhile become the habitual pimp of the 
 favourite. It is to him that the conqueror of the 
 Taurida owed- the acquaintance of Madame de Witt, 
 " the fair Greek," who afterwards became the Countess 
 Potocka. The material organization of the famous 
 journey in the Crimea was also, in part, the work of 
 Ribas, who had a lively imagination and plenty of 
 resources. 
 
 "This Ribas/' says Langeron, "was an extraordinary 
 man, gifted with the rarest talents. By his own wits he 
 became a good general, an excellent diplomatist, and 
 even an honest man." 
 
 To this last point we shall have to return later. The 
 career of the man to whom it is applied brings into 
 sharp relief a whole side of Catherine's individuality, on 
 which we shall have to dwell. The woman who had 
 an Orlof at her side when she rose to the throne, and a 
 Zubof by her death-bed, was certain to have a Ribas in 
 her retinue. She was certain also to transform him into 
 something almost useful. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHIEF MEN : THE ORLOFS, PATIOMKIN, THE 
 ZUBOFS. 
 
 I.— THE ORLOFS. 
 
 We may pass in review, as we have just done, the 
 statesmen and soldiers of whom Catherine made use for 
 the accomplishment of her schemes, without touching, 
 not merely on the really private life of the Empress, but 
 even upon many of the most conspicuous episodes of 
 her life and reign. The private and public history of 
 this extraordinary reign are closely connected with the 
 history of a series of episodes of passion, of which we 
 have already given some glimpse, but to which we must 
 return in some detail, though with a certain reserve, if 
 we are not to leave the figure which we are endeavouring 
 to evoke incomplete and incomprehensible. From 1762 
 to 1796, as we have said, the history of favouritism was 
 something more in Russia than a corner of the private 
 life of a sovereign who has an autocrat's privilege of giving 
 free rein to her fancies : it played the part of an institu- 
 tion of state. And it is for this reason that this chapter, 
 at the head of which we have inscribed three names, 
 chosen out of a large list, is, independently of any 
 romantic interest there may be in it, historically and 
 scientifically an essential chapter of this book. The 
 
 7S 
 
76 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 whole existence, not only of an exceptional woman, but, 
 during the space of thirty-four years, of a great people 
 with whom her destiny was inextricably linked, is to a 
 large extent comprised in those three names : the Orlofs 
 being the beginning, the radiant dawn, of the great 
 reign, Patiomkin its noonday splendour, and Zubof its 
 sad and gloomy ending. 
 
 The Orlof family, if we must believe the records of 
 heraldry, is of recent nobility and distinction. An Orlof 
 is, indeed, seen in 1611, fighting against the Swedes 
 under the walls of Novgorod ; but this ancient line 
 apparently became extinct. The new line has for 
 ancestor a mere soldier, who, in 1689, was compromised 
 in the affair of the Strelitz. He was known among his 
 comrades, on account of his courage and vigour, as the 
 Eagle iariol). Condemned to death, and brought to the 
 place of execution, he quietly pushes aside with his foot 
 the bleeding head of a companion who has preceded 
 him on the block, and which is in his way. The Tsar 
 notices the movement, and, in his admiration, pardons 
 the prisoner. Such at all events is the legend. Raised 
 to the rank of officer, and ennobled, Ivan Ariol, a name 
 corrupted into Orlof, is the father of a major-general and 
 governor of Novgorod, Gregory Ivanovitch, who, at the 
 age of fifty-three, marries a noble lady of the name of 
 Zinovief, and has nine sons by her, of which five survive. 
 They are the five Orlofs of Catherine. 
 
 It is a strong race, of heroic build. According to 
 Prince Shtcherbatof, writer of a curious book on the 
 moral corruption of Russia, only one contemporary is 
 taller and stronger than the five brothers : Svanovits, 
 the governor of Cronstadt, on whom rests the suspicion 
 of having had an active part in the death of Peter III. 
 The eldest, Ivan, is almost thirty at the time when the 
 coup d'Etat raises Catherine to the throne. He takes part 
 in it as under-officer in a regiment of the Guards, becomes 
 count and senator, with an allowance of about a hundred 
 thousand roubles a year, at which he is quite satisfied, 
 and obstinately refuses any further promotion. " He is 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 77 
 
 quite an original personage," writes Sabatier in 1772 ; 
 " he will take neither orders nor promotions, and, in 
 spite of all, he is looked upon with great deference. He 
 has the control of the affairs of the Archipelago ; he is 
 the central point of the secret service in the Guards . . . 
 he has a great influence in the Senate. . . . They say 
 that, despite his extremely rough exterior, he is very 
 acute, and, despite his crass ignorance, admirably suited 
 to the political life. . . . During the absence of the 
 favourite he stays in his rooms in the palace." 
 
 Of the younger brothers, Theodore and Vladimir 
 occupy very subordinate positions, the former as aide- 
 de-camp of his brother Alexis during the first Turkish 
 war, the second as vice-director of the Academy of 
 Sciences. The principal parts are played by Gregory 
 and Alexis between them. 
 
 On October 9 1762, the Baron de Breteuil writes 
 from St. Petersburg to the Due de Choiseul : 
 
 " I do not know, Monseigneur, what will be the result 
 of the correspondence of the Tsarina with M. Ponia- 
 towski, but there is no doubt that she has found a 
 successor to him in the person of M. Orlof, whom she 
 made count on her coronation-day. . . . He is a very 
 handsome man. He has been in love with the Tsarina 
 for several years, and I remember her pointing him out 
 to me one day as an absurd creature, and telling me of 
 his extravagant proceedings. But since then he has 
 deserved to be treated more seriously. For the rest, he 
 is, they say, very stupid. As he only speaks Russian, it 
 is impossible for me to judge. Stupidity is common 
 enough to those who are about the Tsarina, and though 
 she appears to put up with it easily enough, I cannot 
 persuade myself that she will not weed out most of those 
 who now form her society. Hitherto she has only 
 associated with the conspirators, who, except Panin 
 and the hetman (Razumovski), are a poor enough set, 
 mostly lieutenants or captains, and for the most part 
 the haunters of the lowest resorts of the town." 
 
 The anecdote told by the same correspondent, in 
 
78 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 proof of the grossness and licence of speech which the 
 future Semiramis at that time tolerated about her, is 
 well known. Gregory Orlof, the new favourite, boasting^ 
 one day of his personal prestige in the Guards, assures 
 Catherine to her face that it would not take him more 
 than a month to dethrone her again. 
 
 " That may be, my friend," replies Razumovski, " but 
 we should have hanged you in a week." J 
 
 Let us not forget that it is the morrow of the coup^ 
 d'Etat, and that the scene takes place between accom- 
 plices and companions in adventure, who still retain the 
 habits they have taken up in the course of the dangers 
 they have gone through together. With time, Catherine 
 will put all that in order. Orlof has, besides, other 
 reasons for not minding what he says, and it is not merely 
 the succession to the place of Poniatowski that the fine 
 young officer (scarcely twenty-two years old, and with 
 the handsomest face that has ever been seen in Russia) 
 is on the point of securing when the Baron de Breteuil 
 begins to be concerned about his rapid rise. At this 
 time he has another heritage in view. Ambitious, in 
 the true sense of the word, this spoilt child of fortune is 
 not and never will be. Catherine is even inclined to 
 think that he is not enough so. He has taken part Inj 
 the coup d'Etat for the adventure's sake, and also because/ 
 the least adventurous of men will take up the cause of 
 the woman he loves. It was a way of serving a mistressj 
 But his is a simple nature, and very simply also has he 
 planned out the dhiouement of the drama of which he has 
 become the hero. What would a woman of the people 
 do for a man of the people who had raised her to the 
 position of a great lady .'' She would marry him, surely. 
 Why should not Catherine do as much .' The handsome 
 Gregory sees no difficulty. Catherine, for her part, sees 
 many. Nevertheless, she remains, she who is usually so 
 decided and so resolute, hesitating and uncertain before 
 the disturbing problem, not daring to speak out the 
 language of cold reason to this charming lover, averse to 
 listen to it herself, almost carried away, at one moment, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOFS 79 
 
 to the point of abandoning herself to the tender and 
 imperious seduction, 
 
 At no other turning-point of her career do her 
 character and destiny appear under so curious a 
 light. ^7 
 
 First of all, whatever Razumovski may say and thinkX 
 she fears the man who is now inevitably associated with [ 
 her new grandeur, and, also, with his four brothersj 
 There they are, on the steps of her throne, hand in 
 hand, "having but one head and heart," as Sabatier 
 observes, and ready/to dare everything, as she knows 
 by experience. A^ then, it costs her something to be 
 reasonable ; she is passionately in love. In the follow- 
 ing February shfe is at Moscow for the celebration of her 
 coronation ; the marriage scheme, which has been ripen- 
 ing for several months, is about to come to the point, 
 and the Baron de Breteuil writes : 
 
 " A few days ago there was a Russian tragedy given 
 at court, where the favourite played, very awkwardly, 
 the principal role. The princess was, however, so 
 charmed with the graces of the actor, that she called 
 me several times to speak to me about him, and ask me 
 what I thought of him. Nor did she confine herself to 
 this with the Comte de Mercy (the Austrian ambassador) 
 who was sitting by her side. She cried out to him a 
 dozen times in every scene, all about the beauty and 
 dignity of Orlof" 
 
 Soon the council of the empire is consulted in regard 
 to this grave and formidable question. Evidently it is 
 a mere formality. The councillors are silent. Panin 
 alone makes an exception. When his turn to speak 
 comes, he says simply : " The Empress can do what she 
 pleases, but Madame Orlof will never be Empress of 
 Russia." In uttering these words he draws himself up 
 to his full height, leaning back towards the wall against 
 which his chair is set, in an attitude of defiance. His 
 powdered wig, coming in contact with the tapestry, leaves 
 a white patch which his comrades notice, and against 
 which they feign to rub their heads, in order to give 
 
8o CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 themselves courage. The talisman is after all insufficient. 
 According to the Princess Dashkof, her uncle, Count Vor- 
 ontsof, sounded by Bestujef in reference to the proposed 
 union, repels the first advances, asking how he has 
 deserved the insult. But, according to other reports, the 
 intervention of the old chancellorin this difficult question 
 seems, as we shall see, to have been exerted in quite a 
 different direction. As for Bestujef, he is entirely in 
 favour of the project ; it is his last chance of return to 
 his former omnipotence. 
 
 Catherine has by this time reached the stage of dis- 
 cussing, not the project itself, but the means of carrying 
 out the project. And the experience and resources of 
 Bestujef offer themselves, just when they are needed, 
 in the interests of the favourite. Even if the Empress 
 is a little frightened at the novelty of the situation, is 
 not the former prime minister of Elizabeth there to 
 point to a precedent } for, did not the late Empress 
 marry Razumovski .■' The latter is in possession, so 
 it is said, of the most authentic documents, establishing 
 the reality of this clandestine marriage. It will suffice 
 to make public what has hitherto been concealed, by 
 the publication of these documents. But the aid of 
 Razumovski himself is necessary. It is Vorontsof who 
 undertakes to obtain it. The story of the interview has 
 been published by a nephew of the ex-singer of the 
 imperial chapel, now grown old before his time (he is 
 but little over fifty), and seeking repose after his dizzy 
 career ; he has become pious, and lives in absolute 
 seclusion. Vorontsof finds him sitting by his fireside, 
 reading the Bible in the recently-published Kief edition. 
 With great care and caution he unveils to him his pro- 
 ject. It is a service that he is asked to render, and he 
 will be magnificently rewarded ; in acknowledging him 
 officially as the husband of her aunt and benefactress, 
 Catherine proposes to raise him to the rank of Imperial 
 Highness, with all the honours and prerogatives con- 
 nected with that title. The scheme of a ukase to this 
 effect has already been drawn up. Razumovski listens 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 8i 
 
 without a word, disconcerting his visitor, after a time, by 
 the silence and steadfastness of his gaze, into whose 
 veiled depths there comes an infinite sadness. He asks 
 to see the scheme of the ukase, reads it carefully, then, 
 rising at last, but still in silence, he slowly crosses the 
 immense room in which the interview takes place, and 
 pauses at the other end before an old oaken chest. An 
 ebony coffer, inlaid with ivory and silver, stands upon 
 it. Slowly he takes a key, opens the coffer, and touches 
 a spring ; a roll of parchments, covered with a strip of 
 pink satin, faded with time, is contained within. He 
 carefully replaces the faded covering in its casket, closes 
 the coffer, and returns to the fire-place with the roll, 
 which he examines with attention. One by one the 
 large sheets, weighed down by their heavy seals of red 
 wax, crackle under his fingers in the profound silence 
 which Vorontsof dares not interrupt. When he has 
 finished, he rearranges the roll, puts his lips to it, and, 
 turning towards the corner of the room where, according 
 to the custom still existing among the orthodox, a lamp 
 always burns before the gilded icon with its hieratic 
 features, he seems to offer to it an eloquent invoca- 
 tion. His eyes fill with tears ; he trembles for an 
 instant, as if in prey to an inner conflict ; then, like a 
 man who has made his choice, he crosses himself, and, 
 with a sudden movement, flings the mysterious roll into 
 the fire. A sigh, of satisfaction or of regret, and, sink- 
 ing once more into his arm-chair, he watches the flames 
 as they devour the fragile monument of a past of which 
 nothing now remains. When all traces have disap- 
 peared, he at length opens his lips. 
 
 " I have never been other than the most humble slave 
 of Her Majesty the Empress Elizabeth. I desire to be 
 no less than the very humble servant of the reigning 
 Empress. May her favour always be mine ! " 
 
 The precedent exists no more. Bestujef, however, 
 does not abandon his design. At his suggestion a 
 petition is drawn up, praying the Empress to marry in 
 order to assure the heredity of the throne ; dwelling on 
 
 G 
 
82 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 the anxiety which the delicate health of Paul causes his 
 subjects in regard to the future of the empire. A 
 certain number of bishops and senators append their 
 signatures. But at this moment the conspiracy of 
 Hitrovo and his friends, directed against the ambitious 
 projects of the Orlofs, breaks out ; there are disturb- 
 ances at Moscow ; the portrait of the Empress, dis- 
 played on a triumphal arch, is torn down in broad 
 daylight ; an agitation threatens to break forth in the 
 very regiments of the Guards over which the favourite 
 and his brothers seem on the point of losing their 
 control. They are seized with fright, and are the first 
 to give up the too daring project. 
 
 Catherine, certainly, does not advise them to con- 
 tinue. At the bottom of her heart she is grateful to 
 Razumovski for his discretion, as the old courtier 
 doubtless foresaw. But, fortunately for herself, the 
 result of the adventure not only puts an end to a 
 fond dream on the part of the favourite, but another 
 ambition, which he might more legitimately have hoped 
 to realize, is compromised at the same moment, and 
 by the recoil of the same blow. A few months earlier, 
 while engaged on behalf of the matrimonial project, 
 Bestujef had made certain advances to the Comte de 
 Mercy in regard to another delicate matter : before he 
 could become the husband of an empress, Orlof must 
 be made a Prince of the Holy Empire. At first the 
 Austrian envoy made objections ; the movement was 
 ill-chosen for making such a request of Austria, when 
 it had just been abandoned by Russia on the field of 
 battle, left alone against Prussia. But Catherine herself 
 took up the matter ; first evasively, and in a roundabout 
 way, then quite openly. She wished Count Orlof to be 
 made a prince, and she would not fail to show her 
 gratitude. And, as Mercy was anxious to know the 
 precise extent of this gratitude, she became offended. 
 " Did they dare at Vienna to doubt her word .' " They 
 did not dare, and the diploma was dispatched. The 
 dignity conferred on the protJgd of the Tsarina was 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOFS 83 
 
 therein justified by the ancient nobility and the dis- 
 tinction of his family ; as for the personal merits of the 
 recipient, the document left them for the future to bring 
 to light. 
 
 This touch is not without its irony, but the new 
 prince has yet to encounter a more serious obstacle. 
 At the moment when the diploma comes into the hands 
 of Mercy, the crisis to which we have already referred 
 is still in progress, and the ambassador prefers not to 
 accept the responsibility of this coup de theatre. He 
 hands on the document to Bestujef, telling him to 
 make what use of it he pleases. The hand of his court 
 has been forced, and he wishes it to be known. Bes- 
 tujef is enchanted : now Catherine and her favourite 
 will know how much they owe to him. He rushes 
 forthwith to the Empress, but soon returns downcast. 
 Catherine will not hear a word of her favourite's new 
 title; he is in danger of being cut to pieces, and 
 she of being face to face with an insurrection 1 He 
 must wait a year, ten years, perhaps. And so the 
 incident ends, Mercy getting but embarrassed thanks 
 and vague promises, and Orlof is prince, and yet, after 
 all, no prince ! It is true that he does not appear to 
 concern himself about the matter. 
 
 He takes his revenge after another fashion. Under 
 date November 25, 1764, the French charge d'affaires, 
 Beranger, writes from St. Petersburg : " The more I 
 observe M. Orlof, the more I seem to see that he 
 is Emperor in all but name .... His familiarity of 
 manner with the Empress strikes every one, and the 
 Russians say that nothing like it has been seen in any 
 country since the foundation of monarchy. Superior to 
 every kind of etiquette, he publicly takes liberties with 
 his sovereign which, in polite society, a self-respecting 
 mistress would not tolerate in her lover." 
 
 The apparent attitude of Catherine in regard to this 
 lover is, indeed, that of a mistress docile to all caprices, 
 humble and submissive to excess. She writes to 
 Madame Geoffrin : 
 
84 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 " When your last letter arrived Count Orlof was in 
 my room. You say in this letter that I seem to you to 
 be very active, because I work at laws and do tapestrj'. 
 He, who is constitutionally idle, though he has much 
 natural talent and intelligence, cried : ' That is true ! ' 
 And it was the first time I ever knew him to praise me. 
 It is to you, madame, that I owe that." 
 
 She even overlooks his very numerous infidelities, 
 which she never does in the case of any of his suc- 
 cessors. She allows him to absent himself for weeks 
 together. If she dares reproach him with anything, it 
 is with that voluptuous indolence in which he loves to 
 bury himself. She has to be ambitious on his behalf, to 
 urge him step by step up the official ladder, do him 
 violence, in some sort, in order to drag him out of his 
 torpor and make him take some part in affairs of 
 state. He is director of the body of engineers, head 
 of the horse-guards, general-in-chief and grand-master 
 of artillery, president of the bureau of colonization, 
 director-in-chief of the fortifications. He has no in- 
 clination to direct anything, or take any command. 
 Receiving nearly two millions of roubles a year on 
 account of the improvements which he is to make in 
 one of the departments under his command, that of 
 artillery, he squanders a good half of it, and hands on 
 the remainder to Catherine, who uses it to gratify her 
 personal taste for building. She builds for her favourite 
 the famous marble palace, on the front of which she has 
 the courage to put this inscription : " Eleve par I'amitie 
 reconnaissante." 
 
 Grateful she is, indeed, and to profusion. Lodged, 
 fed, free of every kind of expenses, the favourite receives 
 10,000 roubles (50,000 francs) a month as pocket-money, 
 with peasants by the ten thousand, estates by the square 
 league, with palaces and castles, that of Ropsha among 
 others, of sinister memory. He has the portrait of the 
 sovereign in the form of a heart decked with diamonds, 
 with the sole right of wearing it at his button-hole. All 
 this does not suffice to rouse him out of his idleness and 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 85 
 
 inertia. He seems to think that he has made quite 
 enough effort in raising himself and his benefactress to 
 the place which they both occupy. He refuses the 
 unanimous invitation of the legislative assembly to be- 
 come its president. Once only do the slumbering soul, 
 the torpid athlete's body, seem for a moment stirred by 
 the remembrance of the old lighting days. One day, 
 when he is present at the council, he violently opposes 
 the project set on foot by Catherine for sustaining the 
 PoHsh candidature of his former rival, Poniatowski. By 
 way of argument, however, he can find nothing but the 
 grossest abuse ; and it is a mere flash in the pan. At 
 a quietly reproachful word of Catherine, he stops short, 
 withdraws what he has said, and accuses Bestujef of 
 having given him bad advice. 
 
 n. 
 
 And little by little Catherine's tenderness, the pas- 
 sionate interest with which she has so long followed 
 every word and motion of the young man, begins to 
 show some signs of weakening. Her mind and heart 
 detach themselves gradually from this hopeless nullity, 
 whose emptiness she finally comes to realize. He sees 
 it ; he sees that she is slipping from his hands ; he 
 realizes the gulf that opens up before him. And sud- 
 denly a change comes over him, he becomes himself 
 again, the old self of those troubled times. It is a 
 complete awakening. On October 2, 1 771, he sets out 
 for Moscow, on a mission which, this time not merely 
 in Catherine's complacent imagination, makes him a 
 hero, and the saviour of his country. The plague, which 
 has been raging for two months in the second capital 
 of the empire, has given rise to fearful uproars. The 
 local authorities have completely given way before the 
 insurgents. The governor has fled. The head of the 
 police has been massacred by the people. Order must 
 be re-established, the outbreak arrested. Gregory Orlof 
 
86 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 takes it into his hands, and Catherine allows him to do 
 so. Does she not hesitate to send him to his death? 
 Or does the glory which she hopes to see him win 
 render her insensible to every other consideration ? 
 Who can venture to guess ? Seen elsewhere than in the 
 dull and pallid mirror in which, for the historian, the 
 passions are reflected, a woman's heart has such un- 
 fathomable depths ! The momentary favour of an 
 obscure rival named Wysocki, who does but pass 
 briefly across the dazzling sky where the star of Orlof 
 is soon to recover all its splendour, seems to belong 
 to this period. Who knows .■' If Orlof were not to 
 succeed .... 
 
 But he succeeds. With the exertion of an indomit- 
 able courage and a savage energy, he muzzles the 
 monster of popular tumult, and seems to command 
 Nature herself. The progress of the evil is stayed. 
 When he returns he has reconquered Catherine ; he is 
 once more for her the man of men, "like the ancient 
 Romans in the palmy days of the republic," as she 
 formerly wrote to Voltaire. At Tsarsko'fe, on the 
 Gatshina road, a triumphal arch of marble still recalls, a 
 little battered though it is, the glory of his return. On 
 a medal, struck on the same occasion, there is the por- 
 trait of the favourite, together with the figure of Curtius, 
 and this inscription : " Russia also has such sons." 
 Catherine had intended to put "such a son," in the 
 singular. It was Orlof who insisted on the other more 
 modest version. Nevertheless, it is at this very time 
 that we see him under a new aspect, and anything but 
 a modest one. A new demon of boundless pride and 
 mad presumption seems to have possessed him. Is it 
 that he feels obliged to still dazzle the woman whose 
 affection he has come so near to losing .■• Or is it not 
 rather the first signs of that mental alienation which, 
 ten years later, is to end his astonishing career > A few 
 months after his triumphal return, he sets out again 
 for Fokshany, as negotiator in the treaty of peace ob- 
 tained by the victories of Rumiantsof. A regal train 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 87 
 
 accompanies him, and Catherine writes to Madame de 
 Bielke : 
 
 " My angels of peace will soon be face to face with 
 those hideous bearded Turks. Count Orlof, who, with- 
 out exaggeration, is the handsomest man of his time, 
 must really look like an angel in the presence of those 
 clodhoppers ; his suite is choice and brilliant. ... I 
 would wager, however, that he himself outvies every one 
 who is in his retinue. He is a singular creature, this 
 ambassador ; Nature has been so extraordinarily liberal 
 with him in face, in mind, in heart, and in soul ! " 
 
 A singular ambassador, indeed. No sooner has he 
 arrived at the meeting-place with the Turkish pleni- 
 potentiaries than he turns everything upside down. To 
 begin with, he is not at all disposed to carry out the work 
 he has undertaken : that is, to make peace. He dreams, 
 rather, of beginning the war over again, and out-doing 
 the exploits of Rumiantsof with the aid of General 
 Bauer. He claims command of the army, and, in full 
 council, before the united plenipotentiaries, he falls 
 out with Rumiantsof, and tells him that he will have 
 him hanged. He pays no heed to the instructions that 
 are sent him by Panin, dreams of attacking Constanti- 
 nople, then, all at once, breaks off negotiations and 
 retires to Jassy, where he spends his time in giving 
 splendid fetes, and in parading a costume covered with 
 diamonds, to the value of a million roubles, which 
 Catherine has sent him. 
 
 A letter which comes to him from St. Petersburg 
 from a friendly hand surprises him in the midst of these 
 frolics. He learns that in his madman's game of the 
 last few weeks he has staked his position, and lost it. 
 In once more allowing him to leave her side, Catherine 
 had a reason which he never suspected, and of which 
 she was not perhaps entirely conscious herself. But this 
 time she was well aware that there was no question 
 either of the glory of her favourite or of the interests 
 of her country ; and while she was writing about him to 
 Madame de Bielke so enthusiastically, she was prepar- 
 
88 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 ing to give him a successor. The departure of the 
 favourite took place on the i8th (29th) August, 1772, 
 and two weeks later Vassiltshikof was installed in the 
 imperial palace in the special apartments of the 
 favourites. 
 
 One can imagine the effect of the disastrous news, the 
 consternation of the one principally concerned, the 
 amazement of his following, the interrupted fete, then 
 the quick leap into a kibitka, and the headlong ride 
 across space. Full speed to St. Petersburg, a course of 
 a thousand leagues ! Night and day the kibitka flies 
 forward, devouring the space, with its fasting, sleepless 
 traveller. In vain ! At a few dozen versts from the 
 capital, an imperial order arrests the gallop of horses : 
 a quarantine is imposed on all travellers coming from 
 the south, where the epidemic has once more broken 
 out. Quarantine for him who had measured his 
 strength with the plague of Moscow, and stayed it ! 
 But the order is formal. He is received, however, with 
 the most friendly offers. Will it please the exile to 
 enter into quarantine at the castle of Gatshina .'' It 
 was built by Rinaldi — like the triumphal arch recently 
 put up on the road — and the spot is charming. A 
 delightful river, the Ijora, runs through the park, which 
 was laid out by English gardeners. There is an isle in 
 the midst of the river, full of delicious groves, and in 
 one of them is a temple sacred to Love. Alas, alas ! 
 it is these very charms which Gregory Orlof had destined 
 to another. At the suggestion of Catherine, he had not 
 long before written to the author of the Noiivelle Helolse 
 to offer him the hospitality of this abode, " so peaceful, 
 and made for reverie." It is he who is to indulge in 
 the reverie now, the remembrance of departed joys and 
 splendours. 
 
 He is not yet, however, in despair. He is not the 
 man to do violence to his fate by any endeavour to 
 re-take his lost place with a high hand ; he is too poor 
 in resources for that, or too weak of will. At all events 
 he can keep a good countenance, and, when the decree 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOFS 89 
 
 has definitely gone forth against him, defy his evil 
 fortune. Catherine at first feared on his part some 
 headstrong action, whose consequences might have been 
 incalculable. She is said to have had the locks on the 
 doors of the favourite's suite of apartments changed, 
 and ordered that all the roads leading to St. Petersburg 
 were to be guarded by soldiers. She only breathes 
 freely when she learns that he has complied meekly 
 with her orders, and installed himself at Gatshina. But 
 she wishes to obtain his resignation of all his posts and 
 offices. Prudently and timidly, with a crowd of little 
 courtesies and tempting offers, employing now Betzki, 
 now Alssoufiof, now Tshernishof, whom she sends one 
 after the other to Gatshina, she negotiates an arrange- 
 ment. It would be difficult to say what her precise 
 feeling is at the moment. Her attitude is an enigma 
 even for those who see her the closest. She refuses to 
 see the ex-favourite again, but she writes to him every 
 day. She seems deeply in love with the new lover, but 
 she concerns herself in regard to what her old lover 
 has to eat and drink, even looking after his very linen 
 herself At the same time she is so nervous and agi- 
 tated that the most pressing affairs of state are neglected, 
 for she is incapable of giving audience to her ministers. 
 Is it merely fear that troubles her to this extent ? 
 Durand, the French charg^ d'affaires, seems to think so. 
 On December i, 1772, he writes : 
 
 " The Empress has lately found out that more than a 
 thousand soldiers of the Guards were in the private pay 
 of Orlof, and that he had won over the archbishops . . . 
 It appears that he has .two millions of roubles sterling, 
 so that the Empress fears him, and prefers to act 
 gently." 
 
 A few days after he adds : 
 
 "At a masked ball the other night there was a 
 rumour that Orlof was there in disguise, and a coach 
 and livery resembling his having raised the report that 
 he was in the castle, the Empress fled into the rooms of 
 Count Panin." 
 
90 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 There are other reasons, however, for thinking that a 
 more tender emotion mingles with these mere anxieties 
 on the part of the Empress ; and Orlof certainly does 
 his utmost to rouse and sustain both feelings at once. 
 When she demands the return of the portrait cased in 
 diamonds, which he has no longer the right to wear, he 
 returns the diamonds and keeps the portrait ; he refuses 
 to return this, save into the hands that gave it to him. 
 Her threats fail to move him in the slightest. When 
 she threatens to shut him up in the castle of Ropsha, 
 he replies that he will be happy to receive her in 
 it. She cuts short these eternal parleyings by a ukase 
 which declares him deprived of all his offices, and gives 
 him permission, equivalent to an order, to travel for the 
 benefit of his health. He declares that he is in excel- 
 lent health, and has no intention of moving, unless in 
 order to come to St. Petersburg. 
 
 Finally he comes there ; it is uncertain whether with 
 her permission or not. He appears with new lustre, for 
 another ukase, issued on October 4, 1772, has authorized 
 him to bear the title of prince. He comes to court, and 
 at night, as in former days, sits down to the card-table 
 with the Empress. He is gay, and full of life and spirits. 
 Catherine addresses him, and he replies without the 
 slightest embarrassment, talking of indifferent matters. 
 Next day he is seen all over the town with a companion 
 with whom he seems on the friendliest terms, and this 
 companion is the new favourite. He talks with him, and 
 with every one he meets, of his change of fortune, joking 
 over his own downfall, to the point of embarrassing 
 them. He calls on the Grand-Duke, and the foreign 
 ministers hasten to call on him before he has time to 
 pay them a visit. He is seen openly frequenting the 
 lowest company, and gets drunk in public with loose 
 women. He seems to have no inclination to measure 
 strength with his rival, or to take revenge on those who 
 were responsible for his disgrace ; and he praises in the 
 highest terms the disinterested patriotism of Count 
 Panin, his most formidable enemy. 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 91 
 
 Every one, at this time, in St. Petersburg expects 
 that Orlof will occupy a similar situation to that of 
 Alexis Razumovski during the last years of the reign 
 of Elizabeth, when the Shuvalofs had assumed in the 
 palace much the same office and functions as those 
 which were now enjoyed by Vassiltshikof. The former 
 favourite is in daily receipt of new favours and gifts from 
 the hands of the Empress ; gifts in money and in kind 
 rain upon him, and at the same time he still seems 
 to dispense favours on his own account with almost 
 sovereign power. He has the daughter of his friend 
 General Bauer raised to the rank of lady-in-waiting ; he 
 gives the cordon bleu to his prot^gd, Prince Viaziemski. 
 The general expectation is doomed to general dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 III. 
 
 Early in 1773 Orlof disappears. He spends the 
 remainder of the winter at Reval. He is still blithe and 
 gay, he gives magnificent fltes, pays court to the noble 
 ladies of the neighbourhood and the bourgeoises of the 
 town, dances with all alike in turn, and from time to 
 time still plays the potentate as if he had lost none of 
 the power that had once been his. He confers the 
 Order of St. Anne on a Count Tiesenhausen, presents a 
 Prince of Holstein with an estate belonging to the 
 Crown, and these liberalities are duly ratified by 
 Catherine. In the spring there is a new surprise in 
 store ; he reappears at St. Petersburg, once more in 
 possession of all the offices which he had formerly 
 occupied. He does not shine in the administration of 
 these functions, if we may believe Durand : 
 
 " Lately, at the exercises of the polygon. Prince Orlof 
 seemed to know less about them than a school-boy, 
 though he is grand-master of artillery, general-in-chief, 
 and ambitious of military glory and honour. Every 
 
92 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 movement of the soldiers astonished him. 'Why is 
 that ? ' he asked ; ' what are they going to do ? ' And 
 when they were advancing under the rampart by the 
 covered way : ' Where are they gone ? ' . . . Every one 
 looked at him, and then looked down." 
 
 But is Catherine herself once more blinded, once more 
 won over.' No indeed, if we may believe the confi- 
 dences which she is supposed to have made at this 
 very moment to an intimate friend : 
 
 " I owe greatly to the Orlof family ; I have covered 
 them with benefits and honours ; I shall always continue 
 to protect them, and they can be very useful to me ; but 
 I have taken my stand. For eleven years I have suffered, 
 now I intend to live according to my own pleasure, and 
 in entire independence. As for the prince, he can do 
 whatever he pleases ; he is free to go or stay, to drink, 
 to hunt, to keep mistresses ... If he governs well, he 
 will do honour to himself; if he governs ill, he will cover 
 himself with shame." 
 
 " He will cover himself with shame," repeats the well- 
 informed gentleman of the court whom Durand reports. 
 " Nature has made him a Russian peasant to the end of 
 time. For eleven years he led a delicate and delightful 
 life ; his palate must have grown used to all that is most 
 exquisite ; well, now, when he is no longer in favour, 
 and has 250,000 roubles a year, and appointments to 
 the value of twenty millions of our money, and could 
 live in luxury as a grand seigneur, far from a stormy 
 court, or, if he pleased, in that court itself, how do you 
 suppose he lives ? He remained at Gatshina one day 
 only. He came here (to St. Petersburg) the day after. 
 From morning to night he never leaves the coxxti fresles 
 (ladies) who are left at the castle (the Empress is at 
 Tsarskole). He dines there, he 3ups there ; his table is 
 nevertheless squalid, his food disgusting, and he delights 
 in such an existence . . . His condition of mind is no 
 better. The most puerile things amuse him ; his mind is 
 like his taste, anything is good enough for him. He 
 loves as he eats, finding a Calmuck or a Finlander as 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOFS 93 
 
 much to his taste as the prettiest court lady, like the 
 burlak (country clown) that he is." 
 
 This well-informed court gentleman thinks the career 
 of the ex-favourite at an end, or at least his influence. 
 He is mistaken, as the agent of French diplomacy finds 
 out a few weeks later, for he writes in May 1773 : 
 
 " Panin's successor will be certain to be some proUgi 
 of the Prince (Orlof) ; since he has come back into 
 favour, he has four times as much authority as he had 
 when he lived in the Empress's own apartments." 
 
 And tidings follow tidings, ascribing ever-increasing 
 importance to the ex-favourite. Vassiltshikof still 
 occupies his position in the palace and the coach of the 
 Empress, but his influence is non-existent. He takes 
 no part in public affairs. Gregory Orlof, however, seems 
 to have sway even over the foreign policy. Frederick is 
 somewhat taken aback, for, on the strength of his envoy's 
 reports, he has expressed without disguise, in the reports 
 which he supposes will be read only by Panin, the 
 satisfaction which the fall of the ex-favourite has caused 
 him. The prince now appears at Tsarskol'e as a master. 
 The Empress returns his visit at Gatshina, and, with an 
 incredible disregard of appearances, it is at Gatshina 
 that Catherine has her first interview with the Princess 
 of Hesse-Darmstadt and her two daughters, one of 
 whom is to become the wife of the Grand-Duke Paul. 
 Nor is this all. The Empress is a little uncertain which 
 of the two princesses to choose on behalf of her son. 
 Meanwhile, Orlof makes his own choice. Under date 
 July 5, 1773, the frightened Solms dispatches a courier 
 to his master at Berlin, with these lines : 
 
 " I have to acquaint Your Majesty with a secret of the 
 utmost importance, on which the welfare of Russia 
 depends, and to which Your Majesty, as the friend and 
 ally of this empire, cannot be indifferent. Count 
 Panin, who always keeps watch over the projects of the 
 Orlof family, considers that he has reason to suspect 
 Prince Orlof of carrying his ambitious views to the 
 point of desiring to marry one of the Princesses of 
 
94 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Darmstadt. The extraordinary attentions, for him, 
 which he pays to the Landgrave, and the freedom of 
 manner with which he treats the princesses, especially 
 the younger, to whom he pays open attention, increase 
 these suspicions. . . . The vivacity of this princess might 
 well, without imagining any harm, afford to this ambi- 
 tious man the means of succeeding." 
 
 Another Prussian envoy adds that the Empress is 
 not to be relied upon to counteract so daring a project. 
 
 It is a false alarm, and the very return of the ex- 
 favourite into active politics is but an inconsequent 
 caprice of the moment. He abandons the Princess of 
 Darmstadt for the first maid-of-honour that he comes 
 across, and the affairs of state for his private pleasures. 
 He has enough good sense to know that he is not at his 
 best in ruling the affairs of the nation. He never takes 
 part in a discussion in which serious interests are con- 
 cerned without putting his interlocutors in difficulties, 
 and Catherine, if she is present, in distress, by the 
 ignorance and want of intelligence which he displays. 
 And, as he is reasonable enough in himself, he is the 
 first to realize the fact, and to acquiesce in its con- 
 sequences. In 1774, in the course of the Pugatshof 
 affair, he lets himself be duped like a school-boy by a 
 knight of fortune, a bankrupt merchant of some pro- 
 vincial town, who gives himself out for an emissary 
 from the Cossacks of Jaik, who are prepared to betray 
 the formidable insurgent ; and he swindles both Orlof 
 and the Empress of considerable sums. 
 
 In the course of this same year a new actor appears 
 on the scene, one whose coming is to eclipse for long 
 years— or, if not eclipse, at least dominate — all the actors 
 in the grand spectacular drama of the life of Catherine. 
 Patiomkin takes the place of Vassiltshikof, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 95 
 
 IV. 
 
 And now the colossal figure of the new favourite 
 seems to occupy the whole stage upon which he has 
 made his appearance. Gregory Orlof does not seem to 
 have met with any new disfavour ; but he takes his 
 departure, like a child in a temper, or like a finally 
 discouraged man. "Prince Orlof," writes Durand, 
 "declares that he has had a singular explanation with 
 the Empress, and that he has replied to all her endeavours 
 to divert him from his intention of departure by saying 
 that it was impossible for him to endure any longer the 
 sight of all that was done against his relations and 
 friends, unable however to reproach her in anything save 
 the lack of that which Nature had ceased to accord him." 
 He leaves Russia, travels throughout Europe, astonishing 
 the capitals by the splendour of his retinue, and intimi- 
 dating the most daring of gamesters by the amount of 
 his stakes. Diderot, who meets him at Paris, has but a 
 poor opinion of him, comparing him to a "boiler always 
 boiling which cooks nothing." At the end of a year 
 he returns to St. Petersburg, and there resumes a situation 
 which has now really become very similar to that of 
 Alexis Razumovski under the preceding reign. At the 
 court he is known as " The Prince," without further title. 
 His relations with the Empress, without having returned 
 to their former familiarities, seem to be now on a footing 
 of affectionate comradeship, almost of equality, without 
 any thought of sovereign and subject. Catherine makes 
 him the present of a palace, and he responds by the 
 purchase of the famous Persian diamond, the Nadir- 
 Shah, for which he pays 460,000 roubles, and which he 
 lays at the Tsarina's feet on the occasion of her birthday. 
 
 At the root of things, there is still, between them, 
 something of the past, a link so closely and so strongly 
 woven into the deepest fibres of their being, that it 
 resists every test. In 1776 she writes to Grimm : 
 
96 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 " I have always had a Hking to let myself be borne 
 along by people who are more disposed to it than I am, 
 provided only that they do not let me feel that they 
 are doing it deliberately, for then I fly at full 'speed. 
 Of all the men who have helped me to indulge in that 
 liking, I know no one more capable than Prince Orlof 
 He goes ahead instinctively, and I follow him." 
 
 To break this link, there is need, in the crowded and 
 agitated life of the ex-favourite, of something very new 
 and surprising. In 1777, at the age of over forty-three, 
 this unbridled libertine, this dcbaucM and blase, falls 
 in love. This is no light, empty affair of gallantry, no 
 escapade of a Don Juan easily in and out of love, but 
 a really sincere passion. Such a love, which is almost 
 a sort of posthumous betrayal, the lover of long ago 
 cannot forgive, even in the aging lover whom she has 
 herself abandoned. Especially also as, by a new favour 
 of fate conferred upon this privileged being, it is a 
 happy love, despite its difficult beginning and the cruel 
 end it comes to, this drama which becomes an idyll and 
 ends in tragedy. 
 
 Pretty, full of grace, scarcely nineteen years of age, 
 conspicuous amongst the maids-of-honour of the Em- 
 press, and greatly sought after in marriage, Mademoiselle 
 Zinovief is the cousin-german of the prince. It is a 
 mutual affection, and, in spite of the formal interdic- 
 tion of the civil and religious law, the marriage takes 
 place. It is annulled by a decision of the Senate, 
 decreeing the separation of husband and wife, and the 
 young woman writes heart-broken letters to her brother 
 Vassili, whom she affectionately and playfully calls 
 doushenka-frerushka, in which she relates her vain 
 endeavours to meet with the husband who has been 
 torn so swiftly from her arms, adding : " I love him 
 more than ever, and, in spite of all, by the grace of 
 God, I am very happy." 
 
 Finally Catherine consents to be generous. She 
 annuls the decree of the Senate ; she even gives a place 
 to the Princess Orlof among her ladies-in-waiting ; she 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 
 
 97 
 
 makes her a present of a toilet-table in solid gold. 
 Husband and wife spend their honeymoon in Switzer- 
 land, and the princess expresses her joy and delight in 
 some verses which make their way to St. Petersburg, 
 and are soon in all mouths : " Vsiakii krai s'toboiu rat 
 (All lands with thee are heaven for me)." 
 
 They return to St. Petersburg after a few months' 
 time, and take up residence in the Shtegelman palace, 
 one of those which the Empress has given to her 
 favourite ; and here they lead a quiet, well-ordered life, 
 without show or ostentation, entirely devoted to the 
 happiness of each other. The prince is rarely seen at 
 court, and assures Harris that he has no more influence 
 in affairs. In 1780, the devoted pair once more set out 
 for abroad ; but this time the princess is in ill-health, 
 and needs a warmer climate. This time Catherine 
 seems to view the departure with pleasure, and after 
 bidding farewell, coldly enough, to the man whom she 
 has loved, and whose existence she has not filled with 
 that love, she asks her femme de chainbre, the faithful 
 Pierekussihina : 
 
 " What is done to an old icon when its colours have 
 faded > " 
 
 " It is burnt." 
 
 " No, no ! You, who know the ways of your country, 
 not to know that ! It is thrown in the water, Maria 
 Savishna ; I tell you it is thrown in the water ! " 
 
 Her alienation is now so complete that she can write 
 to Grimm : " Prince Orlof is in Paris . . . salute him 
 from me, and tell him to bring back with him a little 
 Prince Orlof, visible or invisible." 
 
 Alas ! instead of this maternity, doubtless longed for 
 by the princess herself, it is death that comes. A 
 disease of the lungs soon places her life in danger. It 
 is in vain that the couple, but lately so radiant with 
 happiness, travel from city to city in search of the most 
 renowned specialists. Princess Dashkof comes across 
 them at Leyden, at the house of the famous physician 
 Gobieus ; afterwards at Brussels. Her stories of the 
 
 H 
 
98 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 court intrigues in which the prince is impHcated, and 
 of the strange propositions he makes to her in regard 
 to her son, undertaking to put him in the place of 
 Patiomkin in the Empress's favour, are obviously mere 
 legends. The princess dies at Lausanne, June i6, 1782. 
 Dierjavin laments this premature end in some touching 
 verses, and when Gregory Orlof returns to St. Petersburg, 
 he himself seems but half in the land of the living ; his 
 reason has given way in this irretrievable catastrophe, 
 in his delirium he seems to see before him the avenging 
 ghost of Peter III., and he repeats: "It is my punish- 
 ment ! " Six months later the Marquis de Verac writes 
 from St. Petersburg to the Comte de Vergennes : 
 
 "Prince Orlof has just died at Moscow. . . . His 
 illness had its terrible details, which I dare not write 
 even in cypher." 
 
 This is how Catherine announces the sad news to 
 Grimm : 
 
 "Though quite prepared for this mournful event, I 
 confess that it causes me the profoundest grief They 
 say to me, and I say to myself, what is always said on 
 such occasions : paroxysms of sobbing are my only 
 response, and I suffer terribly." 
 
 Does she really suffer so much as all that .'' The 
 remainder of the letter scarcely indicates it. While 
 she is in the midst of eulogizing the dead man, she soon 
 drops into so lively and casual a vein as this : 
 
 " There is one very odd thing in connection with the 
 death of Prince Orlof, Count Panin died only fourteen 
 or fifteen days before him, and neither of them knew of 
 the other. These two men, always at variance, and 
 so far from loving one another, will be very much 
 astonished at meeting in the other world. . . . For 
 years and years, I have had these two counsellors 
 hanging at my ears, and things, all the same, went 
 swimmingly. But it was often needful to do as my 
 Lord Alexander did with the Gordian knot, and then 
 their advice could be harmonized. The boldness and 
 spirit of the one, and the backward prudence of the 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOFS 99 
 
 other, and your very humble servant doing the Kurz- 
 galop between the two, gave a pace and elegance to 
 things which was really up to anything." 
 
 No, she is neither deeply affected nor in great distress, 
 though she would fain appear so. She is not, for she 
 has never pardoned, not even in death, the last insult 
 of a man whom she has loved, thus wronging the 
 memory of such a love as hers. Still, she writes to 
 Grimm of the " vast genius " of her former lover, of 
 " the force of his eloquence." Two years later she will 
 again say of him, in writing to Zimmermann : " This 
 unique and really great man." And she will accuse 
 his contemporaries of never having understood him. 
 
 Is the accusation just 1 The opinion of contem- 
 poraries seems to us, on the contrary, to have been 
 influenced, to some extent at least, by the counter- 
 influence of that illusion, perpetuated by the death of 
 the favourite, in which Catherine herself lived. In 
 speaking of his actions, they seem to see him as if he 
 had really been a sort of hero of antiquity at certain 
 moments, precisely as the Empress wished him to be 
 seen, but with a heroism which seems to go back to 
 the remotest horizons of antiquity ; rising to this point 
 at rare intervals, to relapse into deeper depths. In 
 judging his talents and his qualities, they seem often 
 to be but the echo of the passionate infatuation of the 
 imperial mistress. Sabatier himself, little indulgent as 
 he generally is, lets himself be carried along by the 
 current : " He was a simple and straightforward man, 
 without pretension, affable, popular, good-humoured 
 and honest. He never did an unkindness to any. . . . 
 He was shrewd, acute, by no means wanting in enter- 
 prise. His success in studies, often entered upon simply 
 in order to escape for a few moments from the satiety 
 which undermines him, proves that he might have done 
 much with his natural advantages. In public affairs he 
 had a direct good sense, to which M. Panin has always 
 done justice." Prince Shtcherbatof, a declared enemy 
 of Catherine and her glory, has good words for the 
 
ICX3 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 courage, honesty, and liberal ideas of the favourite. 
 " It was impossible not to love him," writes another 
 contemporary, Bolotof, author of some very curious 
 memoirs. The observation is applied, it is true, to 
 Gregory Orlof in the days of his youth, without either 
 a political or a romantic past behind him, wounded 
 three times at the battle of Zorndorf, and leading the 
 dances, a few days after, at the castle of Koenigsberg. 
 Catherine seems also to have done her utmost, with 
 that sedulousness which she put into everything she did, 
 to cultivate the fallow intelligence of her lover. In the 
 course of their long drives into the silent country about 
 St. Petersburg, she took advantage of the lengthy 
 tete-a-tete in order to read instructive books together. 
 At one moment he seems to have really developed some 
 taste for study, and shows some curious, ignorant 
 interest in science. In 1765 he founds, in company 
 with MM. Vorontsof and Taubert, the German librarian 
 of the Empress, a society for the study of economic 
 and social questions. He is the first to raise the thorny 
 question of the means to be used in giving to the 
 peasants some property in the lands which they them- 
 selves have tilled. In the following year, he is fired 
 with enthusiasm for the famous " Instruction," the first 
 step in the work of legislation with which Catherine 
 intends to endow Russia, and in which Panin finds 
 maxims "enough to knock down the very walls." At 
 the same time, Orlof accompanies the Empress on 
 board the yacht which is to take her to Kazan on the 
 Volga and takes part in the translation of Marmontel's 
 BMisaire. It is at this period, too, that he thinks of 
 offering his hospitality to Jean-Jacques. He writes 
 to him with his own hand a pressing letter, which 
 Catherine has doubtless inspired, as she is accustomed 
 to do. Is the author of the Contrat Social, the para- 
 doxical man par excelhnce, suspicious of the apparent 
 paradox which such hospitality would present to the 
 mind of his contemporaries .? He is in error. It is still 
 long before the revolutionary ideas and men of -the 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS loi 
 
 West will become at all disturbing and embarrassing 
 for Russia. The home apostles of our day, with their 
 mystical language, their ideas as bristling as their 
 beards, innocently as they may amuse the curiosity of 
 Parisian drawing-rooms, present quite other difficulties. 
 Jean-Jacques declines the invitation, and the romance 
 of Catherine the Great and her favourite loses a fine 
 chapter. 
 
 Lomonossof, at least, the national poet, the survivor 
 of a great literary epoch, finds in Gregory Orlof, from 
 the first, a passionate admirer and a devoted^ friend. It 
 is to him that he turns, after the coup d'Eiat, for the 
 realization of a scheme that has been on foot for twenty 
 years : the establishment of a university at St. Peters- 
 burg. Unfortunately the intervention of the favourite 
 is in vain ; Catherine has already acquired a taste for 
 Western culture and the universities of her native land. 
 All that Lomonossof gains by his attempt is to be 
 deposed from the presidency of the Academy by a 
 special ukase, which, however, is soon annulled by a 
 fresh intercession of his protector. He dies two years 
 afterwards, leaving his papers to Orlof. 
 
 But, as Sabatier remarks, in his portrait of the 
 favourite in 1772, "his irresistible taste for pleasure and 
 dissipation, his unbridled fancy for women, the absence 
 of contradiction, the immediate gratification of the 
 slightest desire, wore out the activity which a different 
 education and more ambition might have developed in 
 other directions." 
 
 To all this Catherine paid no heed. Infatuation, as 
 we know, was a feature of her character, and hyperbole 
 a feature of her mind. In the man who, on the 12th 
 of July, 1762, accompanied her to the gates of the 
 Siemionov barracks, she saw, not only the maker of her 
 fortune and the companion of the best years of her life, 
 but also, elementary as were her feelings in this respect, 
 the father of two or three of her children. According 
 to the English envoy Gunning, there were three ; accord- 
 ing to others, two. Two girls who were brought up by 
 
I02 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Mademoiselle Protassof, the Empress's head femme de 
 chambre and confidante, as her nieces, under the name of 
 the demoiselles Alieksieief, one of whom married the 
 poet Klinger, passed for daughters of Catherine and of 
 Gregory Orlof ; and, in 1764, B6ranger sent to the Due 
 de Praslin, from St. Petersburg, the following details con- 
 cerning a male child to whom Catherine was supposed 
 to have given birth shortly after the death of the 
 Empress Anne : " This child is looked after by Shkurin, 
 formerly a confidential valet de chambre, now chamber- 
 lain, of the Empress, who brings him up as his nephew, 
 and his father and mother (Catherine and Orlof) often 
 go out in the dusk in a common carriage, followed by 
 a single lackey, to pay the child a visit." He added : 
 " He (Orlof) at times treats his sovereign as if she 
 were his servant. Only a little while ago there was so 
 lively a quarrel that Orlof went away for three days 
 under the pretext of a hunting-party. For two days 
 Catherine was in despair. On the third she wrote a 
 most tender letter to her lover, which she enclosed in 
 a very costly box, saying that she hoped to see him at 
 Tsarskoie-Selo, where she was going. It was there that 
 the reconciliation took place. I have even been informed 
 that she gave birth there to a still-born child. The 
 marked decrease in her size, and her faded complexion, 
 all the appearances and all the probabilities, strengthen 
 this idea." 
 
 These were but rumours and conjectures, but of the 
 child brought up by Shkurin there was no doubt ; it 
 was Bobrinski. 
 
 Gregory Orlof had about him a family on whom 
 Catherine was forced to rely ; a brother especially, to 
 whom she succeeded in giving the air of an heroic 
 warrior, whilst the man himself was much more of a 
 taproom-hero, and whom she raised to a height at 
 which he became dangerous to herself. There were 
 many reasons which contributed to the maintenance, 
 during eleven years, of the undivided favour of so 
 faithless and often so exacting a lover as the handsome 
 
THE CHIEF MEN; THE ORLOFS 103 
 
 Gregory ; to the retention, also, even after his disgrace, 
 of so enviable a situation. One of these reasons lay in 
 Alexis Orlof. 
 
 1/ 
 
 It was Alexis, it virill be remembered, who, on the 
 1 2th of July, 1762, made his way at dawn into Catherine's 
 bedroom at Peterhof, and awakened her to announce 
 that the time was come for her to go to St. Petersburg 
 and be proclaimed Empress of all the Russias. It seems 
 that he had the right of entry, by day and night, into 
 her room. A historian has alleged that at this time the 
 summer residences of the court were not guarded ; that 
 the very doors were not even fastened. The misadven- 
 ture, not long before then, of Poniatowski in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Oranienbaum, seems to prove the contrary. 
 However, Catherine was by no means prepared for this 
 early visit. On his way through the dressing-room, 
 Alexis could see, laid out on a chair, the dress that she 
 was to have worn that very day at the gala dinner given 
 to the Emperor. 
 
 Alexis was not so handsome as his brother ; a sabre- 
 stroke received in a pot-house when he was twenty 
 marked him with an enormous scar, running from the 
 corner of the mouth to the ear. All the same he was 
 a fine man, and capable of felling an ox with a blow of 
 his fist. Catherine one day owed to his muscular force 
 an escape from what might have been a fatal accident. 
 At Tsarskoie, on the montagnes russes that she had just 
 set up there, the heavy vehicle, descending at full speed, 
 got off the rails. Alexis, who was sitting behind her, 
 put one foot on the course, seized a balustrade, and the 
 danger was over. He was as violent as he was strong ; 
 and Patiomkin, giant as he too was, had to pay dear 
 for a moment's forgetfulness. The tumult, it is said, cost 
 the future favourite an eye. Given over to debauchery 
 like his brother, and, like him, prepared for any daring 
 
I04 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 deed, he distinguished himself by an ardour of tempera- 
 ment, not displaying itself by fits and starts, as in the 
 other, but constantly sustained, a furious and continual 
 need of movement, and a devouring ambition. In 1798, 
 chafing under a forced repose, he fell into a decline, 
 virhich for long baffled the skill of the most famous 
 physicians at St. Petersburg. A simple military surgeon, 
 who was iri possession of certain recipes learnt from a 
 Chinese doctor, was the only one who was able to divine 
 the secret of this savage organization, and to heal the 
 sufferer. Shortly after, the Turkish war opened for him 
 the field of action he had so long and so impatiently 
 desired. In 1769 he set out for Leghorn with the title 
 of commander-in-chief of the army and navy sent against 
 the Turks in the Archipelago. He had never led a 
 regiment to battle, nor manoeuvred a skiff, but he had 
 entered into relations with Papozoli, and mapped out a 
 project for a general insurrection of the Greek nations 
 under the Mussulman yoke ; and these credentials 
 seemed to Catherine to be sufficient. 
 
 Alexis took up his winter quarters, first at Pisa, then 
 at Leghorn, and, living there gaily enough, entered 
 into correspondence with the Mainotes ; and, in the 
 following spring, appeared under Navarino as a liberator. 
 Unfortunately, obliged to raise siege to Modon, and to 
 look after his own safety, he was soon forced to abandon 
 those whom he professed to have freed to the terrible 
 revenge of the tyrant. The burning of Tchesme was 
 not long in blotting out the memory of this failure in a 
 blaze of glory. The part taken by the commander of 
 the victorious fleet in this brilliant feat of arms has 
 called forth many controversies. His absolute in- 
 experience in the matter would seem to lend a some- 
 what plausible argument to those who regard him as 
 merely a figure-head. According to his English lieu- 
 tenants, Elphinstone and Dugdale, and to certain Russian 
 officers as well, he even failed, on this occasion, to show his 
 usual courage and presence of mind. The unfamiliarity 
 of the sea, so disturbing to the mind of a novice, might 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ORLOPS 105 
 
 well have had its effect on his natural energy. None 
 the less he was proclaimed the hero of the day, and, 
 when he returned next year to St. Petersburg, Catherine 
 had not enough triumphal arches, solemn shows, and 
 honours of all sorts to express her enthusiasm and 
 gratitude. The surname of Tchesmenski was added to 
 his name ; the celebrated sea-painter, Philip Hackert, 
 immortalized his glory in a series of pictures ; and, by 
 a note from her own hand, Catherine gave him a general 
 quittance of all sums disbursed in the course of the 
 campaign, y^r whatever purpose. 
 
 Sabatier wrote at this time : " Count Alexis Orlof is 
 the most important personage in Russia. . . . His 
 presence entirely eclipses all others. The Tshernishofs 
 scarcely dare lift their heads. . . . Catherine venerates, 
 loves, and fears him. . . . He might be looked upon as 
 the master of Russia.'' 
 
 He is unable, however, to sustain the weight of a 
 fortune so rapidly built up. On his return to Italy, he 
 once more astonishes Leghorn and Pisa with his Asiatic 
 luxury, and his satrap's whims. He still has enough 
 prestige to seduce the fair Corilla Olympica, whose real 
 name was Madeleine Morelli, the poetess crowned at the 
 Capitol in 1771 with the laurels of Petrarch and Tasso ; 
 but the sole new exploit which makes much noise in the 
 world is his capture of the luckless Princess Tarakanof, 
 whose sad fate we shall have to relate : an infamous 
 action, the exploit of a brigand. And this time Catherine 
 has not the time to be grateful ; she is fully engaged, 
 just at this moment, in getting rid of Alexis's brother. 
 She forbids the hero of Tchesme to return, and has an 
 active surveillance organized in all her ports to hinder 
 him from doing so. He breaks his orders, and appears at 
 St. Petersburg in 1773 ; whereupon he is at once exiled to 
 Reval. It is merely a passing storm. Ere long Gregory's 
 return to favour restores to Alexis his former position. 
 Catherine once more sets him up as the national hero, 
 the creator of a new glory, the glory of the Russian 
 navy. His exploits are celebrated in the theatre ; gold 
 
io6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 medals represent him in the character of Mars ; a marble 
 column, in honour of his victories, is set up at Tsarskoie ; 
 and in 1774, when the foreign ministers in residence at 
 St. Petersburg are making endless and useless efforts to 
 get sight of the treaty of peace with Turkey, Panin 
 refusing to hold any communication even with the allied 
 courts, on account of certain difficulties not yet cleared 
 up, the conqueror of Tchesme takes possession of the 
 text, and quietly has it printed at Leghorn, on his own 
 authority. 
 
 His prestige, however, has gone down in public 
 estimation. Durand professes to express the general 
 feeling when he writes : 
 
 " Count Alexis Orlof has merely brute force and no 
 heart. Circumstances have brought him forward, but he 
 is incapable, by himself, and with his own lights, of con- 
 ceiving a great project, and still more of carrying it out 
 vigorously. Never, in all his campaigns, has he come 
 within range of cannon, and never has any man been 
 killed on board his ship. . . . He is less attached to the 
 Empress, and of less use to her, than she had anticipated. 
 He sometimes speaks of her with outrageous licence." 
 
 Three years before, one of Durand's predecessors still 
 saw in the hero thus summed up " a strong, bold, and 
 methodical man," and could praise " his courage, loyalty, 
 and frankness." This was not, it is true, even then the 
 opinion of Joseph II., who saw him on his way through 
 Vienna, and who was not without shrewdness in his 
 judgments of men, often as he lacked that quality in his 
 judgments of events. " I find him," he wrote to his 
 brother Leopold, "just as you described him to me, 
 open, frank, but narrow-minded." At the same time he 
 joked at the expense of Galitzin, the Russian ambas- 
 sador, who, by the side of this great dragoon, " is most 
 ridiculously embarrassed .... shamefaced, but yet 
 forced to play the page ... on his feet all the time in 
 the box where Orlof is sitting, and labouring to play the 
 Russian slave after having been, during the twenty 
 years that he has been out of his country, a free man." 
 
THE CHIEF MEN; THE ORLOFS 107 
 
 More summary still, and even less flattering, is the 
 Princess Dashkof in her conversation with Diderot. 
 " If one is to believe her," writes Diderot, " the Orlof 
 who is known as Le Balafri is one of the biggest 
 scoundrels on the face of the earth." 
 
 It is by the latter part of his career especially that 
 Le Balafr^ carries out the appreciation of Joseph II. 
 In 1774, in face of the new and alarming apparition of 
 Patiomkin, he shows himself still more powerless than 
 his brother to make headway against this formidable 
 adversary. The new-comer is himself, too, a barbarian 
 and a man of impulse ; but impulse, with him, seems to 
 be held in check by that subtle instinct which is found 
 in certain savages, and which can supply the place of 
 knowledge, of talent, and even of genius. Against such 
 a rival, Alexis has nothing but big blundering rages, 
 or the pettish violence of a spoilt child. He throws up 
 all his official positions, and retires to Moscow ; then, as 
 no one thinks of recalling him, he returns of himself, and 
 wearies Catherine with scenes which frighten without 
 intimidating her. She neither dares nor desires to be 
 severe upon the man whom she herself has raised so 
 high, but still less is she disposed to sacrifice to him 
 her new companion, her new master. Her wish and 
 purpose, patiently carried out through long years, is to 
 bring the two redoubtable rivals to terms with one 
 another. In 1783, at the death of Gregory, she gives 
 Alexis the equal right with Patiomkin (as it were by 
 inheritance) to wear the famous portrait, given, taken 
 back, and then given again to the former favourite. 
 Great as is the honour, it does not completely disarm 
 Le Balafrd. In the evening, meeting at the Empress's 
 card-table, before the crowd of attentive courtiers, the 
 two men exchange a few strained compliments ; but 
 next day, in the Empress's room, where Alexis still 
 retains his right of entry, the quarrel breaks out again 
 furiously, and the thundering voice, now of one, now 
 of the other, makes the palace windows rattle, and 
 puts the poor Empress in despair. During the second 
 
io8 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Turkish war, in 1787, the hero of Tchesme is again at 
 Moscow, in a pet with Empress and court. He hastens 
 to offer his services, which are accepted with alacrity ; 
 he may, if he please, take command of the fleet. But 
 to take command of the fleet is to become subordinate 
 to Patiomkin, who is to exercise the supreme com- 
 mand over the combined armies fighting against Islam. 
 Le Balafri will not have it ; he puts forward his claim 
 of precedence in the service. Let him, then, keep his 
 services to himself! Let him, above all things, take 
 care not to discuss and disapprove of the operations in 
 which he refuses to take a part. What right has he 
 to interfere .■■ " He came down upon us like an ava- 
 lanche," writes Catherine to her generalissimo, with 
 evident temper. " Let him go back to Moscow." 
 
 And so he does, this time prolonging his voluntary 
 exile till the end of the reign, giving way in turn to 
 discouragement and to the consolations of an epicurean 
 existence. He reappears at St. Petersburg, in order, it is 
 said, to gratify the revengeful will of Paul, by mounting 
 guard for two days over the body of Peter HI., exhumed 
 after thirty-four years, and by bearing after the coffin of 
 the assassinated monarch the crown of which he had 
 helped to deprive him. On his return from this cere- 
 mony, he finds an order commanding him to return to 
 his own estates. He succeeds in obtaining permission 
 to travel abroad, and lives till 1801 in Germany, chiefly 
 at Vienna. On the death of Paul he is able to return 
 to Moscow, where he dies in 1808, leaving immense 
 wealth to an only daughter, who dies unmarried. 
 
 He has had a son by Catherine, who bears the name 
 of Tchesmenski, who is put into the corps des cadets, and 
 in whom his mother occasionally shows some interest, 
 without concerning herself very much about him. As we 
 know, her maternal instinct is not very highly developed. 
 What became of this love-child we do not know. 
 
 The race of Ivan Ariol and the name of Orlof come 
 to an end, so far as the legitimate line is concerned, in 
 1832, in the person of the youngest of five brothers, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: P AXIOM KIN 109 
 
 Vladimir, whose scientific disputes with his colleagues, 
 astonished and disarmed at times by the audacity and 
 tranquil assurance with which he puts forward and 
 defends the most impossible propositions, are the de- 
 light of the capital. His only son dies before him, in 
 \%2%. Michael Orlof, one of those who signed the 
 capitulation of Paris in 18 14, and also its historian, 
 and Alexis, who signed the Treaty of Paris in 1856, 
 are natural sons of Theodore, one of the five brothers 
 who raised Catherine to the throne. The chapter of 
 history which they wrote with her that day had given 
 to them also a place and rank near the throne, which 
 were to descend to none of their lineage. 
 
 II.— PATIOMKIN.i 
 I. 
 
 From 1774 to 1791, though Catherine was still on the 
 throne, Russia was despotically ruled, or all but ruled, 
 by a man of whom it is difficult now to decide whether 
 he was a genius or a madman. The history of the great 
 events of the world, and of great human fortunes, is 
 unhappily full of these enigmas. Whether we choose 
 to look upon it as a lucky chance, and one irony the 
 more of fate, or whether it is possible, from our present 
 standpoint, to calculate the regular effect of a par- 
 ticularly happy combination of gifts, natural or acquired, 
 in the person of this extraordinary man, it is certain 
 that his presence at the side of Catherine marks, as we 
 have already said, the culminating point of the splen- 
 dours and triumphs of this glorious reign. He treated 
 destiny as his slave, and destiny smiled upon him. He 
 did the same with Catherine, and with the same result. 
 
 The officer of the Siemionovski Guards — a young, 
 obscure lieutenant, who, on the 13th of July, lent 
 
 1 The usual transcription Potemkin has no raison d'etre ; the 
 name is pronounced as we have spelt it. 
 
no CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Catherine the uniform which she was to wear at the 
 head of her troops — forgot, it has been said, a particular 
 item of the equipment, the sword-knot, the lack of which 
 was perceived and remedied by a young and yet more 
 obscure officer ; and it is this, according to the story, 
 which was the first step made by Gregory Patiomkin in 
 the Empress's favour. The story is very doubtful, and 
 we confess frankly that we do not quite see the im- 
 portance of the detail, on which so much stress has 
 been laid. On the other hand, it has been argued that 
 the sword-knot belonging to a mere cavalry sergeant, 
 such as Patiomkin was in 1762, would not have been 
 suitable for Catherine. But have not the under-officers 
 of noble birth, the iounkers, always worn in Russia a 
 silver sword-belt .■' Now Patiomkin was of noble birth : 
 one of his ancestors had figured in 1676 at the court 
 of the Tsar Fiodor Alexsieievitch. 
 
 Gregory was an only son, and he was enrolled in one 
 of the regiments of the Guards, while at the same time 
 living at the University of Moscow. In poor and noble 
 families this was a common way of providing for a 
 young man's future, opening up, as it did, a twofold out- 
 look on fortune and advancement. Young Patiomkin 
 began by being a model scholar. He worked diligently, 
 and became very friendly with the learned deacon 
 Porofel, which accounts for the liturgical knowledge 
 which he was afterwards to exhibit. In 1757 he was 
 one of a picked body of scholars sent to St. Peters- 
 burg, at the expense of the state, in order to show 
 their learning. He was then seventeen or eighteen (for 
 the date of his birth is not known with certainty). He 
 was presented to the Empress Elizabeth ; and this ap- 
 pearance at court, followed by a stay of some weeks in 
 the new capital of the empire, caused a sudden change 
 in his already very changeable mind. When he returned 
 to Moscow, his imagination was already filled with 
 dreams which seemed, both to his masters and his com- 
 rades, absolutely crazy. His head was turned by the 
 boundless possibilities which seemed to open before 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN iii 
 
 him. A year afterwards he was dismissed "for idle- 
 ness and consistent neglect of his classes," a disgrace 
 which he shared with another illustrious contemporary, 
 Nicholas Novikof, the future founder of national educa- 
 tion. The army still remained to him. A friend of 
 the family, the archbishop of Moja'i'sk, Ambrose Zertis- 
 Kamienski, advanced him 500 roubles, with which he 
 set out for St. Petersburg. He afterwards took pleasure 
 in recalling the memory of that loan, the commence- 
 ment of a colossal fortune, but he never returned the 
 amount. A relation of his mother. Lieutenant-general 
 Zagriajski, helped him forward in the Guards. It was 
 thus that he came to meet with the brothers Orlof, at 
 the time of the co7ip d'Etat. His rank was of small 
 importance ; but they were none of them very im- 
 portant, those conspirators of 1672 ! Only one of them, 
 Fiodor Hitrovo, was a lieutenant. 
 
 On the list of rewards distributed after the event of 
 the 1 2th of July, Patiomkin is named cornet. Cath- 
 erine crossed out the word, and wrote with her own 
 hand, " under-lieutenant." This was on the ist of 
 August. Four months later, the under-lieutenant was 
 made chamberlain, and had his right of entry at court. 
 What had occurred 1 It is a mystery. According to 
 one account, it was the Orlofs themselves who praised 
 before Catherine a certain society talent possessed by 
 one of their friends, in whom they were far from sus- 
 pecting a rival : a marvellous gift of imitation, which 
 allowed him to imitate perfectly the voice of anybody 
 whatever. Catherine was curious, and the " phenome- 
 non," on coming before her, began to imitate her own 
 voice in a way that made her laugh till she cried. From 
 that day he was admitted to the Empress's private 
 circle, and the title of chamberlain was given him as a 
 sort of passport. It was the post of a society clown, 
 but he was soon to make it evident that he could play 
 any part, however serious. 
 
 Catherine, certainly, already showed considerable in- 
 terest in him, and in a very odd fashion. She seems 
 
112 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 to have been absorbed, from this time onwards, in 
 preparing the future vice-emperor for his destiny. Later 
 on, she liked to call him " her pupil " ; and at this time 
 she seems wishful to complete the university education 
 which came to an abrupt end at Moscow. In August 
 1763, while still retaining him in the army, she puts him 
 into one of the bureaux of the Senate, enjoining on the 
 senators, by a special ukase, to put young Gregory 
 Patiomkin au courant with everything. In the follow- 
 ing September she draws up a course of instruction for 
 her pupil, indicating to him how he is to acquire, in 
 his new post, the greatest sum of useful knowledge. 
 She provides him with a French master, a Vivarais 
 gentleman, an unfrocked monk, who has served under 
 Dupleix at Pondichery, and married, we know not 
 where, one Vaumale de Pages, who later on will act 
 as secretary to the favourite ; and, after remaining for 
 twenty-three years with his former pupil — now prince, 
 and all-powerful prime minister — will return to France 
 in 1785, still, at the age of over fifty, full of health and 
 gaiety. Patiomkin always had among his retinue — in 
 his " courtyard," as Catherine called it — a certain num- 
 ber of adherents who came originally from a country 
 for which he had no special liking : the surgeon Massot, 
 whom he kept always at his side ; an aide-de-camp, 
 the Chevalier de la Teissonniere, who had been a credit 
 to French diplomacy ; a poet, Destat, who had access 
 to the Hermitage as a maker of proverbes, and who 
 afterwards went over to the Prince of Nassau, and 
 finally betook himself to France at the time when the 
 Revolution was breaking out. 
 
 We must not forget that, while Catherine is thus 
 sending to school her twenty-three-year-old prote'g^, 
 Gregory Orlof is at his highest point. 
 
 On the breaking out of the Turkish war, Patiomkin 
 returns, in 1769, to his military career, and makes rapid 
 advances in it. In April 1773 we find him lieutenant- 
 general. But he does not seem to have advanced 
 equally rapidly in the favour of Catherine, She seems 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 113 
 
 to have forgotten him. It is ten years since he has 
 been admitted to the Empress's intimacy. During this 
 time Gregory Orlof has retained, without rival, the 
 imperial favour ; and Patiomkin has had the ill-luck 
 or the tactlessness to quarrel with the favourite, espe- 
 cially with his brother, the brutal and gigantic Alexis. 
 A quarrel over a game of billiards comes to an actual 
 fight, from which Catherine's pupil comes out with the 
 loss of an eye. Let us admit, however, that the catas- 
 trophe is set down by some authorities as a mere 
 accident. But there is no mistake about the loss of 
 an eye. Deprived of one eye, and squinting with the 
 other, the young man flees the court. He even thinks 
 of turning monk. His friends, the Orlofs themselves, 
 according to one version, dissuade him from this pro- 
 ject, and bring him back to Catherine. He gives in, 
 not without making use of the circumstance to renew, 
 but more artfully, the sentimental comedy which has 
 formerly succeeded so well with Gregory Orlof Cath- 
 erine is quite ready to believe that these ideas of flight 
 and of monastic seclusion are due to a violent and 
 discreet passion, of which she is the object. To the 
 end of her life she remains susceptible to this kind of 
 seduction, an illusion which one would have thought 
 must have grown more and more apparent to her. 
 Patiomkin thus succeeds in implanting in her heart 
 and imagination a germ which will one day find its full 
 development. But his hour is not yet come. Perhaps 
 he judges that in order to realize his cherished dream, 
 he requires a certain amount of personal prestige, and 
 seeks for this on the field of battle. He retires to a 
 distance, letting time work in his favour, and to the 
 disfavour of his rival. And the latter did indeed 
 happen ; but at first it was another who benefited by it. 
 In June 1773, while Vassiltshikof is still in possession 
 of the place which he has won from Gregory Orlof, 
 Patiomkin takes part in the fighting under the walls' 
 of Silistria. He seems to be entirely absorbed in his 
 soldiering. But a few months later he asks for leave 
 
 I 
 
114 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 of absence, and suddenly, precipitately, he leaves the 
 army. Something has just happened, the decisive event 
 of his life: he has received the following letter from 
 Catherine : 
 
 "Lieutenant-general,- — You are, I imagine, so 
 absorbed in what is going on in the direction of Silistria 
 that you have no time to read letters. I do not know 
 how far your bombardment has succeeded up to now, but 
 I am quite sure that every undertaking of yours is to be 
 attributed to no other motive than your ardent zeal for 
 me personally, and for the beloved country whom you 
 love to serve. But as, on the other hand, I am anxious 
 to keep zealous, courageous, intelligent, and able men 
 out of danger, I beg you not to run into risk if you can 
 help it. In reading this letter, you will perhaps ask 
 why it was written. I can only say : that it may con- 
 firm to you my way of thinking in regard to you, for I 
 always wish you every good." 
 
 Patiomkin had no need to ask what these ambiguous 
 lines meant. Knowing, more than any one, all the 
 passions and intrigues in the midst of which the un- 
 certain will, the distracted heart, of the Empress were 
 then battling, he saw at a glance what she doubtless 
 meant him to see : an avowal and an appeal. In 
 January 1774 he was at St. Petersburg, where he waited 
 six weeks longer, feeling his way, weighing his chances ; 
 then, on the 27th of February, he risked his stake, and 
 wrote to the Empress asking for the position of general 
 aide-de-camp, " if she considered his services worthy of 
 her." In the language of the time, it was a bid for the 
 vacant succession of Orlof and Vassiltshikof. At the 
 end of three days the answer arrived ; it was favour- 
 able. On the 20th of March, Vassiltshikof was dis- 
 patched to Moscow with a rich allowance, and the reign 
 of the most powerful of the favourites began. 
 
THE CHIEF MEN; PATIO MKIN 115 
 
 II. 
 
 At this point even Grimm, the "fag" himself, could 
 not help making a timid reproach to his imperial 
 friend : was she not really a little too versatile ? 
 "Why ? " she asked unconcernedly. " I suppose, because 
 I have dropped a certain excellent, but very tiresome 
 citizen, who has been immediately replaced, I scarcely 
 know how, by one of the greatest, oddest, and most 
 amusing originalities of this iron age." She was en- 
 chanted with her new acquisition : " Ah ! what a clever 
 head he has, too ; he had more to do than any one with 
 this peace " (the peace of Koutchouk-Kainardji, signed 
 July 14, 1774, with the Turks), "and this clever fellow is 
 amusing as the very devil." From this time forward, 
 breaking with a custom which even the handsome Orlof 
 had never made her abandon, she employed in writing 
 to the new favourite the most familiar and affectionate 
 terms. Batienka (little father) and galoubtchik (little 
 pigeon) find their way even into purely business letters. 
 
 The witnesses of this change of scene and this new 
 infatuation were far from approving of it, or even of 
 understanding it. Durand was amazed to see the 
 uniform of general aide-de-camp borne by a man 
 " whose timorous countenance, on various occasions, 
 had caused scandal in the Russian armies and laughter 
 to the Turks." According to his account, the show of 
 mystery made by the new favourite in going in and 
 out of his mistress's rooms caused much amusement 
 to the guard, " who made merry over a mystery which 
 has a dozen new witnesses every day." Gregory Orlof 
 assumed an air of disdain. " Though we have certain 
 things in common," he cried to his successor, before all 
 the court, " do not imagine that we are Menaechmi, and 
 I shall not suffer you to go on wearing the uniform of 
 the artillery, of which I am the grand-master, and you 
 nothing." The daughter of Cyril Razumovskl was 
 
Ii6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 indignant at the attentions which her father himself, 
 the former ketman, bestowed upon the new-comer. " I 
 really suffer to see so little pride," she wrote to her 
 brother. " How can one pay court to the blind beggar, 
 and why .' " The displaced favourite, Vassiltshikof, was 
 almost the only one to recognize and proclaim the 
 superiority of his rival. " Patiomkin's standing," he 
 said to one of his friends, who passed on the confidence 
 to the French charge d'affaires, " is very different from 
 mine. I was merely a sort of kept woman, and I was 
 treated as such. I was scarcely allowed to see any one, 
 or to go out. When I asked anything, no notice what- 
 ever was taken. It was the same thing when I spoke 
 on my own behalf When I was anxious for the Order 
 of St. Anne, and spoke about it to the Empress, I 
 found in my pocket next day thirty thousand roubles 
 in notes. I always had my mouth closed like that, and 
 was simply sent to my room. As for Patiomkin, he 
 gets what he wants. He asserts his will, he is the 
 master." 
 
 On this last point every one was in agreement, 
 whether astonished or indignant at the ascendancy of the 
 new-comer, "the Cyclops," as Orlof called him ; but there 
 was no evading the fact. " She is crazy over him," said 
 Durand, in talking with the senator Jelaguin. "They 
 may well be in love, for they are exactly alike." And 
 he related how Patiomkin endeavoured to obtain his 
 admission to the council : " On coming here, he spoke 
 to me of things with an openness which astonished me. 
 He condemned everything. I took advantage of it . . . 
 to speak about the matter on which we agreed. He 
 heard me with interest, and answered : ' What am I to 
 do } I am not even admitted to the council ! And 
 why not.? They won't have it, but I'll bring things 
 about.' He was resolved to renew his demands. Evi- 
 dently they were refused, for on Sunday, when I was 
 sitting at table near him and the Empress, I saw that 
 he not only did not speak to her, but that he did not 
 even reply to her questions. She was beside herself, 
 
THE CHIeP MEN: PATIOMKIN iij 
 
 and we, for our part, very much out of countenance. 
 The silence was only broken by the monosyllables of 
 the grand equerry (Naryshkin), who never succeeded in 
 animating the conversation. On rising from table the 
 Empress retired alone, and re-appeared with red eyes 
 and a troubled air. On Monday she was in better 
 spirits, and he entered the council that very day." 
 
 In a few months' time "the Cyclops" has become 
 definitely the master, the all-powerful man, before whom 
 all rivalries sink to nothing and all wills bend, that of 
 Catherine first of all. His entrance into the council has 
 made him practically prime minister. He controls the 
 home and foreign policy of the empire. He takes the 
 presidency of the War Office from Tshernishof, who 
 leaves St. Petersburg, putting up a notice on the door of 
 his house : " To sell or let." The lofty and quarrelsome 
 Alexis Orlof writes the most friendly letters to the 
 favourite from Pisa, and Gregory has forgotten his dis- 
 dain. It is no doubt just now that the well-known 
 meeting on the stairs takes place between the two 
 antagonists : 
 
 " What do they say at court 1 " 
 
 " Nothing, except that you are going up, and I arii 
 going down." 
 
 As for Durand, he is now vigorously and vainly 
 endeavouring to get into the good graces of the general 
 whose uniform was once so distasteful in his eyes. " I 
 should have liked," he writes to the Comte de Vergennes, 
 " to get on familiar terms with M. Potemkin, in order to 
 make good use of it on occasion, and what have I not 
 done in order to succeed ! M. Branigki, whom I used 
 to second my advances, told me at last that this favour- 
 ite of dubious education and childish naiveU feared to 
 be approached, and so seen through by any of us ; that 
 he would not speak anything but his own language . . . 
 nor see any about him but young flatterers, with whom 
 he is for ever gaming." 
 
 This hold upon practically sovereign power and rank 
 is only strengthened in the course of the next two years. 
 
iiS CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 In 177s, on the occasion oi\\\& fetes given at Moscow in 
 honour of the peace with Turkey, the favourite is made 
 count ; he receives a sword of honour, and the portrait 
 of the Empress now glitters on his breast, as it once 
 did on that of Orlof, in its setting of diamonds. In the 
 following year, Frederick sends him the Black Eagle, 
 and Joseph, not to be behindhand, makes him, this time 
 without being asked. Prince of the Holy Empire. But 
 the favourite's ambition is not yet content. On the road 
 where he is now following in the steps of Orlof, he sees 
 a goal which his rival has toiled after in vain. In the 
 course of a pilgrimage to the convent of the Troltza, 
 near Moscow, where one of the decisive scenes in the 
 life of Catherine has already been acted, the lovers find 
 themselves surrounded by obsequious monks. Patiom- 
 kin has kept up his former relations with these priests. 
 He speaks their language, knows' every detail of their 
 complicated devotions, and joins in their long psalmodies. 
 They are completely won over to him. And now they 
 endeavour to alarm the conscience of the Empress. Is 
 she resolved to continue a connection of which the 
 Church is bound to disapprove, since it has never been 
 called upon to bless the union .' They insist, they 
 entreat, threatening and supplicating in turn, and sud- 
 denly the favourite enters upon the scene. He has 
 doffed his brilliant costume, and assumed the black 
 gown of the tcherniets, who inhabit the monastery. 
 His conscience has been awakened, and, if he cannot 
 be the husband of her he loves, he will dedicate himself 
 to God. 
 
 It is a false move. Catherine is affected, it is true ; 
 she replies to her lover in the tone he has adopted, but 
 the reply is not at all what he had hoped for. She 
 understands his scruples ; she shares them. And she 
 approves of his resolution : let him obey the divine call ! 
 Evidently she is far from being duped by the pretence 
 to which she affects to lend herself The great actress 
 that she has come to be has seen the actor through the 
 monk's garb so suddenly donned. But how is it that 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 119 
 
 she is so shrewd in this particular case ? Is she already- 
 tired of him ? Perhaps. The end of the adventure 
 would seem to indicate it. Patiomkin plays his game 
 to the end, and swears that he will bury himself within 
 the walls of the Troltza ; she leaves him in full liberty 
 to do so, and sets out for St. Petersburg. He follows 
 her, but is not long in realizing that the charm is broken, 
 that his voice, however caressing or however imperious 
 it may now be, has no longer the same power. And 
 already the courtiers are beginning to point out to one 
 another a young and fascinating secretary that Rumi- 
 antsof has just put at the sovereign's disposal, and whose 
 star begins to rise on the horizon. 
 
 III. 
 
 In April 1776 the favourite is seriously thinking about 
 his retreat. But he wishes to do it beautifully. If we 
 may believe the statements of the Marquis de Juigne, 
 the new minister of France at St. Petersburg, he asks 
 the Empress to give him, in exchange for the position 
 that he is about to quit, the crown of Courland, adding 
 that he should look upon it merely as a step towards 
 the crown of Poland. This time he is haunted by 
 memories of Biihren and Poniatowski. But Catherine 
 has no thrones to give away at present. She has ac- 
 customed herself to better means of getting rid of 
 " pictures whose colours have faded." In October of that 
 year the storm bursts. As if in obedience to a fatality 
 to which each of his rivals seems to give way in turn, he 
 repeats the folly which has been the ruin of Orlof, and 
 takes leave of absence to make a rapid tour of inspection 
 in the neighbouring province of Novgorod. It is the 
 signal : a few days after his departure, Zavadovski is 
 installed in the place which he has just left. 
 
 But it is at this crisis that the real superiority of the 
 man comes out, a superiority of which neither Catherine 
 nor those about her have ever realized the extent or vigour. 
 
120 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 This time Catherine is not measuring herself against a 
 weak mind, nor yet against a temperament weakened by 
 too long a career of pleasure ; or, like Orlof, one who can 
 smile at evil fortune, but not overcome it. Orlof, when 
 he fell into disfavour, cut capers and amused the gallery ; 
 Patiomkin rages, and strikes fear into his adversaries. 
 When he returns to St. Petersburg, he presents himself 
 as master still. So be it, he gives up that corner of the 
 palace into which an intruder has stealthily crept during 
 his absence ; he counts it small loss, though he takes up 
 his mourning, at the same time, for a love too lightly 
 profaned and betrayed. But if the favourite of yester- 
 day is ready to make way for the favourite of to-day, 
 not so the servant of the Empress, prince, minister, and 
 general, placed by her at the helm of state ; never will 
 he resign his post for the benefit of the first-comer, a 
 young man without past and without potentiality. 
 Rather would he make common cause with the Orlofs 
 against the invasion of casual lovers, or even make a 
 stand against the sovereign on behalf of rights superior 
 to her own. Do not the five formidable brothers talk 
 of taking up the cause of the Grand-Duke Paul .' The 
 threat is not perhaps serious. But it is precisely at this 
 moment that the romantic and, for Catherine, disquieting 
 incident of Gregory Orlofs marriage with his cousin 
 occurs. Her former favourite is lost to her for ever, and 
 it causes her anxious feelings of isolation. The new 
 favourite has not enough solidity to offer her any 
 support ; only Patiomkin can understand, only Patiom- 
 kin can prey upon, her terrors. He troubles her yet 
 further, frightens her by his rages and audacities, his 
 lion-like tempests of fury, when he breaks everything 
 about him ; until at last, tamed into submission, she 
 flies for refuge to his arms. Not now as lover, for he is 
 yet more cunning than bold ; he realizes that a part in 
 which he can be under-studied by a Zavadovski should 
 never be his ; that there is no counting on a heart and a 
 temperament such as those of whose exorbitant demands 
 and deceiving mobility he has had experience ; that, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 121 
 
 over and above, he will gain by retaining his liberty, 
 while he recovers his power. He will not return to the 
 place in which he has been succeeded by another, but 
 he will not permit that other to remain there ; he will be 
 the lover no longer, but he will retain the command of 
 the pleasures which he himself renounces, the creator of 
 those passing favours which his power and prestige are 
 to outlive, and which are to be subordinated to his con- 
 trol. And he achieves his purpose. Zavadovski once 
 gone, one insignificant creature succeeds another, 
 Korssakof after Zoritch, Lanskoi after Korssakof, 
 chosen by him, shining for their brief moment, a 
 moment without a morrow, in the gilded cage ; he 
 summons them and he dismisses them by the lifting 
 of a finger, and the ambitious dream which he had 
 cherished under the dark arches of the Troitza receives 
 a sort of half-accomplishment. For year after year, now 
 the inseparable companion, the councillor always heard, 
 the master often obeyed, he is to share the life of her 
 whose throne he had hoped to share, and practically to 
 reign by her side. 
 
 It would take a book in itself to narrate in detail this 
 chapter, certainly the most extraordinary, but also the 
 most complicated, in the romance of the Empress. We 
 shall endeavour at all events to sketch in outline the 
 character of the person who figured in it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Of immense height, with black hair and dark skin, he 
 was not handsome. " Dreadful and repulsive in appear- 
 ance," according to one of his relations, Berezin, with 
 whom Thiebaut, the author of the well-known memoirs, 
 had some conversation at Berlin. One-eyed and squint- 
 ing, as we know, he was knock-kneed as well. And he 
 himself was far from anxious to leave his face for the 
 inspection of posterity. " Prince Patiomkin," writes 
 Catherine, in one of her letters to Grimm, " has never 
 
122 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 consented to be painted, and if there exists any portrait 
 or silhouette of him, it is against his wish." In 1783, 
 however, he gives way to the wish of the Empress, and 
 it is in this year that he sits for the full-length portrait 
 which is now to be seen in the Salle des Mar^chaux of 
 the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg ; an official portrait, 
 which has no value as a document. His manners are 
 not distinguished. The third paragraph of the Rules of 
 the Hermitage : " You are requested to be lively, with- 
 out however breaking, biting, or destroying anything," 
 is meant specially for him. His merriment is boisterous, 
 and he has also the habit of biting his nails and scratch- 
 ing his untidy head. He often passes whole days in 
 his room, half-dressed, uncombed, unwashed, biting his 
 nails. A great eater and drinker, but swallowing without 
 apparent distinction the most delicate and elaborate 
 dishes, he has always at hand, even on his night-table, a 
 supply oi pirojki (little pasties), prepared in the Russian 
 way, and drains down bottles of kvass by the dozen. 
 When he is travelling, he lives on garlic and black bread ; 
 but at St. Petersburg, at Kief, or at Jassy, his table is 
 served with the most redierche dishes of all countries, 
 oysters and sterlets, figs from Provence, and water-melons 
 from Astrakhan. When he is not in full court-dress, he 
 generally wears a large dressing-gown, in which he even 
 receives ladies, and, in the country, gives audience and 
 presides at official dinners. Under this free-and-easy 
 garment he wears neither trousers nor drawers. When 
 the Comte de Segur visits him on his arrival at St. 
 Petersburg, he receives the minister of the Most Christian 
 King in bed, stretched out at full length, and the French 
 diplomatist draws his own conclusions. It is true that 
 he uses very little more ceremony in receiving Joseph II. 
 Langeron thus relates his first meeting at Bender, in 
 1790, with the omnipotent favourite, to whom he presents 
 a letter of recommendation from the Empress : 
 
 " Prince Patiomkin was on the point of starting for 
 the Crimea, to examine the fleet ; his horses were 
 harnessed and his guard ready, but I was told that that 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 123 
 
 was no proof that he was really going to start, and that 
 his horses were sometimes put in the shafts every day 
 for six months, without his making up his mind to leave 
 the palace where he happened to be. He was living in 
 the former palace of the Pacha. In an immense court 
 I saw six hundred officers, couriers, orderlies, and in a 
 small vestibule I found Princes Repnin, Wiirtemberg, 
 and Dolgoruki, all the generals, adjutant-colonels, etc., 
 who waited for the prince to come through, and dared 
 not even go near the door of his room. M. de Damas 
 conducts me into his presence. I see a tall, dishevelled 
 man, wrapped in an immense dressing-gown ; he looked 
 gloomy and thoughtful ; he was at a table, signing some 
 papers. He takes the letter which the Empress had 
 given me for him, and in which she had deigned to 
 recommend me particularly to his attention. He scarcely 
 reads it ; then, without looking at me, he says : ' Very 
 well, sir ; meanwhile I advise you to stay with M. de 
 Damas.' This way of behaving surprised me, but M. de 
 Damas surprised me still more by telling me that the 
 prince had received me very well. In the sequel I had 
 to admit that he was right." 
 
 Squandering countless sums of money, employing the 
 most incredible abuses of power to increase his revenues 
 — establishing, for instance, a glass manufactory in one of 
 his estates, and then issuing a ukase forbidding the im- 
 portation of foreign glass into Russia, which, according 
 to his confidential agent, Garnovski, comes to more than 
 the revenue of fifty thousand peasants — the favourite 
 makes endless debts, which he rarely discharges. One 
 day he meets one of his creditors at the Empress's table 
 at Tsarskoie, the court jeweller Fasi, for the Swiss is 
 quite a personage in his way, and it is in a coach drawn 
 by four horses that he comes to the palace to wind up 
 Her Majesty's clocks. Fasi takes advantage of the 
 occasion to slip'under the favourite's plate a memorandum 
 of the debt. The prince, who thinks he has found a 
 billet-doux, is furious, and shows it. The Empress laughs 
 heartily, and that night the amount of the debt, a sum 
 
124 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 of fourteen thousand roubles, is sent to the jeweller in 
 coppers, enough to fill two of his rooms. The prince is 
 a great gambler, and spends his nights in gaming, 
 sleeping at odd hours of the day. His chancellor, Popof, 
 scarcely ever takes off his uniform, obliged to be at 
 his master's orders from morning to night, at night 
 especially. He is of Tartar extraction, without talents 
 or acquirements, and he owes his position entirely to his 
 exceptional power of resistance to all kinds of fatigue. 
 He too is fond of gambling, and he spends his leisure 
 moments in staking handfuls of ducats against his 
 friends. He has no lack of them, for, in addition to the 
 gifts in land and in gold which he owes to the generosity 
 of his master, he has the administration of the special 
 funds under Patiomkin's control, and it is no small 
 budget : there are eight millions in gold and silver, the 
 " extra " war supplies, always granted to the commander- 
 in-chief of the imperial armies ; there are about two 
 millions, the revenues of the governments of lekatierin- 
 oslav and the Taurida ; finally, there are twelve millions 
 of roubles given every year by the army supply bureau : 
 nearly sixty million francs in all. During the second 
 Turkish war fifty-five millions of roubles are assigned to 
 the treasury of Patiomkin's army, and only the vaguest 
 account is rendered for about forty-one millions. Popof 
 disposes of the rest. 
 
 Popof cannot write in any language ; but the prince 
 prides himself on his skill in writing, in Russian at all 
 events. For his French correspondence he employs 
 Massot, when Massot is not engaged in acting the 
 buffoon for his amusement, a kind of amusement which 
 is much to his taste. He forgives a great deal to those 
 who will make him laugh, but Massot, who unites the 
 position of court surgeon with that of court fool, some- 
 times carries his licence to great lengths. He is a 
 Frenchman who does not love France. It appears that 
 he has had certain difficulties in connection with the 
 justice of his country, and he has not forgotten them. 
 One day when he is giving free course to his spite, the 
 
THE CHIEF MEN; PATIOMKIN 125 
 
 Comte de S^gur, who is playing chess with the prince, 
 interrupts him by suggesting that he might, after saying 
 so much about his old country, say something about his 
 new. Patiomkin frowns, but Massot calmly launches 
 out into the most violent diatribes against the ambitious 
 and ruinous enterprises in which Russia has been en- 
 gaged. He ends with these words : " And do you know 
 why all this ruin is brought about, this bloodshed, this 
 conflict with all Europe } It is to amuse a great prince 
 here present, who bores himself, and to give him the 
 pleasure of adding the Grand Order of St. George to the 
 thirty or forty orders which already cover his chest, and 
 which are not enough for him ! " S^gur bursts out 
 laughing, the others present have to bite their lips to 
 keep from following his example, and Patiomkin knocks 
 over the chess-table and hurls the chess-board at the 
 head of Massot, who takes to his heels to escape being 
 knocked down. But next day nothing is said of the 
 incident. 
 
 Is this stormy and good-humoured giant, so apt to be 
 furious and so ready to forgive, really good at heart .'' 
 During the siege of Otchakof, when the same Massot 
 comes to complain of the deplorable condition of the 
 ambulances, he says an atrocious thing : " Good : there 
 will be no wounded." A writing from his hand is how- 
 ever preserved, in which he directs one of his intendants 
 to take down all the gallows which he may find in the 
 lands he has bought from Prince Lubomirski, and to 
 announce to the inhabitants that in future they will be 
 expected to carry out their new master's will " through 
 respect for their duty, and not from fear of punishment." 
 Like Catherine, he is adored by his servants ; like her, he 
 is rarely sharp with them, much less does he strike them, 
 as he frequently does high functionaries and generals. 
 The latter, it is true, take things very easily. During 
 the campaign of 1790, Prince Gregory Volkonski, son-in- 
 law of Prince Repnin, Lieutenant-General and Knight 
 of the Order of St. Alexander, receives several blows 
 from his hand. A Russian officer, sent to Vienna a few 
 
125 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 weeks later, meets the Prince de Ligne, and relates to 
 him the adventure. The Prince de Ligne is indignant. 
 "But," observes the officer, "Volkonski took a signal 
 revenge for the affront." " What did he do .? " " He 
 never went to see the prince again for a week." 
 
 Apart from his servants, and a very small circle of 
 friends, apart also from the army, where the officers 
 detest or despise him, but the soldiers love him 
 greatly, the prince is not popular. Catherine notes 
 it one day with regret. " He looks like a wolf," she 
 says one day to Chrapowigki. In February 1789, 
 .she questions her valet de cJiambre, Zotof: "Is the 
 prince loved in the city .■' " " Yes, there are two who 
 love him : God Almighty and you." She bites her lips. 
 He is too emphatic in his contempt for humanity, which 
 he certainly sees under an unfavourable aspect, seeing 
 it as he does at his feet ; and, at the same time, in his 
 absolute disdain for all that does not personally concern 
 him, nor touch his pleasures, his whims, or his ambition. 
 The last is boundless, never satisfied, impossible of 
 satisfaction. The thrones of Courland and of Poland, 
 which he is supposed to covet, of which he does some- 
 times think, would never content him. The Prince de 
 Ligne speaks one day of making him hospodar of 
 Moldavia. " I care little enough," he replies. " I could 
 be King of Poland if I liked ; 1 have refused to be Duke 
 of Courland ; I am much more than all that." One 
 day his nephew Engelhardt, dining with him, finds him 
 in a gay humour, full of talk and merriment. Suddenly 
 he becomes gloomy and thoughtful. " Could a man be 
 more fortunate than 1 am .' " he says, after a long silence. 
 " All my wishes, all my desires, have been carried out as 
 if by magic. I wanted to have the charge of great 
 affairs : 1 have it ; orders : I have them all ; I am fond 
 of gambling : I can afford to lose incalculable sums ; I 
 like to give fetes : I have given superb ones ; I like to 
 buy lands : I have as many as I want ; I like to build 
 houses : I have built palaces ; I like precious stones : no 
 private person has finer and rarer ones. In a word, I 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 127 
 
 am overwhelmed with favours." As he utters these 
 last words, he seizes a porcelain plate and dashes 
 it to the ground, then he rushes into his bedroom and 
 fastens the door behind him. 
 
 Like all of his race, he believed in his guiding-star. 
 In May 1788, on hearing the news of the first successes 
 of the Prince of Nassau against the Turks, he embraces 
 the Prince de Ligne : "Is it not evident.? I am the 
 spoilt child of God ! " A few days later, a vessel takes 
 fire close to the ship on which he is. " The vessel, a 
 lieutenant-colonel, a major, and sixty men are blown 
 into the air under our very eyes," relates the Prince de 
 Ligne, "and the prince and I should have shared the 
 same fate, had not Heaven, as he said to me afterwards 
 with equal confidence and devotion, taken him under 
 its special protection, and watched over him day and 
 night." 
 
 He is really, however, more vain than actually 
 ambitious. He has always about him a crowd of 
 courtiers, who offer incense before him, sing his praises 
 in Russian, Greek, Latin, and French verse, whom he 
 rewards with the crumbs of his vast fortune, and whose 
 paid flattery is enough to give him all the illusion of a 
 greatness in which he alone really believes. In 1787, 
 Meh^e de la Touche is smiled on and presented with 
 a few ducats for a poem which ends with this ingenious 
 allusion to the project of restoration of the Greek 
 Empire, that dream of Catherine which her favourite 
 endeavoured to make a reality : 
 
 " Conquerir par vos nobles travaux 
 L'ancien pays des hommes de gdnie, 
 Des Idgislateurs, des hdros, 
 C'est rentrer dans votre patrie." 
 
 When he is not bare-legged in his dressing-gown, he 
 is seen in clothes embroidered with gold on all the 
 seams, covered with diamonds, constellated with badges. 
 He invents for his own use extravagant uniforms, 
 
128 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 astounding trappings for horses, plumes as high as 
 the roof. 
 
 But to carry out consistently a definite ambition with 
 a settled end before it, something more is required 
 than his too intermittent energy, with its too frequent 
 intervals of careless idleness. He is changeableness 
 personified. "Within a single hour," says an eye- 
 witness, " he will be gay, sad, playful, pensive, caressing, 
 storming, welcoming amiably, repulsing rudely, giving 
 an order and revoking it." More habitually idle than 
 active, he is ready to leave his subordinates to act as 
 they please. In the course of the second Turkish war, 
 whilst Suvorof is attacking Ismail, he spends all his 
 mornings, according to Langeron, "in polishing his 
 diamonds, and sending bouquets and presents to the 
 object of his love and the other ladies of the court." 
 Five or six dejeuners of coffee, cold chicken, chocolate, 
 and ham bring him finally to dinner-time, which ends 
 his day. 
 
 Is he brave .' It is impossible to say. He sometimes 
 shows a scandalous cowardice, at other times an absolute 
 disregard of danger ; is now undecided and faint-hearted, 
 now set on the most foolhardy projects ; will one day 
 take refuge in a cellar so as not to hear the noise of 
 the cannon, and the next day visit the trenches and 
 remain there for an hour, without the slightest necessity, 
 seeing men fall at his side, and talking of casual matters 
 while the balls whistle past his ears. The Prince de 
 Ligne proposes a night attack on Otchakof, by means 
 of an empty trench ; he bursts into tears, he fears there 
 will be much bloodshed. A few weeks later, he throws 
 away twenty thousand men in a hopeless assault 
 
 The really characteristic part of his character and 
 temperament is seen most clearly in his Sardanapalesque 
 tastes and habits. When he takes up his quarters before 
 Otchakof, in 1788, he dispatches two convoys from 
 St. Petersburg, one by the Moscow route, the other by 
 Mohilew, with a double supply of plate, kitchen utensils, 
 provisions of all sorts, so as to be sure of having at least 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 129 
 
 one at his disposal. In 1791, in his head-quarters at 
 Bender, he has with him five or six hundred servants, 
 two hundred musicians, a corps de ballet, a troop of 
 mimes, a hundred embroiderers, and twenty jewellers. 
 He is passionately fond of music, and he comes near, at 
 this moment, to having, as leader of his orchestra, " an 
 excellent pianist, and one of the best composers in 
 Germany," whom Count Andre Razumovski, then at 
 Vienna, proposes to engage for him, and who seems 
 quite disposed to leave his country, where he is dis- 
 contented with his position ; his name is Mozart. The 
 musician's death unhappily cuts short the proposal. 
 Sarti takes his place, and.Sarti, if he has not genius, 
 has imagination, and knows how to refresh the often 
 gloomy or weary mind of his master by inventions 
 which are more original than harmonious. He does 
 not indeed invent, but he carries to an extraordinary 
 degree of perfection, a kind of orchestra, which has been 
 very fashionable in Russia from the beginning .of the 
 century. "They are a kind," explains Langeron, "of 
 straight trumpets, more or less large, according to the 
 tone which they are intended to render ; they only 
 render one each, and the musicians, instead of musical 
 notes, have a paper with figures which tell them how 
 hard they are to blow." These strange executants, it 
 appears, come to be able to play complete symphonies 
 in this manner, "in which roulades and demi-semi- 
 quavers are executed with as much accuracy, spirit, and 
 precision, as on the finest violins." The invention of 
 the organ-point performed by a hundred pieces of 
 cannon in a Te Detiin composed by Sarti for the 
 capture of Otchakof, is well known. This, a few years 
 after, is the realization of the dream of Crispin in the 
 Mdomanie of Grenier and De Champein, performed at 
 the national Op^ra-Comique on January 21, 1781. One 
 day, when the maestro is hard up for some new dis- 
 covery, the prince manifests the desire of seeing a 
 " tzigane " danced. He learns of two young men, 
 formerly sergeants in a regiment of the Guards, who 
 
 K 
 
J30 CATHERINE THE GREAt 
 
 excel in this dance. He finds out that they have 
 been advanced, and are now captains in a regiment 
 stationed in the Caucasus, three hundred leagues away ; 
 he sends a courier at once, and for a week the two 
 officers, who have been brought at full speed, dance 
 every night before; the favourite, dressed as a peasant 
 man and woman. When be has had enough of this 
 diversion, he sends the dancers back to their regiment, 
 with the rank of major. On his return from a diplomatic 
 mission which has taken him abroad for a few weeks, 
 Langeron finds a surprise in store for him at Bender: 
 the head-quarters are like a piece of pantomime scenery. 
 " The prince had removed, during my absence, a 
 whole wing of the house where he lived, and had built 
 a kiosque in its place, where the treasures of the two 
 worlds were heaped up at the feet of the beauty whose 
 conquest he was resolved upon. Gold and silver glit- 
 tered in every part. On a divan of pink and silver stuff, 
 fringed and ornamented with flowers and ribbons, the 
 prince was seated in a neglig^ as gallant as it was 
 rechercM, by the side of the object of his vows, and 
 surrounded by five or six women whose beauty was 
 increased by the beauty of their garb, and before whom 
 burned perfumes in golden dishes. A collation, served 
 in silver-gilt vessels, occupied the centre of the room." 
 
 The beauty in whose honour all this prodigality is 
 displayed is Princess Dolgoruki, the wife of one of the 
 generals under the prince's orders. Like the Empress, 
 she is called Catherine, and on her birthday she takes 
 her place by the side of the master at a dinner officially 
 given in honour of the sovereign. At dessert, crystal 
 goblets are handed round, filled with diamonds ; the 
 ladies are invited to help themselves, and as the princess 
 expresses her astonishment, " It is for your sake ! " he 
 murmurs in her ear. With another object of his capri- 
 cious affection, the famous Madame de Witt, since 
 Countess Potocki, "la belle Fanariote," who, when some 
 one asked after her health, replied, "J'ai mal a mes 
 beaux yeux," he is more prodigal still in his attentions. 
 
The chief men.- patiomkiH 131 
 
 In order to induce her to accept a costly shawl, he gives 
 a fete, invites two hundred women, and has a lottery in 
 which all the numbers are prizes, and all the prizes are 
 equally precious cashmeres. 
 
 The balls and suppers that he gives in profusion, 
 while his subordinates, Dolgoruki and Suvorof, are in 
 combat with the enemy, sometimes take place in sub- 
 terranean halls constructed for the purpose by several 
 weeks' work of two regiments of grenadiers, whom his 
 generals, in active warfare against the Turks, have to 
 do without during that time. Sometimes, also, it amuses 
 him to transport the scene of his pleasures and his 
 amours to the house of one or another of his changing 
 divinities. The virtuous Countess Galavin, nee Princess 
 Galitzin, whom her husband's presence in the army 
 leaves alone at head-quarters, is herself obliged to give 
 way to his whims in this respect. " There," relates an 
 eye-witness, " given over entirely to his loves, a regular 
 sultan in the midst of his harem, he refuses to see any 
 one but a certain number of his flatterers .... The 
 rooms are divided into two : in the first are the men 
 about the gaming-tables; in the second, the prince on 
 a divan with the ladies .... but he arranges himself 
 so as to turn his back to all, except the Princess Dolgo- 
 ruki, who is placed very near the wall." And it often 
 happens that he forgets the presence of these other 
 momentarily neglected beauties. 
 
 V. 
 
 Such, physically and morally, is the fflan : what is he 
 intellectually .■' It is not easy to say. He is not a 
 statesman. The absolute lack of order in his actions, 
 and of consequence in his ideas, would be enough to 
 deprive him of this title. He has no notion of time. 
 Catherine observes one day with dissatisfaction that he 
 never dates his letters. He thinks by somersaults, and 
 
132 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 acts by fits and starts. In 1787, just when the formid- 
 able crisis of the second Turkish war is about to break 
 out, and certain delicate and difficult negotiations are 
 being carried on with the Porte, he is in the Crimea, 
 knowing little enough of the actual state of negotiations, 
 and caring less. An adventurer, coming from Georgia, 
 presents himself before him, and gives him an account 
 of things which tends to prove that the Porte has not 
 carried out the undertakings which it made in the pre- 
 ceding year. Immediately, without taking the trouble 
 to confirm this information, nor the time to reflect upon 
 it, nor the precaution of consulting the Empress and her 
 ministers, or even informing them of his resolutions, he 
 sends instructions to Bulhakof, the Russian minister 
 now at Constantinople, to present an ultimatum, thus 
 putting Europe in alarm for two months, and, the in- 
 formation turning out to be untrue, obliging himself to 
 make a humiliating retraction. 
 
 The English envoy, Robert Gunning, looks upon 
 Catherine's "pupil" as a man whom one cannot take 
 seriously. After having made much of him in 1780, 
 in order to overcome the Empress's distaste for the 
 Austrian alliance, going so far, indeed, as to quit the 
 imperial cortege at Mohilew, and join the favourite at 
 Moscow, Joseph II. finds he has made a great mi.stake. 
 " Apart from his court tricks," he writes to his mother, 
 " I do not think it is any good to rely upon him for 
 anything but to put a stop to something at the mo- 
 ment, never for actually doing anything which requires 
 system, principle, continuity, application, of all which 
 he knows nothing." Five years later, the Comte de 
 Segur is on the point of adopting the same opinion. 
 Invited, shortly after his arrival at St. Petersburg, to 
 communicate to the prince a memorandum in regard 
 to a com.mercial establishment at Kherson, he makes 
 his appearance at the appointed time ; but while he is 
 reading this document, which is crammed with minute 
 details and figures, in comes a pope, an embroiderer, a 
 secretary, a tailor, one after another, for orders, which 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 133 
 
 are given them. He hurries through his reading, and 
 when he has finished it, and Patiomkin asks him for 
 the document to look over, he puts it in his pocket, and 
 declares that he does not understand this way of attend- 
 ing to business, and that in future he will apply to 
 Count Vorontsof, the president of the department of 
 commerce. He does so ; but in a few months' time he 
 is more astonished than ever to receive a letter from 
 Kherson, conveying the thanks of the director of the 
 proposed establishment. Patiomkin had noted in his 
 memory, point by point, every article of the memor- 
 andum to which he liad not seemed to be listening, had 
 acquiesced in most of the demands, and given orders for 
 their carrying out. 
 
 What, then, is there in this man, so full of surprises 1 
 " Genius, and nothing but genius ! " replies the Prince de 
 Ligne. But the Prince de Ligne is an enthusiast. Cer- 
 tainly the favourite has a prompt, and often an exact, 
 grasp of things. In 1790 he is urging Catherine to 
 vigorous measures, advising her to hand over Moldavia 
 to Poland in order to arm the Republic against the 
 Porte. And she hesitates, doubting what would be the 
 opinion of Europe. " First of all, I do not know what 
 Europe consists in," he answers ; " France has lost her 
 head, Austria is frightened, and the others are our 
 enemies .... I tell you that it is the moment to act 
 boldly." 
 
 His intelligence is like his body, formless and un- 
 cultivated, one-eyed and askew, but of an exceptional 
 strength and vigour. He is fertile in resources, prompt 
 and sure in memory. He hardly ever reads, but he 
 remembers everything he hears, and he is a perse- 
 vering questioner. He knows, too, a whole crowd of 
 things without having studied to any great extent. His 
 knowledge is like a drawer always in disorder, or an 
 encyclopaedia whose pages have got mixed. He dips 
 into it at hazard. He cuts short a political discussion 
 with a dissertation on the quarrels of the Greek and 
 Latin churches, and keeps the Comte de Segur till five 
 
134 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 o'clock in the morning, to explain to him all the ins and 
 outs of the Nicene Council. 
 
 From the point of view of foreign politics, he is a 
 perfect juggler. If there is a firmly-outlined design, a 
 large idea, in the programme to which Russia is pledged, 
 this design and this idea are not his ; they are 
 Catherine's, or rather they are a tradition which she 
 has taken up and transformed with equal daring and 
 felicity. It is not he who has pointed out to his 
 country the way to Constantinople. But, in following up 
 this route, he knows marvellously well how to play upon 
 the rival interests and jealousies of the European 
 powers. His diplomacy, though it is not of the Western 
 school, though it sometimes appears awkward, with 
 its Asiatic finesses and its childish spites, is none the 
 less of the first order. In 1785 he is anxious to reas- 
 sure the apprehensions of the French Cabinet, and 
 he immediately finds an abundance of persuasive argu- 
 ments, an astounding sincerity of tone. " He is not 
 unaware that some have attributed to him the project 
 of destroying the Ottoman empire, and making the 
 young Constantine a Greek emperor. But those who 
 know him most intimately ought to have sense enough 
 to rate such chimeras at their proper value. Besides, 
 if ever Russia were to attempt so great a revolution, 
 it would certainly not be foolish enough not to con- 
 sult France in the matter. It is to France that it 
 would be the first to turn. But there is no design 
 of anything of the kind. Peace is all that it wishes 
 for, and he himself feels that it is that which Russia 
 needs the most. He desires, counsels, and hopes no 
 other thing ! " All the same, at this very moment 
 he is coquetting with England, in the hope of obtain- 
 ing at least a tacit consent to these same chimerical 
 designs. He keeps the English envoys in constant 
 suspense, making them pass from confidence to despair 
 at every moment. In April 1782 Harris is certain that 
 the prince is no longer well disposed towards England. 
 Has he indeed ever been so t Three months later, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 135 
 
 when he imagines the favourite to be at the other end 
 of Europe, he receives one morning a note in which he 
 reads these lines in pencil : " Long live Great Britain 
 and Rodney ! Guess, my dear Harris, who writes to 
 you, and come and see me at once." Rodney has just 
 destroyed the fleet of Admiral de Grasse in the Indies, 
 and Patiomkin has just arrived from the provinces of 
 the South, having covered 3500 kilometres in sixteen 
 days, only sleeping three nights out of the time, and, all 
 along the route, having reviewed troops, received depu- 
 tations, examined works in progress, besides stopping 
 at every church which he passes to pay his devotions. 
 When Harris presents himself before him, the dust of 
 his journey is still on his clothes, but he is fresh and 
 active, showing no lassitude of mind or body, and he 
 immediately pounces upon his visitor, and keeps him 
 talking for several hours without expressing his exact 
 views, but forcing from him the admission that " the 
 most fatigued of the two was certainly myself" 
 
 In his conduct of home affairs, Patiomkin is a 
 fantastic and wonderful decorator, justifying in advance 
 the epithet more recently applied by a French writer to 
 the pomps and shows of the great empire : " Russia is 
 governed by appearances." In 1787 he has to escort 
 the Empress to Inkermann, where a palace has been set 
 up for her reception, and he arranges that she is not for 
 some hours to realize where she is. It is only at the 
 end of a gala dinner that an immense curtain, forming 
 a whole side of the room, is drawn aside, disclosing to 
 the astonished eyes of the Empress and her guests 
 the bay of Sebastopol, where an equally improvised 
 squadron thunders out a salvo of artillery. The palace 
 is built of sand, and will soon crumble away ; the 
 squadron is in green wood and will soon rot ; but the 
 effect is tremendous. 
 
 Is he a soldier } What we already know of his way 
 of life at Bender seems in itself enough to settle the 
 question. As the editor of a part of his military corre- 
 spondence observes, he is the first Russian general to 
 
136 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 direct combined operations from various seats of war. 
 The honour is a great one ; but it does not in any way- 
 help to determine the actual worth of the leader. In 
 1 79 1, during the residence of the generahssimo at St. 
 Petersburg, the Empress demands of Popof, the head of 
 the prince's exchequer : " Is it true that you have a 
 whole squadron of Prince Repnin's couriers .■" " " Yes, 
 there is a good dozen." " Why do you not send them 
 back ? " " I have had no orders." Prince Repnin is at 
 this moment in command, at one of the seats of war, of 
 one of the divisions of the army which Patiomkin is 
 supposed to command. And the first campaign of the 
 favourite, in the rdle which Catherine has conferred 
 upon him, is enough to disconcert his most ardent 
 admirers. " The friendship I have for Prince Potem- 
 kin," writes the Comte de Segur, " is one motive the 
 more for being unwilling to credit anything to his 
 disadvantage ; but, after what I have heard from the 
 Prince de Ligne, the Prince of Nassau, and other officers, 
 I cannot doubt that it is entirely to him that the slow- 
 ness of the campaign is due. A man of genius in his 
 study, he is the most feeble and undecided of men in 
 the field." The criticisms of some of his subordinates, 
 such as the husband of the fair princess to whom such 
 extravagant court is paid, might be suspected of preju- 
 dice if they were not confirmed by so shrewd and 
 impartial an observer as Langeron. The prince loses 
 twenty thousand men and twenty thousand horses under 
 Otchakof, through having delayed the attack, while he 
 amuses himself by sending Major Lansdorf to Florence, 
 Lieutenant-colonel Bauer to Paris, one for perfumes, 
 the other for jewels for Madame Patiomkin, a niece 
 installed for the moment as favourite sultana. As for 
 the Bauer in question, who spends his life in such 
 errands, some one composes this epithet for him : 
 
 " Ci-git Bauer sous ce rocher : 
 Fouette, cocher ! " 
 
 The commander-in-chief's head-quarters are known as 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 137 
 
 "the prince's court," and it is, indeed; a court rather than 
 a camp. Fashionable Europe rather than warhke Europe 
 seems to have its rendezvous there, The two hundred 
 pretty women whom the prince gets together at his 
 fites meet with an equal crowd of brilliant cavaliers ; 
 the Prince of Nassau-Siegen is there, side by side 
 with the Comte de Damas ; there are Piedmontese 
 gentlemen, like M. de Germaniant ; Portuguese, like 
 M. de Freira and M. de Pampelune ; Spanish, Austrian, 
 with a fringe of Asiatic extraction : " A legion of 
 Kirghizs, Turks, Circassians, Tartars, a dethroned sultan 
 who has for three years had his post in the prince's 
 ante-room, another who has become Lieutenant-colonel 
 of the Cossacks, an apostate Pacha, a Macedonian 
 engineer, Persian ambassadors." It is to this crowd 
 that a large part of the provisions of the army goes. 
 The control of such matters being generally put into 
 the hands of the husband or protege of the favourite of 
 the moment, the result is obvious : the obliging husband 
 takes his pick, and the army starves. 
 
 The generalissimo hardly ever mounts on horse- 
 back ; he is rarely seen except in his coach. On one 
 single occasion, as we have related, he goes to the 
 trenches, and lets General Sieletnikof be killed at his 
 side, declaring (courtier even in death) that he has no 
 regret for what has happened to him, but begging the 
 prince not to expose himself in future. He has no 
 intention of doing so. Usually the mere sound of the 
 cannon annoys him so much that at the first salvo he 
 sends a messenger to the commandant of his artillery, 
 General Pistor, to know why they are firing. " Tell the 
 prince that it is because the Russians and Turks are at 
 v/ar," answers the general on one occasion. 
 
 But perhaps the most unfavourable testimony against 
 the military genius of the conqueror of the Crimea is 
 to be found in his own correspondence. He is almost 
 comic in the letters which he writes to Catherine at the 
 commencement of the campaign, when he seems to be 
 
138 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 complaining that his Turks have been changed ; there 
 is no way of attacking them now without their getting 
 their cannon in line too ; they have learnt that it will 
 not do to get too far from your artillery : " the devil has 
 taught them." No doubt he means France, which is 
 then suspected of sending over officers for the instruc- 
 tion of the Turks. The orders which he sends to his 
 lieutenants are often filled with minute details, but there 
 is always something about them at once childish and 
 theatrical, he seems always to be playing at soldiers and 
 striving after effect. He frequently speaks the language 
 which has been so much objected to in a French general 
 of a period nearer to our own. At every moment it is 
 "to conquer or to die." Observe that he has never 
 received a scratch in actual fighting ; as strategist he 
 is absolutely null ; he has not a general idea on the 
 subject, or at least he only gives evidence of one, a 
 characteristic one : in war as in all else he believes in 
 the almightiness of gold. In October 1787, writing to 
 compliment General Suvorof on his brilliant defence 
 of Kinburn, he says : " Assure them all that I will 
 reward every one according to his merits : to the 
 soldiers who have taken part in the combat I will send 
 five roubles a head." And he adds : " But, I beg of 
 you, do not spare those who have shown themselves 
 unworthy of a reward." 
 
 It is still something, in the record of his leadership of 
 the army, to have discovered and encouraged Suvorof. 
 He has a certain clear-sightedness and also an un- 
 doubted high-mindedness, which raise him above petty 
 rivalries and jealousies. In December 1790, furious at 
 the unsuccess of Gudovitch's attacks on Ismail, he sends 
 the unlucky general the following note : 
 
 "As you have not seen the Turks at close quarters 
 except after they have been made prisoners, I send to 
 you at Ismail General Suvorof, who will show you how 
 one ought to judge of them by receiving them at close 
 quarters," 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 139 
 
 At the same time he gives this brief instruction to 
 the new commandant of the besieging force : 
 
 " You will take Ismail, no matter at what price." 
 
 And, a few days after, Ismail is taken. 
 
 The man who gives such orders, and who, in the 
 general way, takes little enough heed of the lives of his 
 soldiers, is nevertheless, it must be admitted, loved by 
 those soldiers. It is partly, no doubt, because he is 
 vague enough in regard to discipline ; because he 
 tolerates everywhere about him, even in his armies, 
 something of the same disorder which is to be seen in 
 himself; but this is not the only reason. He knows 
 how to make himself popular ; he has the secret of 
 those magic words which run from rank to rank, warm- 
 ing every heart, firing every imagination. He sees the 
 soldiers lying in the trenches, and, as they rise at his 
 approach, he says : " You need not rise for me ; only, 
 try not to lie down before the Turkish balls." He is 
 also the first, among leaders of the Russian armies, 
 who, even in an intermittent and incomplete way, takes 
 any thought for the welfare of his men. He does, from 
 time to time, it is true, leave them to starve, but he also 
 finds out whether they have sound shoes to their feet. 
 Before him, no one had thought of such a thing ; after 
 him, even Suvorof will never think of it again. 
 
 Finally, in the course of this campaign of 1788-89, 
 which, on the whole, was an unfortunate one for him, 
 he takes credit to himself, in talking with one of his 
 subordinates in regard to the difficulties he has had to 
 encounter in a land without any natural resources, 
 " that he has made stones into bread." And history 
 cannot deny the fact. He has the creative genius. 
 What he creates is often not quite what it should be ; 
 fleets constructed with green wood, armies of cavalry 
 without horses, half-empty store-houses of provisions ; 
 but there it is, something, at all events, and the final 
 result of all these improvisations, as of the military 
 operations themselves, is anything but contemptible : 
 it is the conquest of the Black Sea, and the man chosen 
 
140 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 by Catherine for the task has bequeathed his name to it, 
 as she had desired. 
 
 " A big man and a great man," said, in his picturesque 
 way, that one among his subordinates who was the 
 readiest to appreciate his merits. " He is in no way 
 hke that French ambassador at London, of whom 
 Chancellor Bacon said, a propos of his great stature, 
 that 'attics, for the most part, are but ill-furnished.'" 
 
 A great man, perhaps, as Suvorof calls him, by his 
 unshapen and savage, if one will, disorderly and un- 
 balanced, certainly, but huge and mighty, personifica- 
 tion of the latent energies, material and moral, of the 
 immense empire, and, more than anything, by his 
 adaptation of these resources to the prolific genius of 
 a great sovereign. None among those who surrounded 
 Catherine, lived by her side, and obeyed her orders, 
 was better able to understand her mind and tempera- 
 ment, and no one better understood how to bring out 
 the latent forces of the great and powerful nation under 
 her sway. 
 
 Catherine had favourites whom she loved with 
 greater tenderness or greater ardour. But Patiom- 
 kin was doubtless right in declaring to her one day 
 that no one had ever loved her more deeply than he. 
 If he has not seriously thought of turning monk for 
 her sake, at least he has turned poet ; poet in action 
 in that colossal pantomime of the Taurida, conquered, 
 peopled, and presented to the eyes of the sovereign in 
 one prodigious panorama ; and poet in verse as well. 
 The song attributed to him : Kak skoro ia Tiebie vidal 
 (" From the moment I saw thee I thought only of thee ; 
 thine eyes made me thy captive, and I trembled to tell 
 thee what I had in my heart "), a variation in advance 
 on " the desire of the moth for the star," has really an 
 inspiration of its own. His very prose, when it is ad- 
 dressed to his imperial mistress, frequently takes a 
 lyrical tone. She sends him a crown of laurel, made of 
 diamonds and emeralds, on the occasion of the capture 
 of Bender, and he replies : " Merciful mother ! you have 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 141 
 
 already poured out upon me all the gifts which you 
 have to give, and I am still alive ; but this life, august 
 sovereign, shall ever be, believe me, ever and always, 
 a sacrifice in your service and against your enemies." 
 And it is in writing to him (the very essence of love 
 being communion) that Catherine finds her happiest 
 and most tender phrases. " There is nothing sweet, my 
 friend, that I would not say to you," we read in the 
 letter which accompanies the laurel crown. At the 
 same time she advises him not to become too proud, 
 and, as he is piqued at it, she replies : " This is what it 
 is to write at a thousand versts apart ! My joyous soul 
 would but express to you, for an instant, its desire to 
 see you free of the one single thing which could lessen 
 the greatness of yours." Her letters to him at this 
 time are filled with small details relating to some rooms 
 that she is preparing for him on his return. We are 
 now in December 1789, and he whose return she awaits 
 is no longer the lover, but the friend. Nevertheless, 
 discouraged by the failures and mortifications of a cam- 
 paign which does not answer to all his presumptuous 
 hopes, he accepts all her cajoleries somewhat sullenly. 
 Again he talks of turning monk. She immediately 
 protests, and, taking from him his own exalted lan- 
 guage : " A monastery } " she cries. " What folly ! The 
 silence of a cell for him whose name is echoed through- 
 out Europe and Asia ? Impossible ! " 
 
 At times, during this campaign, which puts too great 
 a strain on the vigorous but yielding mind of the 
 generalissimo (rough iron, not polished steel), Patiom- 
 kin advises his friend to put an end to her incon- 
 siderate quarrel with Sweden ; and Catherine advises 
 him to take Otchakof, which will allow her to have 
 done with both Sweden and Turkey. But when the 
 impregnable fortress is once more taken by assault, how 
 soon harmony is restored, how soon the familiar and 
 affectionate effusions recommence ! " I take you by 
 the ears, and embrace you, my friend," writes Catherine. 
 
 And she is always concerned about his health, as 
 
142 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 much and more than about the progress of her armies. 
 And she finds charming reasons for urging him to take 
 care of himself: " In losing you, you lose me equally." 
 A whitlow from which he suffers causes her more 
 anxiety than the presence of the Swedish fleet at the 
 very gates of St. Petersburg. 
 
 She knows all his weaknesses, and endeavours only 
 to prevent or attenuate their consequences. She makes 
 it her concern to correct the flights of his imagination, 
 to spare his unbounded vanity what humiliations she 
 can. Why does he give such sounding names to his 
 vessels in the Black Sea .' It would not, perhaps, be 
 easy to justify them. If he concerns himself with her 
 pleasures, and even her amours, she returns him the 
 compliment. The detail is certainly repulsive ; it has, 
 however, its place in the idiosyncrasy of these two ex- 
 ceptional beings, and in the history of the extraordinary 
 relation which bound them together for twenty years, 
 even after the most intimate link between them had been 
 broken, and set in their inseparable hands the destinies 
 of a mighty empire. That this history can be justified 
 from the point of view of morality, we do not say ; but 
 it is true that those who figured in it were placed out- 
 side and above all known laws and ethics ; and true 
 also, such was the loftiness of their fate, if not of their 
 character, that they maintained themselves at this 
 height, and that any endeavour to reduce them to the 
 common level would be to sacrifice truth to what is 
 seemly, and to falsify one at least of the notions equally 
 essential to historic truth. There is a certain nobility 
 in the constant impressionability which keeps them 
 always sympathetic to one another's joys and sorrows, 
 even to those which seem an offence to their past; 
 there is a certain grandeur in their indifference to the 
 susceptibilities and the clash of ordinary amour-propre, 
 which seems to be absolutely alien to them ; and, above 
 all, there is in their whole conduct a fund of sincere, 
 strong, admirable tenderness. If they are thus and 
 thus towards one another, for so long, and through so 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 143 
 
 many ordeals, it is because they love each other as few- 
 have ever done, and that it is their fate to exhaust all 
 the human forms of passion and of sentiment. 
 
 Saint-Jean, the most malicious of biographers of the 
 favourite, and the most ungrateful of his secretaries, 
 speaks of a list on which the prince has inscribed, 
 according to the testimony of numerous confidants, the 
 names of the young officers who seem to possess the 
 qualities requisite for the post which he had himself 
 occupied for two years. He then has the portraits of 
 the candidates painted, and, under colour of pictures on 
 sale, presents the portraits to the sovereign to choose 
 from. That is very possible. The same writer repre- 
 sents him as making an attempt, in the middle of the 
 night, on the virtue of one of the ladies-in-waiting at 
 the palace, whom he follows into a room next to the 
 Empress's, who, awakened abruptly by the fair one's 
 cries, scolds her for waking her up for so little. The 
 anecdote has anything but an air of truth. But here is 
 a note really signed by Catherine, and addressed to her 
 former lover during his absence in the Ukraine at the 
 end of 1788: 
 
 " Listen, Galubtchik, Varinka is very unwell ; if it is 
 your going away that has caused it, it is very wrong of 
 you : you will kill her, and I am beginning to be very 
 fond of her." 
 
 Varinka is Barbe Engelhardt, one of Patiomkin's 
 nieces. They are five sisters : Alexandrine, Barbe, 
 Nadiejda, Catherine, and Tatiana, all among th.& freilines 
 of the Empress, whilst their mother, the prince's own 
 sister, is one of the ladies-in-waiting ; all are pretty, and 
 all are paid court to, one after another, by their uncle. 
 Once more, in looking closely at this man, we have to 
 leave moral aspects out of the question. He himself, 
 it appears, is the fruit of a bigamy. His father was 
 already married, when, falling in love with a young and 
 pretty widow, Daria Skuratova, he passes himself off 
 to her as a free man, and marries her. On hearing the 
 truth, Daria goes to her rival, and succeeds in persuading 
 
144 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 her to take the veil. Contempt for the law, an inclina- 
 tion to what we now call la criminality passionnelle, 
 seems hereditary in the family, and Patiomkin himself, 
 indifferent as he is to most things, is, from this point of 
 view, a connoisseur and a virtuoso. Neither a great 
 statesman nor a great soldier, undoubtedly ; but un- 
 doubtedly a great lover. 
 
 VI. 
 
 It is Barbe who is at first his special fancy. In 1777, 
 ill and in bed, the uncle watches out for the moments 
 when the Empress is not by his bedside, in order to 
 send by Summers, a valet de chambre of Catherine (who 
 is doing no wrong to his mistress, for Patiomkin is no 
 longer favourite in anything but the name), billets-doux 
 to his niece, after this style : 
 
 " Varinka, if I love you to infinity, if my soul has no 
 other support, do you know what all that means ? 
 Can I believe you when you promise to love me for 
 ever ? I love you, O my soul, and how much } As I 
 have never loved. Do not wonder if I am sometimes 
 sad ; there are involuntary motions of the soul, and I 
 feel that I have no reason to be so, but I cannot help it. 
 Farewell, adored divinity. I embrace you all over." 
 
 " I am better, dear soul, and I hope you endure my 
 absence more happily than I yours, and that you think 
 of me as much as I of you. Alexandra Vasilevna is 
 better, but I, dear soul, am sad : how can I be other, 
 \\'hen I am far from you .■' My angel, Varinka, who 
 else could love you so much "i My friend, my dear little 
 lips, my little mother, my treasure ! . . . To-morrow 
 I shall go to the bath. . . . Varinka, my life, my beauty, 
 my divinity, say that you love me, that will be enough 
 to restore to me health and gaiety, happiness and peace. 
 My soul, I am filled with you, all of you, my beauty! 
 Farewell, I embrace you all over." 
 
 "Beauty, angel divine, is it yours to prove to me 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 145 
 
 that you are worthy of my love ? My soul, my tender 
 mistress, your victory over me is great and eternal. If 
 you love me I am happy, and if you know how much I 
 love you, you can have nothing more to desire. Dear, I 
 am yours for ever." 
 
 And Varinka is not behindhand in tender messages : 
 
 " My love and my life, I am very anxious about yovi. 
 In the name of Christ, tell me if you are better. I 
 waited every moment to hear from you . . . and not 
 hearing, I send to you. In God's name, my life, write 
 to me. ... I embrace you in thought a million times." 
 
 Then, when the uncle is well again, and they meet 
 once more, we read so characteristic a note as this from 
 uncle to niece : 
 
 " Little mother, Varinka, my soul, my life, you have 
 slept, little silly, and you remember nothing. In leaving 
 you I put you to bed, and I kissed you many times 
 over. I covered you with your dressing-gown and a 
 rug, and I marked you with the sign of the cross." 
 
 ButVarinka's twenty-two summers are flighty enough, 
 and in the following year Catherine, having discovered 
 this liaison, and looking on it with her usual indulgence, 
 is wrong in attributing the sadness of the young person 
 to Patiomkin. The truth is that Varinka is now entirely 
 devoted to an equally young and brilliant cavalier, 
 whose name is Prince Galitzin, and before even the 
 uncle's departure, a coldness has set in. After the usual 
 plan in such matters, Varinka has made the first step 
 by pretending to be jealous of the infidelities of her 
 lover. Nor has she any difficulty in playing the part 
 successfully : the pockets of the uncle's dressing-gown 
 contain more than one scented note, not in Varinka's 
 handwriting ; this one, for instance, at the end of 
 which figures the name of a lady laelonging to the 
 highest society in St. Petersburg : 
 
 " How have you passed the night, my dear .' Better 
 than me, I hope. I could not so much as close my 
 eyes, I can assure you. I do not know how my thought 
 of you is the only one that absorbs me, but shall I tell 
 
 L 
 
146 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 you that I am not pleased with you ? You looked so 
 worried. . . . The first time that you looked so, the 
 pleasure of seeing me showed all the more. ... I 'passed 
 your house, and saw a great many lights. No doubt you 
 were playing cards. But, my dear prince, if you can, 
 make this sacrifice for me, and do not give yourself so 
 much to the game. It only ruins your health. Do me 
 this favour, my kind friend, show that you would do 
 something for me, and do not go on as you do till four 
 or five in the morning. . . . To-morrow there is a ball at 
 Monseigneur's ; I hope to have the pleasure of seeing 
 you there. I wait impatiently for this pleasure ; it is 
 only there that my anxiety leaves me ; besides, I love to 
 seem guilty to the world. I have just awoke, and they 
 have brought me some flowers from you ; I am much 
 obliged to you, dear heart. I hope that you are well, 
 and that I shall see you gay and happy as I dreamt 
 last night. You are so good to me ; you seem to love 
 me with all your heart. Good-bye. I leave you ; I am 
 expecting my husband ; and when, then, are you going 
 to do something for my son t I should like it to be 
 in your regiment." 
 
 In January 1779, Barbe Engelhardt becomes Princess 
 Galitzin, and we can well imagine that the uncle, 
 changeable enough himself, bears no ill-will against the 
 faithless one. Especially as their relations are soon on 
 the old footing again ; and in the new correspondence 
 the " dear uncle " and " dear papa " alternate with more 
 expressive appellations, such as " my treasure," or " my 
 life." 
 
 More durable and more serious is the affection which, 
 a few years after, is transferred from the elder to the 
 younger sister, Alexandrine, married in 1781 to Count 
 Branigki. In the hour of death the conqueror of the 
 Crimea turned to this niece, who was no more than a 
 niece, and who, from the point of view of intelligence 
 and character, seems to have been a superior woman. 
 We shall find her again among the confidantes of 
 Catherine. As for the other sisters, they only inspired, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 147 
 
 and only deserved, the most fleeting fancies. One of 
 these, Nadiejda, who became Madame Shepielof, is so 
 outrageous in her conduct that her uncle gives her the 
 name of Beznadiejnaia (good for nothing). Her hus- 
 band, an obscure personage, is said to have obtained 
 her hand in reward of a service which he rendered to 
 the favourite, in ridding him, in a duel, of a dangerous 
 rival, another Prince Galitzin, who had distinguished 
 himself in the army, and had the fatal fortune to attract 
 the sovereign's attention. 
 
 In March 1784 the French ckarg^ d'affaires, Caillet, 
 writes from St. Petersburg to the Comte de Vergennes 
 to announce the speedy replacement of the Russian 
 minister at Naples, Count Andre Razumovski, by 
 Count Skavronski, the husband of one of the Engel- 
 hardt sisters. The change is due to Countess Skavron- 
 ski's desire to pass a winter in Italy, where her uncle 
 will doubtless rejoin her. In 1789 it is a cousin by 
 marriage, Prascovia Zakrievska, married to a Patiom- 
 kin, who has the great conqueror at her feet. And 
 there are fresh flights of lyric passion, part naiveU, part 
 vulgarity, as ever : 
 
 " Come, O my mistress ! Hasten, O my friend ! my 
 joy, my priceless treasure, incomparable gift of God 
 Himself I exist only in you, and I will spend my 
 whole life in proving to you for ever and ever my 
 boundless love. Dear little mother, give me the joy of 
 seeing you again, give me the pleasure of rejoicing in 
 the beauty of your countenance and of your soul. . . . 
 I kiss with all my heart your pretty little hands and 
 your pretty little feet. . . . Dear darling, do not think 
 that it is your beauty alone which enchants me, and 
 that my love is lit by vulgar heats alone ; no, dear soul, 
 the deep knowledge that I have of your heart, I know 
 not what mysterious force, in a word, that natural 
 inclination that we call sympathy, it is all that that makes 
 up my love. In looking into your soul I have found 
 an angel, an angel made after the likeness of my own 
 soul ; so you and I are one, and we can never be parted. 
 
148 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 I am gay when you are gay ; satisfied when your 
 hunger is satisfied. I follow you everywhere, even to 
 the swing where you like to balance yourself; only I 
 am ill at ease when you go too high. Wise little 
 madcap, I carry you in my heart." 
 
 Did Catherine ever receive such messages as these 
 from her favourite .■' We do not know ; but it is pre- 
 cisely our uncertainty in this respect which gives a 
 historic and documentary value, from our present point 
 of view, to these fragments of correspondence. If the 
 conqueror of the Taurida never wrote to her in this 
 fashion, at all events he must have spoken thus to her, 
 in those brief moments which sufficed to link one to the 
 other for ever, and to forge a charm from which she 
 could never free herself. 
 
 Prascovia Patiomkin survived her lover many years, 
 and ended her life in the strictest austerity. She had 
 already had the opportunity of realizing the frailty of 
 earthly joys and pleasures, for as early as 1790 no less 
 than two rivals had taken possession of the fancy of 
 this most inconstant of men. One of them was Madame 
 de Witt. Born in 1761 at Mondagna, a village in the 
 neighbourhood of Constantinople, la belle Fanariote 
 began her career at the age of fifteen as a slave, 
 bought for a few piastres by the envoy of the King of 
 Poland at the Porte, Boscamp, a Frenchman naturalized 
 on the banks of the Vistula. Having shortly after- 
 wards paid a visit to Warsaw, and learnt that he was 
 not to return to his post, Boscamp instructed an equerry 
 to bring the fair Sophie along with the people and the 
 baggage which he had left at Constantinople. But, on 
 the way, the equerry gave up the job in despair ; his 
 charge was so unruly that there was no getting her to 
 her destination. Boscamp thereupon told him to leave 
 her at Jassy. From Jassy she made her way to Kam- 
 ieniec, in the Polish territory, where the commandant of 
 the fortress. Colonel de Witt, fell in love with her and 
 married her. She came to Warsaw, where she turned 
 the heads of everybody, and, in 1781, the Princess of 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 149 
 
 Nassau took her to Paris, where her beauty made a 
 great sensation. She was divorced, and by her marriage 
 with Count Potocki became the wife of the wealthiest 
 noble of Poland ; she died in 1821, after having aston- 
 ished, frightened, and scandalized Europe by excesses 
 of every kind. Slowacki, the Polish poet, who died at 
 Paris in 1849, wrote a poem on the story of the latter 
 years of her life, almost apologizing, in his preface, for 
 touching so scandalous a subject. 
 
 In 1 79 1 she accompanied to St. Petersburg, after 
 having entertained him for some time at Bender, the 
 organizer of the fetes that we have described above, but 
 she held him only for a short time. The other rival of 
 poor Prascovia was a more serious one, the beautiful 
 Princess Dolgoruki. The prince, her husband, it is 
 true, did what he could to hold his own. But it was 
 an unequal fight ; the gigantic lover, in open assembly, 
 seized him by the orders upon his chest, lifted him from 
 the ground, and shouted in his face : " Wretch ! I gave 
 you those orders, as I gave the others, and you had no 
 more right to them than they. You are all mere dirt, 
 and I have the right to do what I please with you and 
 all your belongings." 
 
 VII. 
 
 We have told elsewhere the story of the decline and 
 fall of the dazzling career, at whose chief episodes we 
 have just glanced ; we have shown the conquering 
 advent of the rival favour and fortune which it too had 
 to encounter. The spring of 1791, when the conqueror 
 of Ismail and Otchakof returns to St. Petersburg, marks 
 the last gleam of the star so soon to be eclipsed. " To 
 see Prince-Marshal Potemkin," writes Catherine to the 
 Prince de Ligne, "one would say that victories and 
 successes absolutely beautified him. He has returned 
 from the army as handsome as day, as gay as a lark, as 
 brilliant as a star, wittier than ever, not biting his nails 
 
ISO CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 any more, giving fetes, every one more gorgeous than 
 the last." One of these //^gj, no doubt the one to which 
 the Empress specially alludes, is intended to put an 
 end to the increasing favour of Zubof, who is now no 
 longer a prot^g^, but a foe. All the splendours which 
 the prince has at his command, all the enchantments 
 which he has ever wielded, are brought together and 
 surpassed. It is no longer as a sovereign, it is as a 
 goddess that Catherine is welcomed to the palace of 
 Taurida. And at the same time everything is done to 
 strike the imagination and to open the Empress's eyes 
 to the mistake that she is about to make. Marvellous 
 Gobelin tapestries display before her the suggestive 
 story of Haman and Mordecai, and choruses composed 
 by Dierjavin, whose muse, already in the pay of the 
 new favourite, is still on sale for the occasion, drive 
 home the moral. 
 
 All is in vain : on the following day Catherine pre- 
 tends to have considered fhefete as a farewell one. She 
 affects to believe that the presence of the prince is 
 indispensable in the southern provinces, where, how- 
 ever, nothing calls for his return. He resigns himself 
 to his fate ; he sets out, and he sets out to his 
 death. Nevertheless, according to an opinion very 
 generally held, it is not a somewhat faithless friend, it is 
 a totally oblivious wife, whom he leaves behind him at 
 St. Petersburg. But this hypothesis of a decisive victory, 
 a clandestine marriage, snatched at this moment by the 
 former favourite, notwithstanding the constant repug- 
 nance of Catherine to the idea of marriage, has also, 
 and equally, been contradicted. From a letter written 
 to Simon Vorontsof by Bezborodko, it appears that the 
 general opinion at the time was that the prince was on 
 the point of marrying Marie Naryshkin, one of the 
 feminine celebrities of the reign of Catherine, to whom 
 he was paying open attentions. It is true that this has 
 also been put down to a plan agreed upon with the 
 Enipress for turning public attention from the event 
 which had taken place. Note, too, that a very serious 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 151 
 
 authority puts back this event to a much eariier date. 
 We read in a dispatch of the Comte de S^gur dated 
 December 21, 1787 : 
 
 " For the last twenty days there has been no news of 
 Prince Potemkin, and this silence naturally annoys the 
 Empress. The general often takes advantage of the 
 Empress's patience and of certain sacred and inviolable 
 rights which secure the continuance of his privilege. 
 The singular basis of these rights is a great mystery, 
 which is known only to four people in Russia ; a 
 lucky chance enabled me to discover it, and when 
 I have thoroughly sounded it, I shall, on the first 
 occasion which presents itself, inform the king in the 
 matter." 
 
 We are unaware if the king ever came to know more 
 about it than we do ourselves. 
 
 On October 5, 1791, on the way from Jassy to Niko- 
 lafef, the prince died. Feeling the attacks of illness, he 
 had insisted on leaving the Moldavian capital, whose 
 air, he believed, was fatal to him ; but he had only gone 
 a few leagues when he was seized with a fit of choking. 
 He was lifted out of his carriage and laid on the grass, 
 at the side of a ditch, and, a few minutes after, he was 
 no more. Naturally, there was talk of poison. Zubof 
 was accused, and Catherine herself did not escape sus- 
 picion. The Comte de Langeron's version seems the 
 most reasonable : 
 
 " Prince Patiomkin killed himself. ... I saw him, 
 during an attack of fever, devour a ham, a salted goose, 
 and three or four fowls, and drink kvass, klukva, hydro- 
 mel, and all kinds of wines." 
 
 According to Bezborodko's account, he refused to 
 take any medicine ; when the fever seized him, on an 
 extremely cold night, he ordered all the windows to be 
 opened, had eau de Cologne poured over his head in 
 torrents, and sprinkled himself with iced water by 
 means of a syringe which he held all the time in 
 his hand. 
 
 Catherine's sorrow was great. " On learning the news 
 
IS2 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 she lost consciousness, the blood ran to her head, and 
 she was obliged to be bled," wrote the French chargi 
 d'affaires. Genet. " How are we to replace such a 
 man ? " she said over and over again to her secretary, 
 Chrapowigki. " I and all of us are like snails that dare 
 not put head out of their shells." She wrote to 
 Grimm: 
 
 " A rude and terrible blow struck me yesterday . . . 
 My pupil, my friend, almost my idol. Prince Potemkin 
 of the Taurida, is dead . . . Oh, heavens ! it is now that 
 I need to be Madame la Ressource ! Again I shall have 
 to raise up people for my purpose ! " 
 
 A year after, on the 30th September, the birthday of 
 the " idol," Chrapowi^ki once more notes in his journal 
 a crisis of tears, and on the Sth of October following, 
 the anniversary of the prince's death, the Empress sus- 
 pends her daily reception, and remains in her own room 
 in absolute solitude. Nevertheless, this death, so long 
 and so bitterly mourned, is not so much as mentioned 
 in the official journal of the empire. It is a caprice of 
 Zubof, and Catherine lets him do as he will. No monu- 
 ment is raised to the memory of the " great man," as 
 Catherine loves to call him, who has just died ; and, 
 according to a widely-spread legend, his body, which 
 had been buried in the church of St. Catherine at 
 Kherson, is torn from its tomb by order of Zubof, and 
 thrown into the poor man's burying-ground. The legend 
 is inaccurate, it is true ; the mausoleum placed in the 
 church of Kherson by the pious care of the Countess 
 Branigki is indeed destroyed, and the ashes which it 
 covered are scattered, but it is the Emperor Paul who 
 is guilty of this violation of the rights of sepulture; 
 he gives orders by ukase that no traces are to be left 
 of this tomb, which offends in him who knows what 
 sentiment of wrathful filial piety or of long-delayed 
 malice .-' 
 
 Nevertheless, during the lifetime of Catherine, and 
 but a little while after the favourite's end, another 
 fosse commune opens for him : the indifference of the 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: PATIOMKIN 153 
 
 greater part of those who once followed his every move- 
 ment with such avid curiosity, their indifference and 
 forgetfulness. Under date December 25, 1791, we find 
 in a letter of Count Rastoptshin the following lines : 
 
 " The division of the prince's lands has not yet been 
 made: the prince has left some debts, 70,000 head of 
 peasants in Poland, 6000 in Russia, and 1,500,000 
 roubles in diamonds. What is most extraordinary is 
 that he is entirely forgotten. The generations to come 
 will not bless his memory. He possessed in the highest 
 degree the art of doing evil with good, and of rousing 
 hatred in those on whom he was heaping careless 
 favours. One would have thought that it was his 
 deliberate aim to humiliate every man in order to raise 
 himself above them ... His last weakness was to fall 
 in love with every woman he saw, and pass for viauvais 
 sujet. This desire, foolish as it was, had an immense 
 success. The women ran after the favour of the prince 
 as the men ran after him for the posts at his disposal. 
 . . . He left St. Petersburg after having spent 850,000 
 roubles, which were paid by the Empress, without 
 counting debts.'' 
 
 This panegyric is brief but expressive in its eloquence. 
 
 Even more rapidly is the political succession of the 
 prince arranged. The care of foreign affairs falls to 
 Bezborodko ; that of the War Department to Saltykof, 
 with Valerian Zubof, the brother of the favourite, as 
 substitute and eventual successor. The home affairs, 
 and in reality the sway over every division of the 
 government, the absolute power over all civil and mili- 
 tary departments, falls to the favourite himself Soon 
 Bezborodko, too, is put by, with the whole legion of 
 statesmen and soldiers who have been Catherine's as- 
 sociates up to the present. The reign of Plato Zubof 
 has begun. 
 
154 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 III.— THE ZUBOFS. 
 I. 
 
 On July 9, 1789, commenting on the disgrace of 
 Mamonof, one of the favourites provided by Patiomkin 
 for the Empress's choice, and the installation of his 
 successor, Bezborodko wrote to Count Vorontsof : 
 
 " He is a child, with nice manners, but little wit; I do 
 not think he will hold his place long. However, that 
 does not interest me." 
 
 It should have interested him greatly. Three years 
 afterwards, on his return from Jassy, where, after Pa- 
 tiomkin's death, he had been sent to settle the terms of 
 peace with the Turks, he found that the child on whom 
 he looked with such contempt was not only still in his 
 place, but that he had taken from him his own. 
 
 The Zubofs were four brothers, belonging to a family 
 with some claims to nobility, and the very greatest pre- 
 tensions. Field-marshal Saltykof, who is supposed to 
 have exerted himself on behalf of the young man on the 
 ground of relationship, only admitted this relationship 
 after the event. The father, Alexander Zubof, governed 
 a province somewhere, and became wealthy. The eldest 
 brother, Nicholas, was major-general, and married the 
 only daughter of the hero of Rymnik, la Snvorotclika. 
 The second, Plato, was twenty-two years of age, and 
 was lieutenant in a regiment of the Guards, on duty at 
 Tsarskoie, when the Empress set eyes on him. He 
 played with his utmost skill the sentimental comedy 
 which we already know, and found, for his support in 
 the rdle, some useful partners in the inner circle about 
 the Empress ; in fact, her habitual confidantes, Anna 
 Naryshkin, the Protassova and the Pierekusihina, whom 
 he succeeded in gaining over to his interests, did him 
 a number of good turns, and Catherine asked nothing 
 better than to hear, at sixty, their voices announcing the 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ZUBOFS 155 
 
 return of the immortal spring-time. Joyously she set 
 out once more for the woods where the laurels were 
 once more in leaf; and soon the absent Patiomkin 
 hears, in the letters of his imperial friend, the echo of 
 this new joy. " I have come back to life like a fly that 
 the cold has frozen .... Now I am gay and well 
 again," she writes to him in August 1789. Then, in her 
 correspondence with her distant friend, there are more 
 and more frequent allusions to the nice little ways, the 
 charm, the exquisite qualities of " the child," " the little 
 Blackie." He wants to please everybody. " When he 
 has to write to you, he does it with such evident plea- 
 sure, and his amiability makes me more amiable too." 
 He has all the exigences, but also all the graces, of his 
 age : he cries when he is not allowed to enter the 
 Empress's room. Surely, her friend cannot but love this 
 child, our child, as she sometimes writes. 
 
 "A young -man of charming appearance," observes a 
 quite unprejudiced authority, the Swede Stedingk, the 
 brother-in-arms of Lafayette, and the writer of the well- 
 known Memoirs, "dark.slim, not tall, like a pretty French- 
 man after the style of the Chevalier de Puysegur." 
 
 But in a short time the good-humoured child displays 
 a devouring ambition : he grasps at all the influential 
 posts, all the sources from which the Empress's bounty 
 flows. They are all for him and his, for he is fond of 
 his relations, and practises nepotism with conviction. 
 He is a resolute, sometimes an awkward, beggar. On 
 the day when the taking of Belgrade by the Austrian 
 allies is being celebrated at St. Petersburg, he says 
 before all the court : 
 
 " Everybody to-day is celebrating one happy event, 
 and I two." 
 
 " What is the second 1 " asks the Empress. 
 
 " My sister has just had a child." 
 
 There is a general smile, and Catherine has a mo- 
 ment's embarrassment ; but she has infinite indulgence 
 for the pranks of the " maltchik (infant)." She treats 
 him at once as a spoilt child, and as a mistress to whom 
 
IS6 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 one can refuse nothing. She advances a page who has 
 happened to pick up adroitly a handkerchief that the 
 favourite let drop. 
 
 Making the most of all his advantages, Zubof sets 
 himself boldly to the task of ruining the credit of all 
 who stand in his way, beginning with Patiomkin him- 
 self He sends his brother to the army, and his brother 
 makes himself useful by sending in reports in which the 
 faults and negligences of the commander-in-chief are 
 brought out in strong relief. At the same time " the 
 infant " sets to work to amass an enormous fortune. 
 His system, different from that employed by his pre- 
 decessors, is to ask for nothing from the Empress in 
 actual cash, but to take a great deal indirectly, by 
 imposing, for instance, exorbitant contributions on rich 
 people who are unlucky enough to have their affairs 
 passing through his hands. They generally end by 
 remaining there. He knows, too, how to manage so 
 that Catherine seems to force upon him his own liber- 
 alities, and these become more and more generous. In 
 1 79 1 she proposes to buy for him a considerable domain 
 which Patiomkin is thinking of selling. But he gets 
 scent of the project, and the following dialogue takes 
 place at a state dinner : 
 
 " How much does this domain cost .■' " 
 
 " Your Majesty will pardon me : it is sold." 
 
 " How long since .-' " 
 
 " This very morning." 
 
 "To whom.?" 
 
 " There is the purchaser." 
 
 And the imperturbable spendthrift points to a young 
 aide-de-camp, a poor young officer, who stands behind 
 his chair. The Empress frowns ; but the trick has 
 succeeded : on that very day a formal contract is drawn 
 up, and the lucky accomplice of this coup de thidtre 
 finds himself in possession of twelve thousand serfs, and 
 the opulence of one of the most important families 
 in Poland at the present day owes its origin to this 
 princely caprice. 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ZUBOFS 157 
 
 After the deatlj of the formidable rival, who still 
 holds his own against the new favourite, nothing is left 
 to stay the latter's conquering course. From 1789 to 
 1796, now Count and Prince of the Holy Empire, like 
 his predecessor, in possession, too, of the orders of the 
 Black Eagle and the Red Eagle, he rises in seven years 
 to the point which it had taken his predecessor 
 twenty years to attain. In 1794, as governor-general 
 of New Russia, he gives orders to Suvorof On August 
 20, 179s, Count Rastoptshin writes to Simon Vorontsof : 
 
 " Count Zubof is everything here. There is no limit 
 to his power ; it is greater even than that which was 
 wielded by Prince Patiomkin. He is as negligent and 
 incapable as ever, though the Empress repeats to one 
 and all that he is the greatest genius that Russia has 
 ever seen." 
 
 II. 
 
 This time the Empress is alone in her opinion. 
 There is perfect unanimity among contemporaries in 
 sharing the opinion of Rastoptshin. " A good under- 
 officer of the Guards," says Suvorof Every one has 
 daily occasion of seeing that he knows nothing, and does 
 not take the trouble to learn anything. In matters 
 which do not concern his personal interest, he is content 
 to say : " Do as you used to do." In regard to foreign 
 affairs, he acts like a child of three years old, who 
 has been set down to play chess. He reconstructs 
 the map of Europe after his own fancy, suppressing 
 Austria, taking from revolutionary France two-thirds of 
 its territory, and leaving the rest to the Bourbons. On 
 the point of disembarking at London, on his return from 
 St. Petersburg, the Comte d'Artois is in danger of 
 being arrested on account of his debts. Simon Vorontsof, 
 then ambassador in London, hastens to give him 
 warning ; but he receives this reply : 
 
 " I foresaw this difficulty, and mentioned it to Count 
 
1st CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 Zubof, and this is what he said, word for word : ' All 
 Your Highness's difficulties shall be removed. England 
 will be only too happy to see you ; it will do whatever 
 the Empress wishes, and we have an envoy there who 
 will arrange and smooth over everything for you.' " 
 
 The unfortunate envoy is in desperate straits, and, 
 after a perilous attempt, the prince is obliged to put 
 about ship, and make for the coast of Germany. 
 
 In regard to home affairs, the only monuments left by 
 the favourite's administration are, according to the most 
 competent authorities, the relaxation of discipline in the 
 army, the developments of luxurious living among the 
 officers, the emptying of the treasure and the filling of 
 the prisons. 
 
 The acquisition of the Polish provinces, set down to 
 his account by the Empress, is only the consequence of 
 a plan already settled by her in concert with Patiomkin 
 and Bezborodko, and carried out by the survivors of the 
 great epoch of her reign, Kahovski, Kretshetnikof, and 
 Suvorof himself, recalled from semi-exile. The organiz- 
 ation of the conquered provinces is also due to the older 
 men, Tutolmin, Repnin, Pahlen. The Zubofs have 
 nothing to do with it except to fill their pockets. The 
 expedition to Persia is a costly absurdity. The estab- 
 lishment of Odessa, undertaken by Ribas with the 
 support of Zubof, is merely a good private speculation, 
 so long as it remains in their hands. Decorated with 
 the title of grand master of artillery, the favourite is 
 incapable of distinguishing a field-piece from a piece of 
 ordnance, and it is General Melissino who takes the 
 initiative in the formation of the first battalions of 
 mounted infantry, all the credit of which is put down 
 by Catherine to her lover. 
 
 "A brave man," says Suvorof of the strange leader 
 whom the sovereign's caprice has set over him. If it is 
 not said satirically, it seems curiously unjustified. 
 Pillaged Poland was slow to discover this quality in 
 either the favourite himself or his principal assistants, 
 Altesti, Gribovski, and Ribas, who, under his high 
 
The chief men.- the zuboEs 159 
 
 patronage, swoop down on it without compunction. In 
 two years Gribovski, formerly a mere copyist in Patiom- 
 kin's ofifice, has got together enough to keep an orchestra, 
 a company of buffoons, a harem, and the finest horses 
 in St. Petersburg. Patiomkin, for his part, had certain 
 generous instincts, even certain liberal ideas. Von Visin, 
 one of the few independent minds of the age, enjoyed 
 his protection, as Lomonossof had enjoyed that of 
 Gregory Orlof. Zubof takes an active part in the 
 persecution of Radishtchef, Novikof, and Kniajnin. He 
 is even supposed to have set it on foot. Patiomkin 
 had the gallows pulled down in the estates which came 
 into his hands in Poland ; Zubof, on the other hand, in 
 the estates which he acquires, is anxious only to bring 
 the local population of small cultivators of noble birth, 
 whose privileges had been respected by the Republic, 
 under the common laws of serfdom. 
 
 But Catherine knows nothing, or refuses to know 
 anything, of all that. " Never did any one at your age," 
 she writes to the favourite, " possess greater disposition 
 or means for being useful to his country." As for 
 Valerian, his younger brother, she declares in the same 
 letter, that he is " a hero to the full extent of the term." 
 He is a hero, because he has been in Poland, and 
 after having made himself odious by all kinds of ex- 
 cesses, has lost a leg in an outpost skirmish. This has 
 won him the rank of lieutenant-general, the order of 
 St. Andre, and the payment of debts amounting to 
 the respectable sum of three hundred thousand roubles. 
 As the wounded hero is being brought back to St. 
 Petersburg, the sovereign sends him a surgeon, an 
 English carriage, a hundred horses at every posting- 
 station, and a casket containing ten thousand ducats 
 for his travelling expenses. She even seems, on seeing 
 the traveller again, to have discovered that he was yet 
 better-looking than his brother. A note in her hand- 
 writing, belonging to this date, is extant, in which she 
 writes to him that she is happy " to have pleased him 
 the night before." 
 
i6o CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 III. 
 
 It would have been difficult for her, no doubt, to have 
 realized the almost universal chorus of reprobation 
 which arose this time against this new fancy of a heart 
 for ever young, of senses that never flagged. It was 
 only by listening at doors, or seizing bosom-secrets, that 
 one could at this time have guessed at the formidable 
 explosion of invective which was, later on, after the 
 sovereign's death, to greet the fall of the favourite. 
 Meanwhile, it is quite another chorus which rings in 
 her ears. In full Senate, one of the members of the 
 assembly proclaims the superiority of the beneficent 
 genius which exerts itself to annex lovely and pro- 
 ductive provinces to the empire (the Polish provinces 
 after the second spoliation), whilst his predecessor had 
 merely conquered pestilential deserts. In a lecture 
 given before the association of engineers, an orator 
 endeavours to establish the pre-eminence of the new 
 Plato over the old one ! The levee of the favourite 
 leaves far behind it the souvenir of Madame de Pom- 
 padour's toilet, or the famous deculottc of Cardinal 
 Fleury. " Every day from the hour of eight," writes 
 Langeron, " his ante-room was filled with ministers, 
 courtiers, generals, strangers, people with requests to 
 make, people in want of posts and advancements. For 
 the most part they had to wait four or five hours 
 without being admitted . . . and next day they were 
 back again. At last the day of favour arrived ; the 
 folding-doors were thrown open, the crowd rushed in, 
 and the favourite was found seated before a mirror, 
 having his hair done, generally with one foot on a chair 
 or a corner of the toilet-table. The courtiers ranged 
 themselves before him, two or three deep, in the midst 
 of a cloud of powder ; after bowing low, they remained 
 silent and motionless. The favourite appeared not to 
 see any one. He amused himself with unsealing papers, 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ZUBOFS i6i 
 
 and having them read to him, so as to look as if he 
 were occupied with state affairs . . . No one dared 
 speak to him, and when he addressed any one, the 
 person spoken to made four or five bows before reaching 
 the toilet-table. The word said, he returned to his 
 place on tip-toe. Those to whom Zubof did not speak 
 dared not approach him, for he gave private audience to 
 nobody. I am positive there were a great number of 
 persons who waited upon him for three years in succes- 
 sion without having ever spoken to him . . . At Tsar- 
 skoie-Sielo the mirror was placed opposite to the door, 
 so that it was only by their reflection in the glass that 
 Zubof caught sight of the people on whom he turned 
 his back." 
 
 Having on one occasion ventured into the ante-room 
 of the favourite, Miertvago, one of the few honest 
 functionaries who came to the front later on under the 
 reign of Paul I., is driven out by the apparition of a 
 monkey who has the habit of walking about on people's 
 heads. " I have had the honour of this monkey's 
 acquaintance," says Langeron ; " he was no bigger than 
 a cat, and of an amazing agility. He was incessantly 
 flitting over the lustres, the wainscot, the cornices, the 
 mantelpieces, and he never broke or disarranged a 
 piece of furniture or an ornament. He was very fond 
 of powder and pomade, and had a special predilection 
 for forelocks done in the Greek manner. When he saw 
 one which he liked, he leapt from the cornice or the 
 lustre upon the head of the favoured individual, and 
 made himself quite at home there. The favoured indi- 
 vidual bowed his head respectfully, and waited till the 
 little creature had finished his meal, or sprung at some 
 fresh forelock. I have seen people change their way of 
 wearing their hair, and raise the front part of it, in the 
 hope of attracting the favourite's little favourite." Miert- 
 vago, who refuses to expose himself to a similar en- 
 counter, finds few imitators. Rastoptshin speaks in 
 one of his letters of a general, formerly an ambassador 
 at Constantinople, who presents himself every morning, 
 
 M 
 
i6i CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 an hour before Zubof wakes, in order to make his coffee 
 in the Turkish manner, which he takes to him in bed. 
 The old MeHssino, having received the Order of St. 
 Vladimir, presents himself at the levee and kisses the 
 favourite's hand. Dierjavin, after having proudly pro- 
 claimed, during the lifetime of Patiomkin, that the 
 " singer of gods " should never debase himself before 
 " the idol of the day," is in no way hindered by his vow 
 from composing for the favourite's birthday, November 
 28, 1794, an ode in which he compares him to Ariston 
 or to Aristotle, which, as he learnedly remarks in a 
 prose commentary, is the same thing. And on the same 
 day the pupils in the convent of Smolna, that is to say 
 the girls brought up in a school which Voltaire declared 
 was superior to Saint-Cyr, present to the " idol of the 
 day" a piece of embroidery which they have done upon 
 silk, on which appear these verses of, happily, an unknown 
 poet : 
 
 " jVIonseigneur, joie de la patrie, 
 Pour vos prosperit^s notre coeur est attendri. 
 Votre clemence nous est garant : 
 Quand on pense si bien, on doit vivre longtemps. 
 
 Regardez d'un oeil gracieux 
 
 Cat hommage, seigneur, de nos ardents voeux." 
 
 IV. 
 
 When Catherine dies Zubof looks upon himself as 
 lost. Before the time when he became the favourite, he 
 had once paid some attention to the Grand-Duke, by 
 drawing himself respectfully aside in order to make room 
 for his imperial highness's dog. But afterwards, becoming 
 insolent with everybody, he had made no exception in 
 favour of any one. Later on he chose to declare that in 
 acting as he did he was only obeying the absolute orders 
 of the Empress : she insisted on his treating people as 
 she herself treated them, and the very tricks of his 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ZUBOFS 163 
 
 monkey had her approval. Perhaps he told the truth ; 
 perhaps Catherine was wise in thus imposing her whims 
 upon the servile crowd of her subjects. Did Paul know 
 or guess this } Odd as his conduct was with every one, 
 in regard to the favourite it leaves some room for 
 speculation. 
 
 Catherine dies on the 6th (17th) of November, 1796. 
 Zubof takes refuge with his sister, Madame Jerebtsof, 
 and does not leave the house for ten days, pretending 
 illness, and waiting anxiously till he has heard the 
 new Emperor's decision in regard to him. The 28th 
 of November comes, the day which had once been 
 so splendidly celebrated. An unexpected messenger 
 from the court presents himself before the former 
 favourite, and informs him that the Emperor has 
 ordered a house to be prepared for him in Morskala 
 Street, and that he intends to come and take tea with 
 him on the following day. Zubof finds a very com- 
 fortable house, fitted up in the most luxurious style, 
 with plate, horses, carriages, everything he could want. 
 Next day Paul arrives, accompanied by his wife. The 
 former favourite throws himself at his feet. Paul raises 
 him, repeating solemnly the Russian proverb : " Kto 
 staroie pomniaiet tomu glaz von (He who remembers 
 wrongs deserves to lose an eye)." He takes a glass of 
 champagne, and says : " I wish you as much prosperity 
 as there are drops in this glass." He hands the glass to 
 the Empress after having half-drained it, then breaks it, 
 according to the custom of the country, as a witness to 
 the sincerity of his sentiments. Zubof again falls at 
 his feet, and he raises him again, repeating, " Kto staroie!' 
 The Empress remains silent, and somewhat constrained 
 during all these effusions, but the Emperor continues, 
 turning to her : " Now you must pour out the tea ; you 
 know there is no mistress of the house." She obeys. 
 Two aides-de-camp who accompany their Majesties are 
 also helped by the sovereign, and as, after emptying 
 their cups, they put them down on a tray, to intimate 
 that they have had enough, Paul asks : " Why do you 
 
164 CATHERINE THE GREAT 
 
 do that ? You are accustomed to take two cups. She 
 will give them to you ! " 
 
 Zubof is not less delighted than surprised ; but his 
 joy is of short duration. On the 27th of January follow- 
 ing, he is deprived of all his offices, his estates are con- 
 fiscated, and he receives the permission, otherwise the 
 command, to travel. For some time he wanders about 
 Germany. At Toeplitz he falls in love with a fair exile, 
 the Comtesse de la Roche- Aymon ; but shortly after- 
 wards, having met the two young princesses of Courland, 
 the richest heiresses in Europe, he turns his attentions 
 to one of them. The old duke, whom he had himself 
 despoiled of his sovereignty, refuses indignantly. Zubof 
 then dreams of an elopement. His plans are cut short 
 by a new order of Paul, recalling him to Russia. Friends 
 have worked on his behalf; Pahlen, who, loaded with 
 favour by the new Emperor, is plotting his ruin, needs 
 the aid of a man who, he feels confident, is ready 
 to take his share in an adventure or a crime. And, in 
 fact, on March 12, 1801, Zubof is in the front rank of 
 the hapless Paul's assassins. He does not, however, gain 
 the reward he has hoped for : Alexander I. treats him 
 with great coldness. He returns to Germany. In the 
 following year, at Toeplitz, where he has again taken 
 refuge, he has an awkward encounter with the Chevalier 
 de Saxe (son of Prince Xavier, Comte de Lusace, the 
 uncle of Louis XVI.). The Chevalier had taken refuge in 
 Russia at the time of the Revolution, and he had there 
 had, in the year 1794, a quarrel with Prince Nicholas 
 Shtcherbatof. A duel which had never come off, 
 through the fault of the prince, had been followed by an 
 ambuscade in which Zubof had figured, and from which 
 the Chevalier had escaped with his life, but badly lamed. 
 Obliged to leave Russia, the victim had challenged the 
 authors of the attempt by means of the gazettes ; but it 
 was not until a casual meeting, at a place where they 
 were all taking the waters, that Zubof could be induced 
 to come out. The ex-favourite cut a very sorry figure. 
 Pretending utter inexperience of the pistol, the arms 
 
THE CHIEF MEN: THE ZUBOFS 165 
 
 which had been agreed upon by the seconds on both 
 sides, he refused to face his adversary. When the latter 
 suggested the sabre, he pretended to be unwell. Finally 
 Shtcherbatof took his place, and shot the poor Chevalier 
 dead. 
 
 The remaining years of this inglorious career are 
 somewhat obscure ; they are spent in the shadow of 
 the Castle of Shavle, a part of his booty in the spolia- 
 tion of Poland, which a^ ukase of Paul has restored to 
 him. His brothers continue to hold high rank in the 
 army, Valerian till 1804, Nicholas till 18 14, but without 
 much success. As for Plato himself, he now concerns 
 himself with nothing but the disposal of his estates and 
 the heaping up of treasure. He has sunk into the most 
 sordid avarice, and he grinds down his peasants pitilessly. 
 In 1807, passing through the ex-favourite's lands, and 
 struck by the desolate air of the villages and the poverty- 
 stricken appearance of the peasants, Alexander gives 
 orders to the governor of the province to put down the 
 excesses from which he sees that the unhappy folk 
 have to suffer. Zubof lives a solitary life, haunted by 
 the fear of death, to such a point that the very word, 
 pronounced in his presence, causes him to shut himself 
 up in his room for three days. At the age of fifty, he is 
 a decrepit old man. At this period, however, he falls 
 madly in love. Having noticed in the streets of Wilna 
 a young person, the daughter of a small proprietor of the 
 neighbourhood, he orders his intendant, Bratkovski, to 
 bring her to him. Bratkovski failing, he still persists, 
 offers an enormous sum for the possession of the 
 treasure, and finally consents to marriage. Tekla 
 Walentynowicz becomes Princess Zubof, and her hus-- 
 band dies a year after, leaving in his cellars twenty 
 millions of roubles, which had lain idle there for a long 
 time. 
 
 So ended the last great man discovered, educated, and 
 loved by Catherine. 
 
PART II. 
 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
CHArTER I. 
 
 CATHERINE'S INTELLECTUAL CIRCLE. THE 
 PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 I.— VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Imagine one of the African potentates with whom 
 recent events have to some extent familiarized us, a 
 Behanzin before the advent of General Dodds. One 
 conceives of him as being quite infatuated with his pre- 
 rogatives, resolute in defence of the laws and customs on 
 which they are based, in a word, very conservative in 
 his way. Suppose him urged by some more or less justi- 
 fiable personal interest to enter into relations with some 
 of the influential men of European countries. Do you 
 suppose that he would see any obstacle to these relations, 
 if he thought them otherwise useful, in the fact that the 
 influential persons in question were considered, in their 
 own country, to be more or less revolutionary, by reason 
 of being partisans of the Fourth Estate, of communal 
 principles, or of any other political theory of the kind ? 
 Assuredly no ! The fact would, in itself, certainly 
 appear to this man of the Black Continent a matter of 
 perfect indifference, and of no consequence whatever in 
 respect to the stability of his own political and social 
 edifice, fixed there so firmly, beyond those virgin forests, 
 on such very different bases. And, on the other hand, 
 
 169 
 
170 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 would the men of Europe with whom he chanced to 
 communicate, however liberal might be the programme 
 which they drew up for their own home use, consider 
 themselves bound to repel the advances which were 
 made to them from such a quarter (supposing that they 
 found any advantage in it to themselves), by reason 
 of their more or less exact knowledge of the ways of 
 government, very different from their political and social 
 ideal, employed by this exotic despot in his own 
 country ? By no means, surely ! 
 
 I am not trying to set up a comparison ; it would 
 have the double disadvantage of being uncivil and of 
 being historically self-contradictory. It is merely a 
 simple example, which, if the reader will see in it only 
 what seems to him useful for the purpose of my demon- 
 stration, throws a certain light on the problem which I 
 proMse to study in these pages. 
 
 NJi/prance, persecutes the philosophers, and the Scythians 
 
 1 patronize them^ywrote Voltaire to Diderot, September 
 (_23, 1762, and, a little while after, Grimm, writing to 
 
 Catherine herself, thus echoed the words of the 
 master : " Madame, since Your Majesty has poured out 
 favours upon the head of one of the most celebrated 
 philosophers of France, all who cultivate letters, and 
 think well of Europe, hold themselves your subjects." 
 Libraries purchased from needy philosophers, and pane- 
 gyrics addressed to a sovereign far from adverse to 
 praise, an exchange of little services and big compli- 
 ments, all contributed to form a connecting link between 
 the sovereign autocrat of the North and the noisy crew 
 of Western free-thinkers, a link which years only 
 strengthened. These friendly relations did not fail to 
 scandalize many people. We must not forget that even 
 in 1778, at the time of the last and most triumphant 
 appearance which he made at Paris, Marie Antoinette 
 refused to receive the author of La Pucelle. And it was 
 not only in the monarchical and conservative camp that 
 people were disposed, not without some show of reason, 
 to take offence at so strange a union of sympathies. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS ; VOLTAIRE 171 
 
 For, if the excellent Capefigue made a mistake in 
 saying that he was personally indignant at the spectacle 
 afforded to all Europe, in 1773, of the reception into an 
 empress's friendly society of the author of La Religieuse, 
 the poet who had spoken of " warping the entrails of the 
 priest to weave a rope to strangle kings " — and a mistake 
 he certainly made, for La Religieuse was not published 
 till after the voyage to Russia, and the incriminated 
 verses never had the personal allusion which was need- 
 lessly given to them — it is none the less true that the 
 spectacle, if we consider merely the Idees philosophiques 
 and the volumes of the Encyclopedie already published 
 in 1773, and bearing very plainly the sign-manual of the 
 man whom Rodolphe Gotschall called " the destroying 
 instinct of the Revolution," a spectacle so wounding to 
 the faithful followers of religion and order, was calculated 
 also to nonplus philosophy itself in the person of its 
 sworn adepts. 
 
 And some there certainly were who took this view 
 of things, and their disgusted surprise can be realized 
 even now in connection with numerous controversies, 
 (^therine's correspondence with Voltaire, Diderot's resi- 
 dence at St. Petersburg, remain, in the One as in the 
 other camp, among the believers in the philosophic 
 spirit as among the believers in the monarchical, an 
 equally irritating recollection, deserving of equal reproba- 
 tiorp There is the problem, and I think the example 
 I have ventured upon above does something to facilitate 
 its solution, by removing the misunderstanding on which 
 it is based. Yes, a misunderstanding, or, if you will, a 
 certain forgetfulness. People have forgotten this enor- 
 mous difference of the milieux, of the conditions of 
 intellectual, political, and social development connected 
 therewith, which, in spite of their apparent intimacy (so 
 strange and so scandalous as it seemed), always separ- 
 ated the two parties — the philosophers on one side, the 
 autocratic Empress on the other — and which, as a 
 matter of fact, rendered their intimacy possible, making 
 it at the same time much less offensive to reason and 
 
172 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 honour than it appeared at the time, and still does 
 appear. 
 
 I have tried to intimate the sort of sentiment by 
 which, under similar circumstances, a little African 
 potentate might be swayed. A sentiment not far dif- 
 ferent, it is quite certain, guided Catherine in her rela- 
 tions with the philosophical circle of the West. And 
 not less certain is it that this sentiment was recipro- 
 cated by Voltaire and his friends. Did they even realize 
 exactly what being an autocratic sovereign in Russia 
 really meant .' This sovereign, they well knew, ruled 
 over thirty millions of subjects, twenty millions of whom 
 did not even belong to themselves, were mere merchan- 
 dise, bought and sold, at an average of ten roubles a 
 head. But were they not nioujiks, dressed in skins, 
 living off herbs, scarcely men at all .' It happened 
 sometimes, too, that this same sovereign banished to 
 Siberia certain gentlemen guilty only of loving liberty 
 too dearly, that liberty which had been placed at the 
 summit of the philosophic ideal. LBut, again, what of 
 that.' They are only Polish gentlemen, pious and super- 
 stitious barbarians, paying little enough heed to M. de 
 Voltaire himself! Really, philosophy was not made for 
 people of that kindTJ 
 
 This is the aspect under which the curious and dis- 
 tracting enigma connected with the patriarch of Ferney 
 and Catherine the Great presents itself to my mind, and 
 the situation has all the more attraction for me as I 
 seem to see it now, under very similar conditions, acting 
 itself over again. Steam and electricity have done 
 much to bring distant lands together ; they have not 
 yet filled up in a few years the abys.= which is the work 
 of centuries. An apparent, and, in the main, a material, 
 assimilation of certain elements of culture has been pro- 
 duced on the surface, which has now more or less come 
 together ; but the substratum has remained alien, radi- 
 cally impenetrable by any influence. And it is pre- 
 cisely for that reason that new currents of attraction 
 and of sympathy have been able to communicate from 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAIRE 173 
 
 the one to the other, uniting impossible antagonisms of 
 ideas and principles, without any result other than a 
 fresh surprise on the part of a few European spectators. 
 The Marseillaise, on its way to St. Petersburg, has 
 merely followed the course of Diderot ; and neither the 
 blare of the revolutionary trumpets, nor the furies of 
 the tempestuous philosopher, have dislodged so much 
 as a stone on the Newsky Perspective. Thermidor, 
 the play forbidden in Paris, and quietly represented at 
 St. Petersburg, is merely d, repetition of the Belisaire 
 of Marmontel, condemned by the Sorbonne, and trans- 
 lated into Russian by Catherine, with the aid of her 
 principal courtiers. 
 
 Only, the problem is somewhat complicated. There 
 has been of late a sort of reflux of Eastern thought 
 westward, of ideas and theories which have slowly 
 come to the surface of the confused national conscious- 
 ness. A whole literature has brought home to us the 
 rudimentary elements of a half-unachieved new growth. 
 There have even been some attempts at proselytism. 
 Their success has not been more solid than that which 
 aroused a similar curiosity in men's minds, a hundred 
 years ago, by the revolutionary theories promulgated at 
 the court of Catherine by her some months' guest. 
 Though we have read the Krentzer Sonata, and pre- 
 tended to understand it, we are not yet, I imagine, quite 
 in the state of disciples of Tolstoi ; and though we have 
 offered our hospitality to some refugees suspected of 
 wishing to put in practice somewhat too summary a 
 philosophic formula, we are not yet converted to 
 Nihilism. Do we indeed know precisely what it is ? 
 Have we an exact notion of the state of mind with 
 which the revolutionary movement which passes under 
 that name really corresponds, and with which corre- 
 spond, also, the little shivers, the vague ripples that now 
 and again rise to the surface of the immense human 
 sea which loses itself in the mists on the confines of 
 the civilized world ? Do we even really know that 
 
174 THE SEMIRAMIS OP THE NORTH 
 
 ocean itself? Have we measured its depths, noted its 
 currents, marked out its shores ? 
 
 Following upon this literary importation, a whole 
 sort of information-agency has appeared in France, 
 turning out its moral Baedekers of the great unknown, 
 offering circular tickets at reduced rates, 3 fr. 50 c, at 
 the booksellers'. They have succeeded in interesting, 
 even in affecting us ; but have they given us an equal 
 amount of information ? I am inclined to doubt it. 
 And, in the first place, are they so sure of their own 
 facts .'' To hear them, speaking so eloquently of the 
 soul of a great people, one would be tempted to believe 
 that this soul has whispered its secret in their ear, as, 
 once upon a time, did the soul of a French province 
 in the ear of a sentimental deputy. But is this so 
 certain ? It is a kind of soul which does not seem to 
 me an easy one to get at. For it is not, as in the 
 other Western nations, a soul on the surface, ready to 
 enter into communication with others, happy, for the 
 most part, to show and to bestow itself. One of the 
 most famous French novelists once confided to me the 
 difficulty in which he one day found himself when wish- 
 ing to bring on the scene a Nihilist of the militant order, 
 with some show of reality. At last he succeeded in 
 finding a model in flesh and blood, and no common- 
 place model, but a person of eminence in his kind. He 
 turned his man this way and that, without succeeding 
 in extracting anything from him. At last, losing 
 patience, he demanded for the tenth time : 
 
 " But what do you really want 1 What are you aim- 
 ing at .' What is the exact object of your hopes and 
 efforts ? " 
 
 The formidable terrorist reflected for a long time, 
 then, with a great sigh, he said : 
 
 " A parliament ! " 
 
 " Take ours, then, I make you a present of it 1 " ex- 
 claimed the novelist, and he sent his Nihilist about 
 his business. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAIRE 175 
 
 I am not sure that Jeliabof and Kibaltchits let them- 
 selves be hanged in order to afford their country the 
 delights of the ordre du jour motiv^ ; but why did they 
 let themselves be hanged ? 1 fear very much that you 
 have no idea, and I should be unduly confident if I 
 pretended to know more. 
 
 II. 
 
 In 1764, the date at which their relations commenced, 
 Catherine and Voltaire were equally vague as to the 
 conditions in which the action to which they owed their 
 place in the world was organized, and they seemed by 
 no means anxious to know more about them. Had the 
 crowned friend of the philosophers a precise notion of 
 the social and moral condition with which this name, 
 philosopher, corresponded .' I see in the memoirs of 
 a German who studied his countrywoman at close 
 quarters, that it was only in 1784 that she learnt of the 
 existence of a philosopher who had been living for 
 twenty years in the intellectual intimacy of Voltaire, 
 D'Alembert, and Diderot, and who was called Herder. 
 
 " What is this Herder .■' " she asked. 
 
 " He is a pastor who lives in Weimar." 
 
 "And you say that he has written a philosophical 
 book ! If he is a philosopher he cannot be a pastor, 
 and if he is a pastor he cannot be a philosopher." 
 
 Beyond that she cannot go. And her friend Voltaire 
 declares himself persuaded that the condition of an 
 Empress of all the Russias is incompatible with any 
 sort of interference in religious matters. Notes of con- 
 fession, for instance, are unknown in her empire. This 
 affair of the notes of confession is curious, for it proves 
 that there was a vague, underlying consciousness on 
 both sides of the common ignorance and illusion which 
 render common sympathy possible. " In regard to the 
 notes of confession," wrote Catherine to Voltaire in 
 1771, "we have never heard of them even by name," 
 
176 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 and the same year, the same day perhaps, she sent a 
 severe reprimand to General Tchitcherin, governor of 
 Tobolsk, on account of his delay in introducing into his 
 government certain registers on which the existing law 
 decreed that the names were to be inscribed both of 
 those who went to confession and those who neglected 
 to perform that duty. Since 17 16, in fact, a series of 
 ukases had rendered confession obligatory on all the 
 orthodox in Russia. Those who neglected to comply 
 with this regulation were fined according to their 
 station in life, but always heavily. The governor of 
 Tobolsk, suspecting that he had been denounced by the 
 ecclesiastical authorities, and wishing to avenge himself 
 upon them, dressed up his servants in the garb of 
 monks, and sent them into all the lowest haunts of the 
 town. Then, in his turn, the metropolitan of the place 
 employed a local Michael Angelo to paint on the fagade 
 of his cathedral a Last Judgment, in which the governor 
 was seen in a very awkward position between two 
 cloven-footed devils. 
 
 Of all that, Voltaire evidently knew nothing, nor did 
 he attempt to verify the exactitude of the observation 
 by which Catherine had assured him that there was not 
 in all her empire a single peasant who could not put his 
 fowl in the pot when he liked. " For some time past," 
 she added, "they have preferred turkeys to fowls." 
 [Voltaire was enchantedjj all the more so, and all the 
 more ready to be convinced, because he found it to his 
 own advantage. Catherine found it to hers to have at 
 her service one of the powers of the day, and that is 
 the real source and secret of their friendly correspond- 
 ence. It was in no sense an exchange of ideas, of 
 sentiments, of beliefs, but of good-will and friendly 
 services. Catherine herself, with superb frankness, lays 
 bare the root of her feeling in this respect in a letter 
 dated August 22, 1765, addressed to the patriarch, in 
 which she tells him that she is happy to be in cor- 
 respondence with the nephew of the Abbe Bazin (Voltaire 
 himself) "because it is good and useful to have such 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAIRE 177 
 
 acquaintances.'' [Yes, it is good and useful to have at 
 hand some one to whom one can announce that one has 
 been inoculated in order to give an example of heroism 
 to one's subjects, certain that the news of this prowess 
 will be re-echoed to the four corners of Europ^J And, 
 in one of his first letters, Voltaire too lays down the 
 terms of the agreement on his ow n-part. He is asking 
 the Empress for some help on behalf of the Sirven 
 family. The smallest amount will be enough. " We 
 only desire," the patriarch assures her, " the honour of 
 putting so august a name at the head of those who are 
 aiding in the stamping out of fanaticism." And he 
 adds soon after : " I have a favour to ask of Your 
 Majesty; and that is, to allow me to publish the note 
 you have communicated to me on the subject of the 
 bishop of Rostov, who was punished for declaring that 
 there are two powers : there is one only, Madame, that 
 which is beneficent." And, without waiting for the per- 
 mission which he knows will be granted, he draws up 
 and publishes his pretended Charge of the Archbishop 
 of Novgorod, intended to propose in France the only 
 good way of harmonizing Church and State, after the 
 manner of Catherine. 
 
 friendly relations , once established on this footing, 
 remain steadfast and increase in intimacy. QChey are not 
 crossed by the storms and subject to the changes which 
 had formerly compromised another correspondence of 
 the philosopher with one of the powers that b^IJ For 
 t his there are several reasons. When Frederick the Great 
 and Voltaire knew and associated with one another, 
 Frederick was young, Voltaire twenty years younger 
 than he now is. In 1764, despite the great difference in 
 their ages, the widow of Peter III. and the hermit 
 of Ferney both have a long experience behind them. 
 Catherine has prepared for her task as sovereign by 
 an ordeal which lasted fifteen years ; Voltaire during 
 this time has acquired all there is to be learnt in regard 
 to the task of the courtier. Secondly, and this is an 
 important point, Catherine, though she writes a good 
 
 N 
 
178 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 deal, has no pretensions as a writer. As she has no 
 susceptibilities in this respect, there is no risk of wound- 
 ing her self-esteem. If, like Frederick, she calls herself 
 the pupil of Voltaire, the ground on which she applies, 
 or pretends to apply, the lessons of the master, is in no 
 way likely to be encroached upon by the master himself. 
 If she consents to treat him almost on equal terms, 
 sovereign to sovereign, their royalties are in no danger 
 of clashing : each belongs to a different world. Finally, 
 Voltaire never comes to St. Petersburg ; the test of 
 personal contact is spared to these two beings who, at 
 ' bottom, have not perhaps a single idea of sentiment in 
 common, if it is not the exorbitant self-worship of one 
 and the other. But their egoisms measure forces at a 
 distance, and they unite in a compromise of mutual 
 graces and excuses which there is nothing to disturb. 
 
 When, in 1771, Catherine has pressing need of recall- 
 ing to the mind of the Emperor of the Romans " that 
 the Turks have twice besieged Vienna," or of calling the 
 attention of Europe to the "unworthy and unseemly 
 manner in which the Ottoman Porte treats the ambas- 
 sadors of foreign powers," she simply dispatches a 
 courier to Ferney ; the patriarch, she is sure, will know 
 of "a literary debutant," able to write a vigorous 
 pamphlet on this theme, for a consideration of a thou- 
 sand ducats, which she imagines will be enough for the 
 " light skit." The reply is not long in coming, and the 
 "literary debutant" is soon found. "As for that," replies 
 the patriarch, " I have only to pocket the thousand 
 ducats, and dip my pen into the ink." 
 
 Such is the origin of the Tocsin des Rot's. 
 
 But the prodigiously fertile writer does not confine 
 himself to the utilization of the Empress's friendship in 
 regard to the produce of his pen ; he makes further use 
 of it — to place watches. For he makes them, or has 
 them made by the " colonists " whom he professes to 
 take under his protection for the love of humanity, and, 
 in the course of an epistle ingeniously crammed with the 
 politico-philosophical gossip that we know, he slips in 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: VOLTAIRE 179 
 
 a bit of " shop," the bare-faced request for an order. 
 The Semiramis of the North is not likely to refuse ; and 
 she replies by an order for three or four millions' worth 
 of roubles. Immediately three times as much is sent 
 her; but the patriarch excuses himself: it is not his 
 fault, it is that of his " colonists," whose zeal he has been 
 unable to restrain. The extra amount however is only 
 39,238 French livres, and it is a splendid bargain, half 
 as cheap as in London, in Paris, or even in Geneva, and 
 she can pay as she likes. " Very well," replies Semiramis, 
 "but no more." And she sends the 39,238 livres — with 
 the account of the latest exploits of the Russian army, 
 concerning which Europe is in need of being informed 
 by the " most widely-read man in Europe." 
 
 Compliments are always there, serving as passport 
 to this incessant reciprocal exploitation. It is indeed 
 the habitual small change which passes between them. 
 Voltaire certainly excels in the richness and variety 
 of his vocabulary. He possesses and outpours an 
 astounding wealth of the most outrageous flatteries. 
 He has had some practice with Frederick, whom he has 
 called the Solomon of the North before Catherine 
 became the Semiramis ; but the eternal feminine with 
 which he is now in contact fires and feeds his energy. 
 Solomon is cast down ; Catherine is raised above him, 
 and also above Solon, Lycurgus, Louis XIV., and 
 Hannibal . . . The Romans could not have held their 
 own against her armies . . . She excels all monarchs 
 of the age . . . She is the only great man in Europe, 
 though Frederick is still living . . . She is the chief 
 person in the world . . . Europe admires her, and Asia 
 wonders at her ... If Europe and Asia had common- 
 sense, she would reign over the whole world . . . Her 
 soul comprehends all things ; her mind might serve to 
 measure all capacities . . . She is the fire and life of 
 nations . . . She is destined to transform society . . . 
 She has made the eighteenth century a golden age . . . 
 Where she is, there is paradise . . . She is a saint . . . She 
 is above all saints . . . She is an angel before whom all 
 
l8o THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 men should be silent . . . She is equal to the Mother of 
 God . . . She is more : she is Our Lady of St. Peters- 
 burg, superior to the Polish Virgin of Czenstockova . . . 
 She is the divinity of the North : Te Catherinam lauda- 
 fuus, te Dominam confitemur ! . . . She is above nature, 
 history, philosophy itself! Yes, she is the instructor of 
 the philosophers . . . She is more learned than all the 
 academies . . . Her mind might serve to measure all 
 capacities . . . She does more than a man is capable of 
 doing in twenty-four hours, because she has more than 
 one soul, and the number of her talents is a mystery . . . 
 Her institutions are the greatest in the universe . . . 
 Her convent at Smolna is superior to Madame de Main- 
 tenon's . . . Her empire is above all empires ; her laws 
 are above all laws ; her code is the gospel of the world 
 . . . Her diamond (which Gregory Orlof has given her) 
 is finer than the Regent . . . Her hands (he has never 
 seen them) are the loveliest hands in the world . . . 
 Her feet (is it Count Shuvalof now at Ferney, who has 
 given him this detail ?) are whiter than the snow which 
 is seen in her country ... It surprises him that she 
 should condescend to enter into correspondence with a 
 mere nothing like him, an old driveller, a thing of 
 nought. . . 
 
 Is he sincere 1 Is she, when she invites him to come 
 to St. Petersburg and turn priest, so that she can kiss 
 his hand, " that hand which has done so much good " ? 
 In order to clear up this subject a little, it is as well to 
 consult the counterpart of the official correspondence 
 from power to power ; that is to say, the private corre- 
 spondence of the patriarch with a friend like D'Alem- 
 bert, and Catherine's with a confidant hke Grimm. In 
 Voltaire's letters to D'Alembert, the immortal Catherine 
 becomes simply la belle Cateau, or merely Cateau, as 
 Frederick had been Attila-Cotin, and we find passages 
 of this kind in reference to the Divinity of the North : 
 " I agree with you that philosophy has little to brag of 
 in such converts ; but what is one to do .' We must 
 needs take our friends as they are, with all their defects." 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER."^ : VOLTAIRE iSi 
 
 He even attempts to excuse them : " I know well," he 
 writes to Madame du Deffand, "that people object to 
 some little trifles in connection with her husband, but 
 these are family matters, with which I do not concern 
 myself, and besides, it is not a bad thing to have a great 
 fault to redeem ; it causes one to make great efforts to 
 force the public to admire one." Note that before his 
 death, the husband, whose tragic end is so lightly put 
 into the balance of profits and losses by the cynical 
 philosopher, " deserved to live long, since he lived only 
 for the good of men." It is Voltaire himself who de- 
 clares it, in a letter to Count Shuvalof. Afterwards, 
 he is a mere drunkard, whose death is not even capable 
 of forming the subject of a tragedy. 
 
 Frederick had no cause to complain. After the philo- 
 sopher's first visit to Rheinberg, writing to a confidential 
 friend in reference to the travelling expenses claimed by 
 the man whom he officially called " his Apollo," the 
 king expressed the opinion " that it was really paying 
 dear for a court buffoon." Had Catherine more reason 
 for being offended .'' Here is a passage from a letter to 
 Grimm, referring, for the tenth time, to the constantly- 
 talked-of visit of the patriarch to St. Petersburg, so 
 ardently desired, it would seem, on both sides, and yet 
 always put off In 1766, when mapping out the itinerary 
 of two of her nephews, the Princes Augustus and Peter 
 of Holstein, who were to make the grand tour, the 
 Empress struck out the town of Geneva from the map 
 of the route : she would not, and she said it in so many 
 words, allow the travellers to venture into a neighbour- 
 hood where they might make compromising encounters. 
 Did she even desire such an encounter for herself.? Let 
 the letter to Grimm clear up the question. Up to the 
 present the sovereign had always been hindered from 
 carrying out her hospitable intentions in respect to the 
 great man, always obliged to visit her Southern pro- 
 vinces when he proposed to visit her in the North. She 
 writes now, in German, which, with her, shows a real 
 emotion : " In the name of heaven, urge this octogen- 
 
I §2 THE SEMI R A Mis OF THE NORTH 
 
 arian to stay at Paris ! What could he do here ? . . . . 
 It would be like the visit of the King of Sweden. You 
 remember how horribly frightened I was about it." 
 And she added in French : " You might, among other 
 reasons, tell him that Cateau is only good to know at 
 a distance." 
 
 That was also the opinion of Madame du Deffand, 
 who, ten years earlier, joking him about the spirit of 
 tolerance which he attributed to his friend, and which 
 she " did indeed preach, among her neighbours, by 
 means of fifty thousand missionaries armed from top 
 to toe," gave this advice to Cateau s admirer : " Never 
 see your Catherine save by the telescope of your 
 imagination. Leave between her and you the actual 
 distance, in place of the distance in point of time." But 
 did Voltaire need this advice .■" Did he not thoroughly 
 realize the situation, ■^^'he^ he replied sharply to some 
 one begging for a sight of his History of Russia : 
 
 "You are mad ! If you want to know anything, read 
 La Combe's : he has had neither medals nor furs." 
 C And Catherine too realized the situation, since she 
 Kvas well aware (thanks, perhaps, to a treachery of 
 /Grimm) of the familiar and irreverent name by which 
 [her friends the philosophers called her amongst them- 
 *selves. 
 
 III. 
 
 But the official compliments and the private epi- 
 grams, the pilfered ducats and the orders for watches 
 in return for pamphlets improvised to order ; all this 
 mutual dupery and literary brokerage, little edifying as 
 it is from the point of \iew from which we regard such 
 things to-day, is still, it must be said, by no means the 
 most unpleasant side of this dubious little episode. We 
 may overlook, indeed, the excess of zeal on behalf of 
 Catherine in the crusade preached by the philosopher 
 against the infidels in the course of the first Turkish 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAIRE 183 
 
 war, the appeals to the extermination of the name of 
 Mussulman, strange as they were in the mouth of an 
 apostle of tolerance, and the invocations to the Blessed 
 Virgin, protector of Christian arms, unexpected as they 
 were on the part of a scorner of dogmas. We can 
 even, much as it may cost us, excuse the attitude of the 
 philosopher in the Polish question. He figured as the 
 fourth power in the dismemberment of the unhappy 
 republic, or at least as a voice in the matter. When he 
 wrote : " Voila trois belles et bonnes tetes dans un 
 bonnet," he no doubt mentally added his own. He 
 even declared that they had not gone far enough in the 
 first division treaty, and expressed the hope " that they 
 would not stop short on so fine a road," a hope which 
 was fully satisfied. Finally, he saw a chance of getting 
 something for himself, a chance of further orders for 
 watches for his " colony " at Ferney. As for the efforts 
 of the hapless Poles to escape from their fate, as for the 
 war of independence so heroically entered upon by the 
 confederates of Bar with the aid of some valiant French- 
 men, it was " the war of fanatics against tolerance," a 
 war of ingrates against their benefactor, " an unending 
 St. Bartholomew," " an Italian farce," " a mixture of 
 horror and extravagance like nothing one has ever 
 seen ; " in a word, " the most shameful and cowardly 
 business of the age." No matter ; pardon, or forgetful- 
 ness, seems the due, at such a distance from the present, 
 of these deviations of heart and head. There have been 
 such at all times in politics. 
 
 But we shall not endeavour, as some have done, to 
 find an excuse for these things in the attitude adopted 
 by the philosopher in regard to Greece, and of his 
 endeavours, aided by Catherine, for its enfranchisement. 
 Though some have seen in him the first of modern Phil- 
 hellenes ; though some have felt, across the habitual 
 lightness and frivolity of his correspondence, a glow of 
 enthusiasm for the liberty and the renaissance of a noble 
 nation ; though some have admired the spectacle of 
 this cold reasoner, this contemporary of the rouh of 
 
i84 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 the Regency, recovering his early faith, and a note 
 worthy of Byron, in the defence of a great cause ; still, 
 for our part, we can see nothing in this admiration but 
 the effect of a generous illusion, and in the couplets 
 which are supposed to substantiate it a mere bravura 
 air performed by a marvellous virtuoso, and one witness 
 the more to that something voiilu, artificial, and not 
 quite sincere, which there always was in the most seduc- 
 tive inspirations of the most deceptive genius of France. 
 For why this and not that ? Greece and not Poland ? 
 Why, indeed, if it were all anything but one candle the 
 more lit before the shrine of St. Catherine ? In his fine 
 ardour on behalf of the enfranchisement of the Greeks, 
 did he know what Catherine meant to do with them 
 when she had set them free ? Did he care ? Then, 
 when Catherine, after making the most of their courage 
 and desire for liberty, left them to their hapless fate, 
 did he ever utter the most timid reproach against her ? 
 The Roumelian national songs have kept a trace of 
 the hatred aroused in the minds of the unfortunate 
 patriots after they had been betrayed by their would- 
 be protectors. Voltaire never sang to that strain. 
 
 But, once more, let a plenary indulgence cover to- 
 day all these shortcomings ! After all, Greeks and 
 Poles were neither brothers nor cousins of the great 
 Frenchman of the eighteenth centur}', who might well 
 ignore the ideal of national solidarity which was only 
 brought forward ^ a later date. He had no part or 
 lot in them. If he thought and said evil of dying 
 Poland, all his fellows of the philosophic circle did 
 much the same. At the time of the second division 
 he was not living, and the second division did not rouse, 
 in France or elsewhere, any hostile movement of opinion 
 which might put to shame his memory. Yes, there is 
 something else, something worse, in the marivaudage of 
 the philosopher with his imperial friend, a detail in 
 regard to which it is impossible to be indulgent, in 
 regard to which it is impossible, to whatever Church 
 and whatever nationality one may belong, to control a 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAIRE 185 
 
 certain sentiment of revolt and disgust; that is, tiie way 
 in which the great Frenchman speaks of France in 
 writing to this German. He has indeed already done 
 something in this vein in writing to Frederick. He 
 has sung Rosbach : 
 
 " H^ros du Nord, je savais bien 
 Que vous aviez vu les derriferes 
 l3es guerriers du Roi Trfes Chretien." 
 
 But he brings his manner to perfection, he sharpens his 
 wit, he refines upon the bite of his irony ; in reply to 
 the news of a victory which Semiramis sends him, he 
 writes : 
 
 " I too, Madame, must sing the exploits of my country ; 
 for some time past we have had an excellent danseuse 
 at the Opera at Paris. They say she has most beautiful 
 arms. The last comic opera has not had a great success, 
 but we have one in preparation which will be the ad- 
 miration of the universe. It will be performed in the 
 foremost city of the universe by the finest actors in the 
 universe. Our fleet is about to sail from Paris to Saint- 
 Cloud. . . . All that makes up the foremost nation of 
 the universe, the foremost court of the universe, the 
 foremost mummers of the universe." 
 
 It is true that he also writes : " Condescend, Madame, 
 to note that I am not Velche ; I am Swiss, and, if I were 
 younger, I would become Russian." He has abdicated 
 his nationality, and in denying it, he scoffs at it. Some 
 French officers, fighting in Poland, have had the ill-luck 
 to fall into the hands of the Russians ; the adventure 
 seems to him very amusing ; and when Catherine an- 
 nounces her intention of sending her prisoners to Siberia, 
 " in order to spread the taste for good manners," he is 
 enchanted with the joke. It is true that he afterwards 
 vaunts to his friend, D'Alembert, that he has interceded 
 in favour of the prisoners. Alas ! friend D'Alembert 
 also interceded in their favour at the same time. He 
 wrote three letters, one after another, to the Empress, 
 " the most eloquent," he declares, " that were ever 
 
186 THE SEMI RAM IS OF THE NORTH 
 
 known in the memory of ape." The Empress replied 
 to the third, coldly and maliciously joking the philo- 
 sopher on the elevation of his sentiments, the force 
 of his eloquence, and the beauty of his style, which, 
 however, she confronted by the most definite negative. 
 And the good D'Alembert was quite distressed : " It 
 would have been so easy lor her to have made a decent 
 reply, satisfactory and flattering to philosophy, without 
 compromising herself in any way, and without granting 
 what was asked of her." Yes, it would have been easy, 
 since the intercession on behalf of eighteen gentlemen 
 condemned to share the fate of convicts for no other 
 fault than that of having put their swords at the service 
 of a noble cause, this appeal to justice and humanity 
 and the rights of men, coming from this philosopher, 
 had no other end but that of making capital on behalf 
 of philosophy out of the blood and tears of these 
 Frenchmen, and of getting a compliment for himself into 
 the bargain ! And, alas ! at the same period (1773) a 
 book appeared at the Hague, dedicated " To Her 
 Imperial Majesty, the Most High and Most Mighty 
 Princess Catherine II., protectress of the arts and 
 sciences, worthy by her wisdom of judging the nations 
 of antiquity, as she is worthy of ruling over her own." 
 The book was the posthumous work of a French philo- 
 sopher, and the preface, added by an anonymous editor, 
 probably also a Frenchman, and certainly co-religionist 
 of the philosophic church, contained these lines : " It is 
 no longer under the name of French that this people 
 can ever hope to become famous. This degraded nation 
 is to-day the scorn of Europe. No salutary critic can 
 ever render it its lost liberty. It is perishing of cor- 
 ruption. Conquest is the only remedy for its disorders." 
 Helvetius had written the book {De riiomme, de ses 
 facultes intellectiielles, et de son education), and Diderot, 
 who had been staying at the Hague on his way to 
 St. Petersburg, and who was accused of taking part 
 in the publication, only denied it in a half-hearted 
 manner. " I suspected him ( Diderot ) of being the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : VOLTAHiE 187 
 
 author of the preface," wrote M. de Noailles, then 
 French minister in Holland, " but I am still more 
 certain that, whether he has done it or not, he has 
 expressed similar sentiments at the Hague." The 
 incident was without consequence. Prince Galitzin, 
 Russian minister at the Hague, was supposed to have 
 encouraged the work, of which he sent two copies to 
 the Empress, and he made no attempt to deny it. 
 The Cabinet at St. Petersburg took its stand on the 
 numerous French works in which Russia was just as 
 badly treated, and made no endeavour to find out 
 who had written them. Only they were not written 
 by Russians ! 
 
 But it has at all times happened to revolutionary 
 ages and the leaders of revolutionary thought to sacri- 
 fice lightly, sometimes odiously, on one occasion or 
 another, for the sake of one carnal ideal or another, 
 ideas, principles, and sentiments which might have been 
 thought to form, above the passions and absorptions 
 of a day, the imperishable and intangible patrimony 
 of our minds and hearts. If there are no longer among 
 us philosophers so forgetful of the duties they owe to 
 their native land, perhaps it is because there are no 
 longer any who aim at upsetting the whole world ; and 
 among those who do think of it, are there not some 
 equally ready to deny this patrimony, to immolate their 
 birthright of common traditions, interests, glories and 
 sorrows, at the feet of some new alien divinity, as exi- 
 gent and not less fickle than she whose worship, at 
 the hands of Voltaire and his friends, was to end, before 
 the end of the century, in so complete a deception 'i 
 
 IV. 
 
 Reformer, and even, in her way, liberal as she was, 
 Catherine ceased to be revolutionary the day after her y^ 
 own revolution had given her a throne. That was her j 
 great superiority over her philosophic circle ; and she 
 
l88 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 took advantage of it, playing upon Voltaire and his 
 friends, and using them for her purposes, much more 
 than they succeeded in using her. She was not always 
 and with all of them as cruel as she was with jJ'Alem- 
 bertJn__i2Z3J i" that case she had a grudge to pay, as 
 we shall see later on, and she was not the woman to lose 
 an occasion of settling those little accounts. She gave 
 the others, generally and plentifully, compliment for 
 compliment, with furs and medals in addition, but she 
 never sacrificed to them anything essential, even a single 
 one of her prejudices. When she came to the throne, 
 she was nothing but an adventuress in possession of a 
 half-Asiatic and very unstable throne, with a very con- 
 siderable, but not a very agreeable, reputation in Europe. 
 Voltaire, on his part, had, even in Russia, a definite and 
 considerable reputation. In a number of the Gazette de 
 Moscow, some time in 1749, in the midst of the most 
 important political news, one comes upon details in 
 regard to the will made by the illustrious philo- 
 sopher in favour of his niece. In 1745 he was made a 
 member of the Academy of St. Petersburg, and in 1757 
 was appointed historiographer to the empire. His 
 name, somewhat disfigured by local pronunciation and 
 orthography, had acquired a conventional sense in the 
 language- of the country, where it was used to represent 
 a type of superior culture. People spoke of putting 
 their sons dans les Voltaire, as one might say, among the 
 court pages, or in the Guards ; and the expression called 
 up the idea of a particularly refined education. [Catherine 
 made use of all that, but she did so in her own way, 
 taking just as much of the philosophy as she thought 
 suited her, aqd just as much of the philosophers as she 
 found usefulj It is possible that in liberating the 
 peasants in the ecclesiastical domains which she secu- 
 larized, and at the expense of the monasteries, she was 
 inspired by a thesis sent by the patriarch in 1767, to be 
 put into competition for a prize given by the Economic 
 Society of St. Petersburg. The pamphlet bore the 
 motto, Si populus dives rex dives, and it urged the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: VOLTAIRE 189 
 
 sovereign to set a good example by liberating the 
 peasants belonging to herself. It did not get the prize, 
 but it had the better fortune to be read and appreciated 
 by the sovereign. This did not hinder Catherine from 
 writing to Grimm, a little while afterwards : 
 
 " It must be confessed that these philosophers are 
 queer -creatures ; they seem to have come into the world 
 to put the dots on the i's, and to obscure and unsettle 
 things of which people were as convinced as that two 
 and two make four." 
 
 The works of the English writer on law, Blackstone, 
 who was also in his way a great philosopher, were at 
 one time as familiar to Catherine as those of Voltaire 
 himself This is what she really thought of them : 
 
 " Blackstone's commentaries and I are inseparable, J 
 she wrote in 1776 to Grimm; "he provides endless( 4- 
 matter. I do none of the things that he says in hisj ^ 
 book, but it is my thread, which I wind in my own way. 
 
 As for the philosophers of the school of Quesnay and 
 Turgot, her way of using them was still more summary. 
 A year later, this is what the "fag" had to read in 
 one of her letters : " Economic books are raining upon 
 me, but I throw them in the fire without reading them ; 
 that is silly, I know, but I cannot endure them, and I 
 eat and shall always eat my bread without you, the 
 brawlers ! " 
 
 She did not throw Voltaire's books in the fire, but 
 after having subscribed to a posthumous edition of the 
 master's works, she i nstructed her s ecretary to read them 
 for her , and mark tfie beginning of the reasonable and 
 the unreasonable things in them ; then, when the anno- 
 tated copy was before her, she never even glanced 
 at it. She was merely playing to the gallery . It was 
 from the same motive that she bought the great man's 
 library after his death ; she even wanted, little as she i 
 desired his presence when he was living, to confiscate I 
 his corpse. She scolded Grimm : 
 
 " Why did you not get hold of his body, and in my 
 name ? You ought to have sent it to me, and, by 
 
190 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 heaven, you failed for the first time in your life. I 
 assure you he would have had the most costly tomb 
 conceivable." 
 
 Then, giving way to emotion : 
 
 " I hoped that the news of his death was untrue, but 
 you have confirmed it, and all at once a movement of 
 universal discouragement and of scorn for everything in 
 the world has come over me. I nearly wept . . . Since 
 he is dead, it seems to me that there is no more honour 
 any more in humour ; for he was the very god of 
 mirth . . . He was my master ; it was he, or rather his 
 works, which formed my mind. I think I have already 
 said so to you : I am his pupil. When I was younger, 
 I loved to please him : when I had done anything, I was 
 not content with it unless it was worthy of being told 
 him, and then immediately I would tell him of it." 
 
 She took it into her head to reconstruct at Tsarkole 
 the chateau of Ferney, reproducing as exactly as possible 
 the exterior and interior of the famous abode, even to 
 the very furniture where the philosopher had thought 
 and written, and the very view which his eyes were wont 
 to delight in. Sut at the same time she opposed with 
 all her power the publication of her correspondence with 
 the dead man : her own letters were too badly written, 
 and those of Voltaire too flattering for her, and too 
 contemptuous of certain other sovereigns?) And, as this 
 correspondence aroused universal curiosity, and, in 
 Russia particularly, gave rise to malevolent interpre- 
 tations, and as certain prelates, the representatives of 
 outraged orthodoxy, found subject for scandal in con- 
 nection with it, she finally denied it outright. She 
 certainly could not hinder Voltaire from writing to her : 
 so many people wrote to her ! But she had not taken 
 the trouble to reply to him ; she had resisted all his 
 endeavours to draw her into correspondence, a corre- 
 spondence which would have been beneath the dignity 
 of an Empress of all the Russias ! 
 
 Afterwards the memory of Voltaire fades away, or 
 rather is dragged down by thoughts which leave all and 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 191 
 
 every ideal more and more out of sight, thoughts now 
 more and more absorbed in the practical details which 
 have become everything to her. In 1790 she does 
 indeed re-read the Henriade, and advises " poor folk," 
 by means of Grimm, to do likewise, "so that the scoun- 
 drels hereinafter mentioned " (these same Frenchmen 
 tainted with Jacobinism) " may learn how to think." 
 But as early as 178 1 she declares that the Germans are 
 able to do with their language all that Voltaire did with 
 his, and in 1784 she refuses to subscribe to a publication 
 undertaken in honour of the master, a literary and 
 artistic act of homage to his genius ; till finally, when 
 the Revolution is let loose, Grimm is obliged to take 
 up, against the ungrateful pupil, the defence of the 
 master who is now denied and held responsible for the 
 worst excesses of the Revolution. 
 
 II.— DIDEROT. 
 I. 
 
 Voltaire, all his life, was a fortunate man. Among 
 other good fortunes, he had that of remaining in his 
 place, and of letting Catherine remain in hers, in a 
 friendly intercourse which was one of his great prides, 
 and which was a little like the marriage of the Grand 
 Turk with the Republic of Venice. Diderot was not so 
 lucky ; he was predestined to misadventures ; and his 
 residence at St. Petersburg was one among many. 
 But he kept up his illusions easily. He returned from 
 his travels enchanted, or professing to be so. It was 
 only philosophy which suffered in the ordeal ; and 
 philosophy was soon to have more cruel ordeals than 
 that to pass through. 
 
 The origin of the relations between the great encyclo- 
 paedist and the great sovereign of the North has been 
 put back to a period when, almost at the beginning of 
 
192 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 his literary career, the writer is supposed to have found 
 a double means of support, moral and material at once, 
 in the generosity of the Empress, which assured to him 
 the competency and the chance of repose needful to the 
 pursuit of his labours and the development of his 
 admirable faculties. This is a little extreme. France 
 was not then, any more than it is to-day, in such straits 
 as to be obliged to seek the bread of strangers for the 
 workers-out of its own glory, and Catherine was never 
 much inclined to patronize beginners. At the time 
 she first became interested in Diderot she had enough 
 to do to look after her own debuts. It was in 1762 ; she 
 had just dethroned Peter III. and installed herself in 
 his place, and, only nine days after, yes, only nine days 
 after the coup d'Etat, she invited the philosopher to 
 come to St. Petersburg, and go on with the publication 
 of the Encydopedie, which had just been suspended by 
 a royal decree. She had sent for the seven already 
 published volumes of the great work, in which she had 
 found a marvellous store of intellectual bric-a-brac, 
 exactly what she required for her own furnishing. 
 It was long before she ceased to dig this inex- 
 haustible mine, alike for inspirations for her reforms 
 and subjects for her plays. She was always very 
 fond of dictionaries. She doubtless thought, in 1762, 
 that it would be a pity for Diderot's to be cut short 
 on the way. vS.he probably also thought of the effect 
 to be made upon the European world in which she 
 longed to take a front placej She was impatient to 
 strike one of those blows by which she was to astonish 
 and fascinate the minds of contemporaries, and she lost 
 no time about it. Negotiated by her minister at Paris, 
 Prince Galitzin, with the aid of Count Shuvalof and of 
 Voltaire, the affair came to nothing. ^Diderot grounded 
 his refusa l on specious reasons^ the Encyclopedia was 
 not a thing which he could dispose of ; it belonged to 
 his publishers. Besides, the interdiction which had just 
 been inflicted had not had the effect that was supposed 
 at St. Petersburg : he was at that very moment correcting 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 193 
 
 the proofs of the succeeding volumes, which were being 
 quietly printed at Paris, while they were supposed to 
 appear at Neuchatel. At bottom, he was not disposed 
 to abandon his life and his work to the chances of the 
 great unknown which Russia then was, and the new 
 sovereign who had reigned there so short a time, and so 
 strangely. 
 
 His relations with the future Semiramis remained 
 at that point till 1765, when Prince Galitzin again 
 approached him in " reference to the purchase of hi s 
 li_brary. At this time, but not more so than in 1762, 
 Diderot was far from being a beginner. Born in 1713, 
 he had had time to show all he could do, and he 
 had made the most of the opportunity. Nor was 
 he without resources. He had inherited something 
 from his father, and his Encyclop^die brought him in 
 two thousand five hundred francs per volume, plus ten 
 thousand francs down, a considerable amount for the 
 time. He was extravagant, very generous with his 
 friends, very fond of gambling, and always a loser, if 
 we may believe his daughter, Madame de Vandeuil, and 
 he was just then anxious to give this very daughter a 
 dowry, of which he did not possess a penny. |His desire 
 to sell his books was due entirely to this!^ It was a case 
 of throwing the axe after the handle, By giving up the 
 very instruments of his work. On the part of Catherine 
 it was an excellent bargain to get this choice collection 
 for fifteen thousand livres, a collection which, as the 
 scrupulously exact Grimm bore witness, was worth 
 double. The Empress did things in the grand manner, 
 and allowed the usufruct of his library to the philoso- 
 pher, asking him to become her librarian, with a pension 
 of a thousand livres a year. But the bargain was none 
 the less a good one : her subjects had no very pressing 
 need of the books (as the end of the adventure was to 
 prove), and she would also have had some difficulty in 
 storing them suitably. In our own days it sometimes 
 happens in Russia that valuable collections offered to the 
 state or to some city are refused on account of not 
 
 O 
 
194 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 knowing where to place them ; indeed, that happened 
 only recently at Moscow. In 1765 the Hermitage was 
 not yet built, and the generous act of Catherine had the 
 further advantage of showing up her liberality in con- 
 spicuous relief, and bringing out her excellent relations 
 in regard to the great moral power of the day. Had 
 the rebuff which Diderot had met with at the Academie, 
 and the desire on the part of the sovereign to give a 
 lesson to the pietists who had opposed his election, to 
 Louis XIV., who had announced his intention of not 
 sanctioning it, and to Madame de Pompadour who had 
 refused to support it ; had these really something to do 
 with the affair, as has been suggested .-' We should 
 hesitate to admit it. Madame de Pompadour had been 
 dead for a year, the academic candidature had been 
 abandoned since 1760, and Catherine was probably not 
 sufficiently versed in all the small details of literary life 
 which took place in a world which she was only then 
 entering. 
 
 It was Diderot who was to aid her in taking an 
 honourable place there. Unhappily the pension allotted 
 to the philosopher had the fate of most of those which 
 were at this time so liberally flung about : at the end 
 of two years Diderot heard nothing more of it. But 
 Catherine had immediate occasion to find out, at 'her 
 own expense, the force and importance of this new 
 element with which she professed to enter into alliance ; 
 and to find out further, that a French encyclopaedist 
 was not to be treated like a Russian writer or artist ; 
 Lossienko, for instance, who died of starvation without 
 so much as a complaint. Diderot made an outcr y, and 
 his friends followed it up so loudly that she was soon 
 brought to repentance. She still did things in the grand 
 manner: she handed over at once the arrears of the 
 pension, and to avoid, as she said, any fresh negligence 
 on the part of her treasurer, she added the amount of 
 fifty annuities in advance. The effect was all she could 
 wish for : there was an explosion of enthusiasm in the 
 philosophic clan, and, on the part of the enthusiast 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 195 
 
 par excellence, Diderot himself, a regular transport, 
 almost a delirium of excited gratitude : 
 
 " Great princess, I kneel at your feet ; I reach out my 
 arms to you ; I would speak to you, but my soul is 
 overcome, my head turns, my thoughts become con- 
 fused, I weep like a child. ... A noble enthusiasm 
 seizes hold of me, my fingers feel after an old lyre of 
 which philosophy has cut the cords. I take it down 
 from the wall where it was hanging, and, bare-headed 
 and bare-breasted, I am impelled to sing : 
 
 ' Vous qui de la divinitd 
 Nous montrez sur le trone une image fid^e . . .'" 
 
 Catherine had her money's worth. She secured at 
 the same time more than a famous pensioner, more even 
 than a librarian. Writing to Betzki, this time selected 
 by the Empress as the intermediary of her largesse, 
 Diderot professed himself a subject of his benefactress. 
 She was his sovereign, since she took upon herself to 
 acquit the debt of his country. And, in his turn, he 
 showed himself anxious to acquit his own. From this 
 time forward he became a zealous and often most 
 valuable agent, at Catherine's orders, for every kind of 
 commission, and often utilized by her. His artistic 
 knowledge and acquaintances permitted him to supple- 
 ment with advantage Grimm himself He negotiated 
 the engagement of the sculptor Falconet and his 
 departure for St. Petersburg. He sent thither the 
 economist La Riviere. He was employed in the more 
 deUcate negotiations with Rulhiere for the purchase or 
 the suppression of a manuscript whose publication 
 Catherine wished to prevent. He bought pictures and 
 statues for her. Playwright as he was, he even engaged 
 actresses for her, and at the same time, by way of 
 exchange, she put on the stage at St. Petersburg one of 
 his plays, Le Pere de Famille, translated by Hliebof. 
 
196 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 II. 
 
 But all this was not enough to satisfy the exuberant 
 gratitude of the philosopher. And now, in that brain 
 always swarming with ideas, a project presented itself, 
 which was to give a new turn to his relations with the 
 great sovereign : he would sacrifice the remaining years 
 of his life to her who had assured their well-being, and 
 he would employ them in raising to her a monument 
 worthy of her. What was this monument to be .■• A 
 new EncydopMie, neither more nor less, " supposing 
 the first already done, and better done than it is," a 
 gigantic supplement to the thirty volumes in course of 
 publication. Pelion on Ossa, the repertory of ideas 
 added to the repertory of things, a philosophic vocabu- 
 lary summing up the effort of human thought since the 
 beginning of the world ! 
 
 At the end of i ^66, when Falconet is on his way to St. 
 Petersburg, Diderot charges his friend to speak for him 
 on behalf of this wonderful project. Let the Empress 
 say the word, and " he will shut himself up, he will work, 
 and he will do on his own account what the Academie 
 Frangaise, forty in number, has not been able to do in a 
 hundred and forty years." And now it is he who offers 
 to transport himself to the banks of the Neva. Yes, it 
 is there only that he could set his hand to the great 
 work of which he dreams, there only that he could give 
 it its due amplitude. And as the Empress makes no 
 reply, he insists : " Make her accept ; make me do the 
 work, and let me be permitted to use the sacred fingers 
 of our sovereign to apply a fillip to our forty dummies." 
 
 Evidently he still has a grudge against the Academie, 
 and a part of his feverish excitement is due to his desire 
 of avenging himself for its disdain of him ; but, apart 
 from that, is it really a mere fever of gratitude t and 
 does his honourable desire to acquit himself, for once, of 
 his obligations, really excite him to such a point .■' Is 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 197 
 
 it, as some have also said, his poetic imagination which 
 awakes at the touch of a generous emotion, and which 
 makes him, like a knight of the heroic ages in quest 
 of some wonderful enterprise to be undertaken for 
 the honour of his lady, dream of accomplishing super- 
 human toils on behalf of her whom he calls " his 
 sovereign " ? 
 
 We should be only too glad to adopt this version of 
 the case. Only it happens to be contradicted by certain 
 details which have doubtless escaped the notice of those 
 well-meaning interpreters from whom it is painful to us 
 to differ. [Tlje project of the " philosophic vocabulary " 
 was never carried out, and the real reason which 
 prevented its carrying out was a question — of money7\ 
 Diderot, certainly, was never mercenary, or greedy of 
 money. He was both too lofty-minded and too naif 
 for that. But he had an exacting family, exacting 
 friends, expensive habits, and all his life he was in 
 conflict between the generous impulses of his heart and 
 the difficulties of his existence as a needy writer. So, 
 despite himself, the aspect under which he saw the 
 famous monument which he longed to raise to the 
 glory of a beneficent Empress and the confusion of a 
 malevolent Academie, was a twofold one : a pyramid 
 of volumes on one side, a pile of ducats on the other. 
 The rain of gold which was scattered open-handed, 
 there at the other end of Europe, some drops of 
 which had fallen his way, that too spoke to his poetic 
 imagination ! Unhappily, just at this moment, the open 
 hand began to close upon itself: the expenses of the 
 Turkish war and the division of Poland imposed the 
 necessity of economy. Hence a certain disagreement • 
 and a certain deception for the too confident philo- 
 sopher. His visit to St. Petersburg in 1773 is princi- 
 pally for the purpose, as we know from his private 
 correspondence, of giving a more favourable turn to the 
 parleyings which were going on interminably in regard to 
 his fine project, without arriving at any satisfactory con- 
 clusion. When he makes his appearance at the capital 
 
igS THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 of the North, his head is full of ideas, which he himself 
 defines with his usual frankness, congratulating himself 
 afterwards on having abandoned them in favour cf a 
 "more honest and straightforward conduct." The ap- 
 parent purpose of his journey, it need scarcely be said, 
 is quite other. He goes to St. Petersburg officially, in 
 the first place, to thank the Empress for the gift of fifty 
 thousand francs, secondly and primarily, to bring her, her 
 alone of all the great powers of the Continent, the greet- 
 ing of the new ally that she has made in the West, 
 that republic of letters which she has seemed in some 
 sort to recognize, and whose new power in the world 
 she has in some sort proclaimed. It is as an ambassador 
 that he presents himself, and the little (it is unhappily 
 very little) that we know of this mission constitutes, 
 certainly, one of the most curious chapters of the hterary 
 history of the time. 
 
 III. 
 
 Its commencement was a little unfortunate. Accom- 
 panied, at his departure from the Hague, by M. 
 Naryshkin, travelling with the slow state of an actual 
 ambassador, so that at one time those at St. Petersburg 
 have lost all hope of ever seeing him, the philosopher 
 becomes more and more possessed with the idea of the 
 importance of his part and the estimation in which he 
 is held. He is a little taken aback, when he lands, at 
 not finding a solemn reception awaiting him. He 
 inquires for the accommodation which has been prepared 
 for him : there is no answer ; no orders have been given. 
 He has just refused the hospitality offered him by 
 Naryshkin, imagining that a princely welcome will be 
 given to him in the imperial palace. A little cast down 
 from the heights on which he had imagined himself 
 placed, he knocks at the door of his friend Falconet . 
 There a fresh surprise and discomfiture await Eim. The 
 sculptor looks very black at him, and sends him about 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 199 
 
 his business. He returns, downcast, to his travelling-com- 
 panion, in whose house he finally finds accommodation. 
 What is the reason of such a reception 1 On the part 
 of Falconet it is easily explained ; the sculptor has now 
 been living at St. Petersburg for ten years, he has had 
 time to find out how the land lies, and he is very much 
 frightened at the impression which Diderot is likely to 
 produce with his subversive ideas and his blustering 
 words. Absorbed entirely in his art, which he carries 
 out through innumerable difficulties, he is cautious in 
 doing anything which may prejudice his position. And 
 the Empress ">. The Empress has plenty to occupy her 
 mind at this moment ! We are at the end of September 
 177^ ; on the banks of the Danube, Rumiantsof has 
 just been defeated before Silistria, all but leaving his 
 arms and his military glory there together ; on the 
 banks of the laik the insurgents are beginning to 
 proclaim the name of Pugatshof ; on the day after 
 his arrival, Diderot is awakened by the sound of bells 
 and the noise of cannons celebrating the marriage of 
 the Grand-Duke Paul with the Princess of Hesse- 
 Darmstadt ; ' finally, in the palace itself, the crisis 
 consequent on the disgrace of Gregory Orlof, and the 
 installation of Vassiltshikof in the place of favourite, is 
 at its most disturbing point. The moment is very 
 ill-chosen for the entry of a philosopher. 
 
 In a few days, however, Semiramis does honour to his 
 name and his European renown. Diderot has given 
 somewhat different accounts, in writing to his friends at 
 Paris, of the reception which he met with at the hands of 
 the Empress when she learnt that he was at St. Peters- 
 burg. He declares in one of his letters that he sees the 
 Empress " every day alone " ; elsewhere he speaks of 
 " three hours every three days " regularly spent in this 
 intoxicating tite-d-tete. It is certain that his visits were 
 frequent, and they had from the very beginning a 
 character of extraordinary friendliness, and even famili- 
 arity. " He takes her by the hand," writes Grimm, who 
 is also at St. Petersburg at this moment ; " he shakes 
 
2CO THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 her arm, he bangs his fist on the table, as if he were 
 in the midst of the synagogue of the Rue Royale." ^ 
 Catherine herself playfully relates, in one of her letters 
 to Madame Geoffrin, that she is obliged to put a table 
 between her and her interlocutor, in order to escape the 
 too daring flights of his too expressive pantomime, from 
 which she was in danger of coming out black and 
 blue. 
 
 But, however friendly and familiar are these rela- 
 tions, they are far from coming up to what the philo- 
 sopher had promised himself And in the first place, 
 if Catherine gives way so condescendingly to the 
 cavalier ways of her guest, to the impetuous flow of his 
 words and the exuberance of his gestures, it is for the 
 very reason that, after the first moment of surprise, she 
 sees clearly that she has nothing to fear, she sees just 
 the kind of man with whom she has to do. From the 
 'very beginning she marks out their respective positions, 
 and she sets up the barrier which, with all his spirit, 
 ivigour, and unconscious daring, he will never over-pass. 
 Unconscious as he is of outward realities, absorbed in 
 an ideal world of his own, there is nothing in the man 
 which is calculated to disturb her. She lets him talk : 
 one of the most exceptional traits in her, one of the 
 signs of her masculine order of mind, is her constant 
 and absolute insensibihty to the effect of eloquence. 
 Action alone takes hold of her ; never speech. She 
 can be carried away, and easily, by appearances ; never 
 by words. Wordy herself, she is proof against the 
 I power of speech. 
 
 And then, from the first moment, another wall of 
 separation has arisen between them. No sooner has he 
 come, than Diderot (to his honour be it said) loses sight 
 of the very motive which has prompted his journey. 
 He thinks of nothing but the representative role that 
 he has taken upon himself. He is the ambassador, 
 the apostle ; his mission has a twofold end : that of 
 
 ^ The house of Baron d'Holbach, at Paris. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 201 
 
 studying the country where he finds himself the 
 standard-bearer of philosophy, and that of sowing at the 
 same time the seed of future harvests, which shall 
 flourish to the glory and advantage of philosophy and 
 humanity. Now on this point Catherine and he are 
 still more at variance. He takes his role quite seriously, 
 and she only plays with it. He questions her minutely, 
 he addresses her in eighty-eight clauses, which testify 
 to his prodigious mental activity, and she answers with 
 evasions and pleasantries. [He asks for information on 
 the condition of the slaves which she still unhappily has 
 in Russia, and she replies that he is using an incorrect 
 expression, which is not even allowed to be used in 
 Russiari There are no slaves, only men belonging with 
 the land which they till. The philosopher is indiscreet 
 enough to remind her that she herself has made use of 
 the word in her Instruction to the legislative committee, 
 and that she has condemned the thing. He asks how 
 the wine made in Russia from the grapes grown in the 
 country is taxed, and she replies that it has already 
 happened to the Abbe Terray to wish to tax a non- 
 existent article. He asks her if there are any veterinary 
 schools in Russia, and she replies : " God forbid ! " 
 Finally, she tires of the game, and hands over her too- 
 curious questioner to Field-marshal Miinich. 
 
 He does not insist too far. In spite of his irrepressible 
 intemperance of speech and gesture, she impresses him 
 enormously. And without perceiving it perhaps, un- 
 consciously as ever, he steps into the position of a 
 courtier and a flatterer. One day, as he is declaiming, 
 in his customary way, against courtiers and flatterers, 
 he declares that hell, if there is one, ought to reserve a 
 particularly horrible corner foi such vile and infamous 
 beings. She interrupts him with the question : " What 
 do they say in Paris about the death of my husband .' " 
 He remains for an instant dumfounded ; then, without 
 replying to the question, he launches into a dissertation 
 on the necessities sometimes imposed on those whose 
 exalted rank gives them the charge of souls. She 
 
202 THE SE MIR AM IS OF THE NORTH 
 
 interrupts him again : " It seems to me that you rfre 
 aheady on your way, if not to hell, at all events to 
 purgatory." 
 
 Another slip, more compromising than this, almost 
 brings the philosopher to grief. Under date November 
 6, 1773, Durand, the French charg^ d'affaires, writes to 
 the Due d'Aiguillon : " The Empress takes particular 
 pleasure in conversing with M. Diderot. . . . They con- 
 verse together in private, and often at great length. I 
 have told M. Diderot what I expect of a Frenchman. 
 He has promised, as far as possible, to wipe out the 
 prejudices of this princess against us, and to point out 
 to her what added lustre she might derive from friendly 
 relations with a nation more capable than any other of 
 doing justice to her remarkable qualities, and of treating 
 her with invariable openness." 
 
 This lopks as if Diderot is about to become a d'E6n, 
 or a Lauzun, a mere tool of official diplomacy. Accord- 
 ing to the German and English envoys, he is far from 
 shining in this capacity. Solms mentions on the 
 authority of Count Panin that the Empress silenced 
 the would-be diplomatist by telling him to leave politics 
 to those whose business it was. Gunning declares that 
 she threw into the fire in his presence a communication 
 that he had handed to her on behalf of Durand. The 
 version of Durand himself, which brings in the officious 
 Grimm, certain to be mixed up in the imbroglio, seems 
 more plausible. We read in his dispatch of February 
 15, 1774: "I have some proof that M. Diderot and 
 M. Grimm have done what was asked of them. The 
 Empress very publicly reproached the latter, laughingly, 
 for having treated her as if she were prejudiced against 
 us, and the former being by her bedside, she said to 
 him : ' Could you give me an example of your theory 
 that there are people who do wrong on principle .•' ' 'I 
 will give you one,' he replied, 'in a very prominent 
 place: the King of Prussia.' 'Stop there,' she replied, 
 and changed the conversation." 
 
 It proves very little if Catherine, as Durand also 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 203 
 
 declares, on one occasion herself complained of Fred- 
 erick's rnachinations, saying that he had put her in an 
 awkward position in regard to public opinion and 
 before the judgment of posterity by urging her to the 
 partition of Poland. That was an old story. For the 
 present, she was certainly not anxious to have Diderot 
 as a negotiator. She explained the position very 
 frankly and amusingly to Durand : she found her guest 
 at once too old and too young for the business : " in 
 one way he seems a hundred years old, and in another, 
 ten." She had no difficulty in turning him aside from 
 this ticklish path. She sent him to inspect her scholastic 
 institutions, and at once he flung himself with the same 
 ardour on this fresh scent. All that he saw and heard 
 enchanted him. The plans and statutes in particular, 
 the former not yet quite worked out, the latter still less 
 put into practice, seemed to him wonderful. He did 
 not know, or he forgot that the proverb, " Bumaga vsio 
 tierpit (Paper bears anything)," has, in the country to 
 which it belongs, a particularly expressive meaning. 
 He had these statutes translated, and planned an 
 undertaking which was, indeed, carried out later. And 
 he still preached. Alas! the ideas which he scattered 
 broadcast were to wait, even in his own country, more 
 than a century before bearing fruit. He preached com- 
 pulsory education. He preached the suppression of 
 Greek and Latin, in order to clear away the encum- 
 brance of merely academic training. He was allowed 
 to talk as he pleased. When, later on, after his return 
 to France, he wrote his Plan of a Unipersitv in T^usxia ^ 
 a vast programme of national education, this work, so 
 much appreciated, so largely commented upon, so con- 
 siderably utilized, in France and Germany, has never , to 
 this very day, been tran^latpH into Russian . 
 
 The theatrical performances given by the pupils of 
 the convent of Smolna and the Corps des Cadets 
 afforded him, however, a more favourable occasion for 
 putting into practice his generous inspirations and his 
 brilliant talents, One of his favourite notions, education 
 
204 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 by means of the theatre, found an easy chance of appli- 
 cation. Not content with talking at length on the 
 subject, he drew up lengthy schemes addressed to the 
 Empress, some fragments of which have been preserved, 
 and recently published. One cannot but admire the 
 ingenuity, the inexhaustible fecundity, and at the same 
 time the instinctive force and good sense, of this 
 prodigious mind. 
 
 " I confess to Your Majesty," he wrote, " that I should 
 be, if not displeased, at all events somewhat concerned, 
 if I had children who acted so well. The pieces that 
 they are made to act seem to me by no means of a 
 right nature to exercise their sensibility, to teach them 
 pity and benevolence, or to form their morals. How 
 often these innocent young lips have to give utterance 
 to unseemly words ! It is of the greatest importance to 
 draw up a little repertoire for their benefit." 
 
 On this point, it chanced that he was listened to. 
 Catherine was all the more disposed to share his feeling 
 as she had already had the same feeling herself. 
 Though she set her pupils to act Zaire and L Enfant 
 prodigue, she held that there was too much about love 
 in them, and she had applied to Voltaire for precisely 
 that petit theatre which Diderot had in his view, in 
 which these young minds could exercise themselves 
 without a premature awakening to dangerous emotions. 
 She had, for her part, imagined a suitable adaptation, for 
 this purpose, of the masterpieces of the French stage. 
 But the great man had drawn back ; this time it had 
 seemed to him that he was asked too much. There 
 was no such risk with Diderot. " What Voltaire did not 
 do," he wrote, " and what he would have done better 
 than I, I will do . . . only too happy to contribute in 
 the smallest way to the welfare of two of the finest 
 institutions that could be conceived of." And he im- 
 mediately sketched out the scenario of a transcription 
 of the Femmes savantes : " In the place of Henriette, 
 take a pupil of your house, give her two or three very 
 ridiculous friends, bring in, in place of Vadius and 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 205 
 
 Trissotin, two or three equally ridiculous young people, 
 set over against them a weak-minded father, a very 
 honest and well-bred lover, and stick in a very lively 
 and caustic servant, who would stand out against the 
 ■ father in defence of the pupil, get the silly lover out 
 of the way, and secure the success of the honest young 
 man." 
 
 IV. 
 
 This was perfect in its way ; but it did not do much 
 for Diderot or philosophy. No doubt he said and thought 
 that he was delighted with his stay at St. Petersburg, 
 and with Jus Empress. For she belonged now to him. 
 He was not far from believing that he had discovered 
 her. He described and explained her to Falconet ! He 
 took immense pleasure, too, in his visits to the palace, 
 especially as he there found occasion for more recreative 
 encounters than those lengthy ones with Catherine. At 
 sixty as at thirty, at St. Petersburg as at Paris, he was 
 still the man to whom the Comte de Montmorin said, 
 on coming away from an orgy : " Confess now, Diderot, 
 that you are an atheist only because you are a libertine ; " 
 and who replied, " Do you think I should be one for 
 nothing 1 " On leaving the Empress he was glad to 
 pause in the ante-room, and, after having perorated for 
 three hours, he had still something to say to Anastasie 
 Sokolof, a charming maid-of-honour, who had seen Paris 
 and remembered it, and who had now for some years 
 become the favourite lady-in-waiting of Catherine, and 
 who was to become, later on, her friend and confidante 
 under the name of Madame Ribas . and whom he found 
 means to fool about with between two doors, and to kiss 
 " on her neck, just by the ear." Catherine was not less 
 pleased, for her part, to have near her this caldron always 
 bubbling, but not, like that of Gregory Orlof, never 
 cooking anything, overflowing - in fact -with sensations 
 and ideas. IShe had no desire to make use of it for her 
 
2o6 The sEmiramis of the north 
 
 political concoctions, either abroad or at homejj for that 
 she had her own pot, into which nothing went but the 
 ingredients of her own choice. But the spectacle, all 
 the same, was calculated to entertain her and provide 
 her with an agreeable distraction. Only, this distraction, 
 which by March 1774 had been going on for five months 
 without coming to anything particular, could not go 
 on indefinitely. There was even a particular reason why 
 it should end promptly. Catherine and her philosopJier 
 were not alone in St. Petersburg. Now the apprehen- 
 sions of Falconet were only too fully justified. In 
 December 1773 Grimm wrote : " He (Diderot) has made 
 no conquest here, except that of the Empress. I am not 
 concerned about that, but everybody has not the sense 
 of that great woman, and is not accustomed as she is to 
 all kinds of oddities." The philosopher's first appear- 
 ance at court, dressed in black, which he would never 
 quit, had already caused a certain frost. A few years 
 before, at Paris, being asked by the Comte de Broglie 
 if he was in mourning for Russia, he answered : " If I 
 had to go into mourning for a nation, Monsieur le Comte, 
 I should not go so far afield for it." At St. Petersburg 
 he was not so ready with his answer. " His ideas froze," 
 he said, " at sixty degrees below zero." Voltaire hi.d 
 already realized this phenomenon, and had written to 
 the Empress : " As soon as you have got Russia up to 
 thirty degrees instead of sixty, I shall beg leave to come 
 and spend the rest of my life there." He changed his 
 costume for a fine embroidered court suit which Catherine 
 sent him, but things went no better. 
 
 We scarcely know how much to believe of the story 
 of Thiebaut in reference to a little conspiracy set on 
 foot against the philosopher by the courtiers, anxious to 
 get rid of him. He was informed that a native scholar 
 proposed to enter into a discussion with him before the 
 assembled court, in order to prove to him the existence 
 of God. At the appointed hour a circle was formed, and 
 Diderot saw before him an unknown individual, who, 
 without further preamble, said to him : 
 
The PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT ' 207 
 
 a — l—b^ 
 
 " Monsieur, = x ; therefore God exists." 
 
 3 
 
 The anecdote is very improbable. Despite the state 
 of the thermometer, Diderot would have found something 
 to reply to an accusation of atheism, and Catherine, 
 who had read the Letters on the Blind for the use of those 
 who see, and who had declared that her own sight had 
 been strengthened by it, ought at least, however little she 
 had really studied the subject, to have known so much. 
 What is certain is that as the winter drew to its close, 
 Diderot realized that his residence on the shores of the 
 Neva, to which no definite limit had been assigned, 
 had lasted long enough ; by remaining any longer, he 
 would lose his time and somewhat compromise his 
 dignity. 
 
 He went away sadlv, He went away disconcerted 
 and empty-handed. \Ks for the Encyclopedie, it had 
 never even been mentionedj and, after having been on 
 such footing with her, he could scarcely appeal to her 
 munificence : it had been too much grand seigneur to 
 grande dame, power to power ! Personally, the philo- 
 sopher would willingly have let all his hopes and schemes 
 go by. But he had to think of his return, of the effect 
 that he would produce at Paris, of the recriminations 
 that he would have to expect. And, awkwardly enough, 
 on the eve of his departure, he wrote a letter to the 
 Empress, expressing his reluctance to take anything 
 from her but a souvenir without actual value, insinuating 
 at the same time that an ambassador of the Republic of 
 Letters did not travel at the expense of his constituency. 
 
 Then he wrote to his wife : 
 
 " On the eve of my departure from St. Petersburg, 
 Her Imperial Majesty presented me with three bags 
 containing a thousand roubles each. If I take out of this 
 the cost of an enamelled plaque which I have presented 
 to the Empress, the cost of my return, and the presents 
 that it will be only decent for us to give the Naryshkins 
 . . . there will remain five or six thousand francs, perhaps 
 a little less." 
 
2o8 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 And to Mademoiselle Voland : 
 
 " I return loaded with honours. If I had felt inclined 
 to dip my hands into the imperial treasury, I think they 
 would have let me ; but I preferred to silence the evil 
 tongues at St. Petersburg. . . . Oh ! I assure you that 
 you must really believe all that I say to you of this 
 extraordinary woman, for my praise has not been 
 bought. All the ideas that filled my brain when I left 
 Paris evaporated the first night I spent at St. Peters- 
 burg ; my conduct has been all the better and more 
 straightforward for it." 
 
 The poor dear great man excused himself for not 
 having done more ; he pleaded to wife and friend the 
 cause of his forced disinterestedness ; he found certain 
 extenuating circumstances : the letter which had brought 
 him three thousand roubles, and no more than that, 
 had been shown beforehand to Grimm, and to the 
 Swedish minister, the Baron de Noli<en ; both had 
 assured him that the Empress would not take him at his 
 word, that she would do her duty as he had done his. 
 He further explained how he had been obliged to give 
 his watch to M. Balla, a secretary whom Catherine had 
 sent to look after him on the way, for he would certainly 
 otherwise, heedless as he was, have lost himself: " Look 
 here, if I gave my watch to my guide, she zvill know of 
 it, and then it is of so little use to me. . . . Now that 
 you know all, what do you think .' Do you think that 
 Her Imperial Majesty will hold strictly to the articles of 
 our agreement, and will do nothing more for me 1 " 
 
 Then, as he gets further from St. Petersburg, the 
 mean and petty ideas, which he had lost sight of 
 without regret, return to his mind, and take form more 
 definitely. He becomes more and more affirmative in 
 his confidence to Madame Diderot : " I cannot persuade 
 myself that this is all we have to expect from a sovereign 
 who is generosity itself, for whom I have travelled, at a 
 somewhat advanced age, more than fifteen hundred 
 leagues, who has not disdained to accept a present, and 
 for whom I have laboured in every way, almost day and 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: DIDEROT 209 
 
 night, for five months." Since his departure he has 
 renewed negotiations in regard to the Encydop/die. The 
 Empress has handed over the projectto one of her ministers 
 to carry out the material details of the undertaking, and 
 the funds will be shortly sent : " It will come to no less 
 than forty thousand roubles, or two hundred thousand 
 francs, of which we shall have the revenue now and for 
 about six years . . . which will settle our affairs nicely." 
 Only it must not be mentioned to the children, " who 
 will bother us for money." And then the success of the 
 affair is not certain. (Nevertheless, " in truth, the more 
 I think, the less I can fancy that this sovereign, really 
 so great in everything, should give me the advantage 
 over her on this occasion, for you must know that it J5_ 
 myself who tied her hands and checked her beneficence.^ 
 
 He neglects to inform his wife that during his residence 
 at St. Petersburg, living with the Naryshkins, and having 
 all his expenses paid, he has already several times dipped 
 into the imperial treasury, not to any great amount, 
 twelve thousand francs at the outside, according to the 
 local witnesses. On setting out he has also had the 
 present of a handsome English carriage, but that has 
 broken down at Mittau. He hopes for better things. 
 And that is why, at every halting-place, he does not 
 forget to make a fresh appeal to the slumbering generosity 
 which he is so anxious to awaken. He writes to the 
 Empress to assure her that he will do his best to amaze 
 those who question him about her. Going even beyond 
 Voltaire, he calls himself Russian, declaring that he has 
 become so " by reason of the ingratitude of his country 
 and the kindnesses of the Empress." And when he has 
 reached Paris, how skilfully he paints the scene of his 
 return ! 
 
 "The talents and virtues of Your Majesty are the main 
 subject of our evenings. People want to know every- 
 thing. — ' She is then noble in her personal appearance ? ' 
 ' No one could be more so.' — ' But you say that she is 
 full of grace and affability .' ' ' All who have met her 
 will say as I do.' — ' And you did not tremble at meeting 
 
 P 
 
210 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 her ? ' ' Pardon me, but that did not last long, for one 
 never thought of her rank or grandeur ; she caused one 
 to forget them both in an instant.' — ' Has she firmness 
 of mind ? ' ' She told me herself that she was never 
 more herself than in moments of danger.' — 'Does she 
 love truth ? ' 'So much so, that I condemn to the 
 mortar of Amurat all who dare not speak truth to her.' 
 — 'Is she well informed.'' 'Better informed of her 
 empire, vast as it is, than you are of your little domestic 
 affairs.' " 
 
 Whole pages are devoted to the enumeration of the 
 infinite qualities possessed by the extraordinary woman 
 in whom the philosopher finds " the soul of Brutus with 
 the charm of Cleopatra," as he declares to Princess 
 Dashkof and repeats to Mademoiselle Voland ; " the 
 strength of mind of the one and the fascination of the 
 other." Alas ! the strength of mind of Brutus-Cleo- 
 patra manifests itself just now, to the detriment of poor 
 Diderot, in a refusal to give any satisfaction to his hopes 
 and wishes. /As a matter of fact, we do not believe 
 that Catherine ever seriously thought of giving two 
 hundred thousand francs for the carrying out of a new / 
 Encyclopedia Her large liberalities were always reserved"^ 
 for her favourites. And even in these cases her gifts 
 were generally in lands and peasants, which, especially 
 since the annexation of the Polish provinces, cost her 
 nothing. She meant to keep on good terms with philo- 
 sophy by better management than that, and she 
 succeeded. In 1779 Diderot was reduced, "in one of 
 those urgent circumstances which constrain the most 
 upright souls to do some outrage to modesty," to appeal 
 to the generosity of the sovereign for the much more 
 modest sum of two thousand roubles. She complied at 
 once, and, with that delicacy which she ahvays used in 
 these small gifts, thus doubling their value, she instructed 
 Grimm to send the amount to Diderot, "who would 
 know what he was expected to do with it." Five years 
 later, at Grimm's suggestion, Catherine endeavoured to 
 see after the better bestowal of her library and her 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS : DIDEROT 211 
 
 librarian at Paris. For twenty years Diderot had been 
 living in the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade, on the fourth 
 storey. His library was on the floor below. According 
 to his doctor, it was bad for his health to have to climb 
 these four or five storeys, suffering as he was from 
 asthma. Catherine took for him a handsome set of 
 rooms in the Rue de Richelieu, on the first floor. But 
 it was too late : twelve days only were given him to 
 delight in his new establishment ; on the thirteenth, a 
 choking fit carried him off. He had nevertheless had 
 time to reflect on the fragility of the bonds which unite 
 men with the great ones of the earth, and to write this 
 phrase, which contained the substance of his reflections 
 on what he had seen at St. Petersburg : r'The most 
 dangerous enemy of a ruler is his wife, if she can do 
 anything but bear children."j Soon after, Catherine also 
 made her reflections on the illustrious dead, and thus 
 communicates them to Grimm : " I found in the catalogue 
 of Diderot's library a MS entitled, ' Observations sur 
 P instruction de sa Majesty Imperiale aux d^puth pour la 
 confection des lois.' It is mere twaddle, showing neither 
 knowledge of things, nor discretion, nor foresight ; if my 
 Instruction had been to the taste of Diderot, it would 
 have turned things topsy-turvy. He must have written 
 it after his return from here, for he never mentioned it 
 tojTie." 
 
 iQn both sides the disenchantment was equally com- 
 pleted All that remained ot an intellectual intercourse 
 which seemed so intimate was the library, now added 
 to the imperial collection ; but even that had an un- 
 fortunate fate. It was not treated in the same way as 
 Voltaire's ; brought to St. Petersburg in 1786, it re- 
 mained for some time in one of the rooms of the 
 Hermitage, but before long it was found to be in the 
 way. It was turned over to the public library, and 
 Diderot's books, annotated by his own hand, got scat- 
 tered into one department or another, now impossible to 
 identify. What Madame de Vandeuil says of a special 
 copy of the Encyclopedie, with the suppressed passages 
 
212 THE S EMIR A Mis OF THE NORTH 
 
 restored by Diderot, seems inexact. Its loss is none 
 the less to be regretted. In 1792, Madame de Vandeuil 
 destroyed, in her fear of the Revolution, a last monu- 
 ment of the glorious past, the letters written by 
 Catherine to her father; and, in 1815, the St. Peters- 
 burg Journal de V Empire printed these lines in a 
 literary article : " The Empress of Russia invited M. 
 Diderot to her court ; after having seen and heard him, 
 she lost no time in getting rid of a guest of his kind." 
 Some, however, of the MSS which came into Cath- 
 erine's hands with the library escaped this disaster. 
 These six volumes of MS were copied in 1874 by 
 M. Godard, the writer of a curious book on St. Peters- 
 burg and Moscow, and they have been printed in the 
 new edition of Diderot's complete works published in 
 1875-77. The philosopher accused France of being a 
 bad debtor to him : she has amply justified herself 
 towards his memory. 
 
 III.— D'ALEMBERT— ROUSSEAU— VOLNEY. 
 
 Such tricks of fortune were not likely to happen 
 to the more balanced and independent D'Alembert. 
 He was nevertheless one of the first of the philosophic 
 circle to whom Catherine made advances. In August 
 1762, Beranger wrote from St. Petersburg to the Due 
 de Choiseul : " I should inform you, Monseigneur, that 
 the Empress has written to M. d'Alembert to invite him 
 to take up his residence in Russia. She offers him a 
 pension of ten thousand roubles, that is, fifty thousand 
 livres, the liberty of continuing the Encyclopedie, and 
 of printing it at St. Petersburg. In return she asks 
 only for some mathematical instruction to be given to 
 Monseigneur the Grand-Duke. I think we should resist 
 these attractions held out to our great men in this 
 country. Besides, the climate seems to me little suited 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: D'ALEMBERT 213 
 
 to the sciences and arts in general. . . . Diogenes 
 would have made a great mistake if he had left his tub in 
 fair Greece to dwell in a palace among the Sarmatae." 
 
 It was a false alarm ; D'Alembert drew back. " If it 
 had only been a question," he wrote to the Empress, " of 
 making the prince a good mathematician, a passable 
 man of letters, or even a middling philosopher, I would 
 not have despaired of success ; but it is far from a 
 mathematician,. a man of letters, or even a philosopher, 
 to a great king, and no one, Madame, knows and 
 proves it more than you." He did not, however, give 
 his real reason for refusing, and he explained the matter 
 quite differently to his friends, saying simply : " In that 
 country it is too easy to die of a colic." 
 
 Catherine insisted in vain, going so far even as to 
 propose to the philosopher to bring with him to St. 
 Petersburg, not merely the EncyclopMie, but all the 
 encyclopaedists, if it was so painful for him to leave 
 them behind, offering him double the pension she had 
 at first proposed, the rank of ambassador, and a splendid 
 house to live in : he preferred his entresol in the Palais 
 Mazarin. She was piqued, and their friendly relations 
 were suspended for six yeaTs:"'"' It was D'Alembert who 
 broke silence, in 1772, in order to intercede in the affair 
 of the French officers taken prisoner in Poland. He 
 desired to have it written on his tomb : " He obtained 
 at the hands of the immortal Catherine, in the name 
 of philosophy and humanity, the release of the French 
 prisoners." He neither succeeded in being very eloquent 
 nor in seeming greatly moved. Catherine, on her side, 
 was dry, almost brutal. Perhaps she still wanted an 
 occasion for revenge. She never forgot a grudge, except 
 with the lovers who were ungrateful to her, and with 
 them she contented herself with the law of retaliation. 
 She did not release the prisoners ; she wrote a scarcely 
 poHte letter in answer to the philosopher, and she made 
 numerous epigrams against him amongst his friends, 
 Voltaire especially. Voltaire did not keep the epi- 
 grams to himselfi and the quarrel was complete. 
 
214 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 From this time forward D'Alembert took upon himself 
 to pass no very lenient judgment on the undertakings 
 by which the Empress continued to draw upon her the 
 attention of her contemporaries. In 1783 he condemned 
 the annexation of the Crimea, and his demonstrations 
 on the subject in the circle of the philosophers were 
 among the last acts of his life. On May 8, 1784, Cather- 
 ine wrote to Grimm : " It is sad that D'Alembert died 
 before he could see our justification of the Crimean 
 affair. At all events he ought to have heard both sides 
 before passing judgment. Instead of that he merely 
 abused us. I am sorry for it, as well as for the cowardice 
 that he showed during his illness . . . But these people 
 have often practised other than they preached. I have 
 been in his bad books for a long time, and you know it 
 was Voltaire who set us at variance." 
 
 II. 
 
 Catherine was never in correspondence with Rousseau, 
 and towards the end of her life she professed particu- 
 larly hostile sentiments in regard to the Genevese philo- 
 sopher. Was there anything in his writings to offend 
 her .? We can scarcely imagine so. She did indeed, in 
 1760, forbid the sale of Emile, in order to follow the 
 example of others ; but, in 1791, she also made extracts 
 from the Contrat Social, even of such aggressive passages 
 as this : " The laws of liberty are more austere than the 
 yoke of tyrants is hard." Audacities of word or thought 
 had no terrors for her. Nor did her prohibitive ukase 
 cause much prejudice to the philosopher : a few months 
 before it was issued, on February 20, 1763, Rulhiere, 
 then in residence at Moscow, wrote to Rousseau : " There 
 are only three copies of your last works in all Russia, 
 and these were brought over on particular occasions. 
 The University bookseller, the only bookseller in 
 Moscow, will not get any till the return of the vessels. 
 Meanwhile, all the copies are torn out of people's hands." 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: D'ALEMBERT 215 
 
 And some time after that Catherine probably dictated 
 to Gregory Orlof, who would have found great difficulty 
 in writing it by himself, the letter in which he invited 
 the author of Emile to find a home and a refuge in one 
 of his chdteaux. 
 
 But Jean Jacques never came to Gatshina ; he neg- 
 lected even to lay his homage, even by letter and in the 
 strained and unwilling manner of D'Alembert, at the 
 feet of Semiramis. Semiramis was greatly offended. 
 [She had long considered philosophy as a sort of tributary 
 province, a country under the protection of her empir^ 
 She did not, however, make public profession of her 
 resentment until she came to find herself in disagree- 
 ment, not only with D'Alembert, but with the entire 
 circle of which he and Jean Jacques were members. 
 
 For that was bound to come about ; it was decreed. 
 These allies of a day followed ways too widely diverging: 
 their forward movement leading to the final shaking of 
 the social edifice in the tempest of revolution, and hers 
 to an equally violent reaction in the opposite direction. 
 She wrote to Grimm : " Do you remember how the late 
 King of Prussia pretended that Helvetius had admitted 
 to him that the project which the philosophers had in 
 view was the downfall of all the thrones, and that the 
 EncydopMie had been set on foot with the aim of 
 destroying all the kings and all the religions .'' Do you 
 also remember that you never wished to be included 
 among the philosophers .■' You were right in never 
 wishing to be included among the illuniinats, the 
 Uluviinh, or the philosophers, for all that only tends, 
 as we see by experience, to the destruction of things." 
 
 The letter is dated February 11, 1794. 
 
 And now Rousseau, to whom she has never written, 
 with whom she has never compromised herself, becomes 
 her scapegoat. His back is quite broad enough to bear 
 the weight of her disdain, her wrath, and her anathemas. 
 She seizes upon the phrase, "Rousseau set them on all- 
 fours," which she has found in a wretched comedy 
 of Palissot, who for his part probably found it in a 
 
2i6 THE SEMI RAM IS OF THE NORTH 
 
 letter, by no means offensive, of Voltaire to Rousseau. 
 She gloats over this farce, played at the Com6die 
 Frangaise in 1760, in which the future author of Emik 
 is represented as walking on all-fours, in which a valet 
 who pilfers from his master exclaims : " I am becoming 
 a philosopher," and which ends with these lines : 
 
 " Enfin tout philosophe est banni de c&ns, 
 Et nous ne vivons plus qu'avec les honnetes gens." 
 
 Voltaire had written more courteously, in reply to a 
 courteous gift of the Discours sur rinegalM des con- 
 ditions : "One feels inclined to go on all-fours when 
 one reads your book . . . No one has ever expended 
 more wit in trying to make us stupid." 
 
 But in 1794 Volatire is no longer listened to as a 
 master. There has been war between philosophy and 
 Catherine for the last three years. In 1791 Volney sent 
 back to Grimm, with a violent letter, the gold medal 
 which Cathei'ine had once sent him, and which he had 
 accepted so gratefully. Hostilities and retaliations are 
 all the order of the day. Grimm pays down in cash 
 for a witty reply that Rivarol composes against Volney, 
 but Catherine feels the need of pouring out her wrath 
 on a greater personage, and it is Rousseau who bears 
 the brunt. This time poor Jean Jacques has reason 
 to consider himself persecuted. But he is no longer 
 there to complain of it. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the risk of somewhat surprising, if not shocking, 
 our readers, we have endeavoured to say precisely what 
 were the relations, so often discussed, of the Empress 
 with the philosophers. It would be unfair, however, to 
 estimate them at too low a valuation. Such as they were, 
 the part they played in modern history was far from 
 being a slight one. They aided largely in the work of 
 fusion and amalgamation of disparate elements in which 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: VOLNEY 217 
 
 the future of aging Europe would seem to He. They 
 set in motion a current of mutual attractions and reac- 
 tions between two nations separated less by distance 
 than by a reciprocal misunderstanding of each other's 
 modes of existence, and ways of thinking and feeling ; 
 and this is no small thing to have done. A moment 
 has already come when these two nations — on one side 
 an enormous reserve of unused forces and energies, on 
 the other an accumulation of material and intellectual 
 stores — have come to seem, at the two extremities of 
 the ancient continent, like two buttresses propping up 
 the mighty mass of the tottering edifice, and hindering 
 it from falling ; separated also at the base, at the depths 
 of their foundations, but joining overhead in a solid arch. 
 Perhaps this is but an illusion, and the arch, when the 
 day of trial comes, will not prove so solid as it seems. 
 No matter ! Even if it only brings us some years of 
 peace, if it only defers the shock for some years, pre- 
 serving to us what yet remains to one or the other of 
 independence against the law of " the strongest force," 
 we are still bound to be thankful for so much, for it is 
 childish to fall out with Providence over the means 
 which it chooses to adopt, and wise to accept the good 
 it sends us, no matter from what quarter. And then, 
 who knows 1 Another day may come, when, really 
 united in heart and mind, not only by the clamours of 
 the street, interchanging no longer mere fugitive im- 
 pressions, but the lasting treasures of their experience 
 and their genius, the one acquiring something of the 
 sentiment of authority so deeply rooted in the other, 
 the other something of the passion for liberty so vivid 
 and so fruitful in the fair land of France, the two 
 nations may raise for themselves by a single united 
 effort, for themselves and for the European race at large, 
 some really durable shelter against the coming storm. 
 
 And, meanwhile, high above, where already the arches 
 of the ideal edifice meet and mingle, the spire of the 
 cathedral begins to mount towards the sky, the solitary 
 efforts of a thinker or an artist summing up in itself, 
 
2i8 THE S EMIR AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 and lifting upwards towards infinity, the inspirations 
 and aspirations of the many, the profound work of a 
 De Maistre, thought out at St. Petersburg, the exquisite 
 work of a Turguenief or a De Vogue, dreamt out on 
 the banks of the Volga or the banks of the Seine, one 
 book the more and one step the further towards the 
 mysterious, the divine, the surely happy end to which 
 all things move. 
 
 IV.— PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN RUSSIA.— VON VISIN 
 "novikof, RADISHTCHEF. 
 
 At the same time that Catherine came to violent 
 rupture with her former friends in France and Swit- 
 zerland, she took violent action also against the 
 local representatives of the philosophical spirit. For 
 there existed certain such in Russia, and up to the 
 present they had been tolerated, even treated in a 
 friendly manner, if not courted as were their foreign 
 rivals. They are still but little known, much less known 
 than they deserve to be, if only because they give 
 us some insight into the milieu to which they belonged. 
 We see in them, clear and in sharp relief, the dissimi- 
 larity (on which we commented at the beginning of this 
 chapter) of the intellectual and moral type which they 
 personified, and the natural divergence of its develop- 
 ment with regard to the classic type of the West. 
 
 Different accounts have been given of the sympathies 
 awakened in Russia, or at least in a certain group of 
 more or less independent Russians, by the action of 
 ideas of which the Revolution was the logical, the disas- 
 trous, outcome. Two princes Galitzin taking part, 
 musket in hand, at the taking of the Bastille ; Karagi - 
 zin arriving at Paris, in March 1790, with tricolour 
 cockade in hat ^nd enthusiasm in soul ; the future 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS: VON VISIN 219 
 
 minister of Alexander, the young Count Stro^anof. 
 taken to the sittings of the Constituent Committee by 
 his tutor Romme, entered by him at the club of the 
 Jacobins, and crying: "The happiest day of my life 
 will be the day when I see Russia regenerated by 
 another such revolution ; " these unlikely actors in 
 the great drama have served to point both friendly 
 and unfriendly comments. Looking closely into things, 
 we find that a good deal must be taken off the apparent 
 aspect of them. Karamzin has expressed his real 
 impression of France in a series of letters, whose 
 contents are calculated to evoke, from, the general 
 point of view, a sentiment similar to that which was 
 formerly aroused, in a certain group of French novelists 
 by the publication of the correspondence of a great 
 Russian novelist, whose friends they supposed them- 
 selves to be. The dominant note is the horror aroused 
 in this supposed enthusiast of the Revolution by the 
 greater part of the revolutionary doings. 
 
 Karamzin had been preceded in France by one of 
 the most enlightened and independent Russians of the 
 day: at the end of 1777, Von Visin, the author of the 
 Bxigadier, took up his abode, first at Montpelier, then at 
 Paris. Writing to his sister and one of his friends, Count 
 Panin, he lets us see pretty clearly his way of looking 
 at what was going on in the country in which he found 
 himself He is very severe upon the monarchy, but 
 more severe still upon the society which he saw forcing 
 the last strongholds of the already tottering monarchy. 
 He criticizes it even on its most attractive sides, those 
 which, in our own day, constitute the charm of this 
 vanished world, and redeem its weaknesses and devi- 
 ations. The music at parties is execrable, the con- 
 versation vapid ; in the dinners the cookery is often 
 excellent, but it is so badly served. \Everything, to his 
 mind, is sacrificed to appearances?] He pries into les 
 dessous, less carefully seen-to then than now, of this 
 elegant world, and points out the unseen poverties of it 
 all ; a shirt of coarse linen covered by a flood of lace, 
 
220 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 grease-spots underneath a dazzling white frill. He 
 shows us the grand lady dining in her kitchen when 
 she is by herself, so as to economize the fires in her 
 dining-room. He has no more indulgence for the spirit 
 than for the form : little enough thinking goes on in 
 this frivolous society, for people talk too much, and the 
 few ideas that exist there are a mixture of ignorance 
 and superstition. As for morals, they have arrived at 
 the utmost point of depravity : honour and uprightness 
 exist only in words, and the other virtues are not even 
 alluded to in conversation. The two essential traits of 
 his judgment of things are, first of all, a strong con- 
 servative tendency : the Bourbon monarchy impresses 
 him as an edifice "where it is unpleasant to live, but 
 which it would be disastrous to destroy " ; and, finally, 
 the fixed idea of the superiority of his own country from 
 every point of view. On his way through Lyons, he 
 notes that the finest streets in this town are not equal 
 to a piereulok (side alley) in St. Petersburg. His first 
 impression of Paris is that of a disorderly neighbourhood 
 in which there is nothing to attract strangers but the 
 plays and the women. And he finds the drama 
 mediocre and the opera insupportable. A represent- 
 ation of the Brigadier at St. Petersburg evidently seems 
 to him a much more interesting affair. 
 
 And these are not individual impressions, isolated 
 .testimonies. In all the contemporary Russian literature 
 'it would be hard to discover a glimmer of sympathy for 
 France, and for the reforming and emancipating current 
 which carried things before it at the moment. A very 
 distinct movement of hostile reaction is seen in the very 
 .fashion journals which give the patterns for dresses 
 a la reine, and coiffures a la contre-rdvolution. "The 
 hand trembles with horror in commencing this narra- 
 tive" . . . such is the opening of an article in the 
 Gazette de Saint-Pe'tersbourg describing the taking of 
 the Bastille. " O Cartouche ! Cartouche ! incomparable 
 in thy kind, rise, return to the National Assembly, and 
 demand thy rehabilitation. Thou canst be sure that 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS: VON VISIN 221 
 
 it will do thee justice." Such is the tone of the Russian 
 press from 1790 onward. 
 
 The truth is that the few Russians of the day, who 
 were open to ideas of liberty and reform, showed them- 
 selves equally adverse to Western and particularly 
 French influences. In the movement of emancipation 
 and reform which is seen vaguely at work in this world, 
 put to sleep, as it were, by the inevitable counter-shock 
 of the great European upheaval, two currents, faint 
 enough as yet, are to be traced : one of foreign origin, 
 assimilations of Western culture, French, German, or 
 English ; the other essentially national, indigenous, and 
 in active conflict with the first-named. And it is this 
 second which had with it the most enlightened minds 
 of the age, from Von Visin . the dramatist, to Boltin , 
 the Slavophilist historian ; from Novikof, the founder 
 of schools, to Radishtchef, the pamphleteer. All are 
 nationalists, reformers, and liberals, but in their own 
 way, which is far from being the way of their precursors, 
 and still farther from being the way of the direct authors 
 of the great revolution. 
 
 II. 
 
 In attacking vigorously some of the institutions which' 
 seemed to him to present an obstacle to the moral and 
 material development of his country, the law of serfdom ■ 
 among others, going indeed further on this tack than 
 the boldest thinkers of the West, Novikof shows himself 
 at the same time resolutely opposed to the scepticism 
 which he sees in the Western philosophers. It is indeed 
 a reaction against this tendency which impels him, 
 in 177s, into freemasonry, and afterwards into the 
 illuniinism of Saint-Martin. Satirist or moralist, he 
 remains always the mystic. 
 
 The history of the philosophic and reform movement 
 in Russia is at this moment almost coincident with the 
 history of freemasonry, and this Russian freemasonry 
 
422 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 has a particular colour of its own : it has a particular 
 turn of idealism, asceticism, and exaltation ; and at the 
 same time the external rites, the ordeals through which 
 the neophytes have to pass, are more cruel and fantastic 
 than those in the Western world. It is under its most 
 cloudy, passionate, and eccentric aspect that the sect is 
 seen at St. Petersburg and Moscow, under the influence 
 of Saint-Martin. Saint-Martin himself does not .seem 
 to have ever visited Russia; he, must in all probability 
 have made proselytes among the Russian travellers 
 whom he chanced to come across. At Montbeliard he 
 had occasion to see the mother-in-law of the Grand- 
 Duke Paul, and he immediately became her oracle. At 
 London he won over Prince Alexis Galitzin, and even, 
 for a time, Simon Vorontsof A Polish gentleman, 
 Grabianka, the Russian admiral Pletcheief, and the 
 Bavarian Schwartz, were the principal propagators of 
 his doctrine in Russia. A typographic society was 
 established at Moscow, which published, along with the 
 works of Jacob Boehme, Arndt, and Spener, all the 
 manuscripts and translations of French works which had 
 anything of the moral religiosity of the sect. The 
 literature of the country was soon impregnated with 
 it, and Russian society was easy of approach. Saint- 
 Martin's own book, Des erreurs de la veriti, trans- 
 lated by Strahof, the Arcana coelestia of Swedenborg, 
 found intent readers at St. Petersburg and at Moscow. 
 Novikof was the soul of the movement : hence his 
 rupture with Catherine. 
 
 Catherine had at first looked favourably on the develop- 
 ment of this tendency ; she saw in it water for her 
 own mill : the classic freemasonry with which Novikof 
 and his friends were at first in alliance was well-disposed 
 towards the Government, full of reassuring loyalty, and 
 Catherine was herself in the early -period of her humani- 
 tarian aspirations and her liberal inspirations. There 
 were friendly relations with the national sectaries as 
 there were with the Western philosophers. A lodge, 
 built at St. Petersburg in 1784 at the Empress's expense, 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS: NOVIKOF 22 j 
 
 bore the name of Imperial. At the same time Polish 
 freemasonry organized itself at Warsaw, and adopted 
 the name of Catherine under the Northern Star. A 
 change for the worse came over things when ilbnninism 
 appeared above the horizon. Catherine, with her posi- 
 tive mind, could feel no sympathy for it. jWe have 
 pointed out, in sjjeaking of her dramatic works, t hat the 
 greater part of them were inspired by a reactionary 
 tendency against the invasion of mystic ideasTJ The 
 relations of the Martinists with the family of the 
 Grand-Duke Paul contributed yet further to alienate 
 the Empress. The establishment, in 1788, of a school 
 to which Novikof also gave the name of Catherine, 
 writing verses for the inauguration in which " the house 
 of Minerva is dedicated to the Russian Minerva," did 
 nothing to bring the founder back into favour. He had 
 already lost all favour in the eyes of Catherine. When, 
 four years later, she came to occupy herself with the 
 question of national education, she did not associate 
 Novikof with the work. 
 
 It is not, however, till 1792 that she comes to open 
 enmity. The declaration of war against the philosophers 
 of France leads to the campaign against the Russian 
 Martinists. Only, in this case, the fight is not carried 
 on in epigrams. In 1792, a futile pretext, an in- 
 fraction of certain regulations in regard to printing, 
 brings about the arrest of Novikof The carrying out 
 of the prosecution is confided to Prince Prozorovski 
 and Stephen Sheshkovski, the two heads of police 
 at St. Petersburg and Moscow ; but in reality it is 
 Catherine herself who takes charge of it. She throws 
 herself into it with her usual whole-heartedness, and 
 something more than the usual. Numerous notes in 
 her hand have been preserved, containing a list of ques- 
 tions with which the accused is to be confronted. She 
 seems to fling herself into it with a sort of rage. At 
 bottom, she does not believe in the ideal nature of the 
 mysticism with which she has to do. She seeks for 
 more actual motives, ambitious views, ideas of con- 
 
224 THE SE MIR AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 spiracy. The phantom of a conspiracy in favour of 
 Paul haunts and exasperates her. Novikof has un- 
 luckily lent some books to the heir to the throne. 
 They are immediately seized ; whereupon it is found 
 that one of the volumes contains extracts from Thomas 
 a Kempis. No matter ! After having brought the 
 accused to judgment, she pronounces the sentence 
 herself without going on with the trial : fifteen years' 
 imprisonment in the fortress of Schliisselburg ; the 
 burning of all the publications of the Muscovite 
 society ; the destruction of the house in which the 
 meetings had taken place ; the closure of all the free- 
 masons' lodges in Russia. Nor is this enough: judged 
 and condemned already, Novikof has to submit to 
 further, endless interrogatories ; Prozorovski and Shesh- 
 kovski harass him one after another, and Catherine is 
 never tired of questioning and tormenting him. She 
 has by this time forgotten a phrase which she wrote 
 Abet ween 1744 and 1764, and which is preserved among 
 \her autograph notes : " Was there ever seen a more 
 /barbarous way of procedure, and more worthy of the 
 I Turks, than that of beginning by the condemnation in 
 (_order to come finally to the examination .' " 
 
 In 1794 Novikof finds himself imprisoned in an attic 
 in company with a forger ; he complains of want of 
 air, of food, of clothes, and of medical attendance. He 
 has asked in vain for the services of a doctor who, like 
 himself, is a prisoner. The procurator-general Samoilof 
 does, it is true, explain : the warders of the prison are 
 starving themselves, and the authorities have not enough 
 money to pay for medicines. The hapless publicist is 
 not set at liberty till two years later, on the accession of 
 Paul to the throne. But he is used up ; sick in body 
 and mind, irreparably broken, he has lost his mental 
 equilibrium, and returns to freemasonry only to fall 
 into its worst absurdities and its grossest aberrations. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS: RADISHTCHEF 225 
 
 III. 
 
 Of this style and character, RadishtcheL is an even 
 more pronounced type. Brougfit up as a page at the 
 court, sent at the expense of the state to the University 
 of Leipzig, placed in one of the offices of the Senate, 
 he seems for a long time a model of the good tcliinovnik, 
 the ideal subject of the autocratic and orthodox empire. 
 He feels, however, certain stirrings, and ere long, in the 
 blind struggle which is going on around him — a struggle 
 of contrary influences and tendencies, whose starting- 
 point and direction we have pointed out — he does not 
 become merely an agitator : his soul itself seems to him 
 a field of conflict where the vain combat is desperately 
 waged. In the book for which he is condemned to 
 death, the Joitrney from St. Peter sbiirgh to Moscow, and 
 in a periodical publication. The Souls' Post, by which 
 he has led up to this daring stroke, he is obviously 
 under the influence, so far as the ideas are concerned, 
 of Raynal ; as for the form, it is a copy of the Senti- 
 mental Journey of Sterne. But, in his application of 
 ideas thus borrowed from without to the problems of 
 national life, in the question of the liberation of the 
 serfs, for instance, he finds himself, at one bound, at 
 an equal distance from those among Western thinkers, 
 Voltaire for example, who leave the work of liberation 
 to the good-will of the slave-proprietors, and Rousseau, 
 who proclaims the danger of a premature emancipation. 
 He insists on immediate liberation, without precautions 
 and without limitations ; but it is to be the work 
 of the Government, and the Government alone. He 
 believes in the samodierjavie, in the universal and abso- 
 lute almightiness of the tsarat. When he is asked, in 
 the course of his trial, if he has any complaint to make 
 against the sovereign whom he has dared to offend, he 
 protests : how could he possibly have for her august 
 person any other sentiments than those of every good 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE SEMJRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Russian— gratitude and veneration ? This does not 
 prevent him from inserting in his book a certain Ode to 
 Liberty, written by a declared revolutionary, nor from 
 expressing the opinion that the finest eulogy that could 
 be given to any man is that which was given to 
 Franklin in the well-known line : 
 
 " Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." 
 
 So, too, he is a sceptic, and yet a careful follower of 
 the rites of his religion, a cynic and a pietist, convinced 
 of the theory of egoism, and yet himself an enthusiastic 
 altruist. His head is in a state of chaos, that chaos 
 from which Russia has not even yet entirely emerged. 
 
 Note that his plan for emancipation is exactly what 
 i was realized seventy years later, and to which the 
 Russian serfs now owe their liberty. His book is really 
 nothing but a document of political and administrative 
 statistics. He relates the story of three young nobles 
 planning together to violate the daughter of a peasant, 
 and carrying out their enterprise with justified assurance 
 of absolute impunity. He brings on the scene a district- 
 surveyor whom his subordinate dare not awaken in 
 order to ask him for the orders necessary to rescue 
 twenty young men who are in peril of their lives. He 
 gives a list of girls led astray in a single village by a 
 serf-proprietor who enjoys a universal reputation for 
 humanity and uprighteousness, and he arrives at a total 
 of sixty. " Why, it is Alexander Vassilevitch (Salty- 
 kof)!" cries Catherine. He gives the list also of the 
 customary achievements of the censorship, citing one 
 instance of an author condemned as blasp/iemoushccaMse 
 he had used the expression, " the sly god," in sj^king 
 of Cupid. Catherine was capable, even in if go, of 
 laughing at the affair, but she found other phrases in 
 the book such as this, in which the writer gave his 
 impressions of the neighbourhood round the imperial 
 residence at Tsarskoie : " I am struck by the silence 
 which reigns there . . . All is silence ; every one 
 trembles ; it is the abode of despotism." 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS: RADISHTCHEF 227 
 
 This is quite enough to decide the fate of the author. 
 Radishtchef is condemned to death, and only escapes 
 by a lucky coincidence : the order for his execution is 
 issued on the day when peace is signed with Sweden. 
 Catherine is in good-humour that day, and he is re- 
 prieved. The knout and ten years of Siberia are sub- 
 stituted for capital punishment. On the way to exile, 
 passing Tobolsk, Radishtchef writes these verses, which 
 come from the heart of a poet : 
 
 " Wouldst thou know who I am, what I am, whither I go ? 
 I am what I have always been, what I shall be all my life. 
 Neither a beast of burden, nor a log, nor a slave, but a man." 
 
 His ultimate fate is pretty much that of Novikof. j 
 Pardoned by Paul, even brought by Alexander into the 
 legislative committee, he is never himself again when he 
 finds himself once more at liberty. He has succumbed 
 to the terrible ordeal which has been imposed upon him. 
 Haunted by continual fears, seeing everywhere snares, 
 perils, and menaces, he kills himself, in consequence, it 
 is said, of the question of a high official, " Whether he 
 had had enough of Siberia .-' " 
 
 There is yet one more characteristic trait : he poisons 
 himself by swallowing a bottle of brandy at one draught. 
 Philosophic ideas had still their work before them in 
 Russia. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the European kingdom of the mind, which was 
 hers in the estimation of some of the most brilHant 
 subjects that could be found there, and of which she 
 claimed, if not the cares, at all events the honours of 
 sovereignty, Catherine allowed a privileged place to 
 philosophy. Nevertheless, letters, the arts, and even 
 the sciences, had their share of favour. What that 
 share was we shall endeavour to define as exactly as 
 possible. 
 
 Catherine had no desire to be the creator of literary, 
 artistic, or scientific glories ; she annexed those already 
 in existence, as she annexed the Polish or the Turkish 
 provinces. She distributed abundant compliments, 
 medals in gold or bronze, more often bronze, and from 
 time to time a little money : to Sedaine for his comedies, 
 to Guys for his Travels in Greece, to the Abbe de Saint- 
 Sulpice for his philanthropic establishments, to La 
 Harpe, to Dorat, to Marmontel, to Volney, to the Abb^ 
 Galiani. She sent furs to Mademoiselle Clairon, to 
 Lekain, to Preville, to Bellecour. She bought from 
 Philidor the Carmen saeailare, a composition more 
 lauded than loved by the public ; from a Capuchin of 
 the Rue Saint-Honor^, Father Chrysologue, a plani- 
 sphere of his invention. She was more generous in the 
 
 328 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 229 
 
 purchase of collections, for there she got her money- 
 value in kind ; she offered five hundred thousand livres 
 for the cabinet of Pellerin, the famous numismatologist, 
 who, for his part, preferred to remain Velche, and to 
 part with his unrivalled collection to Louis XVI. for 
 less than half the amount. She begged the King to 
 increase Madame d'Epinay's pension. She wrote with 
 her own hand no less than three rough drafts of a 
 complimentary letter to Marmontel, and she sent with 
 it a printed translation of his Belisaire, in which the 
 Orlofs, the Shuvalofs, and the Tshernishofs had col- 
 laborated with her. All this gained for her an ^ 
 absolute servility of homage, and all but a deification 
 in praise. 
 
 The richest tribute of both the one and the other 
 came from France, which indeed was the main recipient ^ 
 of the petty favours of Semiramis. " If your august 
 ancestor has deserved immortality in Russia, it is in 
 France that she has obtained it," said Suard to the 
 Emperor Alexander in 1824, and it was the absolute 
 truth. La Harpe and Dorat wrote rhymed epistles in 
 honour of the great Catherine on the model of those 
 addressed by Boileau to Louis the Great ; Thomas 
 devoted the last years of his life to the glorification, 
 in a very indifferent Petrcide, of the heiress and the 
 successor of Peter I. Volney, who was then writing 
 his Considerations sur la guerre des Turcs avec les Riisses, 
 endeavoured to justify the political system adopted by 
 the Empress in the East. In his Tableau de Paris, 
 Mercier proposed as an example to the Dauphin the 
 conduct of the great Empress ; not her private conduct, 
 doubtless. Even the Church ranged itself on her side, 
 though the St. Catherine of Voltaire scarcely seems, at 
 first sight, to possess the qualities requisite to figure in 
 its calendar. Her officiants waved the censer before 
 her with the greatest zeal, from the Abbe Gaubert, the 
 obscure writer of a dull poem which drew from her a 
 medal, and the Abb6 Roman, writer of a poem on 
 Inoculation, dedicated to the sovereign, to the Abbe de 
 
230 THE SEMIRAMIS OP THE NORTH 
 
 Lubersac, who seized the opportunity of the visits paid 
 by the Grand-Duke Paul to the establishments at Paris, 
 in 1782, to instruct his readers concerning those of 
 St. Petersburg, which he confidently imagined were at 
 least as fine, if not finer. 
 
 Thus fervently preached and practised, the cult of 
 St. Catherine found but few recalcitrants : Mably 
 making certain reservations in regard to the policy of 
 the Empress in Poland ; Raynal describing the famous 
 legislative assembly at Moscow as a farce ; Rousseau 
 getting out of the way of the advances which came to 
 him from this quarter, more perhaps from force of habit 
 than from conviction. In the feminine clan, a certain 
 coldness manifested itself, even certain definite indi- 
 vidual revolts: even the imperial "fag" in person could 
 not arouse the devotion of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. 
 " Grimm is back again," she wrote to the Abbe Galiani. 
 " I have overwhelmed him with questions ; he represents 
 the Tsarina not as a sovereign, but as an amiable 
 woman, full of wit, of vivacity, of everything that can 
 attract and charm. In all that he told me I seemed 
 to see rather the captivating art of a Greek courtesan 
 than the dignity and lustre of the Empress of a great 
 empire." Madame du Deffant was very sceptical on 
 the subject, and, in writing to her, her "grandmother," 
 the Duchesse de Choiseul, abandoned herself to a wordy 
 and violent diatribe on the relations of Semiramis with 
 Voltaire. In 1794 Madame de Stael, writing to Meister, 
 the friend and collaborator of Grimm, in reference to a 
 conspiracy, abetted by Catherine, against the regent 
 of Sweden, said : " Your Empress has done us much 
 harm. They say that she even knows of my existence. 
 1 wish I could forget hers ! " 
 
 There were also certain dissidents, fervent in their 
 way, but forming a church of their own. Figuring as 
 he did in 1770 among the most ardent devotees of the 
 faith according to Catherine, the Abbe Galian i refused 
 to admit all its dogmas, as formulated by the High 
 Priest of Ferney. That of tolerance, for instance, in- 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 231 
 
 scribed on the Voltairian credo among the virtues exer- 
 cised by St. Catherine, he could not accept. As he 
 confessed to D'Alembert : " His Catherine is a great ■^ 
 woman, because she is intolerant and triumphs, and 
 all great men have been, and must be, intolerant.'' It 
 is true that he sometimes amused himself by signing 
 his letters Machiavellini, and his schism did not prevent 
 him from joining with Diderot in a project for an in- 
 scription to be placed on the base of the statue of 
 Peter the Great, by which the work of Falconet was 
 to be transformed into a monument to the glory of 
 Catherine. He attempted a Latin epigram : 
 
 " Catharina II. Augusta 
 
 Mater senatus, Mater castrorum 
 
 Mater Patriae^' etc. 
 
 Catherine was better inspired in her own interests, 
 and wrote simply; 
 
 " Petro prima 
 Catharina secunda." 
 
 But she bought from the Abbe a cabinet of books 
 and prints, collected by his brother, Bernard, the labori- 
 ous editor of Vitruvius, taking it from him at his own 
 price. Later on he had a little difficulty with her in 
 regard to a medal for which he was kept waiting a 
 long time. But the imperial " fag " had to suffer 
 for it. " Monster of forgetfulness," wrote the Abbe, 
 " what do you mean by all the teasing and tantalizing 
 hopes that you held out to me t Do you not see that 
 my bad luck is so momentous that it changes the order 
 and nature of the universe 1 Is it in nature that a 
 sovereign who has poured out millions in presents, who 
 scatters them as the sun does his rays upon the just 
 and the unjust, should hesitate for three or four years 
 before making up her mind to send you a bronze medal 
 for me 1 I rage against my incredible fate." But the 
 medal came at last, and Grimm no doubt handed on 
 
232 THE S'EMlRAMIS OP THE NORTH 
 
 the passage in the Empress's letter alluding to it : 
 " What is there so very extraordinary if he should be 
 on the reverse of a medal ? Has no one ever seen a 
 genius before ? " The Abbe at once ceased to lament 
 against his fate. He made his will, in which he stated 
 that the famous sword that had belonged to the Due de 
 Valentinois was to be offered for three hundred ducats 
 to a collector who had manifested the desire to possess 
 it, and that if he refused the terms, it was to be respect- 
 fully offered to the Empress of Russia, " in souvenir of 
 infinite gratitude for all her kindnesses." 
 
 Rulhier e, who never received a medal, not even a 
 bronze medal, made a very different sort of sacrifice 
 on behalf of the Empress. In the preface to the first 
 edition of his History of the Revolution in Russia, 
 not published till 1797, after his death and that of 
 Catherine, the delay in the appearance of the work 
 is set down to a pledge of honour given by the 
 author, after having refused a sum of thirty thou- 
 sand livres, offered by the Empress for some correc- 
 tions and suppressions to which he declined to consent. 
 We are left in doubt as to the reasons which could 
 have induced him to consent, in default of this conces- 
 sion, to an arrangement which seems much more to 
 Catherine's advantage ; and Diderot, who acted as 
 mediator, and corresponded on the subject with Fal- 
 conet, gives us no further explanation. " The Empress's 
 librarian" was one of the first to advise the suppres- 
 sion of the work, though the author had represented 
 the sovereign, " our sovereign," he wrote to Falconet, 
 "as a great woman, un gran ccrvello di principessa." 
 Catherine wished to see for herself; but the author 
 refused to give up his MS, or to send her a copy; he 
 pretended that he had never had any idea of publish- 
 ing the book, but had composed it merely to satisfy 
 the curiosity of a few friends. She was none the less 
 anxious. The friends thus privileged were fairly numer- 
 ous : D'Alembert read the MS, after the Comtesse 
 d'Egmont, and also Madame Geoffrin, and many others. 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 233 
 
 And they all gave the most reassuring accounts of it, 
 D'Alembert declaring that he preferred the truth as it 
 was presented by Rulhiere to all the apologies, and the 
 Due de la Rochefoucault declaring that he had found it 
 not indeed " a notable confession," but "a notable life" ; 
 Diderot finally summing up the matter thus : " If you 
 are very anxious, Madame, to have a good reputation 
 for the conventional virtues, the worn-out rags of your 
 sex, then the work is a satire against you ; but if 
 wide views, virile and patriotic ideas, are more your 
 concern, then the author represents you as a great 
 princess, and, taken all in all, he does you more 
 honour than dishonour." 
 
 Catherine had reasons of her own for being suspicious. 
 It was not only over her own reputation that she kept 
 watch. She knew by the example of the Abbd Chappe ■ 
 how a Frenchman could speak of Russia and the Rus- 
 sians, after having lived for some time in their midst. 
 She knew too, perhaps, what were likely to be the im- 
 pressions of the former secretary to the Embassy. Her 
 " black cabinet " did not exist for nothing, and some 
 letters of Rulhiere sent from St. Petersburg to Rousseau 
 might have revealed to her phrases of this sort : 
 
 " Your treatise on education has not yet found its 
 way to Russia ; these people, who pride themselves, in 
 addition to all their other ambitions, on being amateurs 
 of letters and philosophy, have only got, as far as 
 libraries and printing establishments are concerned, the 
 mere wreck and ruin of those founded by Peter I." 
 
 Or again : 
 
 " What you say of the Russians is strikingly true . . . 
 The distinctive character of this nation is its genius, or 
 more generally its talent, for imitation. All the Rus- 
 sians, in their little way, possess what their Tsar had 
 in his great way ; they are regular apes, and their native 
 gift would doubtless have caused them to make rapid 
 progress in the arts, if it were not counter-balanced by 
 their vanity, another not less characteristic national 
 defect." 
 
234 THE S EM IRA MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Diderot recommended Catherine to arrange matters 
 by giving Rulhiere a place as consul at St. Petersburg. 
 Rut her relations with Voltaire had given her certain 
 fixed ideas as to the way in which matters of this kind 
 should be arranged with men of letters. She sent her 
 representative at Paris the order to buy the MS. Un- 
 luckily, Prince Galitzin, an amiable man, in good repute 
 in literary circles, was not at his post. It was Hotinski, 
 a charge d'affaires, who undertook the arrangement. 
 The result was unfortunate: Rulhiere sent the Empress's 
 messenger about his business. Perhaps he had not used 
 due ceremony. That was Diderot's view of the case. 
 " Money is accepted or refused according to the people 
 who offer it," he remarked sententiously. He then 
 undertook the affair himself, and succeeded better. 
 That was in 1768. Five years later, when Diderot was 
 at St. Petersburg, Catherine still questioned him in 
 regard to the terrible MS, which had been put under 
 lock and key, but which always caused her some 
 anxiety. She died without ever seeing it. Thirty 
 years later, after the book had been published, Princess 
 Dashkof declared that it must be a forgery. No Rus- 
 sian translation has appeared to this day, though M. 
 Longuinof has made one. We have related elsewhere 
 how Catherine endeavoured to obviate the damage done 
 to her reputation and that of Russia by the wretched 
 Abbe whose name we have mentioned above, and who 
 was far from resembling the Abbe de Lubersac. 
 
 The ill-success of Cha ppe d'Autej pche, as of Rulhiere, 
 in his relations with the empire and the Empress of the 
 North, was due to his not having followed the advice 
 given by Madame du Deffant to Voltaire, and to have 
 challenged that test of personal contact which none 
 of the literary, artistic, or scientific relations entered 
 upon by Catherine with Western Europe were able to 
 survive. In 1766 Semiramis is fired with enthusiasm 
 for the future author of L'Ordre natural et essential das 
 Societes politiques, known then merely for some articles 
 published in the Journal d^ I' Agriculture, du Commerce 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 23S 
 
 et des Finances. A memorandum drawn up for her 
 benefit, a recommendation on the part of Diderot, give 
 her an intense desire to see the author, and even to have 
 him in her service. What are her intentions in regard 
 to him ? Apparently, if we are to judge by the sub- 
 sequent course of events, they are extremely indefinite. 
 But she is excited by the extravagant tirades which the 
 enthusiastic Diderot does not fail to send to Falconet 
 in praise of his protege's merits : " Ah ! my friend, if 
 Her Majesty is really devoted to truth, what a treat for 
 her ! 1 realize and partalce in it in advance. We give 
 up this man for you ; he gives us up for her. . . . When 
 the Empress has this man, what will be the good of the 
 Quesnays, the Mirabeaus, the Voltaires, the D'AIemberts, 
 the Diderots .' None, my friend, none ! Here is the 
 man to console her for the loss of Monte squieu.'' She " 
 must have this man. She is afraid that, having been 
 for a long time in the diplomatic service at Martinique, 
 the French Government may hinder him from coming 
 over to her. She puts the arrangement of affairs into 
 the hands of Panin. 
 
 As for Mercier de l aJliviere, he really believes himself 
 called upon to take in hand the government, at all 
 events of the home affairs of the empire of the North. 
 His first concern, on arriving at St. Petersburg, is to 
 arrange his rooms as offices of the various departments 
 which he is prepared to direct. The Empress being ab- 
 sent, he waits upon Count Panin, who promises a post 
 with a salary of three hundred roubles a month. The poor 
 Mercier has a more serious fall from the heights than even 
 Diderot had had, and the following dialogue ensues be- 
 tween him and the prime minister of Catherine : 
 
 " I had a much higher salary in the King's service. 
 I can only accept what you offer me as a little addition 
 to my travelling expenses. And I do not even know 
 yet in what way I can be of use to Her Majesty." 
 
 "You can stay in Russia, and take a place in the 
 magistracy. Are you not discontented with your court, 
 and particularly with M. de Choiseul .'' " 
 
236 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 " I ? Not in the least ! The King shows me the 
 utmost favour, and M. de Choiseul has always been the 
 best of friends to me. I have so little intention of 
 leaving France for good, that I have put aside my 
 travelling expenses, and have taken leave of absence 
 for two years only. To show you how much this is 
 the case, I have now only to return at once to my own 
 country." 
 
 " If that is so, go then ; but the Empress will be 
 glad if you will wait at least until she returns to 
 St. Petersburg." 
 
 Mercier waited, but to little purpose. A rhunie 
 which he made for the Empress on his great work 
 on L'Ordre naturel, and a new paper on the labours of 
 the Economic Society of St. Petersburg, were not after 
 all enough to induce Catherine to confide to him the 
 administration of her empire. Some tactless proceedings 
 on the part of the man who was to fill the place of 
 \JV[ontesquieu added to the Empress's dissatisfaction 
 wiffi hTm. Besides a numerous following, he had 
 brought from Paris his wife and another lady friend, 
 to whom Madame Mercier seemed to have no objection. 
 These ladies were anxious to enjoy themselves at 
 St. Petersburg, and were soon the subject of much talk. 
 Then, too, when the publicist was in the presence of the 
 Tsarina, he had no idea how to adopt the tone suitable 
 to his station and to his ambitions. " If ever you 
 recommend any one to the Empress," wrote Falconet 
 to Diderot, "see that he keeps the right sort of 
 company. . . If he is admitted to the Empress's circle 
 he should not say, loud enough to be heard, ' A man 
 like me,' for those present will never take that for 
 modesty. When he is arguing about his Ordre naturel, 
 he should not lose his temper with his opponent, and 
 say : ' You must be very stupid if you don't understand 
 me.' " Thiebaut records a fragment of conversation with 
 the Empress herself, who is questioning her guest on his 
 ideas in regard to legislation : 
 
 " God has left it to no man to establish laws." 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 237 
 
 " In what then consists the science of the legislator ? " 
 
 " In the recognition of natural laws." 
 
 " I wish you good-day." 
 
 The final congd soon follows, and Catherine writes 
 to Grimm, telling him of her disillusion: "Diderot and '-' 
 Galitzin, and you and Panin and I, have all been on 
 the wrong scent. We were all blind, we took it all 
 on trust, from letters, on the authority of twenty people, 
 but it was very foolish of us ! " She kept a grudge for 
 a long time against M. Solon la Riviere, as she called ^ 
 him, and in 1774 she wrote to Voltaire: " M. de la 
 Rivifere, who imagined that six years ago we were 
 walking on all-fours, and who really took the trouble to 
 come from Martinique to set us up on our hind legs, 
 was a little bit out of date." 
 
 Nevertheless she began the same thing over again 
 with Sena^_dfi_Me.i-lhan. This time it was in connection '^ 
 with some historical work, on which it was again im- 
 possible to come to an agreement. A refugee of the 
 Revolution, living very quietly at Venice, but calling 
 himself Maltre de reqjiites honoraires et intendant des 
 provinces de Hainaiit et de Cambresis, Senac suggests 
 in 1 79 1 that he should write the history of Catherine. 
 Asa specimen of his competence for the task, he sends 
 an Introduction to the work, which seems attractive, to 
 the favourite of the moment, Zubof Catherine, how- 
 ever, instructs her minister at Venice, Mordvinof, to 
 examine the candidate : " Is he sufficiently pliable ? " 
 The examiner sends in a favourable report. An invita- 
 tion is at once sent to the future historiographer, and 
 two thousand ducats are sent him for his travelling 
 expenses. But it is no longer the history of Catherine 
 that he is to write : it is to be the history of Russia in 
 the eighteenth century, not without giving a prominent 
 place to the reigning Empress. Scarcely has he arrived 
 at St. Petersburg when the reigning Empress has again 
 changed her mind : she does not wish to be mentioned 
 in a historical work published in her lifetime. He must 
 wait till after her death. But, all the same, she writes 
 
238 THE SE MIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 endless letters to the historian, giving a quantity of 
 suggestions for the work which she asks him not to set 
 about, including even the materials for a very detailed 
 portrait of her person. 
 
 This foolery goes on for some time, the work remain- 
 
 / ing in suspense, but Catherine seeming enchanted with 
 the workman. Suddenly there is a change of front. 
 In June, in conversation with Grimm, Catherine was 
 still on the chapter of the charms of her historian, 
 as she called him ; in September, she writes to the 
 " fag " : " As for M. de Meilhan, who is in very in- 
 different health, I find in him infinitely more will than 
 power to do. He has said very little, in the most 
 charming way. The history, if it is ever done, and I 
 hope not, will come to the same thing ... In the 
 archives at Moscow, the scholars who are there are 
 scandalized at his frivolity . . . He appears to have 
 said that in Russia one sees nothing but beards and 
 orders . . . You shall know one day why I sent for M. 
 de Meilhan ; but I found him not up to the work . . . 
 The man is working with all his might, trying to 
 
 y write the history of a country of which he does not 
 know the language." 
 
 She complains that the unfortunate Senac has been 
 much too ambitious, that he has wanted to become 
 Minister of the Exchequer, and that he has gone to the 
 army and insisted on giving advice to Patiomkin, " who 
 yawned at it " ; that he has even wanted to be appointed 
 ambassador at Constantinople, because he is fond of 
 sofas and the Turkish way of living. She even accuses 
 him of getting into bad repute at St. Petersburg by 
 paying attention to a certain Madame Shtcherbinin, 
 " whose conduct is too bad for anything." 
 
 On his side, he discovers, after he has been three 
 months at Moscow, that Russia " is not a bit French," 
 and is greatly disgusted at finding it so. " I should not 
 at all wish it to be so," replies Catherine, to whom he 
 makes the remark. He too writes to her voluminous 
 letters, to one of which she replies : " I see quite well 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTLSTS 239 
 
 that we shall make whole volumes, and when we have 
 made them, we shall not be any nearer understanding 
 one another than we are now." He takes the hint, and 
 demands leave of absence, asking only for the title of 
 " Intendant of Her Majesty's library." He apparently 
 loves honorary appointments, and collects titles. With 
 a somewhat malicious wit, she points out to him that the 
 equality now established in his country does not admit 
 of distinctions of this kind. Finally, he obtains a 
 pension of fifteen hundred roubles, and goes to Vienna, 
 where, in 1792, he tries to indoctrinate old Prince 
 Kaunitz, and to prove to him that " in a country where 
 everything, ideas included, is topsy-turvy, it is easy to 
 please everybody"; he dies there in 1803. 
 
 II. 
 
 On the whole, however, the foreign litterateurs and 
 scientists are better treated by Semiramis than those 
 of her own subjects who attempt to follow, timidly 
 and from afar, the course of La Harpe and Dorat, of 
 Mercier and Senac. These last, it is true, have their 
 reasons for not being over-particular. We learn from 
 a note added to the 1740 edition of the works of Tre- 
 diakovski, the poet who charmed the court of Anne, 
 fHSt~he- had the honour of reciting one of the poems 
 contained in the volume in the presence of the Empress 
 herself He did it on his knees, by the side of the fire- 
 place, and received as his reward a box on the ears 
 from Her Majesty's own hand. 
 
 Catherine does not distribute blows to Trediakovski's 
 later rivals, but, apart from Andre Shuvalof, who is 
 allowed the honour of re-touching Her Majesty's French 
 correspondence, she admits none of them to her inti- 
 macy. It would be indeed to run even greater risk 
 than with Diderot himself The memoirs of Timkovski 
 form a picture of these Russian men of letters, including 
 some of the most illustrious of thern, Lomonossof and 
 
240 THE S EMIR AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Sumarokof, for instance, meeting together at the house 
 of "JoKh Shuvalof, and spending their time in violent 
 quarrels, accompanied by vollies of the grossest abuse. 
 They call one another drunkards and thieves, and 
 usually end by coming to blows, upon which Shu- 
 valof turns them all out of doors. Sumarokof is the 
 most violent. Having had a quarrel, in 1770, with 
 Belmontia, who plays the principal parts in the Moscow 
 theatre, he rushes upon the stage one day in the midst 
 of the performance, picks up the actress in his arms, 
 and carries her off into the wings, because he has for- 
 bidden her to appear in any of his plays. Catherine 
 is very indulgent in regard to the national poet; and 
 she sends this charming reply to the violent and hardly 
 respectful letters in which he attempts to justify his 
 conduct : 
 
 " Monsieur Sumarokof ! I have been much sur- 
 prised by your letter of January 28, and still more by 
 that of February i. Both seemed to be filled with 
 complaints against Belmontia, who has only followed 
 the orders of Count Saltykof The field-marshal was 
 anxious to see your tragedy, which was a compliment 
 to you. It would have been only seemly in you to 
 have conformed to the desire of the chief person in 
 authority at Moscow ... I think you know better 
 than any one how much respect is due to those who 
 have served their country with glory, and whose heads 
 have grown white in its service. This is why I advise 
 you to avoid similar disputes in the future. In this 
 way you will preserve the peace of mind which you 
 require for your work, and I shall always prefer to 
 see the passions represented in your plays rather than 
 to read them in your letters." 
 
 Before being appointed minister under Alexander I., 
 and not minister of education, but of justice, the poet 
 -JDierjavin plays at the court of Catherine, or rather 
 at that of Plato Zubof, a part beside which that of 
 Trediakovski, in the palace of the Empress Anne, seems 
 quite dignified. In its rapid evolution at the rear of 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 241 
 
 the other European nations, Russia at this time begins 
 to run ahead of them in certain moral, even material 
 matters, with a scarcely enviable celerity, and the singer 
 of Felitsa, as the friend of persons in high position, 
 figures already as an expert trafficker in occult influ- 
 ences, an eighteenth-century chequard before his time, 
 whom his nineteenth- century rivals might look upon as 
 a master. It is true that the poet does not know him- 
 self His rank in the hierarchy of the tchin seems to 
 concern him much more than his place in the temple 
 of the Muses. In praising Catherine in Felitsa for not 
 frequenting the too sublime sanctuary, he seems almost 
 to be apologizing for visiting it himself He compares 
 poetry to " a glass of lemonade, good to take when 
 one is too hot." His artistic education is null. His 
 instinct alone guides him, and at times it guides him 
 well, as in the Vodopad (The Cascade), composed on 
 the occasion of the death of Patiomkin, an admirable 
 poem, which almost permits us to pardon him for his 
 ingratitude towards his former protector. On the whole, 
 however, Pushkin has found the exact word in say- 
 ing that his poems are hke " the bad translation of a 
 masterpiece." 
 
 Apart from Sumarokof and Dierjavin, the current 
 of foreign influence, uninterrupted since Elizabeth, in 
 spite of the nationalist tendencies of the new school, and 
 stimulated by the apparent preferences of Catherine, 
 forms around her a whole group of writers, even of 
 poets, who attempt an even more direct imitation of 
 Western models than that attempted by Lomonossof, 
 to the extent even of disdaining their own language, 
 and rhyming French verses which Voltaire affected to 
 consider as good as his. Catherine is more reserved 
 in this respect. The translator of Marmontel seems to 
 think but little of the lyric gifts of Prince BielQssielski, 
 whose French works are nevertheless edited by Mar- 
 montel himself, and who ends one of his epistles ad- 
 dressed to France, to England, and to the Republicans 
 of Saint-Marin by this challenge : 
 
 R 
 
242 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 " R^ponse, s'il vous plait ! 
 Mon adresse en Europe est Apollon cadet." 
 
 Was Semiramis very far wrong ? D'AlIonville, refer- 
 ring to this poet in his memoirs, quotes some fragments, 
 in very dubious taste, from a Pindaric ode to Princess 
 Dolgoruki, for instance, in which we find verses of this 
 kind : 
 
 " Je confie aux echos de la machine ronde 
 Que rien n'est comparable aux tendres abatis 
 De la princesse Pudibonde ; " 
 
 or again : 
 
 " Hdas ! serait-il vrai, Pudibonde charmante, 
 Que ta belle maman, pour arrondir ce cou, 
 
 T'a claqud d'une main savarite, 
 T'a claqud doucement je ne saurais dire ou ? " 
 
 An operetta, which he puts on the stage at St. Peters- 
 burg under the name of Olenka, puts to flight the specta- 
 tors, at once bored and disgusted ; and Madame Vigee- 
 Lebrun gives an amusing account of her visit to the 
 prince-poet's picture-gallery : 
 
 " What have you come to admire, madame .' " 
 
 " Your pictures. Prince." 
 
 " I have such a lot. What school .' " 
 
 " The Roman school." 
 
 " It has such a lot of painters. Which would you like 
 to see .? " 
 
 " Raphael." 
 
 " Madame, Raphael had three manners. Which would 
 you like to see first .■' " 
 
 " The third." 
 
 " Good." 
 
 And this masterpiece of Raphael's third manner turns 
 out to be a shocking daub. 
 
 In default of other merits, Bielossielski has at least 
 the merit of being the father of the charming Princess 
 Zenaide Volkonski, so adored by poets, and so justly. 
 It is true that she may have inherited some of her 
 qualities from her mother's father, a man of rare intelli- 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 243 
 
 gence and of solid worth, though in a humble capacity : 
 Kozitski, Catherine's favourite secretary. 
 
 Andre Shuvalof, who is not to be confounded, as he 
 generally ispisven in Russia, with his uncle John, owes 
 his favour in the eyes of Catherine to his relations with 
 the patriarch of Ferney, his value as an assistant in 
 the French tongue, and his' discretion. His talents as a 
 versifier seem, in sp_,ite of the EpUre d Ninon, to count 
 for nothing. The Epttre a Ninon was persistently attri- 
 buted to Voltaire himself who not less persistently 
 denied its authorship, sending to the author, by way of 
 compliment, this only half-complimentary quatrain : 
 
 " L' Amour, Epicure, Apollon 
 Ont dictd vos vers que j'adore ; 
 Mes yeux ont vu mourir Ninon, 
 Mais Chapelle respire encore." 
 
 At the same time, writing to the Due de Richelieu, he 
 speaks of a young Russian " who writes French verse 
 better than all his Academic." 
 
 Published in 1774, sixty-eight years after the death of 
 the famous courtesan, the Epttre a Ninon had no very 
 great success in Russia, where too little was known of 
 the life and glory of the immortal priestess of love, 
 whose favours were solicited by the Cardinal de Riche- 
 lieu, and who was protected by Madame de Maintenon. 
 But every one at St. Petersburg knew the lines to 
 Nathalie Zagriajska, a beauty with whom the conqueror 
 of the Taurida was for a moment in love : 
 
 " Cet invincible amour que je porte en mon sein, 
 Dont je ne parle pas, mais que tout vous atteste. 
 Est un sentiment pur, une flamme celeste 
 Que je nourris toujours, helas ! mais c'est en vain. 
 De la seduction je ne suis pas I'apotre : 
 Je serais fortund possedant vos appas, 
 Je vivrai malheureux si vous ne m'aimez pas, 
 Je mourrai de douleur si vous aimez un autre." 
 
 Neledinski, the Russian translator of Zaire, the 
 RussiarT Petrarch, as some of his biographers are auda- 
 cious enough to call him, thought a good deal of this 
 
244 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 fragment. Catherine did not appear to share in the 
 general enthusiasm. She had the good sense to see, 
 I however vaguely, that these Russian versifiers in French 
 were only doing harm to the national poetry and to 
 themselves. But, like his uncle John, whose letters 
 have been attributed to him in every edition of the 
 correspondence of Voltaire, Andre Shuvalof was in 
 constant intercourse with the great man. He too was 
 set down as a " pupil " of the incomparable master. The 
 honour of having formed this disciple belonged more 
 legitimately, however, to a more modest professor, 
 Pierre Louis de Roy, author of a collection of Pohies 
 Diverses, published at Amsterdam in 1757, who was a 
 tutor in Shuvalofs house. Both uncle and nephew 
 were on several occasions guests at Ferney. In 1695, 
 Voltaire gave a performance of M^rope and Nanine at 
 his theatre in honour of Count Andre and his young 
 wife, and the latter presented two hundred thousand 
 ecus' worth of diamonds to Madame Denis for the per- 
 formance, and a similar amount to the Marquise de 
 Florian for having played the part of the Baroness in 
 Nanine. Shuvalof himself played Egiste in M^rope. 
 All this could not fail to give him a certain lustre in the 
 eyes of the Semiramis of the North and her court. It 
 also called forth various rivals. In the year when the 
 Epitre a Ninon was published, Voltaire referred to one 
 of these in a letter to D'Alembert : " A son of C ount 
 Rumjantsof has just been writing French verses, some 
 of which are even more amazing than those of Count 
 Shuvalof It is a dialogue between God and the 
 Reverend Father Hayer, author of the Journal ChrHien. 
 God recommends tolerance to him ; Hayer replies : 
 
 ' Ciel ! que viens-je d'entendre ? Ah ! ah ! je le vois bien. 
 Que vous-meme, Seigneur, vous ne valez rien.'" 
 
 Even more intimately associated with the intellectual 
 life of the West, Prince Dimitri Galitzin, Russian 
 minister, first at Paris, then at the Hague, where he 
 edited a complete edition of the works of Helv^tius, 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 24^ 
 
 had at least the wisdom to attempt the French language 
 only in prose, and only in dealing with scientific sub- 
 jects. Catherine, however, did not welcome his efforts 
 or summon him to the court, for which he was probably 
 by no means sorry. Perhaps too she would not have 
 cared to see at the court the Princess Galitzin, a 
 daughter of the Prussian general, Schmettau, and one of 
 the most notable women of the time, alike for her 
 beauty, her intelligence, and her taste for intrigue. 
 
 L 
 III. 
 
 There are very pretty stories, which one reads in the 
 French papers, about Catherine's relations with the 
 artistic world ; how the Semiramis of the North took her 
 ermine mantle off her own shoulders and put it over 
 Palsiello, who was cold ; replying to her viaitre de cour, 
 when he brings a complaint against the maestro, like 
 Napoleon to the prefect who had been ill-treated by 
 General Lassalle, that she could make fifty mattres de 
 cour whenever she liked, but not one Paisiello. It is 
 pretty, but it is not true. We shall endeavour to show 
 what the facts really were. 
 
 Catherine never had about her, in actual residence, 1 
 any writer or scientist of the first order ; for Diderot may 
 be said to have merely paid her court a passing visit. 
 One artist at least, among the greatest of his day, did 
 indeed live there for twelve years ; and unfortunately it 
 is in regard to him that Semiramis acted most unfairly, 
 and failed most signally in the part which has been 
 attributed to her by her admirers, and which she seems ■J 
 indeed to have had some pretensions to play in the 
 world of art. If the career of Fal conet, a man of 
 incontestable genius, has never received its due reward 
 in Russia, if his existence there has added some further 
 pages to the martyrology of great men misunderstood, 
 Catherine alone is responsible for it in the eyes of 
 posterity. It was not Russia which was in fault. On 
 
246 THE S EMIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 the contrary, we may say that the artist owes to Russia 
 the better part of his glory, and the opportunity, if not 
 of absolutely achieving himself, at all events of showing 
 what he might have done had circumstances been more 
 favourable ; if, for example, he had not been forced to 
 begin his career in the workshop of a wig-maker. 
 
 When Diderot arrived at St. Petersburg, and went to 
 see his friend, he met with a surprise which he has ex- 
 pressed with his usual frankness and vivacity. It was 
 not that he now first discovered the merit of the sculptor: 
 that he had been among the first to admire and praise. 
 But in the artist of the Pygmalion, and even in the more 
 virile craftsman of the Milo of Crotona, and the Christ 
 agonisant of the church of Saint-Roch, it had been 
 especially certain fine and delicate qualities that he had 
 appreciated. The colossal statue of Peter the Great, 
 the model of which he now saw, revealed a quite new 
 force in the artist. " I have seen it, I have indeed seen 
 it," he wrote to the artist, " and I give up passing an 
 opinion on any piece of sculpture, if you have not made 
 a sublime monument. ... I knew how skilful you 
 were, but may I perish if I ever thought you could do 
 anything like that. You have achieved in your lifetime 
 both a charming idyll and a large piece out of an epic 
 poem." Hyperbolical in his praise as Diderot always 
 was, his appreciation has been contested by modern 
 critics, to whom the work of Falconet seems destitute 
 of individual inspiration, made up of reminiscences and 
 imitations : there is no more improvising at the age of 
 fifty ! Nevertheless the grandeur, the epic touch, that 
 Diderot was not the only one to see at the time, still 
 impresses visitors from the West. And to bring this 
 new quality into the artist's manner, scarcely vivified as 
 yet, idyllic, as Diderot said, is incontestably the doing 
 of Russia, of those large horizons which environ the 
 figure of the great creator, of that creation itself, im- 
 pressing its own immensity upon the sculptor, its 
 immensity and its savage vigour. As for Catherine, all 
 she did was to torment the poor artist, or to let him be 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 247 
 
 tormented, with a crowd of petty annoyances, and little, 
 irritating pin-pricks. 
 
 Art always has been, and still is, more or less down u 
 to the present day, a foreign import in Russia. Towards 
 the middle of the fifteenth century the European in- 
 fluence, slowly ousting the Asiatic yoke, replaces, at the 
 court of Ivan III., the Byzantine by the Italian artists. 
 Poland, where Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I., attracts 
 a great number of her compatriots, passes on certain 
 of them to her neighbour of Moscow, and they are 
 employed in the construction of the palaces and 
 churches of the Kremlin. After the Italians come the 
 Germans. The turn of France does not come till 1741, 
 the time of Elizabeth, or rather of John Shuvalof, the 
 all-powerful favourite, and the first to set on foot the anti- 
 Germanic movement. Rastr elli is indeed, in 1761, the 
 architect of the Winter Palace, but it is Lamothe who, 
 in 1767, directs the building of the Hermitage; he is 
 followed by Valois at St. Petersburg, and with Lorrain 
 then Lagrenee, Doyen, and Houdon, French art is soon 
 out of all rivalry. Ere long, measures have to be taken 
 in France in order to put a stop to the emigration of 
 French artists, attracted by the favours held out to them 
 on the banks of the Neva. In 1767 a certain Daniel 
 Barral is arrested at Strasburg on a charge of unlaw- 
 fully tampering with French artists on behalf of Russia. 
 
 The idea of a statue of Peter the Great had already 
 haunted the brain of Elizabeth. But Rastrelli dies 
 before he has carried the work to completion, and Mar- 
 telli, who succeeds him, is interrupted in turn by the 
 death of the Empress. When he has finished his sketch, 
 Catherine is on the throne, and she is not satisfied by 
 the conventional hero in Greek costume who is presented 
 to her. She dreams of something quite different, she 
 knows not what, and she looks to Paris for some one 
 who can give form to this vague dream. Her appeal to 
 Falconet in 1766 is however a mere chance; or rather 
 it is the modesty and disinterestedness of the sculptor 
 which decide it, rather than a real appreciation of his 
 
24S THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 artistic skill. It is a cheap bargain, and that decides 
 Semiramis. The other French artists ask four hundred 
 and fifty thousand livres at the very lowest for under- 
 taking the journey and carrying out the work. Falconet, 
 to whom three hundred thousand livres are offered, 
 strikes off a third of the price himself It is character- 
 istic of the man who, having undertaken in 1747 to 
 execute, after a design of Coypel, a symbolic group, 
 " France embracing the bust of the King," took fifteen 
 years to carry out this official order, and, having sent it 
 in at last, begged to be allowed to destroy it, " one of 
 the worst," he said, " that could be done in sculpture," 
 offering to return the nine thousand livres that he had 
 received for his work. 
 
 The Empress is at Moscow when he arrives at St. 
 Petersburg. This is very much in his favour. A cor- 
 respondence at once begins between Empress and artist, 
 soon dropping into that tone of familiarity which Cath- 
 erine was always ready to adopt in such relations. From 
 October 1766 to January 1768, the date of the Empress's 
 return, the frequent exchange of often very long letters 
 goes on uninterruptedly, and, as usual, Catherine at first 
 finds it very charming. " His letters are really original," 
 she writes to Grimm, " or those of an original, and you 
 know that we do not dislike that." But it is an impres- 
 sion which does not last. Nothing lasts, indeed, with 
 this woman whose genius is so variable, ondoyant et 
 divers, and in this too so feminine. By the time she 
 returns to St. Petersburg she has already cooled down 
 in regard to the artist, and even in regard to the work 
 with which she has entrusted him. She does not visit 
 his studio for six weeks. 
 
 He, however, has set about his task with immense 
 ardour. He meets with unexpected difficulties ; he 
 finds himself surrounded with persons who, while they 
 might say with Catherine that they have no opinion in 
 regard to sculpture, as they have never had the oppor- 
 tunity of seeing a statue, all the same insist on giving 
 the artist advice as to what he is to do. Betzki, the 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 249 
 
 most enlightened of the lot, one day suggests that Peter 
 the Great should be made to look in a different direc- 
 tion with each eye, at the Admiralty with one, and 
 with the other at the twelve " colleges " of the 
 empire, contained in a very ugly building opposite. 
 Catherine happily does not countenance this wild 
 notion ; but she does not use her authority to put a 
 stop to the bickerings, indiscretions, and even insults, 
 to which the sculptor is daily exposed. Betzki one day 
 has the idea that the artist should undertake a statue 
 of Catherine at the same time as that of Peter the Great. 
 Falconet, almost immediately afterwards, shows him a 
 model in clay for the monument. 
 
 " How much ? " queries Betzki. 
 
 " Nothing. That is enough for me in itself" 
 
 " You are very clever, but we know what generosity 
 of that sort means ; it comes too dear." 
 
 " You shall see how clever I am ! " 
 
 And the sculptor seizes his model, and breaks it to 
 pieces. 
 
 Perhaps he is too quick-tempered and too sensitive. ^ 
 That is the opinion of Diderot himself, who calls him 
 " the Jean Jacques of sculpture," and writes to him : 
 " You are too ready to believe anything unfavourable ; 
 your sensitiveness carries you too far ; one evil-minded 
 person could put you at loggerheads with a whole city." 
 Falconet announces to his friend " that he has become 
 more bearish than ever," and Diderot replies : " That 
 is impossible." Catherine too advises him not to pay 
 so much heed to tattlers. Surly as he is, he is not 
 without wit, and one day he translates the usual inscrip- 
 tion Vache Vysokorodie (Your High Birth) which he 
 finds on a letter to Catherine, remarking : " That would 
 suit me admirably, for I was born in an attic." But he 
 . is brought into considerable straits. On his arrival he 
 has once more shown his disinterestedness : on being 
 offered three thousand five hundred roubles for his 
 maintenance, he contents himself with taking half. At 
 the end of six years he finds that provisions have gone 
 
250 THE SE MIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 up in price, and that he is unable to make both ends 
 meet. Thereupon he demands a few hundred roubles 
 extra. A sort of inspector of the Beaux-Arts, who 
 calls himself Lascaris, and who is an adventurer of the 
 deepest dye, replies that "he has already cost too 
 much." " M. Lascaris apparently takes me for the big 
 stone," writes the poor artist to Catherine, alluding to 
 the vast expense which has been occasioned by the 
 transport to St. Petersburg of the great mass of rock 
 on which the bronze equestrian statue is to be erected. 
 Not long after, he himself intercedes in favour of this 
 same Lascaris, " who has made himself as obnoxious as 
 a toad," according to Catherine, and who has richly 
 deserved his disgrace. Gross and ignorant as the man 
 is. Falconet prefers to have dealings with him rather 
 than with Betzki. 
 
 In the spring of 1770 the model of the statue is 
 finished, and exposed to public view. In order to aid 
 the artist in seizing the movement of a horse standing 
 on his hind legs as if about to spring forward, a groom 
 had for several months, several times a day, made the 
 Empress's two favourite horses. Brilliant and Caprice, 
 prance and curvet under his windows. The head of 
 the hero was modelled by a pupil whom the sculptor 
 had brought with him from Paris, and whom he was to 
 take back with him, to become his daughter-in-law and 
 the consolation of his old age, Mademoiselle Collot. 
 There are several busts signed by the young artist still 
 to be seen at St. Petersburg ; but her talent did not 
 fulfil all its promise, for the head of the great Tsar is 
 finely modelled. Probably the master had his share in 
 it too. The success was absolute ; every one was deeply 
 impressed. But now began what Falconet called "the 
 years of my impatience," or " the four or five years too 
 much that I remained at St. Petersburg." The transport 
 of the " big stone," which Catherine insisted on getting 
 from a bay near the Gulf of Finland, becomes an affair 
 of state. A reward of seven thousand roubles is offered 
 to any one who will find the means of moving this huge 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 251 
 
 mass weighing five million pounds, and it is the pseudo- 
 Lascaris who earns the reward, by buying the secret, it 
 is said, from a simple-minded blacksmith : an ingenious 
 system of beams hollowed out in grooves, in which run 
 copper balls supporting the huge pyramid. Catherine 
 herself sees the invention put into practice, but the 
 journey of the pyramid lasts a year. From 1770 to 
 1774, four years more are wasted in trying to find a 
 caster. Ersman, a Frenchman, who in 1773 undertakes 
 the job for a sum of a hundred and forty thousand 
 livres, gets hold of sixty thousand, and decamps without 
 having done anything to the work. Falconet, losing 
 all patience, decides on attempting it himself 
 
 As he has never done anything of the kind before, 
 he spends a year in researches and experiments ; at last 
 he feels confident of success, and, when the moment 
 comes, his workmen, frightened by the fire that they 
 themselves have lit, take to flight in the midst of the 
 casting. The casting is only partially successful ; the 
 head of the rider and the upper part of the horse are 
 absent. Falconet thinks he can remedy the misfortune 
 by casting these parts separately. He has no money 
 His " impatience" has to last till 1777. 
 
 At last the statue is in its place. After having mal- 
 treated the artist, after criticizing and jeering at his 
 work, every one is agreed in praising the result of his 
 heroic labour ; and the lines of d'Orbeil meet with 
 general applause : 
 
 " C'est par tes soins que le bronze respire 
 Sur ce rocher de Thetis apercju, 
 Et que le Tsar decouvre son empire 
 Plus vaste encor qu'il ne I'avait congu." 
 
 But Catherine takes no part in these tardy tributes 
 of praise. She is away, and thinking of very different 
 matters. Perhaps she is discontented with the artist for 
 not having entirely realized the vague dream that she has 
 had in her head. This horseman in the conventional 
 tunic, with panther-skin for saddle, this Roman emperor 
 
252 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 with the protecting gesture, is not her Peter the Great, 
 the rude and savage giant that she sees, in so near a 
 past, hewing out her empire with great strokes of sword 
 and hatchet, whose path she endeavours to follow. The 
 rock on which he is placed, the block of granite which 
 has been brought for her at such expense of time and 
 money, does not entirely satisfy her. She vaguely 
 realizes that in shaping and polishing it, in stripping it 
 of its garb of secular mould, and in striving to give it 
 an appearance of regularity, the artist has made a mis- 
 take. What she had dreamt of was a sublime, heaven- 
 ward flight of horse and rider, throning the creator 
 above the work of his hands ; what she sees is a big 
 stone overpowered by a horse too big for the pedestal, 
 scarcely lifting the horseman to the level of the first 
 storey of the neighbouring houses. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all, the work is a fine one, and the 
 visitor who catches sight of it as he arrives at St. 
 Petersburg, seeing it on high above the river which 
 Peter brought into the service of his glory, cannot but 
 feel that it says eloquently, that it personifies powerfully, 
 some at least of what it was meant to express. And 
 what human language could express the whole grandeur 
 and majesty of the living trophies which our history 
 owes to that other inimitable creator .? Since the day 
 when Falconet set the statue on its base, generations 
 have come and gone, and every generation has looked 
 at horse and rider with an equal enthusiasm. In 1812, 
 on the news of the threatened invasion, there was some 
 thought of carrying away the colossus on the desperate 
 retreat, as the ancient peoples carried their titular deities. 
 Some one dreamed that he saw the bronze horseman 
 cross the Neva to find the heir of his throne, and 
 bid him fear nothing, since " he protected his city." 
 The statue was left in its place, but Pushkin made 
 use of the vision of Bulhakof in one of the finest 
 poems. 
 
 In giving this titular deity to Russia, the inspirer of 
 heroic actions and splendid poems. Falconet sacrificed 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 253 
 
 twelve years of his life, and Russia has never rewarded 
 Falconet, and it is Catherine who is responsible for this 
 injustice. In 1778, weary of waiting for the inauguration 
 of the monument, which seemed to be put off solely for 
 the sake of annoying him. Falconet demands permission 
 to bid farewell to the Empress. She refuses to see him, 
 counts out to him the remainder of the sum agreed upon 
 for his work, and lets him go. He goes back sadly to 
 Paris, where he dies, after having vegetated for a few 
 years in the honours of the Academic de Beaux-Arts, 
 The year after his departure, Catherine uncovers the 
 statue with pompous ceremonials, which she turns into 
 a kind of personal triumph. As for poor Falconet, he 
 counts for nothing in this apotheosis, in which his very 
 name is scarcely recalled. 
 
 It is this same Empress, nevertheless, who in 1779 buys 
 from Cl^risseau, for a sum of sixty thousand livres, of 
 which hFTi~Th need, portfolios of drawings, which she 
 leaves in his keeping, as she had left Diderot his books. 
 Always the same example of the noblest virtues, the 
 virtues most suiting with the rank of Semiramis, prac- 
 tised at a distance. Good architect but bad courtier, 
 Clerisseau will not accept the imperial gift ; he sends 
 the portfolios to St. Petersburg; but he shows his 
 gratitude by demanding of Houdon a bust of the sove- 
 reign, whom he names his benefactress, and of whom he 
 wishes to have the likeness in his home. 
 
 We have few records in relation to the residence at 
 St. Petersburg of the great sculptor who summed up the 
 last efforts of classic sculpture. The little we know 
 authorizes us to believe that he had no more reason to 
 be content than Falconet. The bust of Catherine, to- 
 day the ornament of one of the most Parisian of salons, 
 that of the Baroness of Romand-Kaissaroff, is enough 
 to explain the reason of the coldness manifested towards 
 the sculptor by the Semiramis of the North. The 
 sculptor of L'Ecorchd was, in his way, a precursor, only 
 too sincere, of the school of modern realists. 
 
 That is a school towards which Madame Vig^e-Lebrun 
 
254 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 was certainly not inclined. Her visit to St. Petersburg, 
 however, at the end of Catherine's reign, was not more 
 successful. Was it the forgetfulness, surely pardonable 
 in the agitation of a first interview, of kissing the hand 
 which had been ungioved for that very purpose .' Was 
 it some other reason .'' We cannot say. But the great 
 artist and Semiramis are far from getting on together. 
 A few weeks after the former's arrival, we read in a letter 
 to the " fag " : 
 
 " Listen, if you please : in the time of Louis XIV., 
 the French school of painting promised to paint nobly, 
 and to unite intellect with charm. Here comes Madame 
 Le Brun in the month of August, as I am returning to 
 town ; she pretends to be the rival of Angelica Kauf- 
 mann, who certainly unites elegance with dignity, and 
 more ; all her figures have ideal beauty. The rival of 
 Angelica Kaufmann, for her first attempt, begins by 
 painting the Grand-Duchesses Alexandrine and Helen. 
 The former has a dignified and interesting face, with the 
 air of a queen ; the latter is a perfect beauty, with a 
 touch of Sainte-Nitouche. Madame Le Brun squats 
 you down the two on a sofa, twists the young one's 
 neck, gives them the air of two moax sunning them- 
 selves, or, if you will, two ugly little Savoyards with hair 
 a la Bacchante, with bunches of grapes, and dresses them 
 in red and violet tunics ; in a word, not only is there 
 no likeness, but the two sisters are so disfigured that 
 people ask which is the elder ... In this picture there 
 is neither a likeness, nor taste, nor dignity, and one must 
 have one's senses stopped up to fail so with such a 
 subject . . . You should copy Dame Nature, and not 
 invent the attitudes of apes." 
 
 The " senses stopped up," in matters of art, were not 
 perhaps, in this circumstance, exactly where the great 
 Empress imagined she found them ; and that, to a certain 
 extent, is her excuse. Other foreign artists, Benner, 
 Lampi, Brompton, Koenig, did however enjoy at St. 
 Petersburg an enviable enough position, from the material 
 point of view. But these belonged to a totally different 
 
MEN OF LETTERS, SCHOLARS, AND ARTISTS 255 
 
 order ; they had no_g ersonal rela tions with Catherine ; 
 and the Semiramis of the North has herself defined, 
 eloquently and peremptorily, the value which she put on 
 the artists whom she chose to borrow from the neigh- 
 bouring countries, by charging the " divine " Reiffenstein 
 to send her a couple of Italian architects, " like a bundle 
 of tools." 
 
 As for Russian artists of the order of Houdon, Fal- 
 conet, and Madame Vigee-Lebrun, supposing that she 
 had the occasion of meeting with any, we have spoken 
 at sufficient length elsewhere on the situation in which 
 they found themselves, in describing the death of 
 Lossienko. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FOREIGN COURTIERS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Men of the pen and men of the sword, diplomatists 
 and exalted personages of every kind, the foreign 
 courtiers are legion. To make this chapter complete, we 
 should need to put under contribution a good half of 
 Europe. Some of the foremost nobles of the civilized 
 world, princes and crowned monarchs, appear in the 
 throng, all elbowing one another to come to the front, 
 setting aside their official position in order to attempt a 
 personal conquest, and transacting diplomatic business 
 in the language of Marivaux. Frederick is among 
 them, and, at the time of the first partition of Poland, 
 he vies with even Voltaire : 
 
 "The ancient Greeks deified their great men by 
 reserving the chief place to the legislators : they would 
 have placed Your Majesty between Lycurgus and Solon. 
 . . . May my brother express to Your Majesty the 
 admiration in which I hold your great and noble quali- 
 ties .'' I have had the felicity of seeing Your Majesty at 
 an age when your charms challenged all those who had 
 any pretensions to beauty. Now, Madame, you are 
 raised above all monarchs and conquerors, among the 
 greatest men that this world has ever seen." 
 
 Voltaire too is among the list, and Diderot, and La 
 Harpe. Of these we have already spoken ; let us en- 
 deavour to glance rapidly at the others. 
 
 256 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 257 
 
 The agent chosen in 1770 by Frederick, Prince Henry 
 of Prussia, scarcely seemed to possess the required 
 qualities. Madame Sievers, the wife of the statesman 
 whom we have already" introduced to the notice of our 
 readers, gives a far from flattering portrait of him : 
 " He is not handsome ; ... he squints horribly, is short 
 and thin, wears abominably high heels, and a powdered 
 wig to match." She adds, however, that he has intelli- 
 gence. But this Catherine never seems to discover. 
 If the prince meets with a good reception from her, the 
 charms of his conversation have no more to do with it 
 than the beauty of his wig ; it is all on account of the 
 charms of Poland. When he returns, in 1788, the 
 unhappy republic has been already disposed of, and 
 Catherine is more interested in playing with her monkey 
 than in listening to his conversation. It is in vain that 
 Grimm interferes, stating learnedly all the profound 
 political views of the Royal Highness whose friendship 
 he is proud of possessing. The prince is "a busybody, a 
 word-spinner, always on the high horse ; consequential, 
 an arrant gossip ; a petit maitre who leaves the company 
 on the pretence that he has a rendez-vous, and shuts 
 himself up at home." Two years later, Frederick him- 
 self is no better treated. Catherine will not even read 
 the hero's recently-published correspondence : " When 
 they brought me this great heap of writings, I chanced 
 upon seventeen pages crammed with downright lies, and 
 when I had read that, I shut the book, and have never 
 looked at the rest." As for the successor, whom Fred- 
 erick the Great has the misfortune to leave behind him, 
 he is soon put out of count. His first and last appear- 
 ance at St. Petersburg, in 1 780, when he endeavours to 
 make headway against the increasing influence of 
 Austria and the new prestige of Joseph II., is disastrous. 
 The two rivals follow one another at only a few months' 
 interval, and this is what Catherine has to say about 
 them : " I have no advice to give to M. de Falkenstein " 
 (the name under which Joseph travels), " his education is 
 finished, and it would require a very able master to 
 
 S 
 
258 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 supplement it in any way ; but the pretentious novice 
 who has just left here will have to travel far and wide 
 before he comes up to him . . . They say that he has 
 good intentions ; that may be ; but you might say the 
 same of a goose." And when he is on the throne, Gu, 
 " fat Gn" seems to be her particular aversion. She 
 expends against him almost as boundless a vocabulary 
 of abuse as the complimentary vocabulary of Voltaire. 
 In 1791, hearing that the Emperor, who she knows has 
 become addicted to spiritualism, has had an interview 
 with the spirit of Jesus Christ, she writes to Grimm : 
 " If I could make the acquaintance of the Jew, for it was 
 sure to be a Jew, who played the part of the Saviour, 1 
 would make his fortune, on condition that at the second 
 interview he should give him a good drubbing on my 
 behalf." 
 
 It was not an easy thing to succeed with the Semiramis 
 of the North, and it was harder still to keep in her 
 good graces. The son of Maria Theresa had, however, 
 a share of this good fortune. Among the strangers 
 attracted to St. Petersburg by the new " Northern Star," 
 Joseph II. seems to have been the only one who aroused 
 in Catherine that blind and passionate devotion which 
 gave their passing favour to the most part of her lovers. 
 He won her fancy, and, for once, the feeling lasted. 
 Was it absence that brought about this result, by pro- 
 longing the illusion, in spite of all the tests to which 
 it was subjected, beyond even death itself .' The 
 conquest won by Joseph was, at all events, a personal 
 triumph, and one equally little anticipated on either 
 side. Both Catherine and he looked forward to their 
 meeting without the slightest enthusiasm. Catherine, 
 talking with Grimm, had expressed the opinion that 
 visitors of this kind were better at home than in travel- 
 ling all over Europe to put other people to incon- 
 venience; and, in his correspondence with his mother, 
 while dwelling on the utility of the journey, from which 
 Maria Theresa augurs no good, which is a little galling 
 to his pride, and which causes him to dread the " tricks 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 259 
 
 of the Greek faith," Joseph is cold, sceptical, and sar- 
 castic. It is a political manoeuvre that he is anxious to 
 play off, and he has already converted old Kaunitz to 
 his way of thinking, so far indeed as to set him making 
 plans on paper for the partition of Turkey. But he 
 intends to present himself as courtier and not as 
 sovereign; "he will content himself with a place in the 
 great Empress's ante-room," where he can " increase the 
 number of those who are admitted to admire her glory 
 and her virtues " : so he writes to Kaunitz in a letter 
 meant to be shown. And he strictly carries out his 
 programme : at Mohilef, and afterwards at Tsarskol'e, 
 he affects the strictest incognito. He puts up in an inn 
 which is irnprovised for him by putting up a sign-board 
 on a bathing-tent near the imperial palace, and there 
 installing Catherine's English gardener as innkeeper. 
 He sleeps on a sack which he has brought among his 
 baggage, and which he stuffs with straw. 
 
 The inn and the sack are lucky discoveries on his 
 part, for Catherine is one of those who are easily im- 
 pressed by traits of this kind. But Joseph has other 
 means, one especially, which he explains openly, cynic- 
 ally almost, to his chancellor : " Her vanity must be 
 tickled ; her vanity is her idol ; boundless luck and the 
 extravagant flattery of all Europe have turned her head ; 
 one must go with the crowd." He does not fail to do 
 so. Taken by Patiomkin to the house in which she is 
 living at Mohilef, he waits patiently till she has come 
 back from mass ; then he rushes forward, and would kiss 
 her hand. And he is careful to say nothing at first in 
 regard to his real intentions ; he considers her " by no 
 means inclined to reason out things in politics." He 
 endeavours to interest, amuse, and, above all, flatter her. 
 He only quits the tone of light badinage in order to take 
 that of respectful gallantry, with just a touch of senti- 
 ment. He succeeds admirably. When he leaves, she 
 is entirely won over, and for good. She writes to her 
 confidant : " I should never end, if I began to sing his 
 praises ; he has the most solid, profound, and well- 
 
26o THE S EMIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 informed intelligence that I have ever come across ; you 
 would have to get up early in order to get ahead of 
 him." And a little later she writes : " I know a man 
 to whom heaven has destined the foremost place in 
 Europe, without doubt the foremost. He must live, 
 and survive two of his contemporaries" — herself and 
 Frederick, without doubt, for she is not the one to forget 
 herself, even' in her rhapsodies — "and then his star will 
 have no rival, he will leave all his contemporaries far 
 behind." 
 
 Nor has she been able to resist the temptation of 
 discussing with such a man more serious subjects than 
 those with which he has entertained her. That is where 
 he had hoped to lead her, and she comes to it the first 
 Without abandoning the air of affected lightness which 
 they have adopted by mutual consent, pretending even 
 to have turned aside on a false scent, she asks him what 
 is going on in Italy. Has not the ambition of a sove- 
 reign like himself ever turned in that direction .■■ Does 
 not Rome seem to him the natural capital of the 
 Emperor of the Romans .' And Constantinople the 
 natural capital of an Empress of the East .? replies 
 Joseph, finding the moment apt for his purpose. Then 
 the conversation changes again ; they spend five hours 
 " in chattering and roaring with laughter, whilst Europe 
 is all ears to know what they have to say to one another" 
 in so lengthy a tete-d-tete. But the ice is broken ; during 
 the next few days Joseph sees with satisfaction that the 
 Empress "turns around the subject more and more," 
 and, when he takes his leave, the future alliance and 
 the future campaign against Turkey are already half 
 planned. 
 
 There were many conjectures in the air, as they were 
 seen so anxious to please and then so visibly pleased 
 by one another, and Catherine complacently reports to 
 Grimm : " People have been saying, as we are always 
 together, hanging on one another's words, that we are 
 going to get married." And there was indeed to be a 
 certain union, arising from this few weeks' intimacy, a 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 261 
 
 union of policy and ambition, in which, on the side of 
 Catherine at least, there was more of the heart than the 
 head ; in which diplomatic formalities were entirely- 
 forgotten, or set contemptuously aside, in which the 
 minister of foreign affairs had no part or lot, in which 
 nb protocol was exchanged, so that Frederick's repre- 
 sentative, reassured by Panin, was completely taken 
 in, and assured his master that Catherine had seen 
 nothing in her imperial guest but an " indiscreet gossip," 
 and that Count Falkenstein had done very little for the 
 interests of Joseph II. ! 
 
 A correspondence followed, in which Catherine de- 
 clared that " pagan antiquity, deifying heroes, was justi- 
 fied in her eyes from the charge of flattery " ; and the 
 role remained the same on the one side and the other ; 
 a sincere exaltation on the side of the Empress, and a 
 cold calculation on that of the Emperor ; Catherine's 
 letters being corrected by Andre Shuvalof, a poet ; 
 Joseph's by Kaunitz. 
 
 Nevertheless this union contracted under such happy 
 auspices was not quite a success. And, by a caprice of 
 fortune, which, somehow, was always on her side, or by 
 a supreme irony of fate, this association of interests to 
 which Catherine contributed, in the opinion of Joseph, 
 too much fantasy and femininity, while he himself put 
 only calculation, was disastrous mainly to him ; all the 
 profit was on her side. He does not succeed in utilizing 
 the good-will of his imperial friend either in his project 
 of bartering the Netherlands against Bavaria, or in his 
 difference with Holland. In 1786 he has a moment of 
 discouragement and ill-humour. A letter of Catherine 
 asking for his support at Constantinople, when she has 
 just agreed to the mediation of France, and begging 
 him, in a postscript, " to follow her to Kherson," strikes 
 him as being decidedly too " cavalier." He proposes to 
 send back a reply which shall be " brief and straightfor- 
 ward, but which shall show this Catherinized Princess 
 of Zerbst that she ought to be less summary in her 
 way of disposing of an Emperor." He sends his reply. 
 
262 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Catherine replies calmly enough, saying that she is 
 quite sure he will come to the Crimea ; and he comes. 
 It is he who perseveres in unshaken fidelity to a com- 
 pact which, in his case, is not worth keeping ; it is he 
 who clings closest to it, through all the ordeals of the 
 unfortunate campaign, in which the Turks seem resolved 
 to avenge on him and his forces every defeat which they 
 meet with at the hands of Catherine. He complains, 
 in 1789, in his correspondence with Kaunitz, of "the 
 absurdity and impertinence " of his ally's behaviour ; 
 but in the following year, on his death-bed, he dictates 
 a letter to her in which we meet with such phrases as 
 these : " I shall never again see the writing of Your 
 Imperial Majesty, which has been all my happiness to 
 me, and I feel all the bitterness of knowing that this is 
 the last time I can assure you of my tender regard." 
 
 No doubt he is not sincere even now, and Kaunitz is 
 right in seeing a masterpiece of heroism in the last effort 
 of an actor leaving the scene on which he is never to 
 reappear, but playing his part to the very end. What 
 matter, if the illusion is complete, and the effect carried 
 out } It is one of Catherine's finest victories. For her, 
 this death is a really sincere distress, but it is especially 
 an immense surprise. She cannot get over it for a long 
 time. " Born and bred for his place in the world, full 
 of wit, talent, and knowledge, how has he managed to 
 reign so badly, not only without success, but in such a 
 way as to be reduced to the unfortunate state in which 
 he died t " Grimm, whom she thus interrogates, does not 
 inform her of a scene in a burlesque, much like the 
 revues de fin d'a7inee of the present day, which was 
 played at a Berlin theatre in 1785, in which a courier 
 enters with two big bags of dispatches, one in front and 
 one behind. 
 
 " What have you got there .' " 
 
 " The orders of the Emperor." 
 
 " And there .? " 
 
 " The orders countermanded." 
 
 The agreement signed so gaily at Mohilef in 1780 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 263 
 
 was never countermanded by the unfortunate Emperor, 
 and Catherine was alone in not seeing in his character 
 a trait which sufficiently explains the whole lamentable 
 history of her hero. 
 
 She showed more insight in regard to Gustavus of 
 Sweden. Near relatives (the father of one and the 
 mother of the other were brother and sister), they had 
 certain characteristics in mind and temperament which 
 have a distinct family likeness. Both of them ambitious, 
 with an equal sense of their own place and rank in the 
 world, an equal taste for imposing on the imagination 
 of the crowd, they were both singularly influenced by 
 Western culture, and, in particular, by French literature. 
 But, as some one has observed, the same tendencies and 
 appetites take a feminine turn with the King, a mascu- 
 line turn with his cousin. The first care of Gustavus is 
 to shine ; the means are of little consequence. He can 
 be satisfied, if need be, with diamonds, with which he 
 likes to cover himself on state occasions ; Catherine is 
 not so easily satisfied. 
 
 The first visit of the " Count of Gothland " to St. 
 Petersburg in 1777 puts them, however, on somewhat 
 intimate terms. Gustavus claims the right to call his 
 cousin by the Russian name of siestra (sister) ; on his 
 return to Stockholm, he sends her presents of books, 
 and receives in return the title of member of the Im- 
 perial Academy. He has taken a liking to the national 
 delicacies o{ kvass and shtchi ; a man skilled in prepar- 
 ing them is sent to him. But Catherine's mind is made 
 up about her guest, and the opinion is no favourable 
 one. This "gentleman spending the day before the 
 mirror " has nothing to say to her of any value. And, 
 while she is lavish with her cajoleries to the brat 
 (brother), who returns them with an equally lavish 
 hand, she endeavours secretly to undermine the order 
 of things which, in 1772, has saved Sweden and its king 
 by a coup d'etat which gives the one the absolute 
 mastery over the other. 
 
 In 1783 they meet again at Friedrichshamn, and 
 
264 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Catherine receives a still worse impression than before. 
 On his way to the place of meeting, Gustavus falls 
 from his horse as he is reviewing the troops, and breaks 
 his arm. What clumsiness ! " Fancy doing a somer- 
 sault before one's troops ! " They part apparently on 
 the most friendly terms, and it is still amiably enough 
 that Catherine, next year, asks the King if it is true, 
 as the report goes, that he is going to march his forces 
 into Finland in order to "take them to supper at St. 
 Petersburg".' But the approaching rupture is already 
 in the air. Gustavus, in spite of the good advice urged 
 upon him by the Cabinet of Versailles, writes that " one 
 must have a war to characterize a reign." He seizes 
 the favourable occasion that the second Turkish war 
 seems to offer. We know the rest. From 1788 to 
 1790 hostilities are carried on by sea — and on paper. 
 Catherine expends floods of ink. The peace of August 
 14, 1790, does not arrange things quite satisfactorily. 
 Catherine is only half reconciled to an adversary who 
 has come out more than half conqueror from the strife, 
 and is far from charmed by the costume in which Gus- 
 tavus makes his appearance in a " temple of friendship," 
 " hastily set up," says Langeron, " with three or four 
 boards, decorated with his cipher and that of the Em- 
 press, and guarded by some soldiers dressed as Bacchus, 
 their faces stained with wine-lees." The costume is, 
 indeed, a little startling, even to eyes accustomed to 
 the costumes of Prince Patiomkin : " a short Swedish 
 coat, embroidered all round the edges, with three lace 
 ruffles and three rows of epaulettes, the last of which 
 comes to the elbow ; very tight silk breeches, half blue 
 and half yellow, laced boots, the immense spurs of 
 Charles XIL, and his sword suspended from an enor- 
 mous shoulder-belt, two scarves, all his orders on his 
 coat, and, to put the finishing touch, a yellow straw 
 hat with a huge blue feather in it." 
 
 Matters were not finally patched up between the 
 Empress and this " harlequin king " until the time of 
 the anti-revolutionary campaign of 1792, when Cather- 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 265 
 
 ine was ready to snatch at anything in order to cut a 
 decent figure without interfering with her own affairs 
 in Poland. And thereupon she returned to the former 
 fraternal caresses, flattering and cajoling the half-heroic, 
 half-burlesque heir of Charles XII., playing upon his 
 feverish pride, and setting him dreaming of " sailing up 
 the Seine on gun-boats." The pistol-shot of Ankas- 
 troem (March 16, 1792) puts an end to these imaginary 
 journeys. 
 
 II. 
 
 Though neither king nor emperor, the Prince de 
 Ligne deserves a place of honour in this company. To 
 properly indicate his place there, would require a sepa- 
 rate book. Catherine must have singularly enjoyed 
 the society of this cosmopolitan, who had precisely the 
 kind of charm and intelligence to which she was most 
 alive. " The Prince de Ligne is here," she writes to 
 Grimm in September 1780, "one of the most pleasant 
 men, and the easiest to get on with, that I have ever 
 met. He is really quite a character ; he thinks pro- 
 foundly, and behaves like a child." She does not treat 
 him quite fairly in 1787, in sending him to Patiomkin's 
 head-quarters " to play the spy," as she says cynically, 
 when he has been expecting " orders to take Belgrade." 
 But he is the first to find himself out of place in this 
 position, and he has little difficulty in making his own 
 defence. His correspondence with Catherine has not 
 yet, unfortunately, been published in its entirety. Some 
 of his letters, which have only appeared in a Russian 
 publication, are extremely curious, and highly instruct- 
 ive in studying his personality. Those written in 
 October 1792, immediately after the death of a be- 
 loved son, throw into vivid relief the characteristics 
 of this courtier par excellence : the father, deeply and 
 sincerely distressed as he is, is never for a moment 
 
266 THE SEMI R A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 apparent, there is not a single heartfelt word in it, 
 nothing but the courtier, who makes phrases, always 
 after the same pattern : " I write, not to Your Imperial 
 Majesty, but to a heavenly being . . . Why did he 
 not die under the walls of Ismail ? Why did not I 
 myself fall under the walls of Otchakof ? " And again : 
 " How can I express my gratitude to Your Imperial 
 Majesty for the flowers which she has deigned to lay 
 on the tomb of my poor Charles ? . . . One who is 
 more deserving of praise than Trajan can well pro- 
 nounce a funeral oration . . . Your Majesty is a very 
 Bossuet, a very Robertson." Nothing is wanting, not 
 even compliments to Plato Zubof 
 
 The Prince de Ligne pretended to have followed 
 Catherine, in 1787, through the Crimea as a sort of 
 " diplomatic jockey." The Comte de Segur, who was 
 the official representative of diplomacy, expended a 
 larger amount of madrigals and botits-rimh than of 
 official qualities. There was no chance of success in the 
 diplomatic line, save in such procedures. It was Cather- 
 ine's taste, and also her method — for it is one of the 
 signs of ability to turn one's natural inclinations, and 
 even one's weaknesses, into means of action — to treat 
 grave subjects lightly, and to give a pleasant turn to 
 the most thorny questions. The serious side of things 
 had its turn when the moment came for action ; then 
 there were no more pleasantries. When the partition 
 of Poland was to be carried out, Catherine joked with 
 Prince Henry, exchanged compliments with Frederick, 
 and then, when the moment was come, Kretchetnikof 
 received his orders, very precise and very little pleasing, 
 and the hapless republic was seized by the throat and 
 strangled by the hands of a dragoon. 
 
 " I am not surprised at M. de Segur's reputation," 
 wrote the Empress in 1785, on the arrival of the brilliant 
 young diplomatist whom the Cabinet of Versailles had 
 discovered ; " it seems to me richly deserved, and cer- 
 tainly the best result of anything you have yet sent me 
 from your country. It is difficult to be niore amiable or 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 267 
 
 more witty. He seems happy amongst us, and is as 
 gay as a lark. He has written songs and verses for us." 
 There is still a specimen of the poetic skill of the gay 
 diplomatist on a marble column in the park of Tsarskoie, 
 erected in memory of the charming Zhnire, a greyhound, 
 whose loss was so great a grief to Catherine, and who 
 should not have been taken from his mistress's side, for 
 the gods 
 
 " Devaient k sa fidelity 
 Le don de I'immortaliti^ 
 Pour qu'elle fut toujours auprfes de sa maitresse." 
 
 S^gur was not always so happy as this, and his muse 
 sometimes comes to grief, as in this flattering portrait of 
 Catherine : 
 
 " Je veux en peu de mots peindre un grand empereur ; 
 L'entreprise est facile en paraissant hardie : 
 Son cachet fournira les pinceaux, la couleur ; 
 Sa devise peindra son cceur." 
 
 He was most successful in his bouts-rimh. Those 
 composed on the four rhymes, amour, tambour, frotte, and 
 note, given by the English envoy, Fitz-Herbert, are 
 justly famous : 
 
 " D'un peuple tr^s-heureux Catherine est V amour • 
 Malheur k I'ennemi qui contre elle %& frotte j 
 La renommde aura pour elle son tambour ; 
 L'histoire avec plaisir sera son garde-note.^' 
 
 All this was improvised between two promenades 
 under the trees of Tsarskoie, or between two relays on 
 the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow. For just then, 
 from 1785 to 1787, Catherine was in the humour for 
 travelling, and it was in accompanying her across the 
 deserts of the vast empire that Segur first made his 
 reputation as a man of wit, a man of the world, and a 
 wary diplomatist. He did credit to his task, and was 
 not slow in reaping the reward of his endeavours. 
 Admitted at once to the inner circle of the Hermitage, 
 he was soon the ornament of a society to which his 
 colleague from Vienna, Cobenzl, contributed only the 
 
268 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 amusement of his folly, where Leon Naryshkin, in 
 company with Matrena Danilovna, the court fool, poured 
 out his stock of vulgar buffooneries, and where one saw 
 courtiers of the type that Griboiedof put on the stage, 
 gouty and feeble old men, risking the safety of their 
 arms and legs for the sovereign's amusement, and not 
 always with impunity, in their endeavour to keep pace 
 with the gambols of Naryshkin. 
 
 The Crimean journey fully established the favour of 
 the new-comer. Perhaps, this time, the courtier prevailed 
 a little too strongly over the politician. Segur looked on 
 Catherine, and on the new country through which he 
 travelled by her side, with the eyes of a lover. He was 
 convinced, as we see from his memoirs, that there were 
 no poor in Russia, and that the condition of the serfs 
 was quite enviable. It was only on hearing the mourn- 
 ful songs of the hurlaks, rowing the barges on the 
 Dnieper, that he discovered some signs of the long 
 slavery undergone by this " free tribe of primitive 
 Scythians." He read some of Catherine's writings 
 during the journey, and showed a suitable interest in 
 them ; but he does not seem to have so much as realized 
 the existence of any other Russian literature. The 
 glitter of the " Northern Star " eclipsed in his eyes every- 
 thing outside the radius of that luminous sphere. At 
 Kief his muse awoke once more, and an inscription for 
 the portrait painted by Shebanof, a serf of Patiomkin, 
 once more won for him the smiles of Semiramis : 
 
 " Si le sort n'avait su lui donner un empire, 
 EUe aurait eu toujours un trone dans nos cceurs." 
 
 It was not till 1789 that this perfect harmony between 
 the Empress and the diplomatist was broken. Whose 
 fault was it } It is a doubtful question. The first note 
 of discord crept in on the subject of revolutionary ideas ; 
 but two years earlier they were quite in union on this 
 point : Segur having said that La Fayette was a friend 
 of his, Catherine invited La Fayette to join him at Kief! 
 In 1789 Segur is still faithful to his former sentiments ; 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 269 
 
 he writes such enthusiastic letters to the commandant 
 of the garde-nationale that Catherine, reading them in 
 her " black cabinet," is amazed : " Can a minister of the 
 king write in that strain ? " Perhaps she sees ahead, 
 and the time is soon to come when Segur will think 
 with her. There is at this time no kind of ill-will in the 
 sovereign's reserve ; and in her reflections on the sub- 
 ject there is more of sorrow than of anger. " I have no 
 doubt whatever as to the sincerity of the Comte de 
 S^gur's feelings in regard to me," she writes to Grimm ; 
 "he is a man of honour, uprightness, and nobility." 
 Two years later, when Genet takes up the heavy respon- 
 sibility of the succession to his place, as charge d affaires, 
 he denies the truth of the " absurd rumours " which have 
 been circulated in reference to the disgrace incurred by 
 his predecessor, rumours which at St. Petersburg have 
 only called forth the '' pity " of the better-informed 
 people, and " the indignation of Catherine." But, this 
 time, he is, or chooses to be, mistaken, for his dispatch, 
 dated the 31st of May, 1791, has been forestalled 
 by a letter from Catherine to Grimm, dated the 
 2nd of May, in which we read : " There is one man 
 whose whimsies I cannot forgive, and that is Segur. 
 Shame on him ! he is false as Judas, and I am not at all 
 surprised that no one likes him in France. One must 
 have an opinion of one's own in this world, and the man 
 who has none is only to be despised. What part will 
 he play in regard to the Pope ? The same that he had 
 played here with me, leaving here after daubing one 
 with all the axioms of the ancient chivalry of France, 
 after pretending that he was in despair at the turn 
 things were taking : what does he do, once in Paris .' " 
 
 We may doubt whether S^gur was really so well 
 posted up in what was going on in Paris, after all. He 
 had only left his post on account of his impatience to 
 fling himself into the mile'e. But, on the other hand, not 
 knowing what was to happen, alike in regard to the Re- 
 volution and to the part he proposed to play in it, he had 
 only asked for leave of absence for a few months ; he had 
 
270 THE SEMIRAMJS OF THE NORTtt 
 
 declared himself ready to return to St. Petersburg at the 
 first intimation from her, " like a courier," and, for this 
 reason alone, the farewell words that he puts in the 
 iiiouth of Catherine, in which she condemns the revolu- 
 tionary movement and regrets to see him associated 
 with it, do not seem very plausible. Probably on both 
 sides they refrained from coming to such a definite 
 explanation. Subsequent events speak for themselves. 
 The movement which Segur was dying to fling himself 
 into carried him with it much further than he intended, 
 or than Catherine could have foreseen, and forced him 
 into certain compromises and double dealings which he 
 would have shrunk from only a few months before. 
 " With some," writes the Empress to Grimm, " he passes 
 for a democrat, with others for an autocrat, and finally 
 he is one of the first to rush off to the Hotel de Ville to 
 subscribe to that fine oath ; after which he goes to 
 Rome, apparently to present himself to the Pope as a 
 self-excommunicated man . . It was the Comte de 
 Sigur whom we saw here, and who brought back the 
 court of Louis XIV. again . . Now it is Louis Sigur 
 who is infected with the national disease." 
 
 It is the characteristic of great crises, from which 
 some new political or social ideal is to spring, that they 
 disconcert the most far-seeing of intellects, and warp the 
 most upright of characters. 
 
 III. 
 
 The numerous readers whom M. Maugras has recently 
 charmed and interested would not forgive me if I were 
 not to mention here the name of Lauzun, although all 
 that we know of his relations with Catherine is the littlie 
 that he himself tells us in his memoirs, and that little 
 surpasses greatly the limits of the most indulgent cre- 
 dulity. He went to Poland in 1774, with the twofold 
 aim of winning the favour of the Princess Czartoryska 
 and of being appointed French minister at Warsaw. 
 
THE FOREIGN COURTIERS 271 
 
 Me may well have succeeded in the first of these two 
 endeavours, which does not seem to have been difficult 
 of attainment ; when he was certain of not being able 
 to succeed in the second, he set himself, after the then 
 fashion, to play the diplomatist oh his own account. As 
 the King declined the benefit of being officially repre- 
 sented by him, he assumed, on his own account, the 
 position of unofficial representative of the Queen. He 
 dreamt of bringing about something like a personal 
 alliance between this princess and the mighty autocrat 
 of the North. Catherine is supposed to have at first 
 looked favourably on his advances, even to the point 
 of giving him " unlimited powers" ; then, changing her 
 mind, to have asked him to enter her own service. In 
 what capacity .' By offering him " the highest position 
 to which a subject could rise " in her empire, we read in 
 the memoirs of the hero. Was it then the position of 
 Patiomkin or of Plato Zubof .' And it is on hearing 
 of this brilliant prospect that Marie Antoinette would 
 appear to have made the sad reflection : " The Empress 
 of Russia is indeed happy, and I most unhappy." 
 
 Perhaps M. Maugras' second volume will enlighten us 
 on this subject. Lauzun wrote to Catherine : so much 
 is certain. And she replied to him : that at least is 
 f)i-obable. It was not in the usual way of Semiramis 
 to put off any one. Few there were whom she failed to 
 respond to. When, in 1780, the good Abbe de Luber- 
 sac sent her the plan of a monument to erect at St. 
 Petersburg, with the inscription, " Catharine II. Thetis 
 altera" she did not tell him what she thought of it ; she 
 put the drawing — a huge water-colour, three feet and a 
 half by two feet and a half — in her gallery, sent a medal 
 to the artist, and thought no more about it. Lord 
 Findlater, an English original, of the kind that was then 
 plentiful in all parts of Europe, living in Saxony, where 
 his eccentricities and his bounties were alike the delight 
 of the country, going every year to take the waters at 
 Carlsbad, where the people were almost ready to raise 
 a statue in his honour, and professing a boundless admir- 
 
272 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 ation for the Semiramis of the North, was equally well 
 received. She did not always read the plans for the 
 reconstruction of Europe which he sent to her through 
 the inevitable " fag," but she was not above making use 
 of him in matters of less importance, the settlement of 
 her grand-daughters in Germany, for instance. 
 
 Her medals, which she distributed so liberally as to 
 somewhat lessen their value, were none the less extremely 
 prized. There is, however, one instance to the contrary. 
 In 1786 the Comte de Segur received from a Comte de 
 Turpin, author of a work on Caesar's Commentaries, a 
 letter couched in these terms : " When I took the liberty 
 of sending my work to Her Imperial Majesty, I had no 
 other design than to do homage to her virtues, talents, 
 and learning, and I never thought that this homage 
 was likely to receive or to deserve a present from Her 
 Imperial Majesty. . . . The medal that you are good 
 enough to inform me of, well worthy of respect as it is, 
 coming from the hand of Her Imperial Majesty, could 
 not be accepted by the Comte de Turpin, were it worth 
 a hundred thousand ecus. My principles, and those 
 of all French gentlemen, would not permit me to receive 
 any present from a foreign power." Gentlemen of this 
 kind were not numerous in France, whatever the author 
 of this letter may have thought, and Catherine was never 
 fortunate enough to meet with another. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT. 
 I. 
 
 The Comte de Turpin had few imitators. Not all of 
 those drawn towards Russia by the fame and fortune of 
 Semiramis aspired to the role that Voltaire would like 
 to have played, in succession to Diderot, arid which was 
 so well played by Joseph II. ; some being too modest 
 in rank, others too little inclined to play the part of 
 courtier. For there was a flocking thither of all kinds 
 and from all quarters, and I should be attempting too 
 great a task if I endeavoured to deal in detail with all 
 this influx. Forced to choose, I shall choose the French, 
 who were at once the most numerous and the most 
 interesting of the contingent. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth had already induced some to 
 brave the inclemency of so trying a climate, and the still 
 more hazardous surprises of an uncertain career in an 
 unknown country ; under Catherine the tide definitely 
 sets in. At the same time, a few Russians make 
 their way to Paris, only very few as yet ; outside the 
 diplomatic world there are only two or three who pay 
 more than a mere tourist's visit, a certain Karjavin for 
 instance, who is a curious, almost a unique type, the 
 first of a series. He is not, indeed, the future boyard 
 of legend, an anything but attractive creature ; he is 
 something much better than that. Son of a St. Peters- 
 
 273 T 
 
274 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 burg merchant, he finishes his studies in London and 
 in Paris, where, in 1755, he attends the Sorbonne, in 
 1760, the College des Etrangers. On his return to 
 Russia he is appointed professor of French at the 
 University of Moscow, where he takes the place of a 
 Frenchman named Lavis, who has been living in the 
 country for the last forty-five years. This too is a new 
 beginning : Russia is soon to spare the expense of 
 getting its professors from foreign countries. In 1773 
 Karjavin is once more on the banks of the Seine : he 
 has had a quarrel with his father, who has tried to make 
 a merchant of him. And now, even at Paris, necessity 
 forces him to engage in this detested occupation. He 
 has married a Parisian, and he has difficulty in making 
 both ends meet. In 1776 he embarks for Martinique 
 with a French passport and some merchandise. But 
 business is no more successful than it is agreeable to 
 him : his stock is pillaged on the way by an English 
 cruiser. He tries his hand at everything ; turns chemist 
 at Martinique, where Duprat, the King's apothecary, 
 offers him the reversion of his place. His establishment 
 is destroyed by a flood. He becomes in turn interpreter 
 to the Admiralty, tobacconist, clerk on a French 
 victualler, doctor on a Spanish ship. In 1788 he 
 returns to France, under the name of Lamy, then he 
 once more goes back to Russia. Meanwhile he publishes 
 a number of books, French translations of Russian 
 works ( Voyage du Spitzberg, Instructions Chretiennes, 
 Mythologie russo-slavonne) ; an essay, in Russian, on 
 architecture, for he is also an architect ; a description, 
 in French, of "a louse under the microscope" (Paris, 
 1789), for he is also an entomologist. 
 
 Let us not laugh: the specialization of talents is a 
 late growth in every nation, and of the many Frenchmen 
 who sought their fortune in Russia, at the time when 
 this Russian endeavoured to earn his living in France, 
 few indeed did so much honourable work. Bernardin 
 de Saint-Pierre himself, whose name naturally occurs in 
 this connection, loses by the comparison. 
 
The FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 275 
 
 Every one knows the story of this anything but 
 idyllic enterprise, to which the enthusiastic Aime 
 Martin has vainly endeavoured to lend some charm. 
 His journey from Paris to St. Petersburg is that of a 
 mere chevalier d' Industrie, travelling from stage to stage 
 at the expense of the first person he comes across on 
 the road. On his arrival at the capital of the North, 
 the future creator of an immortal work has in his pocket 
 an ecu of six livres, and an engineer's certificate which 
 has been given to him by mistake. It is true that he 
 has a wonderful dream in his head, a sort of semi- 
 mythological royalty in an empire which, with the aid 
 of Catherine, he proposes to create on the banks of 
 the Caspian. The grand-master of artillery, Villebois, 
 whose favour he succeeds in gaining, endeavours to 
 change this chimera into a reality by setting the youth 
 and interest of the new-comer to checkmate Gregory 
 Orlof It is a vain attempt. There is a little journey 
 through Finland, where another Frenchman, General 
 du Bosquet, in charge of the military defences of the 
 littoral, puts the knowledge of the adventurous engineer 
 to the test, with the most unfavourable results ; a fresh 
 series of loans, which finally tire out the generosity of a 
 third compatriot, the court jeweller Duval ; a final 
 discouragement, a hasty retreat in the direction of 
 Warsaw ; and we are at the end of this scarcely glorious 
 Odyssey. It takes place, it is true, in 1765, and Bernardin 
 has still twenty years of fruitless vagabondage to go 
 through before the day of Paid et Virgifiie. 
 
 Villebois, du Bosquet, and Duval are survivals, at the 
 court of Catherine, of the epoch which has gone before. 
 They attain little prominence, and leave no trace behind 
 them. Their successors are for the most part equally 
 unimportant. There is Clerc, or Le Clerc, a Franche- 
 Comtois, who, after being physician in the house of the 
 Due de Orleans at Villers Cotterets, passes in 1759 
 into the service of the Jietman Razumovski, becomes 
 in 1769 physician to the Grand-Duke Paul, then, 
 successively, scholastic director of the Imperial Corps 
 
576 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NOkTH 
 
 des Cadets, inspector of the hospital of St. Paul at 
 Moscow, and, unable after all to acclimatize himself in 
 his country of adoption, goes back to France after 
 making his fortune, and is ennobled by Louis XVI. 
 
 There is the Lyonnese Patrin, a mineralogist of some 
 importance, who, from 1780 to 1787, makes valuable 
 researches in Siberia, without, like the Abbe de Chappe, 
 drawing on himself the displeasure of Catherine, but 
 not without arousing the jealous animosity of the 
 German geographer, Pallas. Segur mentions in his 
 memoirs another traveller, bearing a name which has 
 since become illustrious, Jean de Lesseps, the grand- 
 father of the constructor of the Suez Canal, appointed 
 consul at Kronstadt at the age of seventeen, one of La 
 Perouse's companions in 1782, but, luckily for himself, 
 sent on shore at Kamschatka with dispatches which he 
 brings back to St. Petersburg in 1788, "zealous, ardent, 
 indefatigable," and only anxious to set out once more. 
 
 There is, too, a Sieur Viridet, calling himself a citizen 
 of Geneva, but apparently born at Paris, who is con- 
 cerned in 1786 with the editorship of the first French 
 newspaper printed in Russia, the Mercure de Russie, in 
 which one finds a little of everything, except sense and 
 judgment ; verses like these, for instance, composed in 
 1787 in celebration of the return of Catherine to St. 
 Petersburg after her journey through the Crimea : 
 
 " Pis comm' je n' savons pas feindre, 
 J' conviendrions bonnement 
 Ou'all' a su se faire craindre 
 ' A ces. porteux de turbans ; 
 
 I I'y parlerions de guerre 
 Et d' ces braves gdndraux, 
 Qui d'sus I'eau comme sur terre 
 Ont fait tant d'exploits nouveaux." 
 
 This is entitled : Chanson poissarde sur le retour de sa 
 Majeste. 
 
 One of Viridet's collaborateurs on the Mercure is a 
 Chevalier de la Traverse. The tone of the journal, 
 naturally, is resolutely conservative, more and more so 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 277 
 
 indeed as the revolutionary crisis develops. Certain 
 Stances sicr la liberie appear in it, intended no doubt 
 to warn the Frenchmen in Russia against these danger- 
 ous disorders : 
 
 " La liberty qui vous tourne la tete 
 Est selon vous un tr&s grand bien. 
 Ah ! pardonnez, je n'en crois rien ; 
 J'aime le calme, et j'ai vu la tempete." 
 
 Catherine, too, " loves the calm " at this moment, and 
 she is not critical of the way in which her glories are 
 sung. In regard to French men of letters, she takes 
 what comes, welcoming the waifs and strays of the 
 great literary tempest from which the Revolution arose. 
 She receives even Abraham Chaumeix himself, shunned 
 as he is by the encyclopaedists, and ill-treated by 
 Voltaire in person. She allows him to establish a 
 school at Moscow, where he dies in 1790. She even 
 makes, at his request, a new regulation, which must 
 be put down to the lasting credit of the poor refugee, 
 for it puts an end to one of the disgraces of Russia by 
 prescribing decent measures for the burial of the poor, 
 whom Chaumeix has been horrified at seeing thrown 
 into the common sewer. The subjects of the sovereign, 
 the great lords of both capitals, are not too particular. 
 Casanova meets at the table of Count Tshernishof a 
 French lackey whom he has brought with him to St. 
 Petersburg, and whom he has discharged on account 
 of misconduct : the lackey has become a tutor. A 
 French cook demands the vacant place of director of 
 the Academic des Beaux-Arts ; he declares that he 
 has had a scullion under his orders who is now a teacher 
 of languages in the house of Count Sheremetief. French 
 cooks, pastry-cooks, and barbers abound in this land 
 where big fortunes are so readily to be made. In 1789 
 the favourite Lanskol has the famous confectioner Babu 
 sent to him from Paris by Grimm. Nor should the 
 actors and actresses be forgotten. Mademoiselle Huss, 
 carried off by Count Markof from the Comedie Fran- 
 
27S THE SEMI R AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 9aise, where Grimm complained that she followed too 
 closely in Mademoiselle Clairon's steps, and conspired 
 with her to "lose for the second time the taste for the 
 true declamation, established by Baron and Mademoi- 
 selle Lecouvreur," has nothing but triumphs of all kinds 
 on the banks of the Neva. Near the capital, at Pav- 
 lovsk, a certain street, Pikof piereoidok, recalls vaguely 
 to-day the name of an artist, doubly famed, as com- 
 poser and as executant, for a marvellous ballet and 
 an extraordinary solo, danced on the 28th of April, 
 1791, at the famous ball given at the palace of Taurida 
 by the most splendid of princes to the most glorious 
 of empresses. 
 
 These hardy seekers of fortune do not always meet 
 with success. Lafosse, the famous veterinary surgeon, 
 who, after attending to His Most Christian Majesty's 
 stables before becoming a revolutionary, finds himself 
 at St. Petersburg in 1789, just at the right moment 
 for attending to a marvellous horse belonging to Prince 
 Patiomkin, a present from the Emperor Joseph, suc- 
 ceeds in curing the horse, but not in getting paid for 
 it, and, on insisting too emphatically, is only too happy 
 to get out of the affair by clearing the frontier. 
 
 Glad and happy to welcome people with any kind 
 of artistic recommendation, giving hospitality, in 1782, 
 to M. de Buffon, whom she receives " as the son of an 
 illustrious man, that is to say sans famous" as she says 
 to Grimm, and delighted to show him the bust of his 
 father in the gallery at Tsarskole, Catherine is less 
 amiable towards certain gentlemen of more or less im- 
 portance who make more or less to-do in her capital, 
 and bring discredit on the name of France. In 1765 
 she writes to Madame Geoffrin : 
 
 " They say here that M. de Conflans had some intelli- 
 gence, and decided talent as a soldier, that he drank too 
 much punch, that he told a great many lies, that he 
 deceived his father (who is said to be an excellent man), 
 that he was too self-confident, but that, if he could get 
 over these little defects, he would really deserve to be 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 279 
 
 called one of the hopes of France, as a soldier, you 
 understand. If one sends him as ambassador to Poland, 
 he will come to grief, and will not fail to return me my 
 compliments, for all your people in office say the most 
 awful things about me." 
 
 In 1765, let us remember, we are but at the beginning 
 of the great reign, and the propaganda of Voltaire and 
 his friends has not yet done its work. The popularity 
 which the Semiramis of the North is soon to enjoy at 
 Paris, will have its periods of variation, and Catherine 
 is always very sensitive on this subject. In 1783 and 
 1789 she is very much annoyed by reports circulated 
 in regard to her health. She is said to be suffering 
 from cancer, and she is as much offended as if it were 
 the gravest insult. She does not forgive Frederick 
 for believing, or affecting to believe, the report. On 
 making inquiries, she finds out that it arises from a 
 certain court lady who has had several consultations 
 by correspondence with the celebrated surgeon, Louis. 
 She sends a detailed description of her malady, and the 
 document somehow gets about. There is a certain 
 English turn about some of the phrases, and people 
 immediately set it down to the Empress's physician, 
 Rogerson ; in the description of the lady it is stated 
 that "she is a widow, and has lived a fast life," and 
 the scandal-mongers need no more proof that it is the 
 widow of Peter III. This is enough to arouse a much 
 less friendly welcome than usual to the Frenchmen who 
 venture just now to make their way into Russia, and 
 the letters sent to the Empress's Parisian correspondent 
 show traces enough of the feeling. " Do tell me," she 
 writes in December 1783, ''why you need send me such 
 uninteresting people. There are half-a-dozen here whom 
 you might as well have kept at home : it would have 
 been no loss to the world in general . . . What was the 
 good of springing upon us a Comte de Caraman, for 
 instance, an economist and a duffer, who has only 
 worried the life out of the Grand Chamberlain, and 
 ^dded to all the ills and ailments of everybody else 
 
28o THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 without rhyme or reason ? You had better burst him 
 and put him in a bladder, when he shall sail over our 
 heads in broad daylight." 
 
 The discovery of balloons was at this time causing 
 great excitement at the capital of the North, greatly 
 to Catherine's disapproval ; after a short time she for- 
 bade the continuation of experiments which seemed to 
 her equally dangerous and useless; but the fancy for 
 flying through the air is not the complaint she has most 
 often to make against the compatriots of the Comte 
 de Caraman. In 1784 a Comte de Verneuil, formerly 
 lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry, and ex-chevalier of 
 St. Lazare, for he has been deprived of his decoration, 
 is received in the most brilliant society at St. Peters- 
 burg. He has good manners, sings well, and accom- 
 panies himself on the clavecin, and appears to be rich. 
 Presently the plate disappears from one house, valuable 
 watches and snuff-boxes from jewellers' windows ; and 
 after some months the culprit is discovered. He is 
 referred to Versailles, and Louis XVI. replies that he 
 leaves him in the hands of justice in the country where 
 he has dishonoured his own ; but meanwhile he has 
 succeeded in escaping. He reaches the frontier without 
 a passport, and plays his cards so adroitly that the 
 governor of the locality puts him into a kibitka, and 
 sends him on to the first German station ; three hours 
 later a courier arrives with the warrant for his arrest. 
 In the following year, another chevalier of St. Lazare, 
 giving himself out to be the Comte de Bussy, arrives 
 from Poland, where he is supposed to have married a 
 Princess Radziwill. He turns out to be an adventurer 
 who has escaped from prison in Copenhagen, after a 
 career of swindling in Poland and Sweden. Then there 
 is a Marquis d'Archies, a relative of the Dues de Guines 
 and de Ghistel ; a young knight bearing the name of 
 the Vicomte de Cromard and the gendarme's uniform, 
 "without being able to prove that he has any right to 
 one or the other ; " a Sieur Daubray, formerly lawyer 
 to the Parliament of Metz, who is banished from the 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 281 
 
 country for reasons which the Comte de Segur, on 
 his arrival at St. Petersburg, thinks it as well not to 
 inquire into too closely, for, as he writes to the Comte 
 de Vergennes : " My principles and yours, monsieur, 
 forbid me to take the slightest interest in those French- 
 men who respect so little either the laws of honour or 
 the reputation of their country." 
 
 II, 
 
 It was due to the Comte de Segur that a desirable 
 change came about in the character of the French 
 pretenders to imperial favour. From this time forward, 
 the dubious bearers of the cross of St. Lazare are few 
 and far between in the Northern capital, and Catherine 
 at the same time makes the acquaintance of the most 
 genuine and worthy members of the French aristocracy, 
 of which she was in danger of receiving a very inaccu- 
 rate and a very unpleasant idea. In 1777 she had had 
 one single good fortune of the kind ; and she wrote to 
 Grimm : 
 
 " I forgot to tell you that the Vicomte de Laval 
 Montmorency has been here, and, though he is not 
 perhaps the finest gentleman in the world, still he is the 
 first Frenchman I have met whose manners were not 
 insupportable. . . . And I have also paid him as much 
 honour as I could, because he is a Montmorency, and 
 it is a name one likes to hear. I wish they would make 
 him marshal of France ; I believe he knows as much 
 about war as most." 
 
 The Comte de Segur has the pleasure of multiplying 
 these agreeable impressions. Introduced by him at the 
 court of Semiramis, the Marquis de Jumilhac, the Comte 
 d'Aguesseau, and yet others, win general esteem, that 
 of Catherine included. Then follow the volunteers 
 attracted to the Russian armies by the second Turkish 
 war and the Swedish war ; and, despite the suspicions 
 which the Empress has at this moment in regard to the 
 
282 THE S EMIR AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 dubious attitude of the Cabinet of Versailles, they meet 
 with the most favourable reception on her part. She 
 keeps them at a certain distance, refuses any sort of 
 intimacy with them, but is quite ready to encourage 
 their efforts in her service. The Comte de Lameth, 
 who is presented to her in the course of the Crimean 
 journey, leaves her, when he returns to Suvorof's 
 camp, under the charm of a grace and wit which, 
 apart from Segur himself, she rarely meets with in 
 her usual society. She little thinks at that time that 
 three years later the Gazette de Saint-Petersbourg will 
 print these lines : " The Comte de Lameth and other 
 rebels, enemies not only of the King, but of the nation, 
 have amused themselves at the head of a drunken 
 rabble beneath the windows of the King and Queen at 
 the Tuileries." 
 
 Segur has brought before us picturesquely enough the 
 first appearance of the brilliant officer before the chief 
 under whom Catherine desires that he should enter her 
 service : 
 
 " What nationality are you .■■ " 
 
 " French." 
 
 " What profession ? " 
 
 " Military." 
 
 " What rank ? " 
 
 " Colonel." 
 
 " Your name .' " 
 
 " Alexandre de Lameth." 
 
 Upon which the young Frenchman looks fixedly at 
 his general, and replies : 
 
 " What nationality are you .•" " 
 
 " Russian, apparently." 
 
 " What profession ? " 
 
 " Military." 
 
 " What rank ? " 
 
 " General." 
 
 " Your name ? " 
 
 '■ Suvorof " 
 
 The future vanquisher of Macdonald was quite capable 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 283 
 
 of giving and taking an interrogation of this Icind. The 
 future commandant of a division of Conde's army, Roger 
 da Damas, Damaderoger, as Patiomkin, in the Russian 
 manner, generally called him, made his appearance 
 about the same time at the head-quarters of the con- 
 queror of the Crimea. The nephew of the Due de 
 Chatelet, whose diplomatic disagreements with one of 
 the Tshernishofs we have already related, he brought 
 with him somewhat embarrassing recollections. Ac- 
 cording to Langeron, however, the former ambassador 
 of Catherine showed no ill-will to the nephew on his 
 uncle's account, and, indeed, amused himself by recalling 
 the fact that he had had occasion of seeing the latter at 
 very close quarters in London, which, in a sense, was 
 the exact truth. 
 
 Damaderoger is the delight and astonishment of the 
 Russian army. He learns Russian in a few months 
 and, under the walls of Otchakof, wins a sword of 
 honour which Patiomkin demands for him, and Cath- 
 erine hastens to send with a flattering inscription 
 engraved upon it. He mounts the walls in twenty-four 
 degrees of cold, " dressed as if he were going to the 
 ball," is one of the first to enter the fortress, and, on his 
 return, finds his French servant waiting for him with 
 his cloak. Almost at the same time another Frenchman, 
 Lombard, put in command of a frigate, distinguishes 
 himself by passing right through the Turkish fleet, and, 
 on being made prisoner in another engagement, is so 
 deeply regretted by Catherine, that she begs Segur and 
 Choiseul-Goufiier to endeavour " to get him exchanged 
 at no matter what price." 
 
 At the siege of Bender in 1789, under the walls of 
 Ismail in 1790, there are not less than a dozen French- 
 men, the Due de Richelieu, the Comte de Verbois, the 
 Comte de Langeron, the Chevalier de Vilnau, Rosset, 
 all equally brave and joyous, all doing honour to the 
 fatherland which they have left. Vilnau, under-lieu- 
 tenant in the French army, but obliged to fly after 
 killing his colonel in a duel, and now captain of light 
 
284 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 cavalry in the Russian army, is always in the front 
 rank. At Bender he offers himself for the task of setting 
 the petard which is to blow up one of the gates of the 
 fortress, risks an almost certain death, survives his in- 
 juries by a sort of miracle, and, when he is invalided, 
 receives the post of governor of Her Majesty's pages. 
 On the eve of the taking of Ismafl, those who are still 
 able to be under arms sit down to supper together gaily, 
 spend the night in playing cards, and in all kinds of 
 follies, and, at the moment of parting, calculating that 
 a third of the assailants will probably be left on the field 
 of battle, draw lots to see who will be the four to be 
 killed. They are all fortunate enough to escape with 
 only a few slight wounds. The Due de Richelieu has 
 his hat shot through, one of his boots torn open, and his 
 trousers cut into bits. Verbois, later on, is killed in the 
 Black Sea, on one of the Prince of Nassau's ships, during 
 the Swedish war. 
 
 At the further bounds of the empire the Swedish 
 war brings to the front a number of recruits from the 
 same source. The Comte de Langeron, who, later on, 
 returning to the forgotten traditions of mercenary 
 loyalism, is unscrupulous enough to take advantage 
 of his engagement as condottiere, to the extent of com- 
 manding a corps of the Russian army under the very 
 walls of Paris, but in whom there was then, after his 
 campaign in America under Rochambeau, nothing to 
 arouse any such suspicions, does full justice in Finland 
 to his reputation for skill and bravery. His unpublished 
 memoirs, from which we have drawn largely, remain an 
 invaluable document for the history of the time. Prevot 
 de Launion, a mere captain of artillery, improvises some 
 admirable tactics for the closure of the water-ways in 
 Finland. The naval captain, De Traversay, who suc- 
 ceeds to Verbois, attains the rank of rear-admiral, and 
 becomes the father of a warlike race now firmly estab- 
 lished in Russia. The regiment of dragoons, stationed 
 for some years past at Kalisz, on the German frontier, 
 has for colonel a descendant of the brave sea-captain. 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 285 
 
 On April 8, 1791, Genet writes from St. Petersburg to 
 the Comte de Montmorin : 
 
 " On Monday the Empress distributed the laurels of 
 the last war : M. de Richelieu is to have a sword of gold 
 and the Cross of St. George of the fourth class ; M. de 
 Damas the cross of the third class. M. de Langeron 
 will have a sword of gold, and will be appointed colonel 
 in the Russian army according to his seniority in the 
 French army." 
 
 It is not only the Comte de Segur, however, who 
 gives a helping hand, and doubtless not without a sub- 
 stantial return for the favour, to this influx of volunteers ; 
 but La Harpe, too, Swiss as he is and Republican as he 
 pretends to be. A curious chapter could be written on 
 thc'part played at St. Petersburg by this enthusiastic 
 disciple of Locke and Rousseau, this pontiff of liberty 
 and rationalism, this admirer of Brutus and despiser of 
 Caesar, who sets up Julian the Apostate and depreciates 
 Constantine the Great, keeping up an active correspond- 
 ence with the worst demagogues of his country and 
 acting as tutor to the future founder of the Holy 
 Alliance. The secret of Catherine's approval of this 
 education, which she defends against frequent onslaughts, 
 is the secret of her own conscience and her innermost 
 thoughts. With all his revolutionary notions and con- 
 nections. La Harpe seems to her neither odious nor 
 dangerous, because she has no fear of any such revolu- 
 tion at St. Petersburg, and because, at bottom, she sympa- 
 thizes with the greater part of the principles which lie at 
 the root of this new movement which is now beginning 
 to agitate Europe. What the man may do or encourage 
 in France or Switzerland is a matter of perfect indiffer- 
 ence to her ; it is no concern of hers ; and as for what 
 he says or writes, she could almost say it after him, at 
 all events at the beginning of the new crisis. Later on, 
 associated with the anti-revolutionary campaign by 
 reasons of political strategy, in which she has no personal 
 feeling, she comes gradually to admit a certain personal 
 feeling into the matter. But, in 1791, Genet .still seems 
 
286 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 to dread, in her, very different sentiments, as we see 
 from his dispatch of the 14th of June of that year, 
 referring' to the arrival at Paris of the Comte de Som- 
 breuil, who is supposed to be the bearer of a commission 
 from the French anti-revolutionaries : 
 
 " It is true that this princess, by reason of the consti- 
 tution of her empire, cannot but manifest very different 
 principles from those which serve as base to our new 
 constitution, but I venture to assure you, Monsieur, that 
 the genius which has dictated the sublime ' instructions' 
 in regard to the laws, which has shown such encourage- 
 ment towards the writers to whom we owe the progress 
 of enlightenment and the stamping out of fanaticism, 
 which has devised for Russia a philosophic code worthy 
 of the admiration of all the ages, will enter neither 
 directly nor indirectly into the mad projects of those 
 who, unfortunately for themselves, have endeavoured to 
 sow discord in a people which is engaged, in concert 
 with its monarch, in the grandest political enterprise 
 which any society has ever undertaken." 
 
 The passage is unmistakable enough, and it is a 
 special pleading, addressed rather to the sovereign her- 
 self than to the minister, but it is singularly true. And, 
 at bottom, even in her most furious tirades against 
 Jacobinism, her most vehement declarations on behalf of 
 the monarchical principle, Catherine does, in a certain 
 sense, escape the reproach of self-contradiction and of 
 apostasy to her philosophic past ; for what she objects 
 to in the Revolution is not the principles on which that 
 Revolution is based, but the use it has made of them. 
 Might not these principles be carried out less violently 
 and more wisely ? Catherine professes that she herself 
 has proved that they can. What she has always dreamt 
 of is a very despotic monarchy based on very liberal 
 ideas. She has not perhaps entirely succeeded in carry- 
 ing out this programme ; but should not her grandson 
 Alexander carry it out to its conclusion 1 And so La 
 Harpe is in his right place ; so it is that in 1791 and 
 even in 1793 she resolutely retains him there, no matter 
 
'THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 287 
 
 what endeavours are made to arouse her apprehensions 
 and scruples. In 1791 the exiles of Coblenz induce 
 Rumiantsof, who has been sent to them as ambas- 
 sador, to denounce the relations of La Harpe with the 
 agitators of the Vaudois canton. She merely laughs 
 with La Harpe over the charge. In the following year, 
 as certain other exiles are defending, before the whole 
 court, the policy of the ancieii regime, Alexander's 
 brother, the Grand-Duke Constantine, a child of hardly 
 thirteen, who is also a pupil of La Harpe, interrupts 
 them : 
 
 " That is an entirely wrong account of things ! " 
 " Where did you get your information, Monseigneur 1 " 
 " From the memoirs of Duclos, that I have read with 
 La Harpe." 
 
 She laughs once more. In 1793, the presence of the 
 Comte d'Artois at St. Petersburg gives new force to 
 the attacks upon the supposed Jacobin tendencies 
 of the tutor. A compatriot of La Harpe who accom- 
 panies the prince, the Chevalier Roll, speaks on behalf 
 of the patriciate of Berne, uneasy on account of the 
 tutor's relations with his brother the general, who is 
 an ally of the Jacobins in Paris. Catherine merely gives 
 a gentle reminder to her protege that he had better not 
 mix himself up with the affairs of his country. And 
 she gives him the opportunity of defending himself, 
 and even his principles, in a justificative memorial 
 which she herself puts in circulation. 
 
 Unfortunately for the tutor, and still more so for the 
 tuition, of Alexander, the excellent advice by which the 
 Empress had hoped to cut short the troublesome and 
 compromising relations in which he was concerned, has 
 an unexpected and disastrous effect : La Harpe lets 
 politics alone in Switzerland only to meddle with them 
 in Russia. Whatever some may have said on the sub- 
 ject, whatever he may have said himself, his banishment 
 is due entirely to this reason. He is seized with the 
 idea, which is anything -but shared by Catherine, of a 
 reconciliation between Paul and his two sons ; which, he 
 
288 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 conceives, will be an effectual obstacle to Catherine's 
 supposed intention of setting aside the succession to 
 the throne. This soon settles matters ! On December 
 27, 1793, a well-informed courtier writes from St. Peters- 
 burg to Prince Kurakin : " A certain M. Harpe, major 
 and chevalier of St. Vladimir, who held the post of tutor 
 to S. A. I. Mgr. the Grand-Duke Alexander, has been 
 arrested and sent across the frontier. The cause is 
 supposed to have been the discovery of his Jacobinism. 
 . . . These are the serpents that we warm in our 
 bosoms ! " 
 
 This well-informed courtier, who is no other than 
 Bantish-Kaminski, a high official in the bureau of 
 Foreign Affairs, and the father of the writer of a popular 
 dictionary of historical celebrities, is, for once, in the 
 wrong : the Jacobinism of the Chevalier of St. Vladimir 
 has nothing to do with the matter ; no more, indeed, 
 than La Harpe, despite his own insinuations on the 
 subject, had to do with the delay of the Russian armies 
 in actually taking up arms against the Revolution. 
 
 The tutor is much regretted. " I don't want to read," 
 declares young Constantine one day to his successor. 
 Count Sacken ; " you are always reading, and you only 
 get more stupid ! " La Harpe, on returning to France, 
 finds himself in the wake of the revolutionary armies, 
 and the principles which he then professes are much the 
 same as those which, half unconsciously perhaps, he has 
 professed even at St. Petersburg, under the indulgent 
 eyes of Catherine herself. Appointed member of the 
 directorate of the Swiss Republic, he manifests in the 
 exercise of his functions precisely the ideal of govern- 
 ment dreamt of by the great sovereign : he is as despotic 
 and as liberal as possible. He even plans another i8th 
 Brumaire, of which he is to be the hero ; a project which 
 only results in a hasty dismissal on the part of his 
 fellow-citizens, and therewith the end of his political 
 career. 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 289 
 
 III. 
 
 The arrival of the Comte de Saint-Priest at St. Peters- 
 burg in 1 79 1 marks a new epoch in the history of the 
 French colony established in Russia : that of emigration. 
 From this moment, Catherine begins to pick and choose 
 among the Frenchmen who recommend themselves to 
 her favour, and, to succeed in that, it is necessary to have 
 a clean record. The painter Doyen, who presents himself 
 with a somewhat revolutionary past behind him, is at 
 first sent about his business. " I did not see him," writes 
 Catherine to Grimm, on the 9th of May, 1792, "for we 
 do not admit Frenchmen so easily ; at least, not until 
 they have gone through political quarantine." The 
 ordeal is not, however, so very difficult, and Doyen ere 
 long has passed successfully through it, and even achieved 
 a very brilliant position at the court. But the emigrants 
 do their best to heighten the rigour of the consigne. 
 They come in shoals. Saint-Priest is required by the 
 diplomatic body of Coblenz to obtain Catherine's aid in 
 the expedition which the King of Sweden is thinking of 
 undertaking in France, in order to re-establish order. 
 He comes a little too soon, and meets with but a cold 
 welcome. Introduced as he is by the official representa- 
 tive of constitutional monarchy against which he wishes 
 the Empress to take up arms, he comes under dubious 
 auspices, which are not likely to augment his chances. 
 Later on, in September 1791, comes Esterhazy, sent by 
 the Comte d'Artois to report the Pilnitz conferences 
 to the Empress. He succeeds better, thanks to the 
 personal charms which formerly won him the familiar 
 friendship of Marie-Antoinette. He brings with him 
 the prestige of the older Versailles. Once the page of 
 King Stanislas, the /iw/fV/ of Marie Leszczynska, he has 
 still before him an honourable career in the French 
 army. The mother of Marie-Antoinette has refused to 
 allow his return to Austria, on account of his dissolute 
 
 u 
 
290 THE SE MIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 life ; but the scruples of " Saint Theresa " are not likely 
 to have much influence on the mind of Saint Catherine. 
 Esterhazy also finds means to ingratiate himself with 
 the favourite Zubof, who takes him unceremoniously to 
 the Hermitage, brings him through room after room, 
 and then, opening a door, pushes him in, saying, " There 
 she is ! " Brought thus into tete-a-tete with the sovereign, 
 he does not lose his presence of mind, and succeeds in 
 rnaking an agreeable impression. Catherine listens 
 inattentively to his diplomatic communications, but she 
 offers to take him into her service and supply all his 
 wants, and that is precisely what he is aiming at. After 
 the final fall of the Bourbons, he lives quietly on the 
 estates that she gives him in Volhynia. 
 
 Sombreuil, too, at about the same time, comes to take 
 up his abode in Russia, and is received as aide-de-camp 
 by the Prince de Nassau. He has many imitators. 
 " MM. de Fiirstemberg, de Schweizer, de Lambert, and 
 de Vendre," writes Genet in April 1791, "have asked 
 permission to be admitted as volunteers in the Russian 
 army ... all received higher rank than they had in 
 France, and are treated with distinction at the court." 
 Two months before the attempt of Varennes, the Marquis 
 de Bouille himself offers his services to the Empress of 
 Russia, through Grimrn. General Heymann, a brilliant 
 cavalry officer, whom he sends to Paris to set matters on 
 foot, intends to follow in his footsteps. There is some 
 disagreement as to conditions, for Catherine replies 
 curtly that her generals cost less and are worth quite as 
 much as the French. But Grimm soon has other pro- 
 positions to make : a Viom^nil and a Vauban wish " to 
 devote themselves to the service of a sovereign who has 
 taken victory into her pay " ; a young Prince de Craon 
 burns to betake himself to Russia, in order to " pay his 
 first devotions in the temple of glory " ; a Marquis de 
 Juignd, head of a large family, and deprived by the 
 Revolution of the means of providing for them, " desires 
 to forget his troubles by donning the uniform of Her 
 Imperial Majesty." Others come straight to St. Peters- 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 291 
 
 burg: in September 1791 Genet announces the arrival 
 of MM. de Boisgelin, de Fortin,and de Veuzotte. Soon 
 it is the whole army, or at least the remains of it, Conde 
 at its head, with 1500 men still under its flag, that 
 demands shelter in the ranks of the Imperial army. But 
 Catherine has soldiers enough. In December 1792 
 Richelieu, the hero of Ismail, arrives at the head-quarters 
 of Conde with two sledges containing 60,000 roubles in 
 silver and a letter from the Empress offering the emi- 
 grants — a settlement on the eastern shore of the sea of 
 Azof, a city to found in a desert ! She has already 
 allotted the ground, and drawn up the plan of the houses 
 to be built. Richelieu is to be governor, Esterhazy 
 inspector of works, and Conde general inspector, in this 
 distant land, behind the Kouban, with about 300,000 
 francs as capital ! The consternation of the unhappy 
 waifs of fortune can easily be imagined : " We would 
 sooner die," writes one of them. 
 
 Just then Catherine was anxious to make a great 
 show, and do little, on the Rhine ; and the appearance 
 of Richelieu in the camp of Conde with his barrels of 
 money and his very unattractive proposals, was probably 
 done for this purpose. Rumiantsof had been there for 
 the last two years, passing in review this army of 
 gentlemen, solemnly haranguing the Marechal de Broglie, 
 but, in point of fact, doing nothing beyond becoming 
 the favourite of the platonic favourite of Monsieur. 
 Nassau, in full uniform as Russian admiral, also figured 
 there, keeping open house, heaping feast on feast and 
 enthusiastic toast on toast. Catherine intervened from 
 time to time, with a little in the way of aid and a great 
 deal in the way of counsel, not always easy to follow, 
 as when she advised the princes never to receive any 
 one in evening dress, so as to " dismiss the idea of 
 equality." Alas ! the poor princes were in danger of 
 soon seeing about them people who had not so much as 
 a dress suit to put on. She wished it all to be taken 
 seriously, and, serious herself in her resolve to do nothing 
 which should be so, she all but succeeded. Monsieur, 
 
292 THE S EMIR A MIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 in spite of all his disappointments, being unable to 
 compare her to anything but Prometheus " stealing fire 
 from heaven to warm the earth." 
 
 A regiment of 1500 Frenchmen in her pay would 
 have been of little use to her, but it pleased her to have 
 a Richelieu under the orders of her generals, as it did 
 also to people her salons with the flower of the chief 
 nobility of Europe. " Madame Vigee-Lebrun will soon 
 imagine that she is in Paris, so many Frenchmen are 
 at all the parties here," wrote the Prince de Ligne in 
 1793 in a sketch of St. Petersburg society. She lodged 
 Esterhazy in her palace, gave a pension to Bombelles, 
 employed Saint-Priest in certain diplomatic missions, 
 and gave a hearty welcome to Choiseul-Gouffier, whose 
 role of peace-maker at Constantinople had commended 
 him to her. She even decided him to take up his 
 abode in her empire, and thus made capture of one 
 noble lineage the more, of which France has since 
 recaptured certain branches. There is even a family 
 legend to the effect that the sovereign had, at first, 
 a more tender interest in the former ambassador, and 
 that his austere virtue led him to act the part of Joseph 
 in a scene very humiliating for Semiramis. It is forgotten 
 that, born in 1752, Choiseul had long passed the age of 
 Plato and Valerian Zubof, and the amorous fancies of 
 Catherine have no need of calling in the miracle of the 
 multiplying. But it is natural that the imagination of 
 contemporaries should have ranged freely on such a 
 subject, and that people should have seen double, and 
 triple, in regard to a romance which, without that, was 
 quite sufficiently varied. 
 
 Semiramis also gave some encouragement to the 
 society poet Grimaut, to the tactician Tranchant de 
 Laverne, the future author of two indifferent biographies 
 of Patiomkin and Suvorof She even so far forgot her 
 prejudices against the painter Doyen as to give him a 
 place in the theatre near her own box. She appointed 
 him decorator of her palace and professor in her 
 Academy, though she knew well that in Paris he had 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 293 
 
 drawn up the inventory of the works of art confiscated 
 from the convents. 
 
 Local society could not but follow in the steps of the 
 Empress, and all vied with one another in receiving the 
 greatest number of the refugees, and paying them the 
 greatest attentions. The salon of Madame Divof is 
 known as " Little Coblenz" ; it is the head-quarters of 
 wit a la fran^aise, sometimes at the Empress's expense. 
 A libel which circulates there is recognized as the work 
 of a refugee in the Empress's pension. At the Princess 
 Dolgoruki's, Catherine is censured by means of rhapsodies 
 on the talent of Madame Vigee-Lebrun. At Prince 
 Bielossielski's, the French verses of the master of the 
 house, which, as we know, Catherine thought little 
 enough of, are much admired. Everywhere there is 
 love-making in the manner of both countries. In this 
 respect, there is a confusion of customs, tastes, and 
 passions of different order, more refined on the one side, 
 more emphatic on the other, but with an equal licence 
 on either side. It is Versailles planted bodily down at 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
 From this accidental fusion of two heterogeneous 
 elements, something more has come about than the 
 mingling of two kinds of corruption. If Gogol, the 
 author of Dead Souls, has seen in it only the perversion 
 of the national genius by puerilities proper to the 
 French temperament, Turguenief has traced, even in 
 the most out-of-the-way nooks and corners, the profound 
 and significant penetration of quite other and much 
 more serious ideas, inspirations, and tendencies of 
 similar origin. Now, it is not the spirit of the old 
 French monarchy, nor that of an impotent reaction 
 against the revolutionary movement, which thus pene- 
 trates to the very heart of ancient Moscow. No, that 
 is confined to the drawing-rooms of the capital ; out- 
 side, it is something quite different which this crowd of 
 strangers disseminates around it. For, though these 
 refugees are the victims or the adversaries of the Revo- 
 
294 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 lution, they are also its issue. They have been carried 
 by the flood ; some of them have helped it onward, and, 
 despite themselves, they bear its influence, they com- 
 municate its movement. The ideas, inspirations, and 
 tendencies which Turguenief has traced, are indeed 
 those which have created modern France. 
 
 Certainly they are slow in making progress in these 
 surroundings, so little prepared to receive them ; they 
 may almost be said to remain in the air like the frozen 
 words of a local legend, which cannot be heard till the 
 return of spring. But they are there, they wait their 
 time, and when once they feel the regenerating breezes 
 of April, they will wake to life. The great work of 
 liberation, in 1861, comes in part from this, without 
 doubt. 
 
 Catherine is doubtless in ignorance of the distant 
 future of this indirect propaganda, or sees it too far in 
 the future to be concerned about it. She tolerates even 
 the meetings of the Caf(6 Henri, a sort of club where 
 people go to drink punch and talk politics, and where 
 very free discussions are held in French. This associa- 
 tion of refugees, assisting unwittingly in the carrying 
 out of a task whose accomplishment will not be seen for 
 several generations, strikes her especially, as it has since 
 struck Gogol, by its mask of frivolity, which at once 
 amuses and reassures her, at the same time that it 
 distresses certain morose observers, who do not share in 
 the general enthusiasm. Seeing the gestures, and not 
 hearing a word — the sound suspended for the moment 
 in this freezing atmosphere — these serious persons find 
 the pantomime exaggerated and ridiculous. " I am 
 surprised," writes the Count Rastoptshin, " that these 
 people can inspire any interest. I have never found 
 any other in them than that which one finds in the per- 
 formance of a moving drama, for this nation exists only 
 by and in its acting. When one studies the French, one 
 finds something so volatile in their whole being, that one 
 cannot conceive how they manage to keep to the earth. 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 295 
 
 The scoundrels and idiots have remained in their own 
 country, and the madmen have quitted it to increase 
 the number of charlatans in the world." 
 
 Catherine too acts a comedy, cheaply enough, with 
 these mainly eminent representatives of a world about 
 to disappear. The arrival of the Comte d'Artois in 1793 
 enchants her : it is a splendid bit of spectacular effect. 
 She had dreamt for a moment, before Varennes, of 
 giving hospitality to Louis XVI. himself She had 
 declared that it would be " the most remarkable act of 
 her reign." A Princess of Zerbst giving shelter to the 
 grandson of St. Louis : she knew what that would 
 mean ! She keeps for a whole month the son of France 
 that she has the good luck to have in her hands, and 
 tries upon him all the pomps of her court and all 
 the charms of her person. He behaves very properly 
 on his side ; " admirable," declares Langeron, " simple, 
 decent, modest, and sincerely distressed, without swagger 
 or affectation, manifesting in his conversation a cold and 
 sane judgment, contradicting all the notions general in 
 Russia in regard to his frivolity and youthful gaieties, 
 inspiring the most lively and respectful interest." But 
 he does not succeed in engaging Catherine in a single 
 conversation in which the affairs of the refugees and the 
 question of royalty were seriously considered. Catherine 
 was a past master in the art of evasion. He gets on 
 better with Zubof, who, more flattered still, is prodigal 
 at all events of promises. 
 
 At the end of a month, Semiramis seems to have 
 exhausted her resources. The prince's companions are 
 iiot very agreeable either. The Bishop "of Arars has 
 " too much the manner and language of a grenadier." 
 The Chevalier Roll gets too much entangled in the 
 affairs of Switzerland and La Harpe. The Comte 
 d'Escars does not find the Empress's table worthy of 
 so great an Empress, and makes no disguise of his 
 opiniod. The parting hour has struck. The prince sets 
 out with the favourite's promises, which nearly bring 
 him to a debtor's prison in England, with a little money 
 
296 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 on which he Hves for a short time in Germany, and with 
 the famous sword, " given by God to the king," which, 
 in the following year, at Hamm, passes into the hands 
 of an usurer in order to pay for the toilet of Madame 
 de Polastron. " I should not give it to you," Catherine 
 had said to him in solemn audience, "if I were not 
 persuaded that you would perish sooner than postpone 
 using it." He uses it, poor prince, in the only way he 
 knows how to. 
 
 Calonne, who comes after, fares worse. Catherine is 
 accustomed to look upon the French within her borders, 
 not as guests, but as new subjects, and she will not hear 
 of their giving themselves airs. The former controller- 
 general gives her the impression, too, of a mischief- 
 maker. Besides, she is gradually outgrowing her spirit 
 of professed tolerance, at the outset of the revolutionary 
 crisis, towards the conflict of ideas and principles to 
 which it gave rise. She has gradually come to believe 
 in the sentiments that she has so long professed out- 
 wardly to her German neighbours, without in any way 
 believing them. She is not yet inclined to set out for 
 the re-establishment of throne and altar in France, but 
 she feels the impulse to hit out at those Frenchmen 
 whom she has at hand. In 1795 it is not only the 
 drawing-room of St. Petersburg in which Calonne's 
 compatriots are to be seen, but the prisons as well. 
 Bonneau, ex-consul-general of France at Warsaw, has 
 been there for the past two years. An order of Sievers, 
 the all-powerful representative of Catherine on the 
 banks of the Vistula, has one night arrested him and 
 hurried him away without trial to St. Petersburg. His 
 neighbour, in the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, is a 
 compatriot who has been put there on account of some 
 irregularity in his passport. The latter goes mad at the 
 end of six months, is sent to a hospital, cured, sent back 
 to prison, and this time becomes raving mad. When 
 he makes too much noise he is beaten with rods until 
 he is quiet. Kosciuszko and his aide-de-camp know 
 him, and find means of communicating with him : he 
 
THE FRENCH AT THE NORTHERN COURT 297 
 
 is twenty-five years of age, and is called Forges. And 
 neither Voltaire nor D'Alembert is there to interfere in 
 his favour ! The friend of the philosophers is equally 
 absent: it is Catherine II. who reigns now, and who is 
 soon to attempt the imprisonment of France itself 
 under the guard of 60,000 jailers whom Suvorof is 
 ready to lead there. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES.— PRINCESS 
 TARAKANOF. 
 
 I. 
 
 To call up the picture of a court of the eighteenth 
 century, and not to assign their place to a certain num- 
 ber of adventurers, would be too obvious an act of 
 forgetfulness. Catherine does not escape the common 
 destiny : the Piedmontese Odart figures among her 
 familiars from 1762 onwards. He disappears after the 
 coup d'Etat, returns some years afterwards, this time in 
 order to conspire against the widow of Peter HI., and 
 then disappears finally, killed, it is supposed, by a 
 thunderbolt at Nice. But he leaves others of his kind 
 at St. Petersburg, for in 1788 Langeron comes across an 
 Italian who is so like him as to be taken for him. He 
 calls himself the Count Morelli, his real name being 
 Rosatti, a former bandsman in a French regiment. His 
 voice, his guitar, and no doubt some other talents, have 
 given him access to Prince Patiomkin. When the 
 second Turkish war breaks out, he is Count, Colonel, 
 and Knight of St. George. Langeron, who has just 
 arrived in Russia, with an honourable and glorious past, 
 waits in vain for a commission which he has been led to 
 anticipate in regard to the Austrian army. He is in 
 despair, when Rosatti, or Count Morelli, gives him to 
 understand that his only chance of obtaining employ- 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 299 
 
 ment is by paying a visit to M. Altesti. This is an 
 Illyrian adventurer, secretary of tlie favourite Zubof, 
 and second minister, specially charged with the employ- 
 ment or surveillance of the strangers in Russia. i\#er 
 some hesitation Langeron consents : " His ante-room," 
 he relates, " from seven in the morning, was as crowded 
 as that of Zubof ... I went to see him after dinner, 
 found him, stayed in his salon for five minutes, and 
 never mentioned the matter to him at all. Three days 
 after I received my commission." 
 
 We have already had occasion to cite the sonorous 
 name of another adventurer whom Betzki put in charge 
 of the Beaux-Arts and the Corps des Cadets. This 
 pseudo-Lascaris is also an Italian, the son of a Neapoli- 
 tan named Carburi, who deals in spices in the Isle of 
 Cephalonia. His imposture and real origin are one day 
 exposed by the wife of a consul of Ragusa, a true Las- 
 caris, who comes to St. Petersburg. It makes no 
 difference ; but soon after he is expelled from the Corps 
 des Cadets on account of a shameful charge brought 
 against him by the chaplain of the establishment. 
 Employment is then found for him in the police. 
 
 In 1764 a brother of Baron Fran9ois de Tott, the 
 Hungarian whose diplomatic and military career in the 
 service of France had been so meritorious, appears at 
 St. Petersburg. He accompanies Madame Saltykof, the 
 wife of the Russian minister at Paris, who has to return 
 to her native country on account of her health. He is 
 soon at home in the best society of the capital, serves as 
 volunteer in the '' camp " of thirty thousand men then 
 gathered at Tsarskoie, shares the tent of the favourite 
 Orlof, and is presented by him to the Empress. Un- 
 luckily, he gets into debt, and thereupon endeavours to 
 make .use of his brilliant social relations and the French 
 cavalry uniform that he bears, no one knows why or 
 wherefore, by offering his services to Bausset, the French 
 envoy then in oiificc. Just then Bausset dies, and he 
 dreams for a moment of taking his place as charge 
 cT affaires, then resigns himself to the less glorious post of 
 
300 THE SEMI RAMI S OF THE NORTH 
 
 informer in the pay of the Legation. On the strength of 
 his intimacy with Count Panin, he obtains the promise 
 of a high salary and the payment of his debts, but 
 Cg^erine's prime minister suspects what is going on, 
 and, in a friendly manner, advises the vendor of the 
 secrets of state to cross the frontier as speedily as 
 possible. He even contributes towards the expenses 
 of this precipitate departure. In a justification pre- 
 sented in 1 77 1 to the Due d'Aiguillon, de Tott excuses 
 himself, amusingly enough, from the unjust suspicion of 
 having been influenced by motives of personal interest : 
 " Set down a Russian at the court of France, with 
 common-sense, a name, good manners, in company with 
 the prime minister, in relations with the nobihty of 
 both sexes ; suppose in him little fondness pour ses 
 glaces {sic) ; let him have eight thousand francs of debt, 
 and imagine whether or not he will get into em- 
 barrassed circumstances." 
 
 II. 
 
 The " Star of the North " would have failed to justify 
 her name if her European lustre had not attracted the 
 greatest adventurer of the time. Cagliostro takes several 
 months to prepare a sensational entry on one of the 
 most conspicuous stages of Europe in the latter half of 
 the eighteenth century. Reaching Mittau in February 
 1779, he prolongs his stay there, watching and preparing 
 his public, getting his scenery in order. He attributes 
 to himself an important mission on behalf of the 
 masonic order of which he is called upon to become 
 the representative in the North. Eagerly welcomed in 
 the Courland house of Count Medem, his appearance 
 loudly trumpeted, he finds himself, on his arrival at St. 
 Petersburg, in possession of all his customary means of 
 action. Patiomkin, then at the outset of his favour, 
 goes to see him, and has his reasons for going again, 
 reasons to which the fair and fascinating Lorenza, who 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 301 
 
 then goes under the name of the Princess of Santa 
 Croce, is no stranger. According to one of the thousand 
 reports which were then in circulation, Catherine herself 
 intervenes in order to get rid of this rival, offering her 
 thirty thousand roubles, which the lady refuses in favour 
 of twice the amount on the part of the favourite. The 
 story is highly improbable. Catherine had better means 
 than that of getting rid of her rivals, and she has given 
 too amusing an account, in a letter to Grimm, of the 
 prowesses of the charlatan in her capital : 
 
 " He came here calling himself a colonel in the service 
 of Spain, and Spanish by birth, pretending to be a 
 sorcerer, having spirits at his beck and call. When I 
 heard that, I said : ' This man has made a great mistake 
 in coming here ; nowhere will he succeed so badly as in 
 Russia.' We do not burn sorcerers here, and for twenty 
 years there has only been one single affair in which 
 there were supposed to be any sorcerers, and then the 
 Senate asked to see them, and, when they had been 
 summoned, they were found to be quite stupid and per- 
 fectly innocent. M. Cagliostro, however, has come just 
 at the right moment for himself, when several lodges of 
 freemasons, which had taken up Swedenborg's principles, 
 were anxious at all costs to see spirits ; they therefore 
 ran to Cagliostro, who declared he had all the secrets of 
 Doctor Falk, an intimate friend of the Due de Richelieu, 
 and who formerly sacrificed to the black goat in the 
 midst of Vienna . . . M. Cagliostro then produced his 
 marvellous cures ; he pretended to extract quicksilver 
 from a gouty man's leg, and he was taken in the act of 
 pouring a teaspoonful of quicksilver into the water in 
 which he put the gouty man. Then he produced dyes 
 which would dye nothing, and chemical preparations 
 which would not work . . . After which, it has been 
 discovered that he could hardly read or write. Finally, 
 overwhelmed with debts, he took refuge in the cellar of 
 M. lelaguine, where he drank as much champagne and 
 English beer as he could. One day apparently he 
 exceeded the usual measure, for, on leaving his repast, 
 
302 THE S EMIR AMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 he hooked himself on to the wig of the secretary of the 
 house, who boxed his ears, whereupon there was a free 
 fight ; M. lelaguine, tired alike of his cellar-rat and of 
 the expenditure of wine and beer, as well as of his secre- 
 tary's complaints, politely persuaded him to take his 
 departure in a kibitka, and not in the air, as he threat- 
 ened, and in order that his creditors should put no 
 hindrance in the way of this brisk means of conveyance, 
 she gave him an old soldier to accompany him and 
 Madame la Comtesse as far as Mittau. There is the 
 whole story of Cagliostro, in which there is everything 
 but the marvellous. I never saw him, even at a distance, 
 nor had any inclination to." 
 
 The Princess of Santa Croce, or, more simply, Madame 
 Cagliostro, seems to have had no share, after all, in the 
 failure of this expedition. Catherine always had, as 
 we know, an exceptional allowance for the amorous 
 caprices of the most capricious and amorous of her 
 favourites. Some years before, the future Prince of 
 Taurida had sighed after the charms, already somewhat 
 faded, of another foreign visitor of more or less the 
 same category, and Catherine had not appeared to be 
 jealous in the least. She even found the fair charmer 
 intelligent, and she was not often given to such kinds 
 of compliment. This was the famous Duchess of Kings- 
 ton, widow of the duke of that name, but the undivorced 
 wife of a first husband still living, a Captain Hervey ; 
 so that she added bigamy to the other gallant adven- 
 tures which she had had under her maiden name of 
 Elizabeth Chudleigh, once maid-of-honour of the Prin- 
 cess of Wales. She comes to St. Petersburg in 1777, with 
 a numerous following, and an almoner, Abbe Sechamp. 
 She is presented to the Empress under the title which 
 is disputed in England, she is supposed even to belong 
 to the royal family, is invited to Tsarskole-Sielo, and 
 meets with the most flattering reception. She gives 
 balls to which everybody in St. Petersburg comes, both 
 on board her yacht, whose luxurious fittings cause 
 universal admiration, and in her house, one of the 
 
AUVKJMTUKKKS AND ADVENTURESSES 303 
 
 fipest in the city, which is put at her disposal by the 
 Empress. The yacht having been somewhat damaged 
 in a storm, Catherine has it set right at her own ex- 
 pense. The adventuress is cunning enougli to tell every 
 qne that she has come simply and solely to have the 
 delight and honour of seeing the most extraordinary 
 woman of the past and present times, and Semiramis 
 likes to hear it said. Patiomkin openly pays court to the 
 pseudo-duchess, and Catherine lets him do it. It should 
 be said that this new rival is fifty-seven years of age, 
 and is beginning to be deaf, and she also appears to 
 take special interest in one of the favourite's secretaries, 
 Garnovski, who comes later to appropriate a part of 
 her large fortune. For, wishing to push her claims, 
 she begins to dream of gaining official standing at the 
 court, and buys an estate in Esthonia. But unfavour- 
 able rumours begin to be circulated on her account, 
 and she thinks it best to go into retirement for a time ; 
 and when, in 1782, she returns, it is all up: no one 
 will have anything to do with her, at the court or else- 
 where, the favourite turns his back on her, and Gar- 
 novski, in whom she has placed all her confidence, 
 takes advantage of it to lay hands on her Esthonian 
 estate. 
 
 in. 
 
 Two years before the first appearance of this adven- 
 turess, the fortress of St. Peter and Paul had seen the 
 end of the romance of another woman, adventurous in 
 quite another way, mysterious also, and whom it is 
 almost a little painful to bring into this chapter, so 
 much of melancholy and pitiful interest is there in a 
 story which suits so ill with the more ordinary vul- 
 garity of this kind of episode. All is mystery in this 
 singular figure, so phantom-like, a mystery which even 
 rumour has been unable to enlighten. She lived and 
 died surrounded with mystery, and, apart from the 
 
304 THE SEMI RAM IS OF THE NORTH 
 
 misty circle of more or less imaginary facts which are 
 reported about her, it is scarcely possible to-day, to 
 really reconstruct her personal identity or her place in 
 history. 
 
 Her name ? She has none. In the legend, and even 
 in what history there is, she commonly bears the name 
 of Princess Tarakanof. Now, not only is this not her 
 true name, but it does not even appear that she herself 
 ever thought of appropriating it, among all the masks 
 which she donned. No Princess Tarakanof, true or 
 false, has ever had a moment's existence. Legend and 
 history have come upon a false track, making the 
 name of Tarakanof out of Daragan, the name of one 
 of Razuraovski's nephews ; but while there are Dara- 
 gans still occupying high positions in Russia, there 
 never has been a Tarakanof, either in the fortress of 
 St. Peter and Paul, or anywhere else. 
 
 Her civil state 1 She has none. She passes for a 
 daughter of Elizabeth and Razumovski. Hence the 
 confusion with the Daragans. In prison, under tor- 
 ture, in the last agonies, she obstinately denies having 
 wished to usurp this title. Could she do so with any 
 show of truth ? Was there any offspring of the mar- 
 riage of Elizabeth with the chorister of Little Russia.' 
 There is doubt on this point also. 
 
 One supposed certainty has for a long time stood out 
 from so many insoluble enigmas. In 1864 at St. Peters- 
 burg, and three years later at Paris, a picture by the 
 Russian painter, Flavintski, drew crowds of spectators 
 by a terrifying representation of the death of a young 
 and beautiful woman, imprisoned in a vault of the 
 fortress of Schliisselburg, surprised by the sudden 
 rising of the Neva, and drowned in her cell. It was 
 imagined to be a historical picture of the death of the 
 supposed Princess Tarakanof. Well, after all, there 
 is nothing historical in this dismal exhibition. A 
 careful investigation has established these facts : that 
 the inundation represented by the painter took place 
 in 1777, at which time the supposed Princess Tarakanof 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 305 
 
 had been dead two years, and she was never imprisoned 
 at Schlusselburg at all. 
 
 Who is she, then, this nameless being, whose sombre 
 destiny has distracted the imagination of artists and 
 put to task the knowledge of historians ? Who did 
 she even profess to be ? What part was it that she 
 wished to play ? Still mystery ! Not by a word has 
 she ever unveiled the secret of her conscience. Was 
 she ever conscious of it herself .'' Did she herself know 
 what we are so anxious to know about her "i Among 
 those who were passionately desirous of penetrating 
 her secret was the Duke of Limburg. All the reply 
 that he received in answer to his pressing and imperi- 
 ous questions is this dubious one : " You ask me for 
 the truth .■' You would never believe me if I told it 
 to you. And, then, what is truth .' What is falsehood .■* 
 In this strange comedy of life which we are obliged 
 to act out, and in which we are not allowed to choose 
 our part, are you able to distinguish between the mask 
 and the face which it covers .■■ To deceive ourselves 
 and one another is the common lot of all. We all lie. 
 Only, some do it without method or design, and are 
 lost by the way, while others fancy that they know 
 their way and make straight for the goal, lying always, 
 but lying systematically. I would be of those." 
 
 The first appearance of this enigmatic actress took 
 place at Paris in 1772. People notice a Princess Aly 
 Emettee de Vlodomir, a name strangely made up of 
 Sclavonic and Persian sounds, coming from no one 
 knows where. She is young and fair, gracious of aspect, 
 with blonde hair like that of Elizabeth, and eyes chang- 
 ing colour like hers, now blue, now black, which give to 
 her face that air of strangeness and dreaminess which 
 has always clung about her person and her destiny. 
 Her manners are admirable, and she seems to have 
 received a most careful education. She gives herself 
 out for a Tcherkess, the niece of an immensely rich 
 Persian lord. She has a numerous suite, among which 
 are two Germans ; a Baron von Embs, who plays the 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE SEMIFAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 part of a middle-aged relative, and a Baron von Schenk, 
 who unites the office of intendant with that of confi- 
 dential friend. The princess lives in great style, and 
 is soon in possession of a very wide circle of acquaint- 
 ances. The strangers who are then so frequent in Paris 
 are to be seen at her house, together with a certain 
 number of Frenchmen. The Polish refugees, who are 
 just then beginning to arrive, furnish a considerable 
 and illustrious contingent to her salon. Prince Michael 
 Oginski, one of the most conspicuous of these exiles, 
 is seen among the admirers of the fair Tcherkess. Sud- 
 denly there is a catastrophe : the respectable middle- 
 aged relation is arrested for debt, and it is discovered 
 that he has no right to the name and title which he 
 bears. He is no baron, and his real name is that of 
 a rich merchant of Ghent, towards whom he has long 
 played the part of prodigal son. The news spreads, 
 and there is naturally a rush of creditors to the luxuri- 
 ous abode of the princess ; but another surprise awaits 
 them : the house is empty, the princess is gone. 
 
 A few months afterwards she re-appears at Frankfort, 
 always accompanied by a number of servants, staying 
 in the best lodgings in the town, and treated with the 
 greatest respect. Her Parisian tradesmen are not long 
 in following on her track ; but a saviour presents himself, 
 the Duke of Limburg, himself deeply in debt, but having 
 subjects whom he still has means of making use of; he 
 generously offers to relieve the princess of her embar- 
 rassments, and finally instals her in his castle of Ober- 
 stein. He expects, naturally, the reward of his chivalry ; 
 but the princess is not to be taken. He then goes to 
 the point of offering her his hand in marriage; it will 
 be no mesalliance, for she too has a sovereignty to give 
 him : she has changed her name and origin, it is the 
 Princess of Azov, a scion of the princely house of 
 Vlodimir, and heiress of a principality under the pro- 
 tectorate of Russia, who is to become Duchess of 
 Limburg. 
 
 Up to now the adventure is a commonplace one, like 
 
Adventurers and adventuresses 307 
 
 a hundred others of the period. False barons and 
 princesses swarm in the capitals and even in the small 
 towns. The greater rapidity of communications and 
 the much more certain division of social conditions are 
 even now scarcely enough to bar their way. In the 
 eighteenth century, when there was no telegraph, when 
 the Almanack de Gotha had only begun to appear in 
 1764, and geographical and ethnological knowledge was 
 but at its commencement, the existence of principali- 
 ties of Azov under the protection of Russia was not easy 
 to inquire into. Even in our own day such things are 
 not always found out in time. In 1772, at the castle of 
 Oberstein, the future Duchess of Limburg could well 
 find elbow-room. A moment comes, however, when 
 the Duke's purse grows so desperately empty, and the 
 subsidies which the Princess of Azov is expecting from 
 her principalities are so long in coming, that relations 
 between the fiances become strained, and the confidence 
 which has reigned till then begins to waver. But by 
 this time the Duke of Limburg has already a successor, 
 and it is now that the romance of the fair unl<nown 
 takes a turn which carries it out of trivial issues into the 
 domain of history. 
 
 The castle of Oberstein is near Mannheim, where for 
 some months another Polish exile, more illustrious still 
 than Prince Oginski, Prince Radziwill, has been living ; 
 the Prince Radziwill whom a legend, entirely without 
 foundation, represents carrying over Europe twelve life- 
 size statues of the Apostles in solid gold, which he has 
 succeeded in rescuing from his castle at Nieswiez when 
 it was pillaged by the Russians, and which serve pro- 
 visionally to cover his travelling expenses. The Princess 
 of Azov hears of her neighbour, and is not slow to turn 
 her fair tearful eyes in his direction. Despite the absence 
 of the twelve imaginary Apostles, the great Polish lord, 
 who still retains more definite fragments of a royal 
 fortune, is a highly desirable catch. But he is suspicious 
 and eccentric, and feminine charms have little power 
 over him. No matter ! The great actress who has not 
 
3o8 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 told her secret to the Duke of Limburg has other means 
 of seduction besides the enigmatic charm of her changing 
 eyes. A sudden shift of scenery brings her out in a 
 new light. There is no longer a Princess of Azov ; there 
 is no longer a principality of Vlodimir ; there is only a 
 nameless orphan, or rather one with so lofty a name 
 that it can only be whispered, and that under mortal 
 peril. Brought up in a convent, then banished to Siberia, 
 she has been liberated by her prison-warders, and taken 
 to Persia. Nevertheless, in all her wanderings, she has 
 preserved a coffer in which is deposited a document 
 which is at once her certificate of birth and her fortune. 
 It is worth an empire : it is the will of Elizabeth I., 
 Empress of Russia, bequeathing her crown to Elizabeth 
 II., only issue of her marriage with Razumovski, and 
 Elizabeth II. is the mysterious chatelaine of Oberstein. 
 
 More or less documented pretenders, hypothetical 
 sons and daughters of kings and empresses, are no rarity 
 in the eighteenth century, though the time of the 
 Naundorffs is not yet come. But no matter! Radziwill's 
 imagination is fired at once by the telling of this mar- 
 vellous tale. He is just then dreaming of some bold 
 attempt at recovering the liberty of his countrj'. He 
 dreams of making his way to Turkey, and demanding 
 the aid of Ottoman arms. What an invaluable support 
 to him in this expedition will be' the simultaneous 
 appearance in the Turko-Polish camp of the grand- 
 daughter of Peter the Great. She asks for nothing 
 better ; she will follow the exiled noble to Venice, where 
 he is to put the finishing touch to his plans, and then to 
 Constantinople. 
 
 And now the sentiments of the Duke of Limburg 
 himself, greatly as they have cooled down, are re- 
 quickened by the contact of this new brazier which his 
 enigmatic friend has set on fire. Jealousy, ambition, all 
 that is left of love, urge him on to new sacrifices. His 
 subjects are bled to the last point, and it is with a train 
 worthy of her rank that the daughter of Elizabeth reaches 
 Venice, in March 1774. There is no question of mar- 
 
Adventurers And adventuresses 30^ 
 
 fiage with the Duke. The iuture Empress of all the 
 Russias could not condescend so far. Some months 
 pass in feverish preparatipns and in fetes ; then the 
 heiress of the Tsars goes before her new compatriots to 
 Ragusa, where the embarkment is to take place. At the 
 moment of parting she is publicly hailed as the legiti- 
 mate sovereign of the great empire, and, as such, she 
 solemnly renews the promises that she has already 
 made to the Polish exiles. 
 
 At Ragusa the rdle thus assumed by the ex-princess 
 of Azov is yet more brilliantly played. At RadziwiU's 
 request, the French consul, Descrivaux, gives up to her 
 his own house, a delicious villa surrounded with gardens 
 and vineyards. This charming abode beco mes a popuh vr 
 centre, as also does the head-quarters of the little army 
 waiting the moment to set sail for Constantinople. The 
 august rank claimed by the adventuress gains a certain 
 consistency, and she proclaims it by a decisive action : 
 she writes to Alexis Orlof, who is at Leghorn with his 
 squadron. There are rumours that the latter is about to 
 make common cause with his brother, the favourite, 
 who has lately fallen into disgrace. A copy of the 
 testament of Elizabeth I. is sent him, with a ukase 
 signed by Elizabeth II., which instructs him to com- 
 municate to the troops under his orders the last will of 
 the daughter of the great Tsar. 
 
 One would suppose that le Balafre would shrug his 
 shoulders at the joke, and the widow of Peter III. would 
 merely laugh at it. By no means. Alexis Orlof refers 
 the matter to Catherine, and she, in a letter dated 
 November 12, 1774, bids the conqueror of Tchesme, by 
 force or by guile, and at all costs, seize upon the would- 
 be grand-daughter of Peter I. If need be, he is to 
 bombard Ragusa, and force the town to give her up. 
 To bombard a town belonging to a state with which one 
 is not at war is a serious affair ; evidently, therefore, the 
 Empress must have looked upon the adventure, which 
 she was so anxious to put an end to, as one of singular 
 seriousness. As we have said, the would-be heiress of 
 
3to THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 Elizabeth had a sufficient number of partners on the 
 look-out for European sovereignties, whom no one ever 
 thought of bombarding. And there is another significant 
 fact: eight years after these events, the Marquis de Verac, 
 French minister at St. Petersburg, has the demand put 
 before him of a Sieur Marine, French subject, to 
 whom the Princess of Vlodomir owes a sum of fifty-two 
 thousand livres, dating from her sojourn of some 
 months at Paris, in 1772. The Marquis has never 
 heard of a princess of that name ; he makes inquiries, 
 and at the first word he is stopped : the princess is dead, 
 her creditors have been paid, and the Sieur Marine 
 would have been also if he had sent in his account. 
 The claim will be immediately settled. At this moment 
 certain French shipowners, who have been plundered by 
 Russian cruisers in the Mediterranean, are waiting in 
 vain for the indemnities which have been promised them 
 years before, and Catherine refuses to honour, even at 
 Paris, the debts of Bobrinski ! Besides which, the 
 Marquis endeavours, privately if not officially, to obtain 
 further information in regard to the princess whose 
 existence he has been unaware of, and he comes to the 
 conclusion that it was really a daughter of the Empress 
 Elizabeth and Razumovski. 
 
 But to return to our story. Le Balafr^s reply to 
 the communication made to him by the pretender is 
 naturally long in coming, and Elizabeth II. has not the 
 time to await it at Ragusa, where her affairs are getting 
 complicated. The treaty of Koutchouk-Kainardji (July 
 2, 1774) has put to rout the hopes of Radziwill and his 
 friends, and the voyage to Constantinople is abandoned. 
 Meanwhile, an awkward accident of a more private 
 character has done some damage to the situation of the 
 grand-daughter of Peter I. While making the most of 
 her personal charms, her youth and beauty, the princess 
 had hitherto succeeded in keeping her reputation un- 
 blemished. She was supposed to be unattainable. Now 
 one night a young knight in the suite of Radziwill, 
 Domanski, is seen climbing over the wall of the Villa 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 311 
 
 Descrivaux. A man on guard takes him for a robber, 
 fires, and wounds him. There is a scandal, and Doman- 
 ski's companions are somevvliat disconcerted, especially 
 as certain dubious rumours begin to reach them from 
 Paris about the pretender. 
 
 As for her, she shows her usual decision by suddenly 
 announcing her departure to Rome. Serious affairs 
 calling her to the capital of the Christian world, where 
 the problem of the succession of Clement XIV. is just 
 beginning to be talked of, serve to cover her retreat. 
 But, travelling now under the name of the Comtesse de 
 Pimberg, she stops on the way at Naples, and there 
 makes another conquest, that of Hamilton, the English 
 envoy, the future husband of Emma Harte, who seems 
 predestined to encounters of this sort. While listening, 
 not too coldly, to the transports of the inflammable 
 diplomatist, she prepares for her entry into the eternal 
 city. Domanski, who has followed her with another 
 Polish companion, Czarnomski, arranges the matter. 
 At last she ventures thither, and, discreetly retired in a 
 lonely palace on the left bank of the Tiber, apparently 
 given over to good works, she is not long in winning 
 great sympathy, as well as exciting a lively curiosity. 
 Cardinal Albani, the protector of the Polish throne, 
 manifests a respectful interest in her, and soon becomes 
 enthusiastic himself as she confides in him her plans for 
 the future and her vows of conversion, which open a 
 dazzling vista before the piety and ambition of the 
 Roman prelate. A Jesuit named Linday, who has 
 formerly served in the Russian army, sees the new- 
 comer, and declares that he recognizes in her the wife 
 of a Duke of Oldenburg, whom he has visited at St. 
 Petersburg. This only aids in confirming the legend 
 which surrounds the mysterious princess. Unhappily 
 her resources are exhausted. She ekes them out 
 for a time by bartering diplomas of Limburg decor- 
 ations and dignities, of which she has laid in an ample 
 supply ; but at last, as the candidates for these honorary 
 distinctions become rare, she has recourse to a last 
 
312 THE SEMIRAMIS OF THE NORTH 
 
 expedient : she appeals to the generosity of Hamilton. 
 She writes him a letter, which is by no means whining, 
 but, on the contrary, lofty, as if she were conferring a 
 favour instead of asking for aid ; and in so doing she 
 signs her own death-warrant : the man who is to con- 
 duct her to prison and to death, and who- has long been 
 watching for his occasion, sees and seizes it now. 
 
 The sum required of Hamilton being a considerable 
 one, he applies to his colleague at Leghorn, John Dick, ' 
 English consul, and banker in that city. John Dick, 
 who is on friendly terms with Alexis Orlof, informs the 
 latter, who has just received peremptory orders from 
 Catherine, which he now sees his way to carry out. 
 
 In eighteenth-century politics, nothing is more common 
 than the laying of traps. The Russians only follow a 
 universal and almost invariable custom. The German 
 Weickard relates in his memoirs the adventure, very 
 ordinary in his eyes, of a Frenchman, whose name he 
 does not know, who is captured at the Hague, by order 
 of the Russian Government, taken to St. Petersburg, and 
 shut up for life in the oubliettes of the Finnish fortress 
 of Kexholm. 
 
 " He is a big scoundrel," declares the officer com- 
 missioned to carry out this proceeding, as he presents 
 his capture to the Empress. 
 
 " You're a bigger, since you managed to catch him," 
 replies Catherine. 
 
 In setting a trap, all means are good. There is a 
 droll story concerning the famous Beniowsky, who has 
 escaped from Kamschatka after having been sent there 
 by the Russians, and who turns up at Spa in 1772 with 
 the MS of a narrative of his Siberian odyssey, which 
 he declares he is going to publish, and in which the 
 Semiramis of the North is likely to be anything but 
 amicably treated. A Russian agent is put oh the track ; 
 he secures the aid of a famous courtesan knpwn as the 
 Ace of Spades, on account of a beauty-spot, which she 
 shows for a thaler. Poor Beniowsky sees the beauty- 
 spot, but loses his MS. 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 3T3 
 
 The snare which is set for the Comtesse Pimberg is, 
 in its kind, an unusually artistic one, a masterpiece of 
 ingenuity and infamy. It is curious to see an English- 
 man and a Russian acting in concert, and both seeming 
 to be equally devoid of scruples or of feelings of honour 
 or pity. Alexis Orlof and John Dick unite together 
 in order to lure the unhappy woman into the trap. At 
 their instigation an English banker at Rome, Jenkins, 
 presents himself before her, offering her unlimited credit 
 on the part of Hamilton, and at the same time a 
 Russian officer brings her, in the name of Alexis Orlof, 
 the most flattering of imaginable declarations. Le 
 Balafrd declares himself convinced of the authenticity 
 of the document whose existence she has made known 
 to him, and highly disposed to avenge on Catherine 
 the wrongs she has done his brother and himself He 
 asks the pretender to come and join him at Pisa. In 
 vain does Domanski, whose sincere passion renders him 
 clairvoyant, urge upon her not to go. She silences him : 
 she will go where her destiny calls her. 
 
 At Pisa she is received as a sovereign. She has by 
 this time again changed her name, and calls herself 
 the Countess Silinska. Orlof showers upon her every 
 manifestation of respect, in which there is a cunning 
 tinge of sentiment. Watched always by the suspicious 
 Domanski, he spares no pains to dazzle and to reassure 
 his victim ; now giving way to wrathful exclamations 
 against Catherine and her new favourite, now expressing 
 an enthusiastic zeal in the cause of the pretender, and 
 an almost servile subjection to her least desires, now 
 suggesting a discreet passion which he scarcely dares 
 avow, and with which he seems to unite certain personal 
 ambitions of his own. He gives fete after fete, over 
 which she is called upon to preside ; he induces her 
 several times to come to Leghorn, where John Dick 
 vies with him in gallantry and lavish hospitality. With- 
 out abandoning her attitude of haughty reserve, she lets 
 herself go on the fatal descent. In order to overcome 
 her last suspicions, he finally tells her openly that he 
 
314 THE SEMI RAM IS OF THE NORTH 
 
 desires to share with her the empire which he proposes 
 to conquer for her ; she goes through a form of marriage 
 or of betrothal, which he wishes to celebrate by a grand 
 naval spectacle, a mock-fight of his squadron off Leg- 
 horn. To witness it, she must go on board the admiral's 
 ship. For the last time Domanski warns her ; she hears 
 him with disdain. She sets foot on the ship ; salvos of 
 artillery and cries of " Long live the Empress ! " which 
 she supposes to be addressed to herself, greet her ; and 
 suddenly the veil is torn from her eyes : Orlof has 
 vanished, she sees herself surrounded by soldiers who 
 appear to be anything but disposed to do her homage ; 
 Domanski and Czarnomski, who accompany her, draw 
 their swords to protect her ; they are immediately dis- 
 armed. She is seized and confined in a cabin, where, 
 a few moments after, a soldier casts at her feet, without 
 a word, the ring which she had given a few days before 
 to the man whom she imagined was her husband. She 
 writes a few lines to him ; the soldier to whom she 
 confides the message returns with an orange wrapped 
 up in a piece of paper, on which, carrying out the play 
 to the end, le Balafre has pretended to hide his reply : 
 he declares he is a prisoner like herself, and unable to 
 do anything for her. The ship hoists anchor, Orlof 
 remains behind at Leghorn, and it is the valiant Greigh, 
 worthy of more honourable commissions, who has to 
 conduct the captive to St. Petersburg. 
 
 He treats her with a consideration which shows that 
 he looked upon her as no ordinary adventuress. The 
 cabin where she is confined is the captain's. She is 
 allowed two of her servants. At St. Petersburg, where 
 she arrives on May 12 (24), 1775, Field-marshal Prince 
 Galitzin is instructed to examine her. He sends in 
 his first report two weeks afterwards : the prisoner is 
 represented as a person of the middle height, thin, of 
 good carriage, with black hair and brown eyes, in which 
 there is a slight cast, the nose long and hooked, the 
 air of an Italian, speaking French and German, not 
 knowing a word of Russian. The doctors who examine 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 315 
 
 her declare she is far on in consumption. She says her 
 name is Ehzabeth, and she is twenty-three years old. 
 She pretends that she knows neither her nationality, nor 
 her birth-place, nor the name of her father and mother. 
 She has been brought up at Kiel, in Holstein, in the 
 home of a Frenchwoman named Peret or Peran, and 
 baptized as a Greek. At the age of nine she left Kiel. 
 A woman of the country, called Catherine, and three 
 men, she knows not of what nationality, accompanied 
 her. She went through Russia, passing through St. 
 Petersburg on the way. They tell her that they are 
 taking her to her parents at Moscow. She came 
 presently to Persia, to Bagdad, where a rich merchant 
 named Hamet received her into his house. A Persian 
 prince called Hali, who was also living under the roof 
 of this Hamet, took her on to Ispahan, surrounding her 
 with the greatest care and respect, and declaring that 
 she was the daughter of the Empi'ess Elizabeth. She 
 lived at Ispahan till 1769. She then travelled to 
 Europe with her protector, who made her dress as a 
 man in passing through Russia. She once more passed 
 through St. Petersburg, but stayed there only one night. 
 Prince Hali, recalled to his own country by urgent 
 affairs, quitted her at London, leaving her a store of 
 precious stones, and a quantity of ingot gold. Then 
 she went to Paris as a Persian princess. She denies 
 that it was her own idea to send Alexis Orlof the 
 will of the Empress Elizabeth. She received this 
 document at Ragusa, without her knowing where it 
 came from, accompanied by a letter advising her to 
 send it to the commandant of the Russian fleet. She 
 did so, hoping to gain some light on the origin or 
 intention of this communication. She had always heard 
 of the birthright which this document attributed to her, 
 but she never paid much attention to it. Orlof was 
 the first to convince her. 
 
 To this report Galitzin adds a letter of the young 
 woman addressed to Catherine. She asks for an 
 interview in the tone of a person demanding a right, 
 
3i6 THE SEMIRAMIS OP THE NORTH 
 
 and able rather to give than to receive favours. She 
 writes : " I can bring about matters of great advantage 
 to your empire. My proceedings prove it. 1 only 
 require to be in a position to disprove all the stories 
 that have been set on foot against me." She signs it 
 " Elizabeth." " What an arrant wretch ! " cries Catherine, 
 as she reads the letter. " The audacity of her note 
 exceeds everything. I begin to believe that she is 
 mad." Galitzin is instructed to obtain a more sincere 
 and serious confession. Every one knows that she is 
 an adventuress. The best thing to do is to get her into 
 a confidential vein, and find out who set her to act this 
 comedy. As the confidences do not arrive, the Empress 
 sets about a personal investigation, with the result that 
 she comes to the conviction that the unknown is the 
 daughter of an innkeeper at Prague. It is from 
 Gunning, the English envoy, that she declares she has 
 the information. In his dispatches to the Foreign 
 Office, Gunning does not seem so well informed. He 
 is convinced, however, that she is an adventuress and an 
 actress, and not too good an actress either. He treats 
 the whole affair very lightly. 
 
 At a month's end, Galitzin sends in a second report, 
 without having learnt anything further. When he 
 speaks to her of the innkeeper of Prague, she declares 
 that if she knew who had invented the fable she would 
 tear his eyes out. She has never set foot in the city. 
 Domanski, interi'ogated in turn, can give no further 
 indication. He declares that he is prepared to spend 
 the rest of his days in prison if he is permitted to marry 
 the princess. When she is told of it, she replies that 
 Domanski is a fool, who cannot even speak foreign 
 languages, and whom she has never treated as anything 
 but a servant. The field-marshal tries every scheme 
 in vain, even depriving her of food and other necessities 
 of life. There are men who never leave her day or 
 night, ready to seize a moment of weakness in the part 
 she is playing. Once more she asks leave to write to 
 the Empress. The note, this time without signature, 
 
ADVENTURERS AND ADVENTURESSES 317 
 
 is couched in more humble language. She implores 
 the Empress to pardon her if she has unwittingly 
 offended her, to hear her, and to be her judge. She 
 adds that " her condition makes nature shudder." 
 
 The only progress that is made is in the disease of 
 the lungs from Which she suffers. A priest is brought 
 to her. But he endeavours to confess her on the subject 
 of her life and adventures, and she immediately waves 
 him aside : " Say the prayer for the dead : that is all 
 that remains for you to do here." 
 
 She dies on December 4, 177S, in the fortress of 
 St. Peter and Paul. A little before, Alexis Orlof had 
 written to the Empress to say that he would be obliged 
 to give up his position as commandant of the fleet, on 
 account of the indignation roused against him in Italy 
 by his abduction of the pseudo-Elizabeth. His life was 
 no longer in safety in the country. Nevertheless a 
 letter from Catherine, dated May 22, 177S, had ex- 
 pressed entire approval of his conduct. As we have 
 several times had occasion to point out, the widow of 
 Peter III. was naturally inclined to be indulgent towards 
 adventurers, only they must be very careful not to 
 come in the way of her own adventure, whose success 
 was so important alike to herself and to Russia. 
 
PART III. 
 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FAVOURITES. 
 
 I. 
 
 I SHALL not, I trust, be accused of seeking in this 
 chapter any other kind of interest save the purely historic 
 interest which has been my sole end in this study. I 
 am not responsible for the existence of Gregory Orlof 
 and his rivals in the history of Catherine, any more than 
 I should be for that of Madame du Barry in the history 
 of Louis XV. To draw a veil over her favourites would 
 be, besides, to go directly against the wish of the great 
 sovereign herself, for she never attempted to do it ; she 
 wished them to be seen and admired. We shall not go 
 to the point of admiration ; but to treat them as a 
 matter of no consequence would be to go against his- 
 torical truth : they are too conspicuous, they occupy too 
 large a space ; to throw over them the veil which we 
 cast over the too shameful shames of poor humanity 
 would be still more offensive to Catherine, by lowering 
 their part to a level too degrading alike for her and for 
 them. In 177S, writing to the Empress, and alluding to 
 the rumours which point out a certain successor to 
 Patiomkin, Sievers ventures to express very clearly his 
 hopes in regard to the choice of the next favourite ; 
 especially that he should have no influence in the 
 Government. That is precisely what Catherine does not 
 wish. She wishes that these men, her heart's choice or 
 
 321 Y 
 
322 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 merely the companions of her pleasures, should have a 
 large place, not only in her life, but in that of the 
 country under her sway. And this is why some of them 
 have already figured in this volume, for they really play 
 a part in history. These are the most interesting. It 
 will be found, I hope, that the others too have an 
 interest of their own. 
 
 They are curiously unlike one another. From the 
 first to the last there is a variety and a gradation of 
 traits, or at least of nuances, very interesting to observe, 
 for they show a corresponding modification in the tastes, 
 instincts, and habits of Catherine, if not in her ways of 
 thinking and feeling. Thus it is that their history is 
 closely connected with that of the intellectual and moral 
 development of the extraordinary woman whose com- 
 panions they were. To neglect these details would be 
 to lose a chance of studying the past psychologically, 
 which perhaps is the most interesting way of study- 
 ing it. 
 
 With the Orlofs, Patiomkin, and Zubofs, of whom we 
 have already spoken in another chapter, we should also 
 omit here the early companions, the Tshernishofs, Salty- 
 kof, and Poniatowski, whom we have also introduced 
 to our readers in an earlier chapter, and who, as lovers 
 of the Grand-Duchess, never had from the Empress the 
 classic rank and title of " favoyrites." These only come 
 on the scene after the coup d'Etat of 1762, with Gregory 
 Orlof After him the list is long, and we have no 
 intention of exhausting it ; all we need do is to give a 
 brief indication of the principal names. 
 
 The first in date is purely and simply the first man 
 who comes along, the man to whom one beckons from a 
 window as he passes outside. 
 
 " A lieutenant of the horse-guards, named Vassiltshi- 
 kof, who had chanced to be sent in the spring to 
 Tsarskofe-Sielo, . . . has attracted the sovereign's atten- 
 tion, to every one's surprise, for he is not a distinguished- 
 looking person, he has never tried to push himself 
 forward, and is little known in society. The first sign 
 
THE FAVOURITES 323 
 
 that Her Imperial Majesty gave him of her good graces 
 was when she left Tsarskoie-Sielo to go to Peterhof : 
 she sent him a box of gold, saying that it was for having 
 kept such good order among the troops ... It was 
 supposed to be a matter of no consequence. The 
 assiduities of this officer at Peterhof, his anxiety to be 
 always in the Empress's way, a sort of eagerness on her 
 part to distinguish him in the crowd, the much greater 
 ease and gaiety that she has had since her former 
 favourite's departure, the ill-humour and discontent of 
 the relations and friends of the latter ; in short, a 
 thousand other little details have at last opened the 
 courtiers' eyes." 
 
 It is thus that the Baron de Solms announces the 
 news to Frederick II., under date August 3, 1772. A 
 month after, he writes again : ^ 
 
 " I have just seen M. Vassiltshikof, and Lrcmembered 
 having met him often enough at the couB^Vhere he was 
 lost in the crowd. He is a man of medium height, 
 about twenty-eight years of age, very dark, and rather 
 good-looking. He has always been very polite to every- 
 body, and has very amiable, but retiring manners, which 
 he still retains. It appears that he is rather embarrassed 
 by the part he plays . . . Most people at the court dis- 
 approve of the affair. It causes some consternation to 
 them, to the family and friends of Count Orlof, and to 
 the ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting. They all have an 
 air of discontent and dejection. They were all familiar 
 with Count Orlof; he favoured and protected them. Vas- 
 siltshikof is unknown ; no one knows if he will have the 
 same power as the other, and on whose behalf he will 
 employ it. The Empress is in the best of humours, 
 always happy and contented, and given up entirely to 
 /^tes and pleasures." 
 
 Catherine is now forty-three, and Gregory Orlof is in 
 Moldavia, suspecting nothing. The general disapproval 
 of this new installation extends to the diplomatic body, 
 and the English minister, Gunning, writes very severely 
 in regard to this new caprice of the Tsarina, which seems 
 
32t PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 to him a stain on a character so generally and so justly- 
 admired in other respects. In addition to this, this 
 little court revolution, prepared by Panin, instigated by 
 Bariatinski, insignificant as it is in itself, has a political 
 signification : it is the revenge of the aristocratic party, 
 long displeased by the presence of the parvenu Orlof at 
 the Empress's side. The family of Vassiltshikof, the 
 issue of the ancient boyards, and at one time allied with 
 that of the Tolstois, is of illustrious origin; in 1575 it 
 gave a Tsarina to Russia. It is but a short revenge : 
 the place that had been filled for ten years by the hand- 
 some Gregory and his four brothers is too great a place 
 for the new-comer to fill. He does but occupy it pass- 
 ingly, before giving way to a more suitable successor. 
 When Patiomkin appears, he disappears. Saltavit et 
 placiiit. His services are handsomely acknowledged, he 
 marries, and marries happily. 
 
 In 1776, taking advantage of an imprudent absence of 
 some weeks on the part of Patiomkin, Panin, this time 
 acting in concert with Orlof, succeeds in securing the 
 triumph of a new candidate, of very different type. 
 Ukranian by origin, once prompter at the court theatre, 
 then director of the secret department of Field-marshal 
 Rumiantsof, governor of Little Russia, Zavadovski is 
 a man of intelligence, accomplishment, and experience. 
 This it is which renders him so formidable to the future 
 conqueror of the Crimea, who is a whole year before he 
 can get rid of him. At last he succeeds by making the 
 discovery of Zoritch. 
 
 Zoritch is the only foreigner among all the imperial 
 favourites ; and he is of Sclavonic origin, Serbian or 
 Croat. A Courlandais, Manteuffel, is supposed to have 
 been invited to occupy the envied, if not enviable post, 
 and to have declined the invitation. But Catherine seems 
 to have generally had the will and wisdom to confine 
 her caprices to Russians. The remembrance of Biihren 
 probably served her in good stead in this. The son 
 of a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian service, having 
 himself served as lieutenant during the Seven Years' 
 
THE FAVOURITES 325 
 
 War, as major during the first Turkish war, Zoritch is 
 already a man of mature years. However, in spite of 
 all the ordeals he has gone through, the several years' 
 captivity among the Turks, the bagnio at Constanti- 
 nople, he is still, at the age of forty, a model of manly 
 beauty and vigour. Mehee de la Touche, who sees 
 him ten years later, when he is in retirement, thus 
 describes him : 
 
 "He is a man of five feet six, made to be painted. 
 I fancy he is near fifty, but his eyes are still charming, 
 and his manners full of grace. Though he is not lack- 
 ing in natural intelligence, his conversation is not in- 
 finitely piquant . . . He said to me over and over 
 again that he was once a barbarian, and that ' his lady' 
 had made another man of him. He spoke a good deal 
 to me of the days when he was in favour, and told me, 
 with tears in his eyes, of the kindnesses with which ' his 
 lady' had honoured him." 
 
 He is, indeed, a barbarian, but Catherine takes- the 
 utmost pains in cultivating him, in order to lead the 
 way to a more intimate education still, in which her 
 scientific and literary tastes, and at the same time her 
 thwarted maternal instincts, find satisfaction. Zoritch 
 is neither young enough nor docile enough to lend him- 
 self easily to the experiment. And, unfortunately for 
 him, his pride marches ahead faster than his intelligence 
 or his knowledge. Named count in 1778, he affects 
 to scorn a title which he considers beneath him. He 
 desires to be a prince, like Orlof and Patiomkin, 
 Nothing more is needed to set the latter in search of 
 a new candidate for an office which creates such bound- 
 less ambitions. After some unfortunate attempts, in 
 which figure, first, a Persian, endowed with extraordi- 
 nary physical advantages (there are a large number 
 of exotics, as we know, in the suite of the luxurious 
 guardian of the seraglio whom Catherine has found for 
 herself), then the minister of police, Arharof, then 
 Zavadovski himself, the ex-favourite, taken up as a 
 last resource, and finally the man of the situation is 
 
326 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 found : a common sergeant in the hussars, named 
 Korsak. 
 
 Zoritch does not take his dismissal without some 
 resistance. He talks of cutting off the ears of any 
 hussar who tries to dislodge him from his place. He 
 even challenges his former protector to a duel ; but 
 Patiomkin refuses to fight with him, and Catherine 
 herself interferes and promptly settles the Serbian's 
 dismissal. His favour has lasted eleven months (1777 — 
 78). He retires, finally, with about four hundred thou- 
 sand livres of income, and the estate of Shklof in White 
 Russia, the revenue of which is double that amount. 
 It is still Poland that pays for his pension. After 
 living abroad for some months, he retires finally to 
 his estate, which is a sort of principality. He lives 
 there almost like a king, with a large court, a theatre 
 where he mounts French operas and Italian ballets at 
 immense cost. He founds there the famous military 
 school, where two hundred youths are brought up at 
 his expense, but which is often on the verge of ruin, 
 the funds destined to its maintenance having been 
 squandered by the boundless extravagance of the 
 former favourite. In one night he loses fifty thousand 
 roubles, which are won by a Prince Volkonski. 
 
 In 1780, on her way to meet Joseph II. at Mohilef, 
 Catherine stops at Shklof Zoritch entirely re-builds 
 the superb castle in which he lives, and places in the 
 new building an exact copy of the bedroom in the 
 Winter Palace, which he remembers in every detail. 
 We are not aware whether he does the honours of 
 the situation to his august visitor in exact accordance 
 with the mise-en-schie. But he expends sixty thou- 
 sand roubles on Saxe porcelain, on which Frederick 
 makes him pay double dues of entrance and export 
 in passing through his states, in order to punish him 
 for not having bought it at Berlin. 
 
 In 1783 the lord of Shklof, whose affairs are getting 
 more and more complicated, is suspected of taking 
 part in a fabrication of false money-orders, which are 
 
THE FAVOURITES 327 
 
 discovered near his house. He clears himself of the 
 charge, and even re-appears at the court after Cathe- 
 rine's death, and holds a place there till the time of 
 his death, in 1799. 
 
 In the series at which we have briefly glanced, Zoritch 
 was the fine male par excellence ; Korsak is the tenor. 
 Writing to Grimm, May 7, 1779, Catherine assures 
 the " fag " that he could not choose but weep if he 
 heard him sing, as he did when hearing Gabrielli, the 
 famous prima donna, daughter of a cook of Prince 
 Gabrielli, whose name she chose to take with her from 
 capital to capital, St. Petersburg included, where her 
 roulades have left never-to-be-forgotten memories, as also 
 her liaison with a high official of the court, the senator 
 lelaguine, the same who had the doubtful privilege of 
 entertaining Cagliostro. This time he sprains his ankle 
 in trying to do pirouettes before the fair singer. The 
 reign of the new favourite opens a new epoch in the 
 annals of musical art in Russia. As partners for him 
 the most famous Italian artistes are welcomed on the 
 shores of the Neva : the illustrious Gorilla Olimpica, 
 the friend of Alexis Orlof, comes to mingle the inspired 
 accents of her poetic improvisations with the melodious 
 voice of the handsome singer ; the violinist Nadini, so 
 highly appreciated in France, where he dies in 1799, 
 is permitted the honour of accompanying him ; and 
 Catherine writes to her confidant : " Do you know that 
 we go in for art, science, music, etc., more than ever . . . 
 I have never seen any one who more really delighted 
 in all the sounds of harmony than Pyrrhus, king of 
 Epirus." 
 
 "Pyrrhus, king of Epirus," is Korsak, or Korsakof, 
 as he is now called. Catherine has always had a taste 
 for nicknames, though for the most part it is now 
 impossible to see the point of them. There is no ap- 
 parent likeness between Zoritch's successor and the 
 famous conqueror of Macedonia. Korsak seems to 
 have been his real name, and it is that of a very old 
 Polish family, still very honourably represented, but 
 
328 PRIVATE LIFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 never having pretended to a specially illustrious origin. 
 After the rise of the favourite, this name, Russified by 
 the termination of, apparently to soothe the suscepti- 
 bilities of national amour propre, is associated with a 
 genealogy made up of all kinds of scraps, and beginning 
 with these words : " To go no further back, we begin 
 with Hercules." There had indeed been Korsakofs in 
 Russia, but these were connections neither of the lover 
 of Omphale nor of the lover of Catherine. One at least 
 is known to history, the vice-governor of a certain 
 province in 1715, condemned to the knout for private 
 misdeeds. He was no relation of the favourite. 
 
 Created general aide-de-camp, knight of the Polish 
 Eagle, and chamberlain, and overwhelmed with the 
 customary honours and presents, Korsak or Korsakof 
 applied himself to justify these liberalities : he was 
 already artistic in his tastes, he would be a man of 
 science as well. He orders a bookseller to supply him 
 with a library. 
 
 " What books would your lordship like to possess } " 
 
 " You know what I want ! Big volumes below and 
 small volumes above, like the Empress's." 
 
 Evidently those afternoons passed in tete-a-Ute with 
 the Empress in the midst of the precious collections of 
 the Hermitage were not thrown away. Unfortunately 
 he was delicate in health, subject to blood-spitting ; his 
 heart too was constitutionally weak, and the Empress 
 one da)' surprises him in the arms of the Countess 
 Bruce, who also makes a point of loving artists. A door 
 which happens to open at the wrong moment reveals this 
 community of sentiments to Catherine ; and Patiomkin 
 is supposed to have had his part in the accident. Per- 
 haps he found it a good occasion to pay off a grudge 
 against his eternal enemy. Field-marshal Rumiantsof, 
 of whom the Countess Bruce was the sister. Perhaps 
 he merely thought that the favourite had lasted long 
 enough. He had lasted fifteen months, and had cost 
 Catherine about a million of roubles : tenors as a rule 
 do not cost so much as that, even now-a-days. Countess 
 
THE FAVOURITES 339 
 
 Bruce was banished for a time to Moscow, where the 
 disgraced favourite followed her, and where he quietly 
 lived to an advanced age. Catherine was always con- 
 siderate for her weaknesses in the past, no doubt feeling 
 that it was one way of assuring that others would be so 
 for her weaknesses in the future. 
 
 II. 
 
 " I did not expect to hear my letter to the historian 
 described as a masterpiece. It is true that General 
 Lanskoi told me that it was charming, but any young 
 man, whatever tact he may have, easily becomes enthu- 
 siastic, and especially a warm soul like his. Now, to 
 know what this man is like, I must tell you the phrase 
 of Prince Orlof on the subject to one of his friends : 
 ' Oh,' said he, ' you will see what he will turn out. He 
 gobbles up everything.' He began by gobbling up the 
 poets and poems one winter, several historians the next. 
 Novels bore me, and we trifle with Algarotti and his like. 
 Without having studied, we have numberless acquire- 
 ments, and we live with delight in the company of all 
 that is best and most learned. Besides that, we build 
 and we plant, we are benevolent, gay, honest, and as 
 amiable as can be." 
 
 These lines, in which Catherine's style is plainly 
 recognizable, the style of her epistolary conversations 
 with Grimm, are dated June 1782, and, in alluding to a 
 letter recently sent by her to Buffon, the sovereign points 
 out the progress of the new scholar whom she has taken 
 in hand. He arouses her warmest hopes. In the book 
 which takes up, awkwardly enough, the defence of Cathe- 
 rine and her court against the " disgusting work of 
 Masson," Kotzebue is unjust to this young man : " M. 
 Lanskoi was the most ignorant man of the court of 
 Catherine, the Empress herself blushed when he spoke 
 to her." This must be taken with due allowance. At 
 the moment when Catherine set eyes on him, the 
 
330 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 favourite was doubtless, at the age of twenty-two, 
 neither more nor less ignorant than the majority of his 
 comrades in the Guards. But the Tshernishofs and the 
 Orlofs had already taught Catherine twenty years before 
 not to be too particular on this subject, and her court 
 never was or professed to be an information bureau. 
 Belonging to the lesser nobility, Lanskol' doubtless had 
 the same education as the greater part of the courtiers : 
 he could read and write in Russian, and say a few words 
 in French. When Catherine took it into her head, in 
 1784, to make him correspond with her literary friends 
 in the West, she had to act as his secretary. The letters 
 of the favourite to Grimm, dated this year, are, from 
 first word to last, in the hand of the Empress. Here 
 are some specimens : 
 
 " You see. Monsieur " (Lanskol is supposed to be 
 dictating to Catherine), " what sort of a secretary I 
 have ; he says that mine was as stupid as an owl ; for my 
 part, I really believe that it is jealousy which makes 
 people talk like that. I should be very pleased with 
 this one if he would only write my ideas instead of 
 his." 
 
 In the following letter the favourite announces to the 
 "fag" that he is sending him 50,000 roubles for the 
 purchase of the collection of pictures to be sold by the 
 Comte de Baudoin, and he adds : 
 
 "If you require more than that, the rest will be sent 
 as soon as the news reaches your most humble servant 
 or his secretary, with whose name. Monsieur, you are 
 not acquainted, nor with his writing, he informs me. 
 This secretary is, as you know, a very good and clever 
 personage, whom I am glad to praise in passing, all the 
 more so as he does his duty admirably ; he is diligent, 
 quick, gay, and altogether a jolly fellow ; he gives me 
 the use of his pen without charge, and sometimes more 
 than I want of his advice. He tells me that you find 
 him quite a character." 
 
 A single letter, dated May 31, 1784, is in Lanskoi's 
 writing; it is very correctly expressed, but short and 
 
THE FAVOURITES 331 
 
 insignificant : a scholar's task, done as well as he knows 
 how to do it. " He did his best, he was learning," 
 wrote Catherine after his death. He took lessons in 
 French from a Chevalier de Serres with whom he had 
 been friendly before his elevation. The latter was fond 
 of telling that the fortune of Lanskol, just before he 
 became the most opulent lord in Russia, consisted in 
 five shirts. One night, finding himself without a roof 
 over his head, Lanskoi' came and knocked at the door 
 of his friend. De Serres considered that he was doing 
 all he need do in letting him sleep by the side of his 
 bed, on the floor of his modest room. A few weeks 
 later, then in residence- in the favourite's apartments at 
 the Winter Palace, Lanskoi sent for his former host, 
 treated him in the most friendly way, gave him supper, 
 begged him to stay over night, went to bed, and 
 requested him to do the same — on the floor. De Serres 
 had to do it, not without bad dreams, assuredly. 
 
 Not content with learning French, the favourite also 
 endeavoured to acquire a taste for the beautiful things 
 with which he saw that Catherine loved to surround 
 herself " He nearly fainted," if we may believe 
 Catherine, on learning that Grimm had let slip, without 
 buying them for him, a precious collection of antique 
 gems. So far as we can judge, he was an insignificant 
 and agreeable young man. Discovered and brought 
 forward by Patiomkin, he had, in the eyes of the latter, 
 the advantage of not showing signs of any pretentions 
 beyond those naturally belonging to his office. Naturally 
 indolent, he even discouraged Catherine's ambitions on 
 his behalf Any kind of participation in the affairs of 
 state was averse to him, perhaps on account of his good 
 sense as well as his idleness. His mistress was obliged 
 to content herself with giving him the outer pomp of 
 merely decorative dignities. She made him, as she had 
 made the others, general, chamberlain, head of her 
 regiment of cuirassiers, grand cross of the Polar Star ! 
 She wrote to Chrapowigki to know if the famous Golden 
 Book of the Russian nobility, the Barhaina'ia Kniga 
 
332 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 (Velvet Book), had nothing about his ancestors ; and in 
 money, palaces, lands, and diamonds, she gave him the 
 enormous sum of seven millions of roubles (about thirty- 
 five million francs). In this respect, there was no 
 refusal on his part : he loved money. He also loved 
 drink : the memoirs of his time have preserved the 
 receipt of a punch of his invention, a mixture of Tokay, 
 rum, and the juice of pine-apple, which he frequently 
 drank to excess. He also had a troublesome family, 
 terrible brothers, who often crop up in the correspond- 
 ence of Catherine at the time with Grimm. The 
 sovereign sends them travelling abroad, and sees that 
 they do not get into too much trouble ; the favourite 
 himself paying very little heed to the matter, careless 
 in this respect also, nowise inclined to nepotism. The 
 burden fell principally on the shoulders of the imperial 
 " fag," who was sometimes almost overwhelmed by 
 it. In 1782 he put in motion the French authorities 
 at Bar-le-Duc to arrest one of these troublesome 
 brothers, and put him in prison, in order to separate 
 him from a woman who had captivated him. The 
 archives of the Minister of Foreign Affairs show some 
 traces of this romance. 
 
 In 1784 the favour of Lanskoif has lasted four years, 
 and, contrary to all anticipation, it seems in no likeli- 
 hood of lessening: Patiomkin is always satisfied with 
 him, and Catherine idolizes him. But a fell malady 
 assails his strength : a scarlet fever, complicated with 
 angina, both aggravated by the premature exhaustion 
 of an organism artificially excited and sustained for 
 some length of time. The memoirs of the German 
 physician, Weickhardt, one of those who tended him, 
 contain brutally instructive indications in this respect. 
 Perhaps indeed the doctor revenged himself on the 
 insults which he had to undergo at the hands of the 
 patient. Lanskoif joked at his hump, declared that he 
 could not suffer the sight of his enormous nose, and 
 made fun of his medicines. Sitting on her lover's 
 bed, Catherine amused herself with his petulance. In 
 
THE FAVOURITES 333 
 
 medical science she was rather the pupil of Moliere than 
 of Voltaire, and she refused to admit the possibility of 
 serious danger for one whose health she had reason to 
 believe was so vigorous. " You do not know what 
 a strong constitution he has," she told Weickhardt. 
 The German shook his head, saying to himself that 
 cantharides powder may well pass for strength of 
 constitution, but it is a destructive strength. While 
 refusing the attendance of Weickhardt, Lanskoi accepted 
 that cf his ordinary doctor, the Russian Sobolevski, and 
 that of his valet de chambre, generally drunk, who would 
 bring him wine on the sly. His throat was on fire, he 
 would not allow any one to touch it. But when the 
 disease took a deeper hold of him, he immediately 
 called in a surgeon, and submitted to the application 
 of blanc de druse : this time, he declared, his future was 
 at stake. So, at least, Weickhardt relates. 
 
 A choking fit carried him off on June 25, 1784. We 
 have elsewhere spoken of the sorrow of Catherine. 
 Alexander Vorontsof, who certainly cannot be suspected 
 of a prejudice on behalf of the sovereign, and who is 
 generally ready enough to look upon her amorous 
 exaltations as being merely a comedy of sentiment, 
 goes so far, this time, as to believe that she will not 
 survive her loss. " Affairs have been entirely suspended 
 since the death of M. Lansko'i," writes the French chargt 
 d'affaires, Caillard, under date July 13, "and no one 
 thinks of anything but of the Empress herself, whose 
 state of health is somewhat alarming." Two months 
 later, the sovereign only sees her ministers at rare 
 intervals, and then only to ask them, "sadly and 
 tenderly," if all is well, after which she dismisses them, 
 and shuts herself up in her room with Madame 
 Kushelof, a sister of the deceased favourite. This 
 person was not supposed to have a very warm affection 
 for her brother, but she has the gift of tears. Whenever 
 she sees the Empress she bursts into tears ; the Empress 
 does likewise, and they pass their time in this dismal 
 tete-d-tete. In her correspondence with Grimm, which 
 
334 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LlF^ 
 
 is not interrupted even now, Catherine denies tiiat she 
 has neglected her duty : " As for public affairs," she 
 writes, " they go on as usual ; but as for myself, who 
 had enjoyed so great a private happiness, I have 
 nothing left to enjoy. I bury myself in tears and in 
 writing, and that is all. . . If you would know exactly 
 my state, I will tell you that since three months yester- 
 day I have been inconsolable for the irreparable losS 
 that I have suffered ; that the only improvement in 
 things is, that I am accustomed again to seeing human 
 faces ; that, in spite of all, my heart bleeds as at the 
 first moment ; that I do my duty, and endeavour to do 
 it well, but that my sorrow is extreme, and such as I 
 have never had in my life ; and it is now three months 
 that I have been in this cruel situation, suffering the 
 tortures of the damned." 
 
 Let us not forget that she is now fifty-five, and thus 
 thirty years older than when, at the time of a merely 
 momentary separation, she wrote to Zahar Tshernishof : 
 
 " The first day it was as if I were waiting for you, so 
 accustomed am I to see you ; the second, I was moody, 
 and avoided company ; the third, I was desperately 
 ennuy^e ; the fourth, appetite and sleep abandoned me, 
 ctU things became insupportable to me ; no more toilets, 
 etc. ; the fifth, I gave myself up to tears . . . Must I 
 still further call things by their true name .■' Well then, 
 I love you ! " 
 
 And on the eve of the day of his return : " What a 
 day for me will to-morrow be ! Shall I find it all that 
 I dream ? No, never will any one love you as I love 
 you. Restless, I take up a book ; I try to read ; at 
 every line, you interrupt me ; I throw the book aside, 
 I throw myself on the sofa, I try to sleep, but how ? 
 For two hours that I have been lying there I have not 
 closed my eyes ; and I am only a little calmer since I 
 have begun to write to you. I have a good mind to 
 bare my arm to be bled again ; perhaps that will 
 distract me." 
 
 At last, towards the middle of October, Patiomkin, 
 
The favourites 335 
 
 who is still absent, and to whom she has sent courier 
 after courier to hasten his return, arrives at Tsarsko'fe, 
 where the Empress still prolongs her stay, in spite of 
 the severity of the autumn ; he induces her to return to 
 St. Petersburg. Her return, however, manifests a change 
 in her habits, and a mental trouble, equally extra- 
 ordinary in her. Without giving warning to any one, 
 she sets out for the Winter Palace, where she finds the 
 gates closed and no one to receive her ; goes on to the 
 Hermitage, where all is equally closed and deserted ; 
 has the gates forced open, goes to bed, then, waking 
 at one o'clock in the morning, orders the salvos of 
 artillery which usually announce her return to be 
 fired, puts the whole city in consternation by this 
 nocturnal cannonade, calls out the garrison and drives 
 her attendants to distraction, and seems surprised herself 
 to have caused such an upset. But, a few days after- 
 wards, she gives audience to the diplomatic body, and 
 appears as composed in body and mind, as affable and 
 smiling, as usual. 
 
 And ere long her life returns to its usual course, and 
 the eternal lover returns to life. On the mausoleum 
 which is erected in the cemetery of Tsarskoie, an inscrip- 
 tion, carelessly inscribed, does not even give the right 
 date of the day on which occurred the death of the man 
 so deeply loved and lamented. A few months after- 
 wards the inconsolable lover begins to reason, in her 
 conversation with Grimm, in almost an impersonal 
 manner, concerning her grief : " I have always said that 
 this magnetism which cures no one, at all events kills no 
 one either." A month later, and the grief is dead : " I 
 have become calm and serene once more," she writes, 
 "because, with the help of my friends, I have made an 
 effort over myself. We began with a comedy, which 
 every one says was charming ; this then proves the 
 return of vigour and gaiety. The monosyllables are 
 banished, and " (now comes the real reason of this return 
 to the ways and distractions of the past) " I can no 
 longer complain of not having those about me whosfe 
 
336 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 cares and affection are calculated to cheer and distract 
 me, but it needed some time to accustom oneself to it." 
 
 It needed some time ! Ten months, to a day, to the 
 date of this letter, which ends with this avowal : " In 
 short, in one word as in a hundred, I have a very capable 
 friend, and one well worthy of being so." 
 
 That he is very capable, we can easily believe. He is 
 called Jermolof, and he is an agreeable companion. 
 The following summer is one of the gayest and most 
 lively that Catherine has ever spent. However, in the 
 moving constellation where Lanskoi has just been 
 eclipsed, and Mamonof is about to appear, this new 
 love is only a star of the second magnitude. Naturally, 
 after the sorrowful crisis that she has just passed through, 
 Catherine is not prepared to let herself go in one of 
 those overwhelming attachments which, in this woman 
 of sensual nature, are far from being mere impulses of 
 the flesh, but are quite as much concerns of heart and 
 mind. This time there is neither passion nor even 
 infatuation for the man whom she has taken up, almost 
 without enthusiasm, coldly and tranquilly, as if she were 
 making a reasonable marriage. Her choice is not, how- 
 ever, such a bad one. The man is better than his office. 
 Bezborodko speaks of him as a modest, refined young 
 man, who cultivates the society of serious people. He 
 fears even that his timid manners, his reserve and love 
 of decorum, may prove an obstacle to the continuance 
 of his favour with a mistress whom Korsakof and 
 Lanskoi have accustomed to quite other and much 
 more piquant manners. 
 
 Nor is he mistaken, for in less than a year Catherine 
 already seems to show signs of lassitude. The grand- 
 master of the imperial pleasures is not, it is true, a 
 stranger to this prompt disenchantment : the favourite 
 has shown to the Empress, before sending it on to his 
 all-powerful protector, a letter from the ex-khan of the 
 Crimea, Shahin-Guiral, in retirement at Kalonga with a 
 pension of two hundred thousand roubles, complaining 
 of the exactions that Patiomkin levies upon his former 
 
THE FAVOURITES 337 
 
 subjects. Nothing more is needed ; in April 1786, 
 Shahin-Guirai and Jermolof both lose, the one his 
 pension, the other his place as favourite. 
 
 The new crisis, which is oddly like those which 
 modern parliamentary methods bring about periodically 
 in the organization of governments, lasts several months, 
 during which Patiomkin's enemies do their utmost to 
 bring in a candidate of their own. For a moment they 
 seem to have won the day with Mengden of Courland, 
 who seems on the point of being selected. But at last 
 Patiomkin distances them with the young and fascinating 
 Dmitrief Mamonof ; and the event is one of considerable 
 importance, a really national question. The Comte de 
 Segur rejoices in it greatly. " M. jermolof," he writes, 
 " honoured our nation, and myself in particular, with the 
 most decided aversion, permitting himself the most 
 unseemly remarks whenever France was alluded to, 
 showing marked impertinence to me, and losing no 
 occasion of stirring up the Empress's old prejudices 
 against us. Though he had too little ability to gain 
 serious credit, he was hand and glove with a party which 
 has much, and which commenced to be a grave 
 impediment to me," 
 
 III. 
 
 His successor, on the other hand, is entirely on the 
 side of France. This time Patiomkin has put his hand 
 on an accomplished man of the court, of education and 
 refined tastes. He even fears that the dish may be too 
 delicate for the palate to which it is destined. "The 
 design is good, but the colouring is not worth much," 
 said Catherine, when she saw the portrait of the candi- 
 date. She lets herself be influenced, however, and soon 
 falls under the charm of the elegant courtier, the brilliant 
 talker, who perhaps calls up other recollections in her. 
 "I love, and all my life I shall love. Prince Poniatowski," 
 she once wrote to Zahar Tshernishof. Of ancient 
 
 z 
 
538 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 lineage, said even to be connected with Rurik, in- 
 scribed, certainly, in the "Velvet Book," the new-comer 
 flatters the new aristocratic tendencies of the sovereign. 
 Well versed in French literature, speaking several 
 languages fluently, writing plays, which, it is true, are 
 detestable, he naturally takes up the tone which the 
 Comte de Segur has lately introduced into the Empress's 
 private circle. Joseph II., who makes his acquaintance 
 during the Crimean journey, refuses to see that he is 
 in place in these surroundings. " The new favourite," 
 he writes to Field-marshal de Lascy, " is a young man 
 of twenty-six, without education, a mere child ... a 
 nice-looking fellow enough, but seeming quite out of 
 his element, and without any particular intelligence." 
 This is perhaps, on the part of the Emperor, a touch of 
 jealousy or spite, provoked by the strange liberties that 
 Catherine tolerates and encourages in this " nice-looking 
 fellow," who does in fact give way sometimes to the 
 caprices of a spoilt child. It is unpleasant, when one is 
 an emperor, to be interrupted in the course of a game 
 of whist, in order that a mere gentleman of the court 
 may finish a caricature that he is drawing on the card- 
 table with the stick of white chalk which is still used in 
 Russia to mark the points. Segur, the Prince de Eigne, 
 and their colleagues of the diplomatic world are less 
 particular : " full of wit, talk, and finesse," writes the 
 Saxon Sacken, in speaking of the favourite. And, in 
 spite of the caricatures, drawn at the wrong moment, 
 Joseph himself does not disdain to pay court, to some 
 extent, to this unskilful partner, presenting him with a 
 costly watch, and offering to make him Count of the 
 Holy Empire. 
 
 As for Catherine, she has the best reasons in the 
 world for not despising the wit and knowledge of her 
 new companion, for, unlike Lanskol, it is now Mamonof 
 who holds the pen when she writes letters to Grimm. 
 He is sometimes a stubborn and unwilling secretary, for 
 we read in one of the letters thus written : " I dictated 
 something quite different, but Red Coat would not write 
 
THE FAVOURITES 339 
 
 it. You will know in time what this Red Coat is, if you 
 do not know already." 
 
 Grimm could not fail to be sufficiently edified on this 
 subject ; but in order that he may be suitably so, she 
 writes : 
 
 " This Red Coat envelops a being- who unites a great 
 fund of uprightness to a most excellent heart. As for 
 wit, he has enough for four, an unlimited fund of gaiety, 
 great originality in the conception of things and in the 
 way of rendering them, an admirable education, singu- 
 larly instructed in all that can give brilliance to wit. 
 We hide our love for poetry as if it were murder ; we 
 are passionately fond of music ; our conception in all 
 things is of a rare facility. God only knows what we 
 know by heart. We declaim, we jest, we have the tone 
 of the best society ; we are excessively polite ; we write 
 in Russian and in French as few among us can write, 
 alike as regards the style and the temper. Our outer 
 responds perfectly to our inner man ; our features are 
 very regular ; we have two superb black eyes, with eye- 
 brows outlined as one rarely sees ; above the middle 
 height, noble in manner, easy in demeanour ; in a word, 
 we are as solid within as we are agile, strong, and 
 brilliant without. I am convinced that if you met this 
 Red Coat, you would ask what his name was, if you did 
 not guess it at once." 
 
 The "fund of uprightness" that Catherine discovers 
 in a young man of twenty-six who sees no objection to 
 a mistress thirty years older than himself, bears witness 
 to an extreme power of self-deception. But it must be 
 said that she has met an actor of her own calibre, who 
 plays his part to the uttermost. On the occasion of the 
 meeting between the old Empress and the old Ponia- 
 towski on the Dnieper, in sight of Kaniof, the favourite 
 does not fail to give every evidence of a jealousy proper 
 to a man passionately in love. Segur and the Prince 
 de Ligne hold their sides, but Catherine ingenuously 
 pities her lover's distress; at the conclusion of the inter- 
 view, which, as we know, is passed in the exchange of 
 
340 PRIVATE LIFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 commonplace compliments, she feels obliged, in order 
 to ease his mind, to exaggerate the boredom she has 
 felt. And the letters that she writes shortly after to 
 Patiomkin show the intense delight which this little 
 scene has caused her : " Sasha is a priceless creature " 
 (Sasha being Mamonof). And Patiomkin himself is 
 worth his weight in gold for having given Sasha to 
 Catherine. Ingenuous as ever, she does not hesitate to 
 express her gratitude to him. 
 
 The favourite, however, is neither a naif nor an un- 
 conscious person, nor even a cynic. "Some of them" 
 (the favourites), notes Langeron in his memoirs, " knew 
 how to ennoble this degrading office ; Patiomkin by 
 making himself almost emperor, Zavadovski by his 
 value in the administration of affairs, Mamonof by the 
 shame that he felt and did not attempt to conceal." 
 The latter part of the obsei-vation is carried out by 
 other testimonies. It seems to indicate a nature in 
 which the lower instincts have not altogether got the 
 mastery over a moral sensibility of higher order. Only 
 the price of the shame is too tempting, and the course 
 of action once decided upon, the young man shows 
 himself not less eager to defend and to make the most 
 of his possession. Garnovski, in his memoirs, shows 
 him to us discussing with Count Bruce in regard to an . 
 estate which the latter wishes to sell, and which the 
 favourite longs and yet hardly dares to ask the Empress 
 to buy for him : he has just bought another for three 
 hundred and fifty thousand roubles. Bruce intimating 
 that he will have no difficulty in finding another pur- 
 chaser, and the Empress, who is present at the interview, 
 pretending to take no notice of the mute invocations 
 that Mamonof addresses to her, Mamonof gives a sigh 
 of resignation : 
 
 " So be it. Who is this other purchaser ? " 
 
 " Kazarinof." 
 
 At that the favourite turns deathly pale ; he looks as 
 if about to faint. He stammers out, with a terrified 
 glance at the Empress: 
 
THE FAVOURITES 341 
 
 " But Kazarinof has nothing ! How can he get such 
 an amount of money ? " 
 
 Catherine at last puts in her word. She has been on 
 bad terms for the last few days with her lover, who has 
 no doubt been somewhat negligent in the accomplish- 
 ment of his duty, and she has given some encourage- 
 ment to this Kazarinof, a young officer, who has long 
 been endeavouring to attract her attention. 
 
 " Is there no one but Kazarinof in the world .' " she 
 says slowly, fixing her eyes on the favourite. " The 
 purchaser will not perhaps be the one you think." 
 
 At that Mamonof does actually faint away. He is 
 put in bed in a state of fever. The two court physi- 
 cians, Rogerson and Messing, are greatly concerned. 
 Only Ribeaupierre, whose hands the patient kisses in 
 sign of gratitude, finds an infallible specific for his cure 
 by bringing to his bedside the repentant Empress, 
 happy to find herself so passionately loved. 
 
 The favourite sometimes takes his revenge by vio- 
 lent scenes in the manner of Patiomkin, generally on 
 account of the part that he wishes to play in affairs. 
 Catherine herself wishes it to be considerable : one day 
 she scolds her secretary, Chrapowi^ki, for having sent 
 an important military document to the Field-marshal 
 Saltykof, without first showing it to the favourite. But 
 Mamonof is ambitious, even to the point of being 
 jealous of Bezborodko, whose talents Catherine still 
 appreciates. " I spit on his talents, on him, and all his 
 gang ! " he cries one day. She cries over it for a whole 
 night, and then gives way to the demands of the 
 favourite by putting a slight upon the minister. 
 
 At last there comes a day when this man, who has 
 made of love a degrading instrument of his ambition and 
 his fortune, sacrifices both the one and the other, in the 
 cause of love. It is a regular drama which is acted out; 
 at the Hermitage and the Winter Palace, a drama which 
 was indeed put on the stage by Madame Birch-Pfeiffer 
 in Tlie Favourites, acted at Berlin in 1831. After the 
 first performance, which,, had been, calmly witrigssed by- 
 
342 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 the German princesses, great-grandchildren of Catherine, 
 the Russian envoy, Count Ribeaupierre, son of the 
 obliging physician who had cured the imperial favourite, 
 forbids the continuance of the piece, to the great disgust 
 of Mesdames Kreslinger and Hagen, who had created 
 the parts of the Empress and her rival, " in such a 
 manner," says Ribeaupierre in his memoirs, " that they 
 deserved to be driven off the stage." 
 
 On the 20th of June, 1789, as she is working with 
 Chrapowigki, Catherine suddenly interrupts the reading 
 of a report : 
 
 " Have you heard what has happened ? " 
 
 "Yes, Madame." 
 
 " I have been suspecting it now for eight months. 
 He withdrew from everybody. He even avoided me. 
 It was always an oppression of the chest which obliged 
 him to remain in his room. Then, lately, he began to 
 speak of scruples of conscience which distressed him, 
 and would not allow him to continue living with me. 
 The traitor ! It was this other love, it was his duplicity, 
 which weighed upon him ! But if he could not over- 
 come it, why did he not tell me frankly 1 He has been 
 in love with her for a year ! If he had spoken, what hap- 
 pened three days ago would have happened half a year 
 sooner, and he cannot imagine what I have suffered ! " 
 
 " Every one is surprised that Your Majesty has given 
 consent to the marriage." 
 
 " God be with them : I hope they will be happy. . . . 
 But, look you, I have pardoned them, I have authorized 
 their union, they ought to be in ecstasies : well, they are 
 both of them wretched. Ah, the old affection is not 
 dead in him yet. For a week and more he follows me 
 with his eyes constantly. Strange ! . . . Once, do you 
 remember, he cared for so many things, everything was 
 so easy to him ; now he gets confused in whatever he 
 does, everything bores him, his chest is always unwell ! 
 The prince said to me this winter : ' Matuslika, spit on 
 her ! ' And he pointed to the Shtcherbatof. But I was 
 blind, and I tried to excuse him ! " 
 
THE FAVOURITES 343 
 
 This is not a dialogue of Madame Birch-Pfeiffer that 
 I give ; it is a page from the journal of the exact and 
 conscientious Chrapowi9ki, word for word. 
 
 Mademoiselle Shtcherbatof was a maid-of-honour, 
 and as such she lived in the imperial palace, without 
 being able to absent herself without a special authoriz- 
 ation, and then only to visit her nearest relatives. This 
 circumstance aided Mamonof and her in the liaison 
 whose denouement we have just learnt. And Catherine, 
 talking with her secretary, tells us further how she came 
 to discover this singular infidelity. 
 
 "On Monday, the i8th of June, he came to me, and 
 complained of my coldness. I told him that he knew 
 well what it was, since September last, and how much I 
 had suffered. You pay no attention to what 1 say, now 
 for a long time, I said to him ; but since a separation 
 has become necessary, I will look after your future. 
 Thereupon I sent him a note which assured to him, on 
 retiring, a brilliant position, and at the same time the 
 idea occurred to me of a marriage for him with the 
 daughter of Count Bruce. She is only thirteen, but 
 she is already mature : I know that. At that he comes 
 to me, trembling, and confesses that he is in love with 
 the Shtcherbatof, and had promised her marriage half 
 a year ago. Imagine what I felt! " 
 
 The pathetic monologue of the old lover abandoned 
 by love continues longer yet, but, while she pours out 
 her complaints and sad reflections, Catherine also gives 
 orders : first a costly ring, then bank-notes for ten thou- 
 sand roubles, are brought to her. She hands the ring and 
 the money to Chrapowigki, who knows what he is to do 
 with them. The conversation takes place, as usual, in 
 the Empress's bedroom. The secretary rises discreetly, 
 and places what has been handed to him under the 
 pillow of the great bed, which that very evening is to 
 become a nuptial bed : the ring and the ten thousand 
 roubles are for the young and fascinating Zubof, whom 
 Anna Naryshkin, the devoted friend, has introduced into 
 the palace at the very outset of the crisis. 
 
344 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 Mamonofs marriage takes place eight days later. 
 According to custom, the bride's toilet takes place in 
 the Empress's rooms, with her own assistance. An eye- 
 witness relates that as the Empress touches her head- 
 dress the girl gives a cry of pain : a gold hair-pin has 
 run into her head. Other rumours speak of a horrible 
 attack on the young couple a few days after : masked 
 men rush into the room, tear the wife from the arms of 
 her husband, and flog her before his very eyes. All 
 that we know of Catherine's treatment of her former 
 lover strongly contradicts these stories. On leaving St. 
 Petersburg, Mamonof receives a present of three thou- 
 sand peasants and a sum of a hundred thousand roubles, 
 which is paid down in spite of the penury in which the 
 imperial treasury is at the moment. He even pretends, 
 to those about him, that, like Patiomkin, he preserves, 
 even in retirement, the privileges of the office which he 
 has left, and the influence connected with it. No doubt 
 Catherine is deeply wounded, to the extent even of 
 injustice towards her best friend, whose warnings she 
 has however neglected. She does not remember them 
 now, and she writes to the conqueror of the Crimea : 
 " You would have cured me in an instant if you had 
 told me the truth ... I have never been the tyrant of 
 any one, and I hate constraint. ... Is it possible that 
 you did not know me on this point . . . and that you 
 imagined me a miserable egoist ? " But there is more 
 of sorrow than of anger in her reproaches. As for 
 Patiomkin, he arranges things his own way : Mamonof 
 is a fool ; how could he so stupidly leave a place which 
 he had been meant to keep ? But it is no great loss. 
 He does not remember that he himself was the first 
 protector of the favourite and the promoter of his 
 fortune. He writes : " In my way of looking at things, 
 I have never been mistaken in him : he is a mixture of 
 indolence and egoism. In the latter he was Narcissus 
 to excess. Never thinking of any one but himself, he 
 expected everything without giving anything in return. 
 Lazy as he was, he forgot even what was seemly. No 
 
THE FAVOURITES 345 
 
 matter whether or not a thing has any value, the 
 moment it pleases him, it becomes the most valuable 
 thing in the world. That is how he looks on Princess 
 Shtcherbatof ! " 
 
 Catherine comes finally to find consolation in the 
 idea, which is suggested to her by the ever-serviceable 
 Ribeaupierre, that the former favourite has gone mad, 
 like Orlof : " Can you conceive that he actually wanted 
 to remain with his wife at the court, as before ? What 
 a contradictory notion ! " And she has neither leisure 
 nor inclination to indulge in a very lengthy resentment, 
 for her letters, in the following month, are already full 
 of another matter for concern : to gain the good graces 
 of her distant friend, busy waging war against the 
 Turks, for " an innocent soul," who has been enchanted 
 to find a nice ring and a big packet of bank-notes under 
 a luxurious pillow, and who has a thirst for caresses : 
 " Come, my friend, send us some caresses so that we 
 may be quite happy." She is once more full of her 
 old gaiety, which only Lansko'i' (already so soon for- 
 gotten ! ) had been able to check for a time ; and it 
 is in the easiest way in the world that she explains 
 the awkward incident to Grimm a little later on. " The 
 pupil of Mademoiselle Cardel having found the Red 
 Coat worthy rather of pity than of anger, and punished 
 for life by this silliest of passions, which has not put 
 the laughers on his side, and has only won him the 
 repute of ingratitude, she has merely put an end to 
 all that, to the satisfaction of the interested parties, at 
 the earliest opportunity . . . There is reason to believe 
 that the domestic arrangements do not get on well 
 at all." 
 
 Did the marriage really turn out so badly .' The cor- 
 respondence of Catherine with the ex-favourite, begin- 
 ning immediately after their separation and going on to 
 1795, has been published. Quite commonplace, at first, 
 on both sides, these letters change their tone after a 
 few years, and indicate, in Mamonof at least, a state 
 of mind little encouraging with regard to the domestic 
 
346 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 virtues. In December 1792, the ex-favourite makes a 
 confession ; he is profoundly miserable. Doubtless the 
 sovereign's bounties have afforded him an enviable 
 situation in many respects, but the regret of no longer 
 seeing her leaves him no room for any other feeling 
 of pleasure. Banished to Moscow since his marriage, 
 he has but one desire : to return to St. Petersburg and 
 to her from whom, for his happiness' sake, he should 
 never have separated. And so strong is the illusion 
 in the mind of the amorous woman of sixty, insatiable 
 of love as at twenty, that she has not even a moment's 
 surprise on reading these amazing confessions. " I am 
 sure of it," she calmly says to Chrapowi^ki, " he cannot 
 be happy." And she almost begins to consider the 
 consequences of a return to the past. But no, Zubof 
 is there, and " it is another thing to go into the garden 
 with him and see him for four hours, another thing to 
 live with him." And if he returned, the old life together 
 would no doubt begin over again. She fears this eventu- 
 ality, and, in a tender and touching letter, she puts off for 
 a year the meeting desired by the audacious sycophant, 
 to whom Patiomkin, who is endeavouring to fight the 
 new favourite, has probably suggested it. But in the 
 following year it is Mamonof in turn, who, invited to 
 pay the visit he had so ardently desired, recoils before 
 the now established position of Zubof, and before the 
 terrible prospect of measuring arms (Patiomkin being 
 now no more) with so powerful a rival. Zubof is to 
 have no successor. 
 
 \:*^; 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM. 
 I. 
 
 Business letters, properly speaking, orders or in- 
 structions addressed to subordinates, exchange of com- 
 pliments or of diplomatic confidences with other sove- 
 reigns, make up a comparatively small amount of 
 Catherine's correspondence. She writes and receives 
 a great number of letters, and those she writes, like 
 those she receives, are often very long ; but this episto- 
 lary abundance and prolixity are due mainly to two 
 causes, both equally distinct from the ordinary neces- 
 sities of government, if not entirely alien to them : ixi_ 
 the first place an impulse to lavish herself and her ( 
 ardent and exuberant nature, always requiring to ex- 
 press and communicate everything that she thinks and 
 feels, or at least everything that she wishes people to 
 think of her thoughts and feelings. In a word, she is 
 loquaciougTj In the second place, she sees, in this ex- 
 traordinarily extensive correspondence, into which she 
 flings herself with such exceptional prodigality, a very 
 powerful means of action. The letters that she receives 
 are, for the most part, a sort of political reporting, , 
 adroitly set on foot and carried out ; those that she sends , 
 are frequently a sort of official journalism. They con-/ 
 tain plans of campaign, explanatory statements, militantj 
 articles, and even actual manifestoes, as in the letter of\ 
 January 21, 1791, addressed to Zimmermann, but in-\ 
 tended for the court of Berlin, which she desires to 
 
 347 
 
348 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 reassure, while advising it not to mix in the affairs of 
 Turkey. A part of the letters to Voltaire are really 
 meant to shake the situation of the Due de Choiseul ; 
 as she one day confesses to Chrapowigki. 
 
 From this twofold point of view, her letters may be 
 divided into three categories : those that she writes, 
 those that she composes, and those that are composed 
 for her. The first are the rarest, considerable as they 
 are : they are addressed to the one confidant, Grimm, 
 and a few intimate friends, to the favourites during their 
 term of office, and to two or three of them after. Short 
 notes hastily scribbled, or long chats, pen in hand, she 
 abandons herself to them, putting into them all that 
 enters her head, with the most perfect freedom, and at 
 the bidding of the most casual inspiration. But she 
 r writes twice over a note of a few lines in which she 
 ' informs the Prince de Ligne of her intention of making 
 I a journey through the Crimea: here we see the work 
 , of composition. And there is probably not a single 
 /' one of her letters to Voltaire which, in form at any rate, 
 is entirely her own handiwork : it is literature made to 
 order. It is only just to say that she has no preten- 
 sions in regard to it, though she does indeed sometimes 
 try to set people on the wrong scent as to her ways 
 of work. " I only write letters myself," she tells the 
 Prince de Ligne, " to the people who I think like me, 
 and whom I value, for it is impossible for me to run 
 after fine and witty sayings , . . and nothing seems to me 
 to be sillier than what I write when it is to be printed." 
 There is not, however, in spite of what she says, any 
 distinction to be made between her autograph and other 
 letters. She certainly copied with her own hand the 
 letters addressed to the patriarch of Ferney. And in 
 them all her personal inspiration has certainly its part 
 also, manifesting itself clearly in certain characteristic 
 traits, which belong to her epistolary style, for she has 
 a style of her own : a tone which is familiar, bon enfant, 
 a deliberate good-humour, certain originalities of thought 
 or of expression, generally appear even under the turn 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 349 
 
 of phrases most conventionally put together by her 
 usual aids in French and Russian, Shuvalof, Kozitski, 
 or Chrapowigki. 
 
 In her private correspondence, it is mainly the 
 familiar note which prevails, and she is anxious that 
 others should follow her own example. She writes to 
 Peter Saltykof : " Use the familiar and not the cere- 
 monious style in writing to me : I set you the example. 
 I want you also to be in as good a humour in writing to 
 me as I am in writing to you, and that because I care 
 for you a great deal." It is a curious detail that her 
 letters to Saltykof are written in a mixture of French 
 and Russian which she frequently employs, and the 
 passages in which there is the greatest freedom and 
 abandonment are invariably in French. Evidently it is 
 the way of talking in which she is most at home. Her 
 correspondence with Madame Geofifrin shows this, a 
 correspondence which she wishes to set upon a footing 
 of entire familiarity and even equality, for " to have no 
 equals is insupportable," and when the good Parisian 
 gossip finds some difficulty in putting herself in this posi- 
 tion, she insists : " Rise, Madame, I do not care for these 
 prostrations ; I have forbidden them . . . My good 
 friend, make use of your opportunities, and tell me 
 quite at your ease whatever you think fit to tell me, 
 without any concern . . . Do not put yourself out, scold 
 me if you like ; I am quite surprised that any one 
 should care to have me for a friend . . . You do not 
 like being contradicted : I will try to accommodate myself 
 to you as far as I can." 
 
 She treats Falconet on the same terms : "If you 
 reply, do not put yourself out, do not use any formality, 
 especially do not draw out the epithets which I do not 
 care for in the least . . . You thank me for the con- 
 fidential tone I have taken with you, but it is for me to 
 thank you for having distinguished me from the number 
 of my confreres, who, it is said, are for the most part 
 not suited to be on terms of confidence with people of 
 merit." It is the same with Madame de Bielke : " I was 
 
350 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 quite struck by the length of time you have known me, 
 twenty-two years ; still, I remember my old friends with 
 the greatest pleasure." 
 
 Formerly in the service of the Princess of Zerbst, 
 Catherine's mother, and since then settled at Hamburg, 
 Mademoiselle de Grothus, since her marriage Madame 
 de Bielke, is a German Madame Geoffrin with less 
 intelligence and more curiosity. She too has a salon, 
 but she receives more statesmen than men of letters. 
 She has wide connections, and, especially in regard to 
 the courts of Sweden and Denmark, has at her disposal 
 an abundance of information and anecdote which enables 
 her to enlighten and aid Catherine like a veritable 
 special courier. She listens at doors ; and no doubt, 
 too, people open their ears in her house, and the letters 
 that Catherine sends her are not unknown to the 
 Hanseatic newsmongers who frequent her salon, nor 
 are they intended to be. Hamburg is already one of 
 the most important commercial centres, and besides, at 
 this epoch, a centre of political movement a good deal 
 regarded by the Scandinavian and Noi'th German 
 countries. Certainly, faithful to her favourite maxim of 
 "uniting business and pleasure," Catherine sometimes 
 drops into chatting with this "old acquaintance" for 
 the mere love of chatting. When she writes : " I pity 
 the poor Queen of Denmark for having a child-husband ; 
 there is nothing so unpleasant. I know what it is by 
 experience, and I am one of those women who believe 
 that it is always the husband's fault if he is not loved, 
 for, in truth, I should have loved mine if he would only 
 have let me;" when, in regard to King Christian VII. 
 and his conduct towards Queen Caroline, she observes 
 that "his reign begins to look mightily like that of 
 Peter III.," these confidences are evidently not meant 
 to circulate in the streets of Hamburg. But when she 
 adds the details of a pitched battle won under the walls 
 of Chocim against fifty thousand Turks, the pickers-up 
 of sensational news are certainly thought of, and it is 
 Madarrie de Bielke's part to make the proper division. 
 
tHE Correspondents.— GRIMM 35 1 
 
 II. 
 
 The correspondence of the Semiramis of the North 
 with the patriarch of Ferney has not yet been published 
 in a complete French edition. The Imperial Historical 
 Society has inserted in its Proceedings, from 1872 to 
 1880, a hundred letters of the Empress, addressed to the 
 philosopher, many of which have never been published 
 in France, some in part only, while others are totally 
 different from the texts previously published. Thisj 
 correspondence is, properly speaking, on Catherine's 1 
 side, a periodical special pleading pro donio, an apology \ 
 in the form of letters for the government and politics of 
 the widow of Peter III., against the criticism and mis- 
 trust of a certain portion of the European public. There 
 is even a minute list of the horse-tails taken from the 
 Turkish pashas whom Rumiantsof had routed : " After 
 that, no one can say that that has been bought in the 
 market ! " 
 
 The passage in question is one of those not contained 
 in the French editions, and it is highly probable that 
 Catherine herself brought about the omission, as well as 
 all those which she was so anxious to make at the time 
 Beaumarchais took in hand the publication of the 
 master's works, going so far as to request the interfer- 
 ence of Louis XVI., and offering to pay for the " cancels " 
 reqiiired in making these cuts. The " cancels " were 
 carried out by order of M. de Montmorin, then Minister 
 of Foreign Affairs, but they were never paid for by 
 Catherine. 
 
 The letters to Voltaire were, from another point of 
 view, as we know, those which Catherine was accus- 
 tomed to speak of with the least interest. She confided 
 to Grimm that they were " very vulgarly written." The 
 confession cost her nothing, but she was wrong in look- 
 ing on them so scornfully, for, for our part, we find some 
 among them that are charming, and in comparison with 
 
353 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 which even Voltaire's answers gain nothing. The way 
 in which the sovereign from time to time puts down the 
 excesses of adulatory eloquence into which the patriarch 
 is always slipping, is very wittily philosophical, whether 
 it comes from herself or from Shuvalof Why does he 
 wish to give her a place among the divinities ? Is it so 
 enviable a place, where men have put " onions, cats, 
 the skin of beasts, serpents, and crocodiles " ? 
 
 The correspondence between Frgd grick II. and his 
 somewhat unwilling associate in the partition of Poland, 
 a correspondence in which there is a certain amount of 
 demonstrative cordiality on the part of the King, of 
 reserve on the part of the Empress, is maintained on a 
 footing of official courtesy, in which there is nothing of 
 whim or unconstraint. It is the language of two 
 monarchs talking over their affairs in a friendly way 
 in the presence of their ministers. Withjosegh II. it is 
 quite different. In the domain of foreign politics, 
 Frederick II. still remains, but for a few rare exceptions, 
 the representative of the older formal diplomacy. 
 Catherine is quite delighted to meet in Joseph another 
 monarch as saturated as she is with the new spirit, and 
 ready to follow the fashion of the times. This fashion is 
 a certain ease, irony, and lightness in the discussion even 
 of serious questions, all of them qualities which her 
 master, Voltaire, has given her the taste for, which she 
 has adopted with enthusiasm, and which she uses in an 
 indiscriminate feminine fashion, without regard for rule 
 or measure, and utterly indifferent, as we know, to the 
 proprieties. Whether her letters are concerned with 
 small-pox and the inoculation of her grandchildren, or 
 with chasing the Turks from Europe, with the aid of her 
 crowned brother, the tone that she affects, and that he 
 shows himself quite ready to adopt, is the same : light, 
 trifling, blagumr, as we should say to-day. While both 
 play their cards waril)^ in regard to the main issues of 
 the affairs, they joke and diverge from the main point, 
 measure their wit against one another, and try to 
 convince each other that they are not only on the level 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.-GRIMM 353 
 
 of the great political problems which they are en- 
 deavouring to solve together, but also on the level of the 
 most refined intellectual culture ; with mutual flatteries 
 and caresses which it would be difficult to discover 
 in the most hyperbolical compliments of the royal 
 correspondent at Berlin. 
 
 We are far from possessing, not only a complete 
 collection of Catherine's correspondence, but even a 
 complete list of her correspondents. In his dispatch 
 of January 31, 1789, to the Comte de Montmorin, 
 the Comte de Sdgur refers to one who would other- 
 wise have been quite unknown to us : "I have just 
 discovered, in a secret, but certain, manner, that the 
 Empress has been in correspondence with M. Fox ever 
 since he has been minister." An exchange ofTeEfers, at 
 that time, was, in general, merely the expression, as it is 
 to-day, of a s ocial necess ity. People did not confine 
 themselves to the communication of news, of ideas, or of 
 business matters ; they wrote for the sake of writing. 
 The Priii£e_de Ligne thus begins one of his letters to 
 Catherine : " If there were only the smallest sort of 
 great man at present existing in the four quarters of the 
 world, I would write to him so as not to trouble you, 
 Madame ; but Your Majesty must needs pay for your own 
 position, and the lack of others." In Germany, Madame 
 de Bielke and Zimmerm ann. the sovereign's general 
 correspondents, had many lesser rivals ; such as the 
 Baron of Asseburg, who in 1771 was put at the disposal 
 of Catherine by the Danish minister Bernstorff for the 
 negotiation of the marriage of Paul with a German 
 princess. After the fall of Bernstorff, Asseburg, who did 
 not like Struensee, and who had no reason for remaining 
 in Denmark, for he was of Brunswick origin, willingly 
 accepted service in Russia. 
 
 Catherine's correspondence with Zimmermann began 
 in connection with the book on Solitude, of which the 
 German writer sent her a copy, and which was her 
 favourite reading after the death of Lanskoif. She 
 wrote to him " to talk reason and folly,'' was enchanted 
 
 AA 
 
354 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 to receive in reply letters " as full of folly as of reason,'' 
 found that he had, like Diderot, and somewhat like 
 herself, " a mind which goes ahead without knowing 
 where it is going, but always further than any one 
 expects ; " and she tells Grimm of her interest in him, 
 and wishes to get him to come to Russia, like the other 
 great man. But she soon sees that this is something 
 very different from an encyclopaedist of Paris. A doctor 
 by profession, Zimmermann was a German philosopher 
 and a German savant, and both science and philosophy 
 in Germany have always had ways of their own. When 
 the courier bearing Catherine's first letter and the costly 
 ring which accompanied it, presented himself at Hanover, 
 and asked for Dr. Zimmermann, he found the door 
 closed against him : the doctor was out. 
 
 " How unfortunate ! A commission from Her Imperial 
 Majesty ..." 
 
 " Pardon ! it is Court-Councillor Zimmermann that 
 you want to see .-• He is in, and will see you." 
 
 The messenger has to wait half-an-hour ; the coun- 
 cillor is at his toilet. He appears at last, in a superb 
 jacket of silver-cloth. That was different enough from 
 the man in black clothes who had been Catherine's 
 guest ten years before. 
 
 The style of his letters does however recall that of 
 Voltaire's and Diderot's, with a certain heaviness in 
 addition. She reads in them that "posterity will be 
 astonished to see her created and organized for empire," 
 and, " aided by her vast genius, making her way to 
 immortality by all the paths of glory." She learns also 
 that her comedies, translated into German, " would be 
 epoch-making to Europe," and her desire of possessing 
 so eloquent a man growing yet stronger, she addresses 
 herself to another German doctor already established in 
 St. Petersburg, whom we have already seen at Lanskoi's 
 death-bed. In similar circumstances, D'Alembert has 
 shown a fine disdain for the bridge of gold that the 
 imperial munificence would fain build in his honour; 
 Diderot had set out without even knowing if he would 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 355 
 
 have enough money to last the journey ; the German 
 philosopher begari by taking precautions, and bargaining. 
 Weickhardt having informed him of Catherine's wishes, 
 he wrote a letter of twenty-seven pages, the point of 
 which was that he would be happy to be near and to 
 serve a sovereign of whom he had the highest opinion, 
 and that he was quite ready to pack up his things, but 
 not without a formal agreement that he was to have an 
 annual allowance of seven or eight thousand thalers 
 at least : the King of England gave him seventeen 
 hundred then, and his patients brought him in three 
 times as much. " You will say that it is too much for a 
 philosopher .■' My friend, it is too little ! I have not 
 yet been able to buy my little plot of land, and the 
 liberty which is the height of my ambition." Besides, 
 JPrihce Orlof had already proposed to follow him 
 td Russia, offering to establish him " en Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau',' in one of his castles, with ten thousand roubles 
 d year. Zimmermann had refused, ahd the prince had 
 throwii himself on his neck, weeping tears of regret. 
 As for the princess, she had been half frantic with grief. 
 
 " He is very expensive," was Catherine's only com-^ 
 rhent when she had read the letter, and she dropped 
 negotiations at once. She gave up the physician and 
 riierely continued to correspond with the philosopher, 
 touching on all subjects, from the highest moral questions 
 to the making of cheeses. Zimmermann tried to re-open 
 negotiations, on much lower terms ; but Catherine there- 
 upon pretended to be very much concerned for the 
 health of the philosopher, for whom she feared the 
 fatigues of so long a journey, and he had to be content 
 with this honourable defeat. At the time of the Crimean 
 journfey, he wrote to Weickhardt : 
 
 " Taurida, Taurida ! That is my first thought when I 
 awake in the morning, my last when I go to sleep at 
 night. On the 4th of January I received from unknown 
 hands yoUr letter of the loth December. ' Oh ! ' thought 
 I as I unsealed it, ' this letter will be from Taurida.' Not 
 
356 PRIVATE LIFE.—CCURT LIFE 
 
 a. word from Taurida in the letter, but words inexpres- 
 sibly touching, coming from the most loveliest, greatest, 
 and most gracious soul that can be found on a throne 
 or on earth. Never was there a soul more full of sensi- 
 bility. ' I cannot decide ' (these are her words) ; ' I made 
 a decision a year ago, and gave it up, seeing that the 
 health of your friend might suffer from it.' These are 
 the words of an angel. O God ! such words are the 
 highest expression of the loftiest, sweetest, and most 
 touching grace upon earth." 
 
 Letters to her relations have also a large place in 
 Catherine's correspondence. In these she shows many 
 amiable qualities. Her letters to the Grand-Duke Paul 
 and his wife, during their travels in EiTrope, are, as" far 
 as the form is concerned, those of a pupil whom Voltaire 
 has no cause to be proud of, but, in substance, they are 
 those of a really affectionate mother : " You will please 
 be good enough all four, father, mother, and two children, 
 to kiss one another for me," we read in one. There is 
 one note among the number, written, for a wonder, in 
 Russian, of which we must give a translation : 
 
 "Alexander Pavlovitch asked me three days ago to 
 give him another brother. I send him on to you with 
 his request, so that you may give him what he asks for. 
 But I questioned him to know why he wanted one, and 
 he tells me that he is absolutely in jieed of a third 
 brother for the serious reason that he has only one horse 
 to harness when he plays at horses, and he really ought 
 to have two. Feeling that he is entirely in the right, I 
 hand on his request to you, adding to it what weight 
 I can on my own behalf My dear friend added still 
 further reasons of the kind, too long to mention in 
 detail ; it is enough, I hope, for you to know the most 
 important one." 
 
 Charmingly turned, too, with a charming playfulness, 
 are the letters of the sovereign to Princes s Car oline of 
 Darmstadt, " a robust-minded man, and anything but a 
 gossip," as Catherine describes her one day to Prince 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMiU 357 
 
 Volkonski. Had the friend of Voltaire and of Madame 
 de Bielke so little taste for gossip ? The presence of 
 Grimm in the front rank of her correspondents certainly 
 seems to prove the contrary. 
 
 III. 
 
 Grimm is the correspondent par excellence. M. 
 Scherer's admirably documented book leaves me no 
 need to acquaint my readers with the curious figure of 
 this letter-writer and courtier. I shall merely point out 
 certain traits, those which seem to me to have caused 
 him to be chosen by Catherine as the habitual depositary 
 of her confidences, and in some sort as the daily witness 
 of her innermost life. 
 
 Catherine seems to have figured in 1764 among the 
 subscribers to the Correspondance Litteraire. She found 
 herself well placed : she gave fifteen hundred roubles a 
 year, her proUg^, the King of Poland, only giving four 
 hundred, and Frederick, whom Grimm took good care 
 not to strike out of his list, nothing at all. During the 
 next few years she turned, more and more frequently, 
 to this man whom she found so well-informed about 
 everything, for the carrying out of various literary and 
 artistic projects ; the purchase of pictures or libraries, 
 the distribution of medals, the colportage of official or 
 unofficial information. She gradually got accustomed 
 to have him at her disposal, and he himself acquired a 
 taste for the post of factotum. When he came to St. 
 Petersburg in 1773, in the suite of the Princess of Hesse- 
 Darmstadt, whose daughter married the Grand-Duke 
 Paul, he was tired of his Correspondance, which only 
 brought him in a moderate income, and which he had 
 for some time handed over to Meister. He never for 
 an instant thought of taking up his abode in the 
 Northern capital ; he saw too plainly the double danger 
 of such a course : the certainty of boring himself to 
 death, and the probability of getting sooner or later into 
 
358 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT tlFE 
 
 disgrace, like his friend Falconet. To stay at Paris, 
 while devoting himself exclusively to the service 
 of the great sovereign, was the object which he 
 had in view, and which he followed up with in6nite 
 address. He pleaded his cause in writing, and gave 
 evidence of his particular art, the mixture of seriousness 
 and buffoonery, which had made the fortune of the 
 Petit Prophete de Boehmischbroda, as well as the invari- 
 able artifice of special pleaders before the great ones of 
 the earth : parody, and unbounded flattery. He paro- 
 died the Credo in a profession of faith as neophyte in 
 the " Catherinian " faith, and made use of the English 
 and German physicians of Her Majesty to translate, in 
 a burlesque consultation, the idea that he oijght to be 
 sent back to Paris, because he was good for nothing bijt 
 writing and doing errands, and that he could only do 
 so there. He set out, with, as yet, nothing but the 
 permission to write directly to the sovereign, with a 
 very small emolument : Catherine had to be economical 
 just then. But, when he returned in 1776 for the second 
 marriage of the Grand-Duke Paul, his position was 
 established. He had audiences which lasted till seven 
 o'clock, and put the foreign diplomatists on the alert, 
 the French minister in particular. He became a per- 
 sonage of importance, a position which he did not abuse. 
 Writing to Madame Geoffrin, he even professed to look 
 lightly enough on the favour which the Empress showed 
 him : " She is a charming woman, who ought to live in 
 Paris ; " but he showed nothing of this in his manner 
 with the Empress herself. He had adopted in this 
 particular an attitude from which he never varied to 
 the end of his life : uije attitude of a woi;^ipper absorbed 
 in the consciousness of his nothingness?] If she offered 
 him the place of director in the new scholastic organiza- 
 tion that she had in view, he turned aside the proposal, 
 saying that he was " tempted to cast himself at her fpet, 
 and beg her to keep him as onp of her dogs." He added 
 moreover that he would be a bad teacher in Russia, as 
 the language of Voltaire was the only one which he 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 359 
 
 knew how to use correctly ; and then was it not under- 
 stood that he was always to remain le rien of Her 
 Majesty ? This time, when he returned to Paris, he 
 carried with him the vague, and so all the more attractive, 
 title of imperial agent, an allowance of two thousand 
 roubles, and a tchin equivalent to the rank of colonel, 
 which greatly amused Frederick, but in no way discon- 
 certed himself. 
 
 He was to see Catherine no more ; yet none the less 
 he passed, in the eyes of all Europe, and rightly, as the 
 man who approached her the most closely, living as he 
 did eight hundred leagues away. He kept this ex- \J 
 ceptional position for twenty-seven years, receiving in 
 return certain honorary distinctions, which he esteemed 
 very highly, and a modest competency, of which the 
 Revolution deprived him. The Terrorists who pillaged 
 his house did not discover Catherine's correspondence, 
 which he had had time to carry into Germany, and had 
 to content them.selves with burning some portraits of 
 the Empress ; but all he had was lost in the catastrophe. 
 According to M. Sch^rer, it was not a confiscation, as 
 Grimm was a stranger and a diplomatist, doubly pro- 
 tected in this respect by the law of nations ; it was 
 simply a sequestration, followed by a restitution on the 
 part of the Executive Council. I would not take upon 
 myself to contradict the learned biographer, still less to 
 say anything against the justice of the Revolution ; I 
 will merely state the facts. The fortune of Grimm, at 
 the time when it was seized upon by the Revolution, 
 consisted in thirty thousand livres of annual income, in 
 addition to somewhat considerable personal effects, and 
 a fine library. The restitution was only concerned, as 
 M. Scherer himself admits, with the actual money value. 
 The books, papers, pictures, which escaped the mito-da- 
 //, remained in custody, and some of them have since 
 found their way into the public collections of France. 
 The money value was estimated at sixty thousand 
 livres, and paid in paper-money. The legend of the 
 pair of cuffs, which was all that was ever got out of this 
 
36o PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 payment, and which, as told by Grimm, has the air of 
 being a joke, is only the expression of a very real and 
 very ordinary fact at the time when it occurred. In 
 order to avoid the increasing depreciation in the value 
 of paper-money, the bankers of the imperial confidant 
 had recourse to an expedient common enough in 
 troubled times : they took the money value in goods, 
 and Grimm had for his sixty thousand livres three pairs 
 of lace cuffs and a few pieces of muslin, the whole 
 contained in a box six inches high. This was all that 
 remained to him of the mass of his fortune, after coming 
 in contact with le bloc revolutionnaire. 
 
 Catherine did something to make up for it by 
 various gifts, intended, according to her expression, "to 
 keep the pot boiling " for her " fag," whose nickname 
 was never more truly deserved. According to her usual 
 custom, she added much more liberal promises, which 
 she forgot to carry out, and the " pot " was not always 
 able to be put over the fire at all. Grimm had a good 
 many mouths to feed. Rather late in life he had come 
 to have quite a family : Emilie de Belsunce, grand- 
 daughter of Madame d'Epinay, married to the Comte 
 de Breuil, and the mother of several children, left 
 penniless by the Revolution, and adopted by him. He 
 handed over all this little flock to Catherine, together 
 with Antoinette Marchais, a faithful servant who had 
 courageously, though vainly, defended his house in the 
 Chaussde d'Antin against its assailants, and who had 
 followed her master to Germany. The Empress at first 
 spoke of receiving them all at St. Petersburg ; but she 
 was afterwards careful that Grimm should not take her 
 at her word. She named him her representative at the 
 Saxon courts at Gotha, then her resident at Hamburg. 
 Paul confirmed him in these offices, which, however, the 
 loss of an eye obliged him to abandon. He returned to 
 Gotha, and lived there quietly till 1807, where he died 
 at the age of eighty-four. Catherine's letters, which he 
 had always refused to part from, and which he had 
 succeeded, through all his troubles, in hiding from view, 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIM M 361 
 
 were handed over in 1 817 to the Emperor Alexander. 
 They have been published in the Recueil de la Societe 
 Impiriale d'Histoire Russe, obviously with some omis- 
 sions. The letters written by him to the Empress are 
 not preserved, or are not known, save in fragments. 
 The copy of the Correspondance LitUraire sent to the 
 illustrious subscriber at St. Petersburg, is in the archives 
 of Moscow, in a more complete state than the published 
 text, but with some gaps. 
 
 I shall now endeavour to describe this man, whose 
 life I have summed up from the time when Catherine 
 had her part in it. The testimony of his contemporaries 
 is rarely favourable to him ; that even of Madame 
 d'Epinay being no exception. She seems, in her 
 memoirs, to be pleading a cause which cannot but be 
 dear to her, but she joins to her pleading the main 
 points of the indictment, and the effect is somewhat 
 unfortunate. She brings Duclos on the scene, and 
 Duclos declares, straight out, that his former friend, and 
 now rival, is " a cheat, cunning, clever, and insinuating ; " 
 recounting his unworthy conduct in regard to "little 
 Fel," the singer whom he looked after so badly, and 
 with Holbach, whose friendship he sought in order " to 
 live with his wife and make use of him as he pleased." 
 Grimm takes his revenge by insinuating to their common 
 friend that Duclos has publicly bragged of her favours, 
 and thereupon Duclos is sent about his business, and 
 Grimm installed as master of the house. Shortly after, 
 Madame d'Epinay is frightened by the discovery of the 
 principles which Duclos' successor puts in practice since 
 he has had to do with crowned heads : " He distinguishes 
 two kinds of justice : one for the use of sovereigns 1 " 
 It gives her a " mortal " headache. Diderot comes to 
 console her. " I see all that as she does," he writes 
 next day to Mademoiselle Voland ; " still, I excuse him 
 as much as I can. At every reproach I add this refrain : 
 But he is young, but he is faithful, but you love him ; 
 and she laughs." 
 
 The portrait which this necessarily indulgent mistress 
 
362 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 gives of him is, indeed, that of a painter very much 
 enamoured of his model : " The face is rendered agree- 
 able by a mingling of naivete a.nd finesse ; the features are 
 interesting, the whole manner negligent and nonchalant; 
 his soul is firm, tender, generous, and lofty. It is just 
 that kind of pride which wins respect without humiliat- 
 ing others. He thinks and expresses himself vigorously, 
 though not with correctness. Badly as he speaks, no 
 one is listened to more attentively. It seems to me 
 that in the matter of taste, no one has a finer, surer, and 
 more delicate sense. He has a turn of pleasantry which 
 is peculiar to him, and which suits only himself His 
 character is a compound of truth, sweetness, savagery, 
 sensibility, reserve, melancholy, and gaiety. He loves 
 solitude, and it is easy to see that the taste for society 
 is not natural to him. No one is more enlightened in 
 regard to the interests of others, no one gives better 
 advice, but he does not know how to carry it out." 
 
 The taste for solitude, discovered in a person whom 
 Diderot himself could not help calling " the Marquis," by 
 way of satire of his vanity and his social pretensions, is 
 enough to show how much truth there is in the picture ; 
 and charms discovered in the face whose big prominent 
 eyes and nose turned awry (" turned always in the right 
 direction," according to another lady friend) left so 
 unpleasant an image even in the memory of Meister, 
 are evidently due to eyes which have been bandaged. 
 Rousseau perhaps invented the paint which he declares 
 "the Marquis" used, "to fill the hollows of his skin," 
 and the nickname of " Tyran le Blanc " is more pro- 
 bably a recollection of some romance of chivalry which 
 formed part of Catherine's early reading, than a hit at 
 this artifice of toilet ; but, physically as well^as morally, 
 the impression conveyed to us by MadamejfEginay is far 
 from being that which disinterested'observers give us of 
 the man of whom the Comte de Tilly, for instance, says 
 in his memoirs that " he would always be in the drawing- 
 room when he was thought fitter to be in the ante-room," 
 and of whom the Paris of the day was mightily amused 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 363 
 
 when, after going to the funeral of the Comte de 
 Friese, his friend and benefactor, apparently in the 
 (deepest distress, his face bathed in tears, he was met a 
 moment after slipping his handkerchief cheerfully into 
 his pocket, and, with an ironical smile on his lips, settling 
 back to the perusal of an interesting ^pamphlet. 
 
 Apart from Diderot, Madame d'Epinay, and two or 
 three other Parisians equally indulgent, Grimm had 
 many acquaintances, but few friends, in the city where 
 he preferred to live and where he wished to die. Paris 
 did not love him, and Paris was not absolutely wrong, 
 for this Frenchman by adoption, this Parisian by pre- 
 dilection, loved neither the city nor the country which 
 he professed to have made his own. Le Petit Prophete 
 de Boehmisdibroda, which made his literary reputation, 
 is really, at bottom, nothing more nor less than a 
 violent pamphlet against his adopted country : " And I 
 have hidden thy shame and thy falling away from thy 
 neighbours .... as though thou hadst not lost the 
 liking of great and fair things, and I have kept themi 
 that they should not see thee wallowing in the littleness 
 of thy soul." 
 
 Strangers — as it may well be noted in passing by one 
 of themselves — already showed themselves vigorous in 
 rebuking the decadence of France, its disgust of great 
 and fair things, and the narrowness of its ideas, while at 
 the same time they were all equally anxious to come 
 and share in this abasement. 
 
 This German looks upon the French language itself, 
 which he uses by preference, as an inferior and un- 
 grateful instrument, to which he refuses even the qualities 
 most commonly accorded to it, clearness and precision. 
 He employs it, one might say, like a bad workman who 
 spits upon his tools. As for the people of the country, 
 they have no merit in his eyes, save for a vivacity which 
 verges upon petulance. German he is, and German he 
 remains, to the inmost fibres of his being. Quite German 
 in his social doctrine : " Shall I tell you what I think } 
 Do not be a child, and afraid of words. I think that 
 
364 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 there is no other right in the world than the right of the 
 strongest ; since that, it must be said, is the only 
 legitimate right ... To wish that the strongest should 
 not be the master, is almost as reasonable as not to wish 
 that a stone of a hundred pounds should not weigh more 
 than a stone of twenty." And this doctrine leads him 
 to condemn the principle of charity. He urges the 
 suppression of alms-houses, " at the risk of letting those 
 people die in the street who have not managed to provide 
 a support for their old age." 
 
 As for Catherine's own opinion in regard to her 
 " fag," it has much the same value as her usual judg- 
 ments in these matters, half illusion, half parti prts. 
 But it is assuredly necessary that we should look, if not 
 for actual qualities, at all events for reasons, and perhaps 
 even defects, which accounted for the choice that she 
 made in this particular case, and the extraordinary con- 
 fidence, extraordinarily prolonged, which she testified 
 towards this man, whom Duclos continued all his life 
 to call " a scoundrel." These reasons seem to be 
 obvious enough, and made up in equal parts of defects 
 and of qualities. 
 
 This German is, in the first place, an hon est Germ an. 
 ^ We shall not try to explain exactly how he managed, 
 with an annual allowance of ten thousand livres, reduced 
 by the changes of currency to seven or eight, and with- 
 out apparently other sources of income, to have in 1793 
 an income of thirty thousand livres. But we need not 
 look into that matter more scrupulously than did 
 Catherine herself. In 1795 she sent him ten thousand 
 roubles to distribute among the refugees, forbidding him 
 to say where the money came from, and he rendered 
 a minute account of this apportionment, which was 
 entirely in his own hands. And there is no reason to 
 suppose that he did not do the same with more con- 
 siderable sums, more than two millions of livres, which 
 from time to time passed through his hands. And he 
 never abused the confidence of Catherine in another 
 respect : guided by an admirable tact, a most delicate 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 365 
 
 sense of things, he never made use of her correspond-' 
 ence in a way of which she could disapprove. She 
 never had to fear a gaucherie or an indiscretion on his 
 part. And he was faithful as a dog, keen as a detective, 
 in guarding the secret of the trust confided in him. 
 
 He was besides, in regard to the tastes, ways of look- 
 ing at things, material and moral conveniences of the 
 sovereign, an unrivalled correspondent. " I have never 
 written to any one as I write to you . . . You under- 
 stand me better than any one, and often the same 
 reflection comes to you at Paris as to me at Moscow. 
 . . . Come, come, M. le Baron, I must have a talk with 
 you. . . . Here are two of your letters waiting to be 
 answered. It is true that there are two from the King 
 of France, three from the King of Sweden, two from 
 Voltaire, three more from God knows whom, all older in 
 date . . . ; but, as they do not amuse me, because with 
 them I have to write and with you I chatter, ... I 
 prefer to amuse myself." Coming over and over again 
 in the course of the correspondence, these declarations 
 explain the value which she attached to it. She loves 
 to chatter. She loves, in particular, to write, witEout 
 need or^d, merely to let her pen and her thought run, 
 like piano-players or fencers, who practise on a mute 
 keyboard or at a blank wall. Grimm is her practising 
 keyboard, not however entirely silent ; her practising 
 wall, behind which there is however a sword, a sword 
 properly buttoned, a discreet and respectful sword, but 
 as agile as can be, and provocative of brilliant passages 
 of arms. The habitual tone of the letters which he 
 writes to Catherine is that of constant adulation, almost 
 verging upon folly, with at the same time a perpetual 
 buffoonery, the one playing off against the other, saving 
 the extravagant praise by a semblance of satirical in- 
 tention, casting a veil of incoherence and fantasy over 
 it all. Hyperbolical ilattery, however, with the " fag," 
 is not the mere artifice of a courtier ; in time it 
 becomes a second nature to him. He has nothing 
 particular to gain, in the way of either profit or honour, 
 
366 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 from the Princess of Saxe-Gotha, with whom he gets 
 into correspondence ; still, he can nevet opeh one of her 
 letters without "the little shiver that precedes some 
 delightful sensation." He never wearies of kissing her 
 feet, "as the ancients kissed the altar of propitious 
 deities." He does no more with Catherine herself, 
 studying merely to add that element of somewhat gross 
 pleasantry \\'hich he knew was so much to her taste. 
 He is equally moved in opening the letters which she 
 writes to him, but his emotion expresses itself differ- 
 ently : he " cries like a calf" ; the earthquake at Lisbon 
 is nothing to the shocks which agitate him. A courier 
 from St. Petersburg brings him the portrait of the 
 sovereign, which he has desired to have for so long ; he 
 writes : " The revered image has beeri received with the 
 same ceremony and the same devotion as that with 
 which Count Suvorof receives an order of St. Andre at 
 Kinburn ; except that I have not taken the sacrament, 
 I can flatter myself that I have laughed, wept, and 
 behaved as much like a madman as he. Why have I 
 not taken both sacraments, like him, before touching 
 the revered image ! . . Blessed be she who, full df 
 grace, has deigned to confer upon her ' fag ' this 
 priceless image of the immortal one." 
 
 At the same time he is quite content to be addressed 
 in the same jocose way, and even at his own expense, to 
 be turned into ridicule in regard to his personal appear- 
 ance and his private character, his wit and his health, 
 his intestinal derangements, and his aristocratic preten- 
 sions. Is he not the " fag" .■' He is also " George Dan- 
 din," " M. l'H6retique," " Heraclitus," " M. le Freiherr," 
 "L'Homme aux boyaux felds." And it is not Catherine 
 only who is allowed to jest with him after this fashion : 
 Frederick calls him M. de la Grimmali^re " since he has 
 become baron, and he does not appear to mind in the 
 least." But (and here his art, his superiority comes in) 
 he does not limit himself to taking blows, which woiild 
 soon become insipid, he knows how to venture, at the 
 right momerit, iti replies, and even bold attacks, but 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.—GRIMM 367 
 
 which only amuse without wounding, so clever is he in 
 wrapping Up the point. In sending to the Empress thai 
 model of a monumental gate designed by Clerisseau, h^ 
 writes : " Now I trust that Your Majesty will not see fit 
 to have a German quarrel with me over this model gate, 
 nor SEty to me, ' I fear that it is too beautiful,' for I 
 shall be quite capable of printing Your Majesty's letter. 
 Now such a publication would do no little wrong to the 
 Empress, for the universe would then perceive that there 
 are sometimes such hubbubs in Your Majesty's interior 
 that one knows not what to listen to, that ideas jostle 
 one another, fall over each other topsy-turvy, so that it 
 needs all tile German phlegm of a ' fag ' not to be sent 
 sprawling." 
 
 These little revolts are easily forgiven, especially as 
 he knows how to excuse himself with all the humility 
 of which he is capable, and his capacity in this respect 
 is infinite : it is that of " an earthworm which, despite 
 the tone of lightness which it sometimes permits itself 
 in its excess of gaiety . . . never forgets its origin, that 
 is to say its nothingness." They are welcomed, indeed, 
 for they arotise and excite his august correspondent. 
 She needs them to set her fancy flying, and her pen, 
 heaping up puns and jokes and sarcasms, gay frolick- 
 ings of a mind which jumps at one leap from politics 
 to the scandals of the ante-room, from philosophy to 
 incongruity. The mere thought of talking with the 
 " fag " puts her in a gay mood, and adds a certain 
 drollery even to the headings of her letters : " From 
 the once duck-pond, now St. Petersburg ; " " separate 
 sheet to be thrown into the fire without losing it ; " " at 
 Peterhof, where neither I nor M. Thomas are on good 
 terms with one another " ( M. Thomas being Her 
 Majesty's favourite dog). And then the endless nick :: 
 narjies-1 Not a single creature is called by his right 
 name ; things themselves take on strange disguises. 
 Joseph II., before the meeting at Mohilef, is "the man 
 with two faces," or the piccolo bambino ; after, he 
 becomes "the eagle." Maria Theresa is " Mamma." 
 
368 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 " Falstaff " stands for Gustavus III. of Sweden. We 
 know already who she means in speaking of " poor 
 folk." " Pea-soup " is meant to take off the diplo- 
 matists ; and, in laughing at the anarchic revolution- 
 aries she writes : die Kdther Bdrenhduter, or Bdrenreiter, 
 commenting on this last as follows : " In Pomerania it 
 is a dirty, ugly dog that one calls Kdther ... I 
 cannot see that Bdrenhduter, one who wears bear- 
 skin, is any insult, but a man who rides on a bear is 
 ridiculous." 
 
 Note that these nicknames are not meant to be any 
 sort of cryptograms, the " budgets " to Grimm not being 
 exposed to the accidents of the post. >/lt is mere fun 
 > and foolery. She caricatures the very language in 
 which she writes^ employing a patois of her invention, 
 a mixture of French, German, and Italian locutions, 
 which all bear her sign-manual. She says that the war 
 has " d^projetd ses projets." She announces that to- 
 morrow " elle legislatera." She writes : " Ma si il signer 
 marchese del Grimmo volio fare mi plaisir." And she 
 comes and goes, full speed, winding as best she can, 
 through all these freaks and follies, the infinite skein of 
 her imagination. She sometimes even calls the "fag" 
 her skein-winder. 
 
 She is grateful to him too, poor man, for a place that 
 she comes to take, not only considerable, but, in course 
 of time, unique, in his existence and her thoughts. \ The 
 history of the relations of Grimm with his imperial 
 friend is the history of the gradual and finally complete 
 V absorption of one individuality by another^ He is con- 
 scious of it himself: "This correspondence has become 
 the only good, the single ornament, of my life, the 
 pivot of my happiness, as essential to my existence as 
 breathing ... I came to have for her, at a distance, a 
 kind of religion which was all made up of her and the 
 worship I rendered to her. The thought of her had 
 become so habitual with me that it never left me day 
 or night, and all my thoughts were wrapt up in this 
 one . . . Walking, travelling, visiting, sitting, lying. 
 
THE CORRESPONDENTS.— GRIMM 369 
 
 standing . . . my whole existence had come to be, as 
 it were, concentrated in hers." Moreover, this commu- 
 nion of spirits came to isolate him from the outer world. 
 He gave up reading, he who had once been Correspond- 
 ance LitUraire. He writes to the Empress, carries out 
 her commissions, receives people on her account, writes 
 to her again ; and there is all his life. Finally, the 
 German in him appearing once more under the varnish 
 of French education, as the man of letters that he had 
 become in France gives place to the courtier, he comes 
 to interest himself vaguely in the literary movement 
 beyond the Rhine. But what a choice he makes ! He 
 echoes Catherine in putting the Thummels and Schlum- 
 mels on the same level as Voltaire ; with her, he dis- 
 covers an " incredible vigour " in the comedies of Lenz, 
 and, like her, does not seem to doubt that Goets von 
 Berlichingen, Werther, and The Robbers, have already 
 appeared, and that German romanticism is already born. 
 The secret of this extraordinary monopoly in posses- 
 sion of a whole soul, Catherine is well aware of. She 
 knows that, at bottom, it is nothing very flattering 
 either for her or for him. She does not fail to joke her 
 " fag " about it ; quite aware " that he is never happier 
 than when he is by, near, beside, before, or behind, some 
 Highness ! " and God knows " where he picks them 
 up ! " He even jests about it himself, telling of his 
 appearance in a box of the theatre at Spa, in company 
 with Joseph II. and Prince Henry of Prussia, and his 
 pleasure in fancying what an effect it would have on 
 the gossips of the place, who would have to confess 
 " that, in truth, the fag of a Greek Imperial Majesty 
 must, all the same, be a creature of some distinction ! " 
 She does not endeavour to raise him above the level 
 where he has set himself, and where he seems so much 
 at home. He is quite justified in denying that he has 
 ever played the part of a more or less underhand agent 
 of imperial politics at Paris. Once only, in 1789, at 
 a time when the official and diplomatic personnel of the 
 French Government has fallen into great disorder, the 
 
370 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 Empress gives him a commission of this kind, and he 
 does not gain enough out of it to make him at all 
 anxious to try it over again. " Fag " he wished to be, 
 and " fag " he will remain ; of too conceited a humour 
 to be content with a place in the republic of letters ; of 
 too vain and too light a disposition, also, to engage in 
 really serious affairs, while taking up a position in the 
 highest spheres of the society of the time. His mind 
 and character, his very nature, condemn him to positions 
 of inferiority. He might have been a writer, but prefers 
 to be a reporter. Catherine might very likely have 
 made him a minister : he insists on being nothing but 
 a factotum. A sort of servility creeps into even his 
 most brilliant and solid qualities. He seems born in 
 the ante-room, and home-sick for livery. Like the 
 lackey who made a fortune out of Law's, speculations, 
 though he is in a position to ride inside his coach, his 
 instinct urges him to get up behind. He was, however, 
 an excellent man in his way. ut has been said that, 
 having wished to find a place among the Empress's 
 dogs, he did not fail to bark at the Revolutioii^ This 
 is rather a hard saying, and, at all events, it was not 
 the Revolution which suffered, and there were certainly 
 reasons for his not being too amiably disposed towards 
 it. But he was not naturally inclined to be malicious. 
 To posture before his Empress, and to amuse her by 
 his posturings, was enough for him. 
 
 It was doubtless on account of just these qualities 
 that Catherine was what she was to him, and that she 
 thus added to her other titles to fame that of having 
 left a unique model of her particular kind of epistolary 
 style, and an autobiographical document which is un- 
 rivalled. In the fortunes of her career, Grimm was one 
 good fortune the more. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS. — PRINCESS DASHKOP. 
 
 Great man as Catherine was, according to Voltaire, 
 she was also, in certain respects, very characteristically 
 feminine. Something of the kind is to be seen in the 
 singular number of her confidential friends, dubious 
 enough figures, whose official functions are doubled by 
 another less avowable one. All through her reign, the 
 Empress indulges in confidential missions to an enor- 
 mous extent. But (and here it is that Catherine the 
 Great comes upon the scene with all the masculine 
 vigour of her genius and her will) great as is the number 
 of the men and women whom she uses as confidential 
 agents, there is not a single one of them, man or 
 woman, who succeeded in reversing the parts. She 
 makes use of them ; never do they make use of her. 
 This trait is seen very clearly in the history of the 
 most famous woman whom she had about her. 
 
 In 1773, writing to Frederick II. in regard to the 
 difficulty of influencing Catherine in favour of the new 
 notions as to the King of Poland, Solms writes : " I 
 have knocked at every door ; the women, on this occa- 
 sion, have been utterly useless. This is not the age of 
 women in Russia." In the presence of a woman on the 
 throne of Peter the Great, in succession to Elizabeth, 
 Anne, and Catherine I., the statement is curious. 
 
 371 
 
372 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 Certainly the Princess Dashkof could never have dreamt 
 of such a thing on the day when, dressed in the same 
 grenadier's uniform, she galloped with her imperial 
 friend on the way from St. Petersburg to Peterhof in 
 chase of a crown. But her dreams were doomed to 
 deception, and it only needed a day to prove the truth 
 of what Solms had stated : the triumph of Catherine 
 was not that of her devoted friend, and, only a few 
 weeks after the accession of the new Empress, the 
 companion of her hours of ordeal had lost even her 
 prerogatives as keeper of the imperial conscience, which 
 she had hoped at least to retain for herself. Her part 
 was ended. 
 
 /^It is but just to say that she behaved in an absolutely 
 insupportable manner. With her eighteen-years-old 
 inexperience, her quarrelsome humour, and her ambition, 
 she soon gave evidence of the most fatal qualities of 
 a busybody. She wanted to order everything and 
 everybody, she gave instructions to the soldiers, placed 
 and unplaced officials, and took the high hand with 
 Catherine herself. She pretended to be unwilling to 
 accept a decoration that was offered to her, and made 
 it understood that she had expected the office of a 
 minister or the command of a regiment. She pocketed 
 the twenty-four thousand roubles which were allotted to 
 her among the rewards, but pretended that it was a 
 mere nothing to what she had reason to expect, and 
 wearied every one with her lamentations. " Princess 
 Dashkof," wrote Bdranger to the Due de Praslin, " has 
 lamented to me over the little she has made out of the 
 Revolution. I blushed for her in silence, hearing her 
 thus shamelessly enlarge upon her poverty and her 
 ^disgrace." 
 
 r Catherine could not be expected to agree to a sharing 
 ! of power, and the " French-speaking Thomyris," as 
 j Voltaire called her, aimed at nothing less. Thus no 
 understanding was po.ssible between the two former 
 \friends. Those who took the princess's place were 
 merely ante-room confidantes, without political import- 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 373 
 
 ance or desire after it. She herself languished for seven] 
 years in the neighbourhood of the court, woefully disap-| 
 pointing those foreign diplomatists who had counted) 
 upon her favour, not even succeeding in being taken 
 seriously in her threatening airs and pretences of revolt. 
 Her share in the plot of Mirovitch in 1764, and the risk 
 she is supposed to have run of being put to the torture, 
 do not seem to us proved. " Her romantic and super- 
 ficial disposition," wrote Solms in 1763, "is so well 
 known that there is no likelihood of many people enter- 
 ing upon any enterprise in her company." She did not 
 dispute, she " wrangled," as Grimm said of her later on. 
 In 1769 she expressed a desire to travel, received a bag 
 containing four thousand roubles, and these words, 
 written by the Empress in pencil : " For the post-horses," 
 at which she wept with rage, but pocketed the money, 
 and set out. 
 
 She visited Paris, where Diderot saw her and became 
 enthusiastic over her, in his usual way ; London, where 
 she met Paoli, and was disgusted to find him in receipt 
 of a pension from the King of England ; then Italy, 
 where she expressed great admiration for the pictures and 
 statues, which she professed to discover. On her return_ 
 to Russia she took up once more her attitude of unwill- 
 ing victim. In order to be quit of her it occurred to 
 Catherine in 1782 to appoint her directress of the 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences. She flatly refused : 
 " Make me directress of your washer-women," she said 
 to the Empress at a court ball. Returning home, still 
 in her ball-dress, she wrote a long letter, giving the 
 reasons for her refusal, and, in the middle of the night, 
 rushed off and awakened Patiomkin, whom she found 
 in his bed (the recent advent of Lanskoi having afforded 
 him some leisure), in order to ask him to hand on her 
 letter to the Empress. He read the letter, tore it up 
 without a word, and went to sleep again. She returned 
 home and took up her pen again. By seven in the 
 morning she had finished another letter more virulent 
 than the first, obstinately refusing the office which lyas 
 
374 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 to be conferred upon her : she had not yet taken off her 
 ball-dress. At last she went to bed. When she awoke, 
 the imperial ukase calling her to her new duties lay 
 beside her bed. She put on a more tragic air than 
 usual, and presided over the academy. In the follow- 
 ing year, she wanted to preside over two, an idea having 
 occurred to her for a Russian Institute. Catherine let 
 her carry out her plan. " She has no time to worry over 
 things now, for she has a good big morsel in her mouth 
 which keeps her jaws active," she wrote to Grimm. 
 
 The lady-president showed great zeal in the exercise 
 of her double duties, and effected several useful reforms. 
 The art-gallery which she endeavoured to put on a 
 European footing was very curiously composed. Among 
 other objects exposed to the admiration of visitors were 
 two glass jars filled with spirits of wine in which were 
 preserved two heads decapitated by order of Peter I., 
 one of which had belonged to Moens, the son of a 
 Flemish jeweller established at Moscow, brother of that 
 Anna Moens who preceded Catherine I. in the affections 
 of the terrible Emperor. He had become the lover of 
 the Tsarina, and was denounced, it is said, by lagou- 
 jinski to the vengeance of the Tsar. The other was 
 that of Lady Hamilton, who was guilty of having 
 yielded to the Tsar's desires, and became enceinte in 
 consequence. Peter had his own ideas in regard to 
 expiatory justice. He ordered the child to be destroyed 
 and the mother decapitated. The two heads had been 
 in the museum since 1724. Princess Dashkof had 
 them removed. In 1786 she had a new map of Russia 
 made by one of her academies. " This map, announced 
 with such a flourish of trumpets," wrote the Comte de 
 Segur to M. de Vergennes, " has been severely criticized. 
 It is found to be no more exact than the others. Only 
 the northern part and Siberia and the part lying 
 towards America are better given, because they are 
 copied from Cook, who has cut down the imaginary 
 possessions of Russia by two or three degrees." 
 
 We have related elsewhere the disputes of the lady- 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 375 
 
 president and the Empress in literary matters, disputes 
 which ended in 1784 in the suppression of the journal 
 published under the auspices of the former. Ten years 
 later, another quarrel of the same kind suppressed the 
 lady-president's functions altogether. She had given 
 her authorization and aid to the printing of a posthumous 
 tragedy of Kniajnin {Vadim at Novgorod), which was 
 not to the Empress's taste. Catherine had the publica- 
 tion suppressed, and the princess wiped out the affront 
 by sending in her resignation. She quitted St. Peters- 
 burg to take up her abode at Moscow, and the last 
 meeting of the two friends of long ago was far from 
 being a friendly one. Introduced after an hour of 
 waiting, the princess bowed in silence. "Bon voyage, 
 madame," said the Empress. That was all. 
 
 The opinion of contemporaries is for the most part] 
 little sympathetic to this dMass^e of politics, who seems ■ 
 to lead the way to the femmes incomprises of the follow- 1 
 ing century. Castera even accuses her of having trafficked ! 
 in Italy with an influence she did not possess, drawing^ 
 upon artistes whom she promised to recommend to the 
 opulent Semiramis of the North. Thiebault attributes a 
 droll motive to the hasty fashion in which she left Paris. 
 Finding herself surrounded in a public promenade by a 
 group of curious persons, she accosted a knight of the 
 Order of Saint-Louis. 
 
 " Why do you consider me like that 1 " 
 
 "Madame, I look at you, but I do not consider you.'' 
 
 She rushed through the crowd furiously, hastened 
 home, called for horses, and set out without giving 
 herself the time to take her son with her, who had to 
 follow her to England. 
 
 Diderot has nothing to say of this adventure, and 
 the portrait that he paints of the princess, very un- 
 attractive from the physical point of view, is, from the 
 moral point of view, coloured with all kinds of charms, 
 such as only lovers know how to lend to their models. 
 She has audacity, and she " feels things proudly." He 
 finds in her a profound sentiment of "honesty and 
 
376 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 dignity," a profound knowledge of the men and affairs 
 of her nation, a decided aversion to despotism, pene- 
 tration, sang-froid, and judgment, modesty even, "to 
 the point of not allowing one to admire her," a trait 
 which, as applied by the amiable painter, is common to 
 the princess and to Catherine, and seems in both cases 
 about equally near the truth. Is he really in love, this 
 eternal enthusiast ? He is positively jealous of his 
 princess. He comes to see her every day, "at night- 
 fall," when she returns from her visits all over Paris, to 
 talk with her " of what is not to be seen : laws, customs, 
 administration, finances, politics, manners, arts, sciences, 
 letters, nature," and also doubtless to gain a closer 
 -knowledge of " this soul dogged by misfortune." And 
 he will not let any one else share this privilege. Some- 
 times he hinders the noble stranger from accepting an 
 invitation to supper at Madame Necker's, "where she 
 will not be esteemed at her true worth," sometimes he 
 prevents her from meeting Rulhi^re. He is even chary 
 of good Madame Geoffrin ! The princess insists a little 
 in regard to Rulhiere, who has written a book which 
 interests her somewhat closely. But he points out to 
 her that "she will admit various things, without con- 
 tradicting them, and that he will not fail to take advan- 
 tage of her testimony." She once more resigns herself, 
 and kisses her mentor, which seems greatly to delight 
 him, in spite of the " fat lips " and " bad teeth " that he 
 attributes to his friend. 
 
 r Miss Wilmot, the future depositary of the memoirs 
 \ of the princess, is not likely to be more impartial. The 
 silhouette, however, which she draws with her pen in 
 writing to her parents from the country near Moscow, 
 whither she has followed her friend, is quite that of the 
 bustling, troublesome, and difficult person, whom other 
 witnesses have shown us at St. Petersburg, and not the 
 one whom Diderot fancied he saw at Paris. The model 
 has aged (the princess is now over sixty), but without 
 undergoing any very great transformation : " Whatever 
 she does, she is different from any one else ; not only 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 377 
 
 have I never seen, but I have never even heard of such 
 a being. She shows the masons how^ to build houses, 
 helps to make shirts, to milk the cows, plays, writes for 
 the press, knows the Church services from A to Z, and 
 corrects the Pope if he does not say the prayer as he 
 ought. She knows by heart all the plays that they act, 
 and corrects the actors if they make a mistake. She is 
 physician, apothecary, surgeon, farrier, carpenter, judge, 
 monk . . . She corresponds with her brother, who 
 occupies one of the highest places in the empire, with 
 men of learning and of letters, and also with dirty Jews, 
 out of whom she hopes to make something. She 
 manages to write at the same time to her son, to 
 various relations, to all her family. Her conversation, 
 attractive by its simplicity, falls sometimes into an 
 infantile naivete. She unconsciously speaks French, 
 Italian, and Russian all jumbled together. She gets to 
 a ball two hours before the candles are lit, and insists 
 on her friends accompanying her." 
 
 This is more like the princess in ski or in of whom 
 we see to-day, carrying her stormy eccentricity across 
 Europe, "the first appearance of the Russian woman 
 in history," according to Herzen, at all events of the 
 Russian woman escaped from the restraints of a home, 
 and rushing about over Europe, in whom the modern 
 nervosity of the feminine temperament seems to meet 
 with its most complete representative. It would be sad 
 for Russia if it had only this type of wife, mother, or 
 even of blue-stocking ; all the more so as the real 
 feeling of the Russian mind in regard to this " historic 
 apparition " is, if possible, less favourable even than that 
 of other nations. The brother of the princess, A. R. 
 Vorontsof, accuses her of having behaved very badly to 
 her sister, the unhappy favourite of Peter III., taking 
 advantage of her disgrace, at the time of the victorious 
 coup d'Etat of Catherine, to appropriate her belongings. 
 All her life she is on somewhat bad terms with her 
 relations. We can excuse her so far as her father is 
 concerned, for he was a gross, savage, and sordid 
 
378 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 personage, notorious for his greed, and his scorn of all 
 kinds of culture : his singular hatred of electricity has 
 passed into a legend. Her son, too, is but a clown and 
 a drunkard, but he is also the product of an education 
 whose responsibility is entirely hers. When he is 
 thirteen, she announces to Robertson that she has 
 already made him one of the most learned men in 
 Europe, and she sends a long list of the various kinds 
 of knowledge which she has instilled into him. Later 
 on, in the same town and almost under the same 
 roof with him, she refuses to go to his death-bed. She 
 is also on the worst of terms with her daughter, who, 
 always in debt and difficulties, prefers poverty to the 
 task of living with her mother. She disputes with all 
 the world. Her disagreements with her neighbour, 
 Leon Naryshkin, which lead, in 1788, to a ridiculous trial 
 a propos of pigs, has become celebrated. Catherine 
 turned it into a little comedy, Za mouhoi s'abouhom 
 (A Hammer to Kill a Moth), and Naryshkin pretended 
 to find in her pimpled cheeks the blood of the pigs she 
 had slaughtered. The disinterestedness to which she 
 lays claim in her memoirs is anything but founded on 
 fact. She takes Catherine's gifts, it is true, with disdain, 
 but she frequently asks for more. She affects also a 
 great contempt for the favourites, but she finds means 
 to come to terms with one of them in regard to an 
 estate which the Empress has given her, on which she 
 does not find the stated tale of heads. She has liberal 
 ideas, but she grinds down her peasants, and flogs them 
 with implacable severity. In order to obtain her per- 
 mission to follow a lover outside her domains, a poor 
 girl has to pay her a sum of a hundred roubles. As 
 she grows older, she acquires the most sordid avarice ; 
 she unharnesses the horses of those who come to see 
 her in her datcha near the capital, and employs them 
 in her garden ; taking advantage of the fashion of 
 parfilage, which exists then in the St. Petersburg salons, 
 she lays hold of all the bits of gold thread that she 
 finds on the tables, and sells them without compunc- 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 379 
 
 tion. Dobrynin mentions in his memoirs a house be- 
 longing to the princess, in which he lived while he 
 was at Moscow, and which was supposed to have been 
 built with the funds of the Academy of Sciences. 
 
 In spite of all this, her memory was lately celebrated 
 in a solemn gathering of the learned assembly. But 
 the memory of Catherine deserves also to be defended 
 against the imputation of injustice and ingratitude, 
 which one might be tempted to make on the strength 
 of the princess's memoirs, where a few eulogies, brought 
 in with a sort of orator's arti6ce, do but little to veil 
 the vindictive animosity of the writer. 
 
 " I cannot accommodate myself to everybody," said 
 Catherine one day to Chrapowicki, speaking of her 
 former friend. " As for her, she could not get on with 
 any one." 
 
 II. 
 
 In 1773, at the very time when Solms was so deeply 
 regretting his inability to get at some feminine influence 
 at the court of Catherine, the sovereign had indeed one 
 female friend and confidante, but one who could be of 
 no use. " The Empress is on familiar terms only with 
 the Countess Bruce, and the Countess never dares talk 
 to her of affairs," declared the diplomatist. There were 
 certain affairs indeed on which the Countess Bruce was 
 in communication with the Tsarina, but which had no 
 interest either for Frederick or his envoy. It is only 
 fair to say that Princess Dashkof would probably not 
 have concerned herself with these affairs. The Countess 
 Bruce concerned herself with them for many years, to 
 the entire satisfaction of her imperial friend, up to the 
 time when it happened to her, as we have related, to 
 forget herself in the exercise of her duty. Catherine 
 was merciful. Korsakof was a handsome man ; the 
 part played by the Countess necessarily brought about, 
 between her and the imperial favourites, a somewhat 
 
38o PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 dangerous intimacy, and the Empress could not be so 
 very greatly surprised if she acquired an after-taste 
 for those merits and charms which she had had the 
 opportunity of appreciating before. The confidante 
 merely followed the favourite into exile, where she was 
 abandoned by him in her turn. Catherine always kept 
 an indulgent recollection of her. "It is impossible not 
 to regret her when one has known her so well," she 
 wrote to Grimm in 1785, on hearing the news of her 
 death. The confidential attributes of the Countess, in 
 regard to which we find it a little difficult to be quite 
 explicit, were at one time the object of very numerous 
 and very definite commentaries. Byron has sung them 
 in a celebrated stanza, describing the first appearance 
 of Don Juan at the court of Catherine, where the 
 Countess Bruce was then replaced by Mademoiselle 
 Protassof: 
 
 " An order from her Majesty consign'd 
 Our young lieutenant to the genial care 
 
 Of those in office : all the world look'd kind 
 (As it will look sometimes with the first stare, 
 
 Which youth would not act ill to keep in mind), 
 As also did Miss Protassof then there, 
 
 Named, from her mystic office, 'I'Eprouveuse,' 
 
 A term inexplicable to the Muse." 
 
 The Countess Bruce is a sister of the great Ru- 
 miantsof ; her husband does not live with her, for which 
 he may be excused, but this does not hinder him from 
 profiting by her position in order to raise himself, 
 without other merit, to a high situation. The son of a 
 Scotchman who came to Russia during the protectorate 
 of Cromwell, he becomes senator, general-in-chief, lieu- 
 tenant-colonel of the Siemonovski Guards, and finally 
 governor-general of Novgorod and of Twer, in the place 
 of Sieversy' 
 
 After me catastrophe of 1779, we are assured by 
 Harris that Catherine shifts her confidence to one of the 
 Engelhardt ladies, though it is impossible to imagine, 
 without further proof, that she took up the " mystic " 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 381 
 
 and inexplicable heritage of the Countess, to which her 
 character, so far as we know of it, seems utterly alien. 
 This niece of Patiomkin has also passed for a daughter 
 of the sovereign and of the favourite. This has been 
 brought forward as an explanation of her privileged posi- 
 tion in the imperial retinue ; she was lodged at the palace, 
 treated with the utmost affection, and provided with a 
 train worthy of a princess of the blood royal. There is 
 nothing to justify this supposition, and the exceptional 
 favour which she enjoyed can be explained on another 
 supposition. In 1781 she becomes, by her marriage 
 with Count Branigki, the wife of the last Grand General 
 of Poland, and as such this confidante (who for several 
 generations set the example of all the virtues, revered 
 by her children and grandchildren, adored as a good 
 fairy by her peasants in the Ukraine) has, for her im- 
 perial friend, a particular merit : she becomes, at the 
 time of the final partition of the Republic, an expressive 
 personification of the work of conquest and assimilation 
 on the banks of the Vistula. In 1790, Catherine even 
 gives her a certain political position : a letter addressed 
 to her by the Empress, which is reproduced in the 
 Gazette de Hambourg, and much circulated in Poland, 
 is intended to recall the Poles to reason, carried away 
 just now by a burst of heroic resistance to the foreign 
 invasion, and to counsel them " not to imitate the 
 nightingale, who, singing with eyes shut, let itself be 
 swallowed by a toad," a comparison which one would 
 think more ingenious than flattering to the person who 
 employs it. 
 
 As for Mademoiselle Protassof, who, from 1781, 
 figures on the list of confidantes ordinary and extra- 
 ordinary, there is no reserve to be made ; she enters 
 directly upon the heritage of Countess Bruce, and her 
 position is universally recognized. A near cousin of the 
 Orlofs, the daughter of a " show " senator, she adds to 
 her other duties that of spy, exercised by means of 
 Mademoiselle Nelidof, the ungrateful and treacherous 
 favourite of Paul. Born in 1744, she survives Catherine 
 
382 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 many years. She is present at the Congress of Vienna, 
 covered with diamonds like a reliquary, and claiming 
 precedence over every one ; doubtless on the strength 
 of having gone before Catherine under other circum- 
 stances. 
 
 As for Anna Naryshkin (born Princess Trubetzkol), 
 at vifhose house, as early as 1755, the rendezvous of the 
 Grand-Duchess with Poniatowski used to take place, her 
 part in Catherine's intimacy and in the history of 
 favouritism seems to have been that of a wary and 
 discreet courtier, not forgetful of her perquisites. Zubof, 
 immediately after his rise to the post of favourite, pre- 
 sents her with a valuable watch, and that, doubtless, is 
 not all she gains by it. For a long time Catherine could 
 not be without her. In the rare cases when she was 
 absent from the palace, where she always had her suite 
 of rooms, affectionate and pressing messages were soon 
 sent, begging her to come back as soon as possible : "As 
 I know that you are a most charitable lady, that you visit 
 the sick and the dead, at the expense of your health, I 
 hope that you will extend your good works to me. I have 
 fallen sick, and am ready to receive extreme unction ; 
 were it only for the sake of seeing you, I would have it 
 given to me. Deign, then, to honour me with your visit, 
 if blood-letting and purges, washings and sudorifics, do 
 not confine you to the house. Come at once, despite 
 the fog and the bad weather; come, if only to make 
 Guyon (the court physician) laugh, for he witnesses the 
 testament that I send you. And do not forget to bring 
 something to make me laugh, for when one is taking 
 purges, one is always melancholy." 
 
 Anna Naryshkin died in 1820 in the house of her 
 cousin, Rumiantsof, Catherine's envoy to the refugees 
 at Coblenz, whom the childless widow had gone to keep 
 company. 
 
 I am sorry to associate with these dark and dubious 
 figures that of a woman who won the confidence of the 
 Empress on entirely different grounds, a confidence 
 which became veneration on the part of Catherine's 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 383 
 
 successors. Madame de Lieven ought not to be included 
 in this chapter ; but it would be difficult to find a place 
 for her elsewhere. She has a place apart in the retinue 
 of Catherine, a unique place. 
 
 A certain de Lieven was the most faithful follower of 
 Charles XII. Political vicissitudes, which had made his 
 native country a Russian province, had impoverished 
 the family, formerly one of the wealthiest in Livonia. 
 Charlotte de Lieven [nh de Posse) was the wife of a 
 major-general in the service of Russia, and was living 
 quietly in a suburb of Riga, bringing up her four children 
 on the scanty resources of a small income, when she 
 was recommended to Catherine by Sievers for the 
 education of Paul's daughters. She was terrified at the 
 idea of leaving her retreat, and of entering upon all the 
 perils of a court which, alike in all she knew and all she 
 did not know of it, was equally formidable in her eyes. 
 But Brown, the governor of the district, received orders 
 which he carried out as Catherine's orders were generally 
 carried out : put into a carriage, almost by force, Madame 
 de Lieven was hurried off to St. Petersburg, taken 
 straight to the palace, and brought before one of Her 
 Majesty's secretaries, who had orders to examine her. 
 He questioned her, and, half dead with fatigue and 
 anxiety, she could but tell her trouble, the grief it had 
 been to her to leave her children, and the longing she 
 had to go back to them again. She was pouring out 
 her story, when a hard and curt feminine voice, softened 
 by a kindly inflexion, interrupted her : 
 
 "You are the woman I want ! Come with me." 
 The Empress had drawn aside a curtain without her 
 perceiving it, and stood before her. 
 
 This was in 1783. Since then, Madame de Lieven 
 lived for nearly half a century at the court which had 
 so greatly alarmed her. She looked after the education 
 of the Grand-Duchesses, and even of the Grand-Dukes, 
 Catherine's grandsons, •' with a sometimes brutal frank- 
 ness," says Guizot, who was a friend of her daughter-in- 
 law, the famous Princesse de Lieven, but with the most 
 
384 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 accomplished skill. Paul, who had never found a mother 
 in Catherine, centred all the respect and a little of the 
 affection for which he could find no other outlet, upon 
 the governess of his children. Alexander and Nicholas 
 looked upon her as their grandmother. She died in 
 1828, after having been raised to the rank of princess 
 and highness in 1826, at the coronation of the second of 
 her pupils. 
 
 III. 
 
 According to a tradition, very generally accepted in 
 Russia, the place which belongs to Ivan Ivanovitch 
 Betzki is not merely that of the principal confidant of 
 Catherine, but something much higher. Gretch speaks 
 of the striking resemblance between the Empress and 
 this supposed father, and the portrait of a daughter of 
 Ivan Ivanovitch in the possession of M. M. O. Ribas, at 
 Odessa, certainly carries out this statement. I cannot 
 say if the Empress really was accustomed, as it has 
 been stated, to kiss the hand of this enigmatic person- 
 age ; but it is certain that she showed him an affection 
 and deference which might easily be taken for filial 
 piety ; that she frequently went to see him, even before 
 his age had put it out of his power to respond to 
 her summons, and that she would stay and dine with 
 him without ceremony, which she did with no one 
 else. 
 
 The natural son of Prince Ivan Trubetzkol and a 
 Swede, the Countess Wrede, Betzki was twenty-six 
 years of age when, in 1728, he became an attache ol the 
 Legation at Paris, where he met the Princess of Anhalt- 
 Zerbst. He returned to the capital of the intellectual 
 world in 1755, and made other acquaintances, which 
 had an equally important influence on his ultimate 
 career. Welcomed by the encyclopaedists, an in- 
 timate of Madame Geoffrin's salon, he knew Diderot, 
 who initiated him into matters of art, and Rousseau, 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 385 
 
 whose educational views he adopted. He thus became, 
 on his return to Russia, a sort of oracle in regard to all 
 questions concerned with that domain of superior culture 
 with which he had found himself in contact. A medal, 
 which was struck later on, represents him on one of its 
 sides, with his somewhat heavy profile, whilst on the 
 other there is a figure of Gratitude, with its ordinary- 
 attributes, clasping a pyramid on which a medallion 
 bearing his cipher is attached by four children repre- 
 senting the four establishments which he founded or 
 re-organized : the Foundling College, the National 
 Gallery, the Corps des Cadets, and the Convent of 
 Smolna. All these establishments were under his con- 
 trol. He professed also to take under his control the 
 intellectual and artistic movement connected with them. 
 In this he showed, as Falconet's misadventures prove, 
 more authoritativeness than tact or intelligence. He 
 liked people of talent to be docile. He professed 
 also to love France, admitting that the man whom he 
 called "the friend or rather the gossip of Catherine" was 
 " not a bad sort of man," " enjoying absolute power in 
 the little matters in which he is concerned." Sabatier 
 adds : " He had a weakness for us, which he sacrificed / 
 to his position." 
 
 His natural daughter, who bore so strong a resemblance 
 to Catherine, was that Anastasia Sokolof whom Diderot 
 was so delighted to meet in Catherine's ante-room. 
 Always gay and sparkling, she amused Catherine by 
 her stories of her adventures in Paris, where she had 
 accompanied Princess Galitzin, and by the letters 
 (which are described as "dull and moral," by the Mar- 
 quise de Beausset in one of his dispatches to the Due 
 de Praslin) which she received from Madernoiselle Clairon, 
 from whom she had taken lessons in declamation. She 
 married the adventurer Ribas, whom Catherine raised 
 to the rank of admiral, and from a mere lady-in-waiting 
 became one of the most trusted friends and most valued 
 confidantes of the sovereign. 
 
 Betzki died in I79S- The little obituary that Cather- 
 
 c c 
 
386 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 ine made of him in her correspondence with Grimm 
 does not show the trace of any emotion, however veiled, 
 which corresponds in any way with the hypothesis of 
 parentage to which we have alluded : " This 3 ist August, 
 after dinner, M. Betzki has just died, about two hours 
 since, at the age of ninety-three. It is nearly seven 
 years since he sunk into a state of senility, almost 
 of idiotcy. For the last ten years he has been blind. 
 When any one came to see him he said, ' If the 
 Empress asks you what I am doing, tell her that I 
 am working with my secretaries.' He hid himself 
 away- from me on account of his loss of sight, for fear 
 that I should deprive him of his offices. As a matter 
 of fact, they had all been filled up, but without his 
 knowledge." 
 
 Betzki is in some sort an intermediary between the 
 new Russia, the Russia of Peter I. and Catherine II., 
 and the Western world. From this point of view, he 
 forms the complement to Grimm, as from another point 
 of view Grimm's place is taken by Chrapowigki. He is 
 the standing " fag," the factotum always at hand, 
 similarly employed for local commissions, tormented 
 like the other, and treated with the same mixture of 
 kindness and of somewhat contemptuous familiarity. 
 She jokes him about his corpulence, and advises him to 
 use a sofa rather than a chair as a seat, " for if he were 
 to fall, he could never get up again " ; she asks him if 
 his legs are not tired after he has been running about 
 on her errands ; if he has not quarrelled with his lady- 
 love, when he looks sad ; she apologizes to him for an 
 outburst of impatience ; hits him in the ribs with a roll 
 of paper, and even asks him to stay to dinner, "since he 
 is there." He takes it all with the same placidity, and 
 notes everything in his journal, which reads as if it had 
 been made by a phonograph, and which is an invaluable 
 document for the private history of Catherine. 
 
 Of Polish origin, the son of one of the gentlemen- 
 guards of the Empress Elizabeth, grandson on his 
 mother's side of a confidant of Peter I., whose wife, 
 
CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS 387 
 
 Helen Serdiakof, was supposed to be the daughter of 
 the great Tsar, he has every opportunity for making 
 his way in the world ; but, after an honourable begin- 
 ning, both in the army and the magistracy, and some 
 attempts in the direction of literature, he slips, like 
 Grimm, into a position of dependence. Fat and scant 
 of breath as he is, he exhibits in his official duties the 
 agility of a deer and the flexibility of an earth-worm. 
 The exact opposite of the Princess Dashkof, he is on 
 good terms with every one ; with Patiomkin and with 
 the Orlofs, with Bezborodko and Viaziemski. He gets 
 on marvellously well with the favourite of to-day, and 
 knows beforehand who will be the favourite of to- 
 morrow. It is thus that he makes a friend of Mamonof 
 before Catherine has ever noticed the red coat. Dis- 
 solute, and far from squeamish in his tastes, he frequents 
 all the low resorts of the capital, and frequently runs 
 the risk of serious encounters. One morning some one 
 who has come to ask a favour is taken aback at seeing 
 on his face the marks of the blows which he had given 
 him in a tavern-quarrel over-night, without knowing who 
 he was. Chrapowigki, however, receives his boisterous 
 adversary in a perfectly friendly way. He is a good 
 honest fellow, and Catherine considers him to be incor- 
 ruptible, so as to wager her hand that he does not 
 take any vziatki, or tips, which is perhaps going too 
 far. In any case, he is discreet, indefatigable, and 
 punctual. He only gets drunk on those days when he 
 is sure of not being required by Her Majesty, and, in 
 case of surprise, he has recourse, with equal success, to 
 the energetic measures found so efficacious by Bezbo- 
 rodko. He has no opinions of his own in regard to 
 anybody or anything. His journal does not even tell 
 us what he thinks of Catherine. Perhaps he has no 
 opinion even of her. He is content to register the 
 slightest words and actions, and he knows, too, how to 
 make her speak. Like Grimm, he " winds the skein " of 
 her thought. And, like him, he has the gift of inex- 
 haustible and cunning flattery, unwearied and unweary- 
 
388 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 ing. But the journal which he keeps in secret becomes 
 the rock on which his fortune finally breaks. Catherine 
 has no desire of going down to posterity by so con- 
 fidential a medium, and, betrayed no doubt by some- 
 thing which he says during one of his drunken fits, he 
 denies the fact with the utmost effrontery, but in vain ; 
 he is quietly set aside, in some honorary position as 
 senator. He dies in 1801, a few months after the death 
 of Paul I. 
 
 His predecessor had been a native of Little Russia, 
 Kozitski, the son of the pope of Kief, where he had 
 been brought up in the ecclesiastical college ; a learned 
 Greek and Latin scholar, and a distinguished man of 
 letters. When Patiomkin comes into power, he has a 
 momentary fit of aberration : believing himself lost on 
 account of his connection with the Orlofs, he cuts his 
 throat. He recovers, however, and a rich marriage with 
 one of the Miasnikofs, the daughter of a ferryman who 
 had made his fortune in the mines of the Oural, con- 
 soles him for his disgrace. One of his daughters marries 
 Prince Bielossielski, whose picture-gallery, known as 
 "the cupboard," so greatly amused Madame Vigee- 
 Lebrun. Another became the Countess of Laval ; her 
 salon at St. Petersburg was much frequented by the 
 French refugees. 
 
 The Countess Brani^ki has for neighbour, in the 
 palace, Count Nicholas Saltykof, who is equally pro- 
 vided for at the Empress's expense, on the footing of 
 an Imperial Highness : two hundred thousand roubles 
 a year! Officially he is merely the guardian of the 
 Grand-Dukes Alexander and Constantine, but he is 
 really a confidential agent of Catherine in all her 
 affairs with Paul, whose downfall he endeavours to 
 bring about. In spite of all this, Paul himself later on 
 makes him Field-marshal and Grand Master of the 
 Order of Malta. 
 
 Ribeaupierre, whom we have seen in connection with 
 Mamonof, is a sort of confidant of the favourite. He is 
 a Swiss, belonging to a family said to be of Alsatian 
 
CONFlbENTiAL AGENTS 3^9 
 
 origin, settled in Switzerland since the time of the 
 Revocation of Nantes. Coming to St. Petersburg in 
 1782 with a commission from Grimm, some cameos 
 bought for Lanskoit, he is received by the Empress as 
 subordinate to Betzki in her reading of the French 
 classics. Of good appearance, and blithe humour, he 
 has the further advantage of lending himself to an easy 
 pun, " Ris, beau Pierre," and Catherine, as we know, is 
 far from disliking this kind of fun. He has also a son, 
 whom the Empress takes a fancy to, and whom she 
 keeps by her in the palace. When the second Turkish 
 war breaks out, he follows the example of those who 
 are aiming at a brilliant career under the great Empress, 
 and we find him brigadier under the walls of Ismail. 
 A Turkish ball cuts short his ambitious dreams. But, 
 with a son brought up almost on the knees of Catherine, 
 he leaves a family of which Russia becomes the adopted 
 country. The prot/g^ of the sovereign left some memoirs, 
 which do credit to his teacher. 
 
 We should not forget the Baron von Asseburg, also 
 the writer of memoirs to which we have frequently 
 turned : his specialty is in marriages ; he is a sort of 
 commercial traveller in this species, always on the 
 search through the little German courts, receiving four 
 thousand roubles a year for his trouble and travelling 
 expenses, and carrying on a correspondence in crypto- 
 gram, in which the proposed marriages are alluded to 
 as "works for publication," and the Empress as "the 
 publisher." 
 
 We know hardly anything of the part played by 
 Rogerson, Catherine's English physician, apart from his 
 professional duties, though there is little doubt that it 
 was a considerable one. In 1786 the Comte de S^gur, 
 announcing the doctor's departure for England for six 
 months, adds : " As he dabbles in politics as much as in 
 medicine, and it is through his hands that the bribes 
 are supposed to pass, I cannot but be very pleased at 
 his absence." 
 
 After these, but still with a considerable share in the 
 
390 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 sovereign's confidence, come the staff of dependents : 
 valets de chambre, tutors of natural children, and feninies 
 de chambre, consulted at the critical moments which 
 occur in the history of favouritism. Their functions are 
 often vague and variable enough : the lackey Shkurin 
 becom.es chamberlain ; Zotof, who succeeds him, uses a 
 liberty of speech with the sovereign which is rather 
 those of a surly friend than a valet ; the faithful Piere- 
 kussihina is a femwie de chambre quite unique of her 
 kind, and is treated almost like an elder sister. 
 Catherine, like Patiomkin, has her court and her lower 
 court, the one as well-stocked and as bustling as the 
 other, and the two so frequently overlapping as to 
 become indistinguishable. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COURT OF CATHERINE. 
 
 "Louis XIV. would have been jealous of his sister 
 Catherine, or he would have married her, so as to have 
 at all events a fine levee," wrote the Prince de Ligne in 
 1787. The courtiers and correspondents of Catherine 
 were good, very good, at hyperbole. But this time 
 the admiring enthusiasm of the amiable cosmopolitan 
 is in perfect harmony with the universal opinion of the 
 contemporary world, all uniting in praise of the luxury, 
 the magnificence, the incomparable splendour, of the 
 new Versailles on the misty shores of the Neva. Is this 
 to admit that his way of appreciating, by comparison, 
 the merits of a court to which he at one time con- 
 tributed some of his charm, can be accepted at all 
 points ? Certainly not. The voice of the people may 
 sometimes be the voice of God ; it is not always that of 
 the historian. In the present case we could not accept 
 its echo without certain serious reservations. 
 
 The Roi-Soleil, in his Versailles, entered upon the 
 heritage of Francis I. and Catherine de Medicis ; it was 
 quite another thing to enter upon the heritage of Peter 
 the Great at Tsarskoie-Sielo. When he came to take 
 up his new abode, Louis XIV. came from Saint-Germain 
 and Fontainebleau, without counting the Louvre. The 
 Saint-Germain, the Fontainebleau, the Louvre of Cathe- 
 rine, was that little wooden house, like a showman's 
 booth, which people still flock to see at St. Petersburg, 
 
 391 
 
392 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 in which the great Tsar had lived. The contrast was 
 enormous. It is enough for the glory of the modern 
 Semiramis to have in some measure filled up the gap. 
 My purpose in the following pages is to indicate just 
 what that measure was, and it is from this point of 
 view that the rapid sketch to which I must confine 
 myself finds its natural connection with the general 
 purport of this study, by offering a certain serious 
 historical interest. With its lights and shadows, its 
 varnish of Western culture and its inner depths of 
 Asiatic barbarism, its requirements and its vulgarities, 
 the real aspect of the court of Catherine gives a partial, 
 but still a faithful, and an amusing, picture of the great 
 work of transformation from which the Russia of to-day 
 has sprung. 
 
 Before Peter I., the Muscovite sovereigns have their 
 courtiers, but, properly speaking, no court. The " assem- 
 blies " at the imperial palace are also the work of the 
 great Tsar. But in order to induce the Muscovite lords 
 to attend them, he had to threaten corporal punishment. 
 Even under Elizabeth the imperial theatre is filled on 
 gala days by ukase. To Catherine II. belongs the 
 , honour of having inaugurated a new regime of absolute 
 liberty in this respect, under which the Count de Segur 
 can escape from the charms of the imperial lotto, and 
 even excuse himself in some caustic lines, over which 
 the sovereign is the first to laugh. ^ The court of Eliza- 
 beth had greatly disappointed d'Eon, what was really 
 fine in the Empress's retinue seeming to him to be 
 confined to ten persons at the outside ; " the rest is 
 anyhow, and, so long as the wardrobe is garnished with 
 some kind of stuff, with some sort of gold or silver 
 trimming, no one minds if the coat is of grey cloth and 
 the trimmings of green velvet . . . The receptions are 
 fine, but monotonous. There is a certain ceremony, but 
 hardly any society." Society, in fact, had scarcely had 
 time to disengage itself from the confusion of ranks, or 
 their levelling under the still brutal weight of an Eastern 
 despotism. The gentlemen of the court were scarcely 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE f 393x 
 
 distinguishable from the servants who waited upon 
 them. On leaving service these people, lackeys, heiducs, 
 cooks, pastry-cooks, took rank in the military hierarchy 
 of the empire, becoming ensigns or under-lieutenants, 
 and ended their days as burgomaster in some provincial 
 town. In spite of this, Catherine was forced to issue 
 orders forbidding the persons of her retinue to strike or 
 beat the servants, as they had been accustomed to do. 
 
 The receptions and fetes with which the widow of 
 Peter III. inaugurates her reign display from the very 
 first a note of superior elegance, despite their definitely 
 Oriental colour. The pomp displayed on the occasion 
 of the coronation is relatively modest, and the expense 
 trifling, compared with what takes place at Rheims, for 
 instance, under similar circumstances. Prince Tru- 
 bstzkoi is entrusted with the organization of the cere- 
 mony, and receives fifty thousand roubles (two hundred 
 and fifty thousand francs) for general expenses, a pound 
 of gold and ten pounds of silver for the crown, four 
 ermine skins for the imperial mantle. The amount 
 does not prove sufficient, it is true, as usually happens 
 under all latitudes. For eight days there is search for 
 the golden ball which is supposed to be contained in 
 the imperial treasure : it has disappeared, and a fresh 
 expense is incurred. The disorder at the court is so 
 great that at the moment of Her Majesty's departure for 
 Moscow, where the coronation is to take place, her 
 servants are on the point of going on strike : they have 
 not had food for three days ! The sovereign does not take 
 with her a very numerous retinue, twenty-eight persons 
 in all, but they demand for their transport no less than 
 sixty-three equipages, with three hundred and ninety- 
 five horses. The Tsarevitch travels separately, with a 
 train of twenty-seven equipages, drawn by two hundred 
 and fifty-seven horses. These equipages are literally 
 houses on wheels. A hundred and twenty oak barrels, 
 hooped with iron, carry six hundred thousand pieces of 
 silver money for Her Majesty's personal expenses, for 
 giving away to the people, to the poor, etc. 
 
394 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 The ceremony takes place September 23, 1762. 
 Catherine herself places the diadem on her own head, 
 after which she goes to the altar, alone, and administers 
 the sacrament to herself. The following days are 
 taken up with the interminable series of deputations. 
 Kissing the hand is not enough for the expression of 
 their homage, they still bow to the ground, a practice 
 which Catherine later on prides herself on having 
 suppressed. One after another goes by, grovelling in 
 turn in the dust before the throne : the representatives of 
 the Russian nobility, and of the knights of the Baltic 
 provinces, the officers of the Guard, the deputies from 
 the Asiatic nations, the Greeks, the Armenians, the 
 Calmucks, the Cossacks of laik and of the Volga, and, 
 in their midst, the scholars from the seminary of La 
 Troltza, dressed in white dresses, embroidered with 
 gold, and crowned with green leaves. This procession 
 once over, the court fites, balls, masquerades, gala 
 dinners, plays, alternate with popular rejoicings. At 
 the imperial theatre a performance of Zaire in French 
 follows a Russian tragedy. The maids of honour take 
 part in a ballet, and the orchestra is composed of gentle- 
 men of the court. But a cortege representing "the 
 triumph of Minerva " receives a somewhat cold welcome 
 on its way through the streets. No one of that name 
 had ever been heard of And no one knows what she 
 is supposed to triumph over: is it over the matushka 
 who has just assumed the crown for the greater welfare 
 of her people ? Besides, a recent ukase has ordered 
 decent vestments to be worn in the streets, and forbidden 
 the wearing of disguise. Why are these people in 
 extravagant costumes not arrested .■■ A people's theatre, 
 with marionnettes and German conjuring tricks, has still 
 less success. It is supposed to be indebted to the aid 
 of the devil. A Frenchman named Dumoulin had, the 
 year before, sent everybody flying with the exhibition of 
 " a movable head," which had caused the deepest terror. 
 
 Catherine herself comes to be somewhat alarmed at 
 the luxurious fashions which these novel travesties bring 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 395 
 
 about. A ukase is issued, forbidding the importation 
 of lace and stuffs of silk and silver. The Baron de 
 Breteuil takes it very coolly in his dispatch of January 
 9, 1763 : " People may now wear neither gold nor silver 
 . . . but all the same they will have to turn to our 
 fashions and our manufactures for things much more 
 simple and not less costly." 
 
 I^^s. fetes continue during the whole time of Catherine's 
 residence at Moscow, from September 1762 to June 
 1763. Meanwhile, the residences in and near St. 
 Petersburg are put on a new footing of elegance and 
 comfort. The wooden palace of Elizabeth is trans- 
 ported to Krasnoie-Sielo, and the new palace built in 
 brick by Catherine's predecessor is luxuriously fitted 
 up. In 1765, when Casanova visits the garden con- 
 nected with the imperial residence, he still sees some 
 things which provoke his surprise and sarcasm : statues 
 blocked out by soldiers of the Guard, hump-backed 
 Apollos, sickly Venuses, a Sappho with the features of 
 an elderly gentleman with a beard, and Philemon and 
 Baucis represented by two young people exchanging 
 innocent kisses. That is a legacy of Elizabeth. But, 
 less than twenty years later, Longpre, the inspector 
 of police, is greatly overcome by the magnificence of 
 TsarskoJe. There is, however, more show than taste 
 in the somewhat monotonous profusion of gilding and 
 other decorations which he enumerates with enthusiasm : 
 " It is impossible to see anything more recherche and 
 more sumptuous than the dressing-room, bed-room, 
 work-room, and boudoir of Her Majesty. The dressing- 
 room is all mirrors, with superb gilt frames. The bed- 
 room is surrounded with little colonnades from top to 
 bottom, covered with solid silver, half natural colour, 
 and half lilac. Behind the colonnades there are mirrors, 
 and the ceilings are painted. The work-room is sur- 
 rounded in the same manner with little colonnades 
 covered with solid silver, half gold-colour and half blue. 
 Behind these colonnades there are mirrors, and the ceil- 
 ing is painted. The boudoir is similarly surrounded 
 
396 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 with little colonnades also covered with solid silver, half 
 natural colour and half pink. Behind these colonnades 
 and on the ceiling it is half mirrors and half pink. 
 These last three rooms are superbly decorated with 
 bronzes and gilt wreaths on all the colonnades." Harris 
 observes, for his part, that among the portraits of 
 crowned heads, ornamenting the walls of a country- 
 house which the Empress modestly and familiarly calls 
 her frog-pond (doubtless on account of the marshy land 
 around, and the Finnish name, kireriko, by which the 
 chateau of Tchesme is known), there is not a single 
 picture in which there is design, colour, or composition, 
 with the single exception of a picture of West, repre- 
 senting the two English princes. But Wedgwood 
 supplied the " Frog-pond " with a wonderful service, in 
 which a charming batrachian in green is seen surmount- 
 ing some delightful English country-houses. But the 
 " Samson," an artificial water at Peterhof, is reported 
 to be the finest in Europe after that of Cassel, on the 
 authority, at all events, of the Abb^ de Lubersac, who 
 assigns only the fourth place to that of Saint-Cloud, 
 after that of M. Bergaret, receiver-general of finances 
 at Nointel. 
 
 Everywhere there is the same mixture of wealth and 
 poverty, except perhaps at the Hermitage, where 
 Catherine does her utmost to concentrate the shining 
 rays of her sphere, which is a very different one after all, 
 as we have seen, and as she doubtless saw herself, from 
 that of the Roi-Soleil. Count Hordt gives in his 
 memoirs an attractive account of this annex of the big 
 palace, built after the designs of Rastrelli in the rococo 
 style of the time : " It comprises a whole wing of the 
 imperial palace, and consists in a picture gallery, two 
 great rooms where play goes on, and another with two 
 tables for little dinners, and, by the side of these rooms, 
 there is a covered winter garden, well lighted. You can 
 walk about there among the trees and a prodigious 
 quantity of flower-pots. You see and hear birds of all 
 kinds singing, principally canaries. It is warmed by 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 397 
 
 underground furnaces, and, despite the rigour of the 
 climate, it always preserved the most even temperature. 
 And, agreeable as all this is in itself, it is still more so 
 on account of the liberty that reigns there. There is no 
 sort of stiffness, the Empress has banished all etiquette. 
 You walk about, you play cards, you sing, every one 
 according to his fancy." The picture gallery abounds 
 in masterpieces of the first order ; the main part of it 
 coming from three considerable collections : that of the 
 Baron de Thiers, lieutenant-general under Louis XV., 
 that of Count Henri de Briihl, minister of King Augus- 
 tus of Saxony, and the marvellous series of pictures 
 collected at Houghton Hall by Robert Walpole. 
 Among the English acquisitions there are six Salvator 
 Rosas, among them the Prodigal Son, his finest picture, 
 the Conception and the Nativity of Murillo, the superb 
 compositions of Rubens for the solemn entry of the 
 child-cardinal at Antwerp, the Virgin with Partridges 
 of Van Dyck, for which Walpole had given ;£'i400, and 
 the Dispute of the Fathers of tlie Church by Guido 
 Reni, which Innocent XHI. would not at first allow to 
 be removed out of his dominions. The Thiers collec- 
 tion contains two famous pictures of Raphael, the Holy 
 Family, with the beardless Joseph, and the St. George 
 on Horseback. In 1772, at the sale of the Due de 
 Choiseul-Stainville, Catherine acquires the Benedicite 
 of Rembrandt, the Doctor of Gerard Dow (which costs 
 19,153 livres), the Stag Hunt of Wouverman (which 
 costs 20,700 livres), and two Village Fetes of Poussin, 
 which belonged to the famous Comtesse Jeanne de 
 Verdrac, and which had cost her 37,000 livres. Then 
 there are the collections of Randon de Boisse, of the 
 Prince de Conti, of Dezallier d'ArgenviUe, of Gostkowski, 
 of Tronchin, which she purchases in whole or in part ; 
 and the pictures painted to order by Raphael Mengs, 
 Angelica Kauffmann, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 
 1784 a theatre is added to the charms of the Hermitage. 
 " Laid out in a single vast semi-circular amphitheatre, 
 rising in tiers from the orchestra to the vestibule," it 
 
398 PRIVATE LIFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 unites, according to a competent authority of the time, 
 Armand Domergue, the stage-manager of the imperial 
 theatre at Moscow, "the utmost possible combination 
 of pomp and splendour." And the best actors and 
 actresses of the day, Aufresne, Floridor, Delpit, Bour- 
 dais, Madame Lesage, Mademoiselle Huss, act the 
 masterpieces of Moliere and Regnard ; the divine 
 Palsiello conducts the orchestra, for which he composes 
 some of his best operas, La Serva Padrona, II Matrimo- 
 nio Inaspettato, and the Barbiere di Seviglia, which 
 Rossini does over again forty years later. Cimarosa, 
 who succeeds Palsiello, writes, during his three years' 
 residence, five hundred compositions for the court 
 orchestra and the private orchestras of the principal 
 members of the aristocracy. Sarti follows suit ; and, 
 indifferent as she is to the charms of music, Catherine 
 submits to all the exacting demands of the artistes 
 whom the composers insist on having ; she even endures 
 their caprices and impertinences. La Gabrielli, who 
 has a salary of seven thousand roubles, refuses to sing 
 to Her Majesty in private, because, she declares. Her 
 Majesty understands nothing about it, and when the 
 Empress points out to her that her marshals are not so 
 well paid as she is, she makes her famous reply : " Let 
 her make her marshals sing, then ! " The quarrels of 
 the tenor Marches! with another prima donna, la Todi, 
 assume, under the indulgent eyes of the Tsarina, quite 
 the importance of an affair of state. 
 
 The display becomes more and more lavish. In 1778, 
 at a fete given on the occasion of the birth of Paul's 
 eldest son, the guests play macao at three tables, at each 
 of which the player who puts down a nine is entitled to 
 a diamond, which he takes with a golden spoon out of a 
 box-full placed at the end of the table. The game goes 
 on for an hour and a half, after which, as the boxes are 
 only half emptied, the players take their share of the 
 contents. This time Harris himself is dazzled, Asiatic 
 as all this seems to him, this realization of the fabled 
 splendours of Golconda. The invitations to this^^^ are 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 399 
 
 sent out in the name of M. Francisque Azor, an Asiatic 
 or African proprietor of a diamond mine, a pseudonym 
 under which one easily recognizes the squanderer of 
 precious stones and Cashmere shawls whom we have 
 already seen in Moldavia. This time the diamonds are 
 not worth more than fifty roubles apiece, according to 
 the English diplomatist's valuation ; but he speaks also 
 of a dessert served at supper on plate which he values at 
 two millions sterling. 
 
 The influence of the Prince of Taurida counts for 
 much in the increase of that prodigal pomp which we 
 find even outside the court and the circles in immediate 
 contact with it. Igelstroem, appointed ambassador in 
 Sweden at the end of the Swedish war, and in the very 
 middle of the ruinous Turkish war, receives twenty thou- 
 sand roubles for his salary, four thousand five hundred 
 roubles a month for his maintenance, without including 
 an immense amount of plate ; and he is not content with 
 that. He requires two state coaches, with six horses 
 each, eight household officers, two runners, two chas- 
 seurs, two heiducs, two hussars to follow his coach, four 
 horsemen, a secretary, three under-secretaries, four or 
 six aides-de-camp, four couriers, a host of valets, a house 
 "finer than any in Stockholm," and fifteen thousand 
 roubles' worth of jewellery for his own person. The 
 uniform of the gentlemen-guards who accompany the 
 Empress outside the palace on solemn occasions, and 
 who serve usually inside the palace, is of the utmost 
 splendour : " blue cloth with red facings, covered with 
 a kind of silver cuirass on which the imperial eagle is 
 embossed. Arms and legs are also covered, at intervals, 
 by plates of silver, linked together by chains of the 
 same metal, which makes them look somewhat like the 
 arm-plates and thigh-plates of the old knights." " The 
 likeness," adds the Marquis de Beausset, who gives us 
 these details in a dispatch of June 10, 1766, to the 
 Due de Choiseul, "becomes still more striking in the 
 silver helmet topped with black plumes. The top-boots 
 
40O PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 are also armed at the knee and along the side with 
 blades of silver." 
 
 It should be noted, however, that, according to a docu- 
 ment dated 1767, the annual expenses of the court are 
 not in excess of one million one hundred thousand 
 roubles ; to wit : 
 
 ROUBLES. 
 
 For the Empress's household, the salary of those who 
 belong to it, meals, music, the play, the menus 
 //(ZW/W, lights, hunting, and its equipment ... 900,000 
 
 The stables 100,000 
 
 The wardrobe, jewellery, and presents 100,000 
 
 1,100,000 
 
 These figures were more than doubled, surely, during 
 the latter half of Catherine's reign ; compared with 
 those we see in the accounts of Versailles at the same 
 period, they are surprisingly moderate. Louis XVI.'s 
 stables alone cost as much or more: 7,717,058 livres in 
 1786. From 1744 to 1788, the complete household 
 budget of the King of France, and those of his family, 
 varies from thirty-two to thirty-six millions a year; or 
 seven times as much as that of Catherine the Great. 
 
 Much of this depends upon the great difference in 
 the number of persons whose expenses are reckoned up 
 in these accounts. Catherine is content with but few 
 about her : twelve chamberlains, twelve ladies and 
 gentlemen-in-waiting constitute the main part of it. 
 We are far indeed from the four thousand persons who 
 make up the royal household in France, without count- 
 ing the military part of it, which is twice as much. The 
 household of Catherine being thus limited, the honour 
 of a place in it is all the more sought after. Count 
 Mussin-Pushkin, afterwards field-marshal, is already 
 general-in-chief when, in 1775, he receives the golden 
 key, and he is enchanted with the promotion. All those 
 holding these envied official positions carry out their 
 duties with extreme exactitude and zeal. Freiline Bibi- 
 kof, who is specially authorized to live outside the palace 
 in order to look after her mother, does not fail to appear 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 401 
 
 at the proper time even on the day of the great flood in 
 1777 : she gets to the palace by boat. Catherine treats 
 her maids-of-honour almost as if they were her own 
 daughters. She notices that Freiline Potocka, who has 
 lately come to the court, has no pearls ; and she im- 
 mediately seizes the opportunity of a fancy dress ball 
 to which the girl comes in the disguise of a milkmaid, 
 in order to slip a superb necklace into the pail that she 
 has put down while dancing. " It is 3'ou, Madame . . . 
 it is Your Majesty ..." she stammers, on discovering 
 the present. " No, the milk has curdled." But the 
 pranks and failings of the young troop are severely 
 punished. In 1784 a caricature goes the round of the 
 court, in which Prince Patiomkin is represented lying 
 on a couch, and surrounded by his three nieces, the 
 Countesses Branijki, Jussupof, and Skavronski, very 
 scantily attired, and all apparently disputing posses- 
 sion. 'Ywo freilines. Mademoiselles Buturlin and Elmpt, 
 both eighteen years of age, are accused of being 
 responsible for the drawing ; they are found guilty, and 
 flogged until the blood is drawn, in the presence of 
 their companions, and then sent back to their homes. 
 Their disgrace, however, is not a final one. Mademoi- 
 selle Elmpt, then Madame Turshinof, re-appears at the 
 court a few years after, and contributes to the success 
 of her husband, who is appointed overseer of imperial 
 works. The other, the fair, witty, audacious, and dis- 
 sipated Countess Divof, afterwards so notorious, we have 
 already seen in her salon, so largely frequented by the 
 French refugees. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the surroundings in which the 
 Semiramis of the North awes and amazes all Europe 
 are really quite modest. As in the preceding reigns, 
 extreme luxury is seen side by side with poverty, and 
 profusion alternates with a singular parsimony. In 
 1 79 1, at a masked ball given at Peterhof, the principal 
 staircase is not lighted. In 1792, it occurs to some one 
 that the pages are in want of a fresh livery; their 
 present livery has been in use for thirty-four years ! 
 
402 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 II. 
 
 In regard to etiquette, good manners, and even 
 decency, the court is equally far from its Western 
 models. According to a German traveller. Count 
 Sternberg, who visited Russia in 1792 and 1793, the 
 reception-room of the palace was always in a state of 
 the utmost disorder up to the moment of the Empress's 
 appearance, and the moment after her departure. A 
 deafening clamour, in which all the languages of Europe 
 and Asia are heard at once, reigns there continually. 
 On ball days it is worse. On these days every one 
 bearing any sort of military title has right of access : 
 now. Her Majesty's coachman has the title of lieutenant- 
 colonel! On ordinary reception-days it is enough to 
 have a sword by one's side to be able to make one's 
 way as far as the door of the throne-room, which is 
 guarded by two of the gentlemen-guards in full uniform : 
 silver cuirass, three-cornered hats, and arms grounded. 
 There is no apparent supervision, either at the door, or 
 on the staircase, or in the first reception-room ; no one 
 asks who you are or where you are going. At the time 
 of the Revolution, there are rumours that an attempt 
 at assassination is to be made by some French dema- 
 gogues, and Passek, the aide-de-camp on duty, places 
 two warders in the vestibule of the palace ; the Empress 
 hears of it, and countermands the order. Entrance 
 into the throne-room is only permitted to those whose 
 names are enrolled on a list in the keeping of the two 
 gentlemen-guards ; but the list is a long one. Even 
 the Empress's dressing-room, where she gives her 
 private audiences, often gets crowded ; the secretaries 
 of state have their entrees every day, the procurator- 
 general on Sundays. A mere valet de chambre in 
 French costume stands at the door. Apart from the 
 liveries of the lackeys and pages, there is no special court 
 dress during the earlier years of the reign. In 1783, a 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 403 
 
 dress is appointed for the gentlemen, in the colours of 
 their respective provinces. At the same time, in order to 
 repress the extravagance of toilet to which the invasion 
 of French fashions gives more and more ruinous pro- 
 portions, Catherine insists on a certain uniformity of 
 costume among the ladies admitted to these receptions. 
 She adopts, first at the Hermitage and then at all the 
 royal residences, a Russian costume, or what is at all 
 events called so, in purple velvet, a costume which 
 would have driven Marie-Antoinette crazy. The belles 
 of St. Petersburg are in the utmost distress at not being 
 able to appear at the palace in the charming creations 
 of Madernoiselle Bertin, but they have to accept their 
 fate. They have to give up even the coiffures a la 
 Reine and a la Belle-Poule, for an imperial ukase forbids 
 any structure on the head higher than a quarter of a 
 Russian ell. The Grand-Duchess, Maria Feodorovna, is 
 in tears for a week, for she has to sacrifice some of her 
 magnificent hair in order to obey the common law. 
 
 Catherine, by these means, endeavours to turn back a 
 current already in force, and whose volume she has her- 
 self swelled. The imitation of foreign models, French 
 especially, has been general for the last half-century, 
 and it is the court which, from Peter the Great onward, 
 has set the example. The park at Peterhof is an imita- 
 tion, on a smaller scale, of that at Versailles. Society 
 merely follows, as it invariably does, the example of 
 those above it. In 1779, a paper nominally concerned 
 with fashions does injustice to its title by only inserting 
 literary articles ; but in 1 79 1 the Magasin des Modes 
 fran^aises, anglaises et allemandes, though it occasion- 
 ally dabbles in politics, laughing at the National 
 Assembly and parodying the Ca ira, gives the most 
 detailed information in regard to the fashions of the 
 day in the various European capitals, Paris principally, 
 the bonnets a la Bergere, and the masterpieces of 
 Madame Treilhard, the milliner of the Palais-Royal. 
 The tide of imitation associates itself at this moment 
 with the anti-revolutionary movement, of which Catherine 
 
404 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 has just given the signal : the Revolution is condemned 
 by the more extensive adoption of the forms and 
 refinements of old French society. 
 
 The imitation, it is true, is always imperfect, often 
 awkward to absurdity. The engravings in the Magasin 
 des Modes are grotesque. The court ladies imagine that 
 they will look like Marie- Antoinette by putting on lawn 
 over brocade, and that they will be dressed a la Madame 
 Marlborough by sewing black fringes over the first dress 
 that comes to hand. The canal of Peterhof, which pro- 
 fesses to rival that of Versailles, is merely a ditch a few 
 feet wide, where nothing but children's boats could float 
 easily. " In Russia," writes the Comte de Damas, 
 " everything is more like a fine sketch than a finished 
 work. The establishments are just beginning, the 
 houses are just putting up a front, the people in charge 
 of things do not know their own duties. . . . Dress, 
 Asiatic among the people, French at the court, does not 
 seem to have been quite put into order. . . . The 
 temper of the people is muzzled rather than softened. 
 . . . One often meets with intelligent, rarely with 
 amiable people. . . . There are Ninettes at court, to 
 any extent, who would find themselves quite at home 
 again in their native villages, shaven chins that have 
 already found out that beards were warmer, and 
 merchants who like dealing in furs more than dealing 
 in trinkets and fashions." 
 
 Instincts, however, remained savage, tastes were still 
 gross. The tone of the ancien regime of France could 
 scarcely be expected to prevail in a court where 
 Peter III. distributed blows with the flat of his sword 
 to his favourites, and treated women, in public, with the 
 utmost indecency. " To touch the bosom," wrote a 
 diplomatist, "is not the greatest liberty that he takes 
 in public with ladies of the highest distinction." The 
 corruption of manners at Versailles is the only thing 
 that seems completely assimilated, and even this is 
 deformed and degraded, despoiled of its cloak of 
 elegance and discreet coquetry, stripped and exposed 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 405 
 
 shamelessly in the street. In 1795 the Italian tenor 
 Bandini and his wife, an old courtesan known all over 
 Paris, are the lions of the greatest ladies at St. Peters- 
 burg. Princess Kurakin boasts of having passed the 
 evening in tete-a-tete with Madame Mandini, awaiting 
 the return of the singer, who comes back to them after 
 the performance " all in sweat, in his dressing-gown and 
 night-cap." People wear mottoes distributed by Man- 
 dini, Madame Divoff that of Seinpre pazsa. Princess 
 Dolgoruki is conspicuous by her fervour in crying Bravo 
 the moment the tenor appears on the stage, and Fiiori 
 the moment he retires to the wings. 
 
 And, we must admit, the main obstacle to a more 
 perfect, delicate, and decent adoption of Western 
 models at the court of Catherine is due to Catherine 
 herself Her mind, her character, her temperament, 
 render her equally averse, not only, as she herself 
 admits, to the rigours of an elaborate etiquette, but 
 even more so to the charms of an elegant and cultivated 
 entourage, or even to the mere habits and manners of 
 good company. The Comte de Segur does indeed 
 attract her, because he flatters her, and because the 
 distinction and correctness of his demeanour, a sort of 
 hot-house plant brought straight from Versailles, are a 
 form of homage whose value she thoroughly appreciates, 
 but Ldon Naryshkin amuses her more and suits her 
 better. State dignity bores her, official ceremonies 
 weary her, the kissing of hands is odious to her. She 
 is sometimes very amusing on the subject. 
 
 " I iinish this letter at Plescow, where I arrived at 
 nine o'clock in the evening, after having dined with a 
 princess who is as salt as a ham, literally salt, and this 
 is how I found it out. On saying good-bye to her, she 
 was going to kiss my hand, so I put my lips to her 
 cheek, and, as the grand equerry was leading me down- 
 stairs, I somehow felt, I don't know how, as I was 
 talking with him, the taste of salt on my lips ; I burst 
 out laughing, and told him of it ; he looked at me, and 
 saw some white on my lips. That is how I learnt that 
 
4o6 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 white paint is salt." And, a few days after : " Since 
 Plescow, Mademoiselle Engelhardt, the eldest, has 
 charge of my eyes ; this is how : before she presents 
 the ladies to me, she arranges their flowers and feathers, 
 with which I had some terrible encounters at Plescow." 
 The Baron de Breteuil comes to her one day at a recep- 
 tion to present his compliments to her ; she interrupts 
 him : " Have you ever seen the hounds after a hare ? 
 You must feel that I am very much in the same situa- 
 tion here." But, apart even from the pack of courtiers, 
 always on her heels, she is ill at esise in the midst of 
 those very splendours with which she has filled her 
 palaces, embarrassed by all the pomp for which she 
 does not care, bored by the works of art which she does 
 not understand. " I am well lodged this winter," she 
 writes in 1777; "all sorts of admirable things are heaped 
 up all around me, things which are good for nothing, 
 and which I never use. I am like that Khan of the 
 Kirghizs, to whom the Empress Elizabeth gave a house 
 at Oremburg, and who had a tent put up in the court to 
 live in. I keep in my own corner." 
 
 Her corner is the Hermitage, where, in a less gorgeous 
 frame, there are two distinct divisions : the decor 
 admired by Armand Domergue, and the mise-en-scene of 
 reception days, the arti.stic collections and the gala 
 representations, make up one, which is meant for the 
 public ; the other belongs to the sovereign, and there she 
 escapes from the crowd to the pleasant familiarity of the 
 private gatherings to which only a favoured few have 
 access. These gatherings are like neither \''ersailles 
 nor Trianon, nor yet the Hotel Rambouillet, nor even 
 the bourgeois salon of Madame Geoffrin. It is not the 
 French style of wit that prevails there : the Comte de 
 Segur himself sometimes forgets his courtly manners, 
 and Leon Narj-shkin, who usually gives the tone, has 
 nothing in common with a gentleman of the court of 
 Louis XIV., not even with Saint-Simon's Roquelaure, 
 supposing that such a Roquelaure ever existed. He has 
 spilt his blood on no field of battle, he governs no pro- 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 40; 
 
 vince. He has, as grand equerry, the charge of the royal 
 stables ; but, having one day found a cat installed in 
 the arm-chair reserved for him in the office of this 
 administration, he declares that his place has been 
 disposed of, and never sets foot in it again. His style 
 of wit tends mainly towards puns. One day a door 
 creaks so loudly during a discussion in regard to the 
 declaration of war against Turkey as to drown the 
 voice of the speakers ; whereupon he declares '' que c'est 
 la Porte qui demande du secours a la Grece." He jokes 
 in public over his conjugal mishaps (his wife is the 
 daughter of a mere Cossack), and parodies before the 
 Empress a song then popular, "Voila I'objet de ma 
 flamme," pointing out one of his own servants who enjoys 
 the favour of Madame Naryshkin, and singing : " Voila 
 I'objet de ma femme." When he is not making puns, 
 he rambles on all subjects, and employs the most 
 extravagant and sometimes the grossest buffooneries, 
 taking lessons in the art, it is said, from the actor 
 Renaud. Catherine finds him one day in her own 
 work-room, sprawling on the sofa and bawling out some 
 senseless song ; as he refuses to quit the place or be 
 silent, she fetches her sister-in-law, and both arm them- 
 selves with a bundle of nettles, and set to beating him 
 with them. Catherine calls him " the born harlequin," 
 but she confesses that she is passionately fond of hearing 
 him talk politics, and that no one has ever made her 
 laugh so heartily. She sings his merits in two burlesque 
 poems {Leoniand), which she brings on the stage in her 
 comedy of L' Insouciant. Amusing herself one day at 
 the game of epitaphs, she composes the following for 
 her favourite companion in her hours of leisure and 
 relaxation : 
 
4o8 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 "FOR THE INFORMATION OF POSTERITY. 
 
 INSCRIPTION 
 
 For the foundation-stone of the country-house of M. le grand 
 dcuyer, Lion Naryshkin : 
 
 This is the abode 
 Of Sir L^on Naryshkin, grand equerry. 
 No frisky horse hates him, for he never mounted one. 
 In his youth Dame Nature promised to make him handsome : 
 
 No one knows why she did not keep her word. 
 
 When he came to marry, he married the women he liked least. 
 
 He loved wine, women, and dress, yet no one ever saw him 
 
 Drunk, in love, or well-dressed. 
 
 He shaved himself, lest the barber should cut him. 
 
 And the greater the occasion, the more numerous were the 
 
 razor-cuts 
 
 On his face. 
 
 His friends said )r\e was very respectful at the outset, 
 
 And very ill-tempered afterwards. 
 He danced much, and was blithe and active at all times 
 Except when his stoutness of body hindered his left leg 
 From following his right. 
 He was rich, and never had a penny in his pocket. 
 He liked to go to the market, where he always bought what he 
 did not want. 
 What he loved best were the hundred fathoms that you see. 
 He planted them with new country boxes 
 Every year, which were reached by 
 Winding paths, laid out 
 With shrubs, bordered by 
 Ponds and streams 
 Which were dry, when 
 There was no rain. 
 Despite which, he passed the larger part of the year out of doors. 
 Blithe and gay was his motto ; 
 
 Cards his element ; 
 Laughter followed in his track." 
 
 After Naryshkin, another intirtiate of the Hermitage, 
 Baron Vanjura, is distinguished by his talent for bring- 
 ing his thick-set hair down to his eyebrows by wrinkling 
 his forehead, as if it were a wig. On account of this 
 talent he is named captain of the gay company that 
 Catherine gathers about her. She herself is clever at 
 moving her right ear, while the rest of her face remains 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 
 
 40g 
 
 motionless. Let us not blame her too severely : twenty 
 years later another Empress, Archduchess by birth, 
 Marie-Louise, will do much the same at the Tuileries. 
 We should not forget, among these buffoons, the court 
 fool Matrena Danilovna Tiepliskaia, a woman belong- 
 ing to a family of small shopkeepers settled at laroslav, 
 equally vulgar in mind and manners, whom the Empress 
 lodges in the palace, covers with diamonds, and whom 
 she allows to call her sister. Questioning her one day 
 why she professes such dislike of the King of Sweden, 
 she answers : " Because he is a German, and with us, 
 when a German comes to the house, we wash and sweep 
 up everything after- him, even the handle of the door 
 on which he has put his hand." 
 
 Yes, this court is a Versailles with at least ten 
 centuries less of those monarchical traditions, that high 
 culture, which in France have blossomed out into a 
 final burst of splendour. It is Versailles copied by a 
 workman who lacked all the materials for his task, 
 alike in substance and in colour ; mere scene-painting 
 on coarse canvas. But the resemblance is there, and, 
 if you would see it even in small details, notice in some 
 corner of the imperial palace that gentleman-in-waiting, 
 whose mouth seems settled into a smile of fixed irony, 
 whose sarcastic eyes seem to pierce through all the 
 pomp and show about him, and see the bareness of misery 
 beneath, raising the silk and velvet that cover it, and 
 displaying the shames that lurk below. Presently, 
 when he returns to his home, he will write to his friend 
 Vorontsof a letter in which the smallest incidents of the 
 day are sifted by a pitiless criticism, in which all the 
 people whom he has but lately been elbowing are lashed 
 with an inexhaustible abundance of sarcasm and in- 
 vective : it is the future incendiary of Moscow, " the 
 Russian Saint-Simon," as he has been called ; a Saint- 
 Simon at once sharper and more jovial, bitterer and less 
 sceptical, having no such reasons for hating the world 
 about him as the other, who was, if the expression is not 
 too free (he himself has set the example of all kinds of 
 
4id PRIVATE LTFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 liberties !), a raM of genius ; on the contrary, he has 
 had a brilliant career before him, he has had but to 
 choose what place he would have at the side of the heir 
 to the throne ; still, always unsatisfied, even with the 
 prince who has had nothing but favour for him, even 
 with the future which does but smile upon him ; a 
 universal fault-finder, detractor, and cynic ; an imitator 
 of Saint-Simon, yes, in this correspondence with the 
 London exile, itself all but a masterpiece, but a pre- 
 cursor too, one of the first representatives of that state 
 of soul which, fortunately for Russia, is as yet only the 
 heritage of a small group of disciples. 
 
 A great empire may be created in a short time ; a 
 Versailles cannot be improvised. It is enough to have 
 succeeded, as Catherine did, in giving so much of 
 the appearance of majesty and grandeur to an estab- 
 lishment only set on foot, or at least on a European 
 footing, a few years back ; especially as, in doing 
 this much, she has had to do some violence to her- 
 self. " It is curious to observe," writes the Baron de 
 Breteuil in 1763, "the painful care that the Empress 
 takes, on court-days, to please all her subjects. For me, 
 knowing as I do the character of this princess, and 
 seeing her adapt herself with such unparalleled sweet- 
 ness and grace to all that, I can easily imagine how 
 much it must cost her, and how much she feels the 
 obligation of submitting to it." Her way of reigning, 
 like her way of ruling, has none the less a certain air of 
 recent military conquest. The banquets at which she 
 appears among her officers of the Guard, dressed in 
 their costume, and emptying her glass of traditional 
 vodka with them, recall the violent struggles out of 
 which her empire has arisen. Her court is always a 
 little like a camp. And that is why the furthest point 
 of the pomp and magnificence with which she strives to 
 reach the level of the monarchical traditions of the 
 West, is reached only in travelHng over the roads of 
 Taurida. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE.-COURT LIFR 411 
 
 III. 
 
 Unlike Peter I., who was an indefatigable traveller, 
 Catherine rarely travels. And it is not only her per- 
 sonal tastes, which are more or less stationary, that 
 keep her at home ; every change of residence is a 
 source of terrible danger ; she has no sooner left St. 
 Petersburg, in 1764, for the purpose of visiting Livonia 
 and Esthonia, than Mirovitch's plot breaks out behind 
 her, with its warning of how frail is the structure of 
 her fortune, and how needful it is to watch over it 
 closely. Later still, even when her throne is secure 
 against any common plot, the mere presence of Paul 
 remains a constant menace. When she leaves the 
 capital, she arranges that, at the smallest alarm, men 
 on whom she has the utmost reliance are to seize the 
 heir to the throne, and bring him to her. However, 
 when she does travel, it is for some length of time. 
 The distances are great, and the Empress cannot seem 
 to be in a hurry. The journey in the Crimea (in the 
 Taurida, as she wishes her conquest to be called, in 
 memory of vaguely wonderful histories of the past) 
 lasts six months. There are two thousand kilometres 
 to cover, and the road first of all has to be made. 
 Between St. Petersburg and Moscow there are easy 
 relays, decent enough stopping-places, and the journey 
 is both rapid and easy. In the Baltic provinces the 
 castles of the Livonian and Esthonian lords offer her 
 not only the warmest hospitality, but an unsuspected 
 luxury and comfort. Between St. Petersburg and Kher- 
 son, about a third of the way is a literal desert. We 
 know already how Patiomkin peoples this desert. 
 
 The departure takes place January 18, 1787. The 
 carriage of Her Majesty is drawn by thirty horses ; it 
 contains a room in which eight persons can sit down, 
 a card-table, a small library, and all the conveniences : 
 it is almost the equivalent of a modern train de luxe. 
 
412 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 The Tavourite Mamonof, the inseparable Mademoiselle 
 Protassof, and the not less inseparable Leon Naryshkin, 
 take their places with Catherine, who moreover invites, 
 on the first day, Count Cobenzl, the Austrian envoy, on 
 the following day the Comte de Segur. There are 
 fourteen other carriages and a hundred and twenty-four 
 sledges for the rest of the suite. It freezes to seven- 
 teen degrees. The English envoy, Fitz-Herbert, is also 
 among the company. The Spanish envoy, Normandez, 
 who has vainly asked for a place, is furious with rage, 
 according to Castdra. 
 
 On its way, the caravan finds wooden palaces, hastily 
 set up at the sleeping-places, and, at the relays, covered 
 galleries, with tables laid out with refreshments. The 
 plate used on each occasion is used only once, and 
 becomes the property of the valets. There is an im- 
 mense profusion, an immense waste, great disorder too, 
 and little comfort. "All our carriages," writes the Prince 
 de Ligne, "are full of peaches and oranges, our valets 
 are drunk with champagne, and I die of hunger, for 
 everything is cold and horrid , . . Nothing is warm, 
 except the water we drink." 
 
 In the Ukraine, Catherine is somewhat disappointed : 
 Bezborodko, who has had charge of the material organiz- 
 ation of the affair, and who is alarmed at the amount of 
 money which it is wasting, has told the governor to be 
 economical. This is no other than the illustrious Ru- 
 miantsof ; he does not require to be told twice, and he 
 cuts down preparations to what is strictly necessary, 
 and neglects to trick out Kief, the holy city, which 
 the Empress has looked forward to exhibiting to her 
 guests. " Tell the Empress that it is my business to 
 take cities, not to paint them," he replies to Mamonof, 
 who has been told to make a complaint. The enchant- 
 ment which has been longed for, dreamed of, expected, 
 by the Empress, only begins in the Crimea. There 
 it is Patiomkin who has arranged the mise-en-sdne. 
 One of his assistants, Tchertkof, is himself scarcely able 
 to understand the marvels that he has contributed to 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 413 
 
 bring about : " I went with His Highness to the Taurida 
 . . . two months before the Empress's arrival . . . and 
 I asked myself what he was going to show Her Majesty. 
 There was nothing! On returning with Her Majesty, 
 God only knows what miracles liave happened, and the 
 devil only knows where all these buildings, armies, popu- 
 lations, Tartars in splendid costumes, Cossacks, ships, all 
 came from. I walked in a dream. I could not believe 
 my own eyes." This amazement is shared by all who 
 saw the transformation, brought about by some magic 
 wand in these desert steppes. " By what marvel," asks 
 Langeron, "can such wonders be produced.''" But 
 he answers the question himself. " It must be admitted, 
 that they were caused by tyranny and terror, and 
 will entail the ruin of several provinces. All the 
 people were turned out of certain populous districts 
 of Little Russia and those parts through which the 
 Empiess was not to pass, in order to populate these 
 deserts ; a thousand villages were depopulated for a 
 time, and all their inhabitants, with all their herds, 
 taken to the different places marked out. They were 
 made to set up, hastily, pretended villages on the shores 
 nearest to the Dnieper, and mere fa9ades further away. 
 The Empress having once passed by, the unhappy 
 people were sent back again ; many of them died from 
 the consequences of this transplantation . . . Having 
 been governor-general of these provinces for thirty 
 years, I have been able to find out these things for 
 certain : they at first seemed to be fabulous." This 
 testimony is precise, authoritative, and conclusive. 
 
 At Kief, the party embarked in order to go down 
 the Dnieper. This kind of locomotion was quite to 
 Catherine's taste. It is in this way that, in 1767, she 
 had gone down the Volga as far as Kostroma, taking 
 with her the ambassadors from Vienna, Berlin, and 
 Copenhagen ; the French envoy was not among them, 
 but the King's minister restrained his feelings. Ten 
 galleys, " all covered, divided into separate rooms, and 
 furnished ; one of them, her own, having a complete set 
 
414 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 of rooms, with a sort of salon in which," according to the 
 Baron von Asseburg, " she dined with twelve persons 
 without the slightest inconvenience," were at that time 
 sufficient to carry her and her retinue. This time it was 
 quite another affair. The flotilla comprised not less 
 than eighty ships with three thousand men on board. 
 A water-colour of John Lindsay, the painter of this 
 wandering court and show, gives us a picturesque view 
 of it at the moment of Catherine's meeting with Ponia- 
 towski. Three great sailing ships are at the head, 
 equal in size, and uniform in their red and gold decora- 
 tion. On the bridge they have a kind of pavilion with 
 bay windows ; above, a platform, on which soldiers are 
 ranged in battle array. The first of these galleys (bear- 
 ing the name of Dnieper) is that of the Empress. Side 
 by side with her the Boug has on board Prince Patiom- 
 kin and his two nieces, the Countesses Branigki and 
 Skavronski. A little further back a third bark, the 
 Desna, serves as dining-room. Then follow the Snow 
 with Counts Bezborodko, Anhalt, and Levachof ; the 
 Seim, with the foreign ministers, including the " diplo- 
 matic jockey," otherwise the Prince de Ligne; the Inipet 
 with Leon Naryshkin ; the Orel with Count Tsherni- 
 shof and his daughter ; the Joz with a crowd of less 
 important courtiers, private secretaries, and the like. 
 The Samara and the Kuban are given over to the 
 provisions and cooking. The Tavel and the Don serve 
 as military escort. " Gold and silk," relates the Comte 
 de Segur, " glitter in the handsome rooms constructed 
 on the decks. Every guest finds on board a room 
 and dressing-room equally elegant and luxurious, a 
 comfortable sofa, an excellent bed in coloured taffeta, 
 and a mahogany writing-table. There is music on 
 every galley. A swarm of little boats leads and sur- 
 rounds this squadron." 
 
 Poniatowski spends three millions in three months 
 in order to meet the Empress at Kaniof, salute her with 
 fireworks, chat with her for three-quarters of an hour, 
 and receive from Bezborodko the assurance that the war 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 415 
 
 with Turkey is not coming off! It will cost him less, 
 very shortly, to live side by side with the sovereign on 
 the Quay of the Neva at St. Petersburg. Only, by that 
 time he will have lost his crown, and deprived his 
 country of its political existence. The fellow-travellers 
 on this fairy voyage are scarcely aware of this royal inter- 
 lude at all. The genius of the Prince of Taurida affords 
 them every day such very different distractions ! " All 
 the stopping-places are equally marked out so as to avoid 
 the slightest fatigue. The fleet only stops over against 
 towns or villages picturesquely situated. Immense 
 flocks cover the prairies, groups of peasants enliven the 
 sea-shore, an immense crowd of youths and maidens 
 comes out in boats, singing the rustic airs of their native 
 lands." A near neighbour, on board the Seim, of the 
 Comte de S^gur, from whom we take these details, 
 the Prince de Ligne awakes him every morning by 
 knocking at the thin partition which separates their 
 beds, and reciting impromptus. An hour after, the 
 prince's chasseur brings the young diplomatist a letter 
 of six pages, in which " wisdom, folly, politics, gallantry, 
 military stories, and epigrams " are all combined in an 
 astounding mixture, and " never was anything more 
 regularly kept up than this odd daily correspondence 
 between an Austrian general and a French ambassador 
 sleeping side by side on the same galley, not far from 
 the Empress of the North, and sailing down the Borys- 
 thenes through the Cossacks' country on their way to 
 the country of the Tartars." 
 
 With this Austrian general and this French ambassa- 
 dor, it is Europe, organized and cultured Europe, that 
 Catherine thus drags behind her across the country of 
 the Cossacks and the Tartars, and through the fantastic 
 land of a wonder-working imagination, the final caress 
 of an all-powerful favourite to the pride of an ambitious 
 mistress. 
 
 A few misadventures interrupt for a moment this long 
 enchantment. Admirably constructed and appointed 
 from the decorative point of view, the ships of the fleet 
 
di6 PRIVATE LIFE.—COURT LIFE 
 
 are less conspicuous for their nautical qualities. One 
 day the Empress's ship is carried along by the current, 
 and dashed against the side ; she is in serious danger. 
 She forbids the incident to be mentioned, since the 
 foreign diplomatists, left with Normandez at St. Peters- 
 burg, will do their best to exaggerate it. At Kaldak, 
 thirty leagues from Kherson, they all disembark ; and 
 at Kherson they meet with Joseph, a little ashamed of 
 having accepted a very unceremonious invitation, not 
 allowing anything of his feeling to appear, but venting 
 his grudge in the surly bulletins that he sends to Field- 
 marshal Lascy, in which he defends himself from the 
 imputation of sharing in the delight of his imperial 
 friend and his other companions : 
 
 " The confusion which reigns is inexpressible. The 
 disembarkation was a long and painful process. There 
 are more things and people on the ships than there are 
 vehicles to hold or horses to draw. One runs in one 
 direction, and every one else follows suit. Prince 
 Potemkin alone, crazy after music, has a hundred and 
 twenty musicians with him, and a poor ofiScer having 
 burnt his hands with powder, it is four days before he 
 can find any one to attend to him. The land part of 
 the expedition is in a state of disorder of which no one 
 can give an idea ; part of the carriages are still on the 
 water ; every one takes kibitkas, the vehicles of the 
 country, to carry his baggage. In these immense plains 
 every one tries to get ahead, six, eight carriages abreast, 
 and, despite the fact that they are going four relays a 
 day, the carriages get broken, and one finds plate, bed- 
 ding, and baggages lying all over the steppes. The 
 food is copious, but for the most part detestable, cold, 
 and hard. With the exception of the Empress, who is 
 most amiable, and of some gentlemen whose society is 
 very tolerable, the strangers especially, it would be a 
 regular penance." 
 
 We may pardon the august traveller for his strictures 
 on Catherine's cuisine: the very day of his meeting 
 with the sovereign, he nearly had to go without any 
 
THE COURT OF CATHERINE 417 
 
 dinner at all, the members of the commissary depart- 
 ment having lost their way or been upset with a kibitka. 
 Prince Patiomkin, after his usual manner, saves the 
 situation, by turning cook, in company with Count 
 Branigki. Between them they manufacture a dinner, 
 which indeed the principal guest finds detestable. His 
 bad humour lasts all through the voyage. At one time 
 he thinks it ridiculous to have crossed impracticable 
 ways in order to see " a couple of Angora goats in a 
 sort of English garden," improvised by Patiomkin in 
 the neighbourhood of Baktchissara'i. At another time 
 it strikes him that a company of bombardiers has been 
 brought all the way from St. Petersburg, a distance of 
 two thousand versts, in order to set off some fireworks 
 at Karassubasar. 
 
 Catherine, for her part, does not or will not see any- 
 thing of all that. She enjoys unreservedly all the 
 marvellous spectacles unrolled before her eyes. She 
 is persuaded that the Crimea will one day pay with 
 usury all the expense that she has had in conquering 
 and visiting it. Only on the way back do we find her 
 enthusiasm a little checked. She has had reports telling 
 of bad harvests. A famine seems imminent, and she does 
 not see how it is to be faced. The sum of four millions 
 of roubles assigned for travelling expenses is not half 
 enough. But Europe has been dazzled, and one must 
 pay for all that glory and advantage. Russia will pay, 
 as it always does. 
 
 Poor Russia is far from being dazzled, and it could 
 scarcely be so. It has not been invited, it has seen 
 nothing. Bolotof relates that at Toula, where the sove- 
 reign's arrival was announced for midday, the streets 
 were crowded from sunrise. But scarcely is Her 
 Majesty's cari'iage signalled than the whole crowd 
 prostrates itself in the dust, and remains so during the 
 whole defile of the imperial cortege. When a few heads 
 dare to lift themselves, the Empress is already at a 
 distance. 
 
 E E 
 
4i8 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 The new splendours enveloping its present monarchs, 
 in their European costume, are not made for a nation 
 still under the bonds of Tartar conquest. To obey, and 
 to worship, remains its lot, without the least share in the 
 pleasures bought by its blood and sweat, without under- 
 standing them, without even seeing them. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN. 
 
 The Turkish war, with its part successes, part defeats ; 
 the Swedish war, still less fortunate, following after the 
 journey in the Crimea, mark a decline. In 1792 the 
 great scenic artist of these wonderful transformations 
 dies on a Moldavian road by the side of a ditch ; that 
 marks the end of an epoch. Catherine is now left alone 
 to bear the weight of the increasing burden with which 
 thirty years of almost invariably successful efforts have 
 weighted her shoulders, the colossal edifice of her 
 fortune together with that of the immense empire whose 
 bounds she has extended ; alone with Zubof 1 And 
 G^net, the revolutionary diplomatist whom she still 
 tolerates at her court, writes to Dumouriez : " Such 
 unbounded confidence in so little capable a man seems 
 to show that the Empress, disliking the power which 
 Prince Potemkin had arrogated to himself, wishes to 
 show now that she is the sole mistress. But pitiless 
 nature is against this last effort of her amour-propre. 
 Catherine II. is visibly on the decline, and melancholy 
 begins to take possession of her soul." 
 
 We see it in her private correspondence, this melan- 
 choly coming down slowly, like a cold and dark fog 
 about her, once so radiant with youth and vigour. 
 Her moral and her physical health give way at once. 
 Even on the serene countenance that she always shows 
 
 419 
 
420 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 in public, Genet observes " certain signs betokening 
 dropsy." She struggles bravely ; she boasts one day 
 that she has walked two or three versts, between the 
 Winter Palace and the Hermitage, to prove that she is 
 still active and nimble. She doses herself too, after her 
 fashion, with quack medicines : " I fancy it is gout in 
 my stomach," she writes to one of her intimate friends ; 
 " I am trying to drive it out with pepper and a glass of 
 Malaga that I drink every day." 
 
 But her empire too shows, to the careful observer, 
 alarming signs of weakness and distress. In a letter to 
 Count Vorontsof, dated April 3, 1793, Bezborodko draws 
 up a report on the general situation, and it presents a 
 very dark picture : against the twenty-five ships that 
 the Porte can put in line in the Black Sea, there are 
 only nine, and these half rotten, on account of the bad 
 quality of the wood used in their construction ; the fleet 
 of oared galleys on which so much reliance is placed, no 
 longer exists : Mordvinof, who has had charge of it, 
 has only thought of filling his pockets. Patiomkin, 
 who at least knows his men, has never thought much of 
 him, but the new favourite takes him under his protec- 
 tion, as he does Ribas, who is worth no more ; the land 
 forces are in better condition, but they cost a great deal 
 of money, ill-managed as they are, and there is not 
 enough to keep them in working order ; nine millions 
 are owing for the maintenance of the fleet, and they are 
 nowhere to be found ; the court runs away with three 
 million roubles a year, and makes two millions of debts ; 
 the maintenance of the Countess Brani5ki alone costs 
 two hundred thousand roubles, and that of Count 
 Nicholas Saltykof as much ; the commerce of the 
 country might bring in a large revenue if it were not 
 under the control of a half-mad poet, Dierjavin, who is 
 bringing it to the verge of ruin. 
 
 Bezborodko is a grumbler, but his testimony is not 
 the only one. It is the almost unanimous opinion that 
 a terrible crisis is at hand ; that Catherine's policy has 
 strained all the springs of the machine of government 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 421 
 
 beyond their furthest point of resistance ; that the 
 supply, on all sides, is unequal to the demand, and that 
 Russia must give way under the burdens that have been 
 laid upon it. Catherine remains almost alone in her 
 invariable optimism, and, if she does for an instant 
 descry the heaped clouds darkening the horizon, not 
 without a momentary shiver, she puts it down rather to 
 a defect in her sight than to a change in things them- 
 selves : age, she says, makes one look at the dark side 
 of things. And she immediately seeks to react against 
 this impression, which, in her eyes, is a mere weakness. 
 She will be gay ; and " I am gay," she writes to Grimm, 
 February 15, 1796, ''gay as a lark." She refuses to 
 consider herself ill. " Up to the present I am in ex- 
 cellent health," she declares at that time. She plans 
 new diversions. She sets on foot an expedition for 
 seizing Count Stroganof by main force, and bringing 
 him back to the court : he is himself in ill-health, and 
 shuts himself up in a country-house near St. Petersburg, 
 which she bombards with cannon-shots. And when the 
 time comes for her to take a prominent place in this 
 anti-revolutionary coalition, the manner in which she 
 announces to Grimm that Suvorof is en route is as 
 blithe as that in which she started the first campaign 
 against the Turks : " They say that 60,000 Russians 
 have set out for the shores of the Elbe, to put an end 
 to the disasters in Germany ; they say that Marshal 
 Suvorof is at their head ; they say lots of other things, 
 and we shall see lots more yet ; it is the magic-lantern 
 in which we shall see what we shall see. Good-bye, 
 ' fag ' ; look out for the claws." 
 
 And now it is herself who, ere the first of her soldiers 
 has crossed the frontier, feels the claws of adverse 
 fortune catching her full in the heart, for the first time, 
 and leaving her overwhelmed by this unforeseen, dis- 
 astrous, deadly blow. The joyous trumpet-note of war, 
 which she sends echoing in the ears of her " fag," is on 
 the 13th of August 1796 ; next day is a joyous day for 
 her: the Count von Haga and the Count von Wasa 
 
422 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 (Gustavus, the future King of Sweden, and his uncle, 
 the Duke of Sudermania, Regent during the prince's 
 minority) arrive at St. Petersburg. They come officially 
 for the purpose of declaring the adhesion of Sweden to 
 the coalition formed against Republican France, but 
 their visit has really quite another aim. For a long 
 time Catherine has dreamt of a marriage between the 
 Crown Prince of Sweden and her grand-daughter 
 Alexandrine, the eldest daughter of Paul. The princess 
 has been brought up with this idea. One day as she 
 was sitting on the Empress's knees, the sovereign 
 opened before her a portfolio filled with portraits, 
 asking her which prince she would like to marry, and 
 the child, without hesitation, pointed to the portrait of 
 Gustavus. The moment is now come to realize this 
 ten years' dream. The young people are now aged, 
 respectively, fourteen and seventeen. But difficulties 
 have arisen. The Regent fancies he sees the hand of 
 Catherine in the plot of Armfeldt against his throne, 
 and he has avenged himself by turning the foreign 
 policy of his country into a direction absolutely con- 
 trary to the Empress's wishes, while at the same time 
 he plans a marriage between his nephew and the 
 daughter of the Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin. The 
 betrothal has been celebrated in November 1795, and 
 he has sent the Count von Schwerin to St. Petersburg 
 in order to notify the fact, while negotiations are set 
 on foot at Stockholm with M. Le Hoc, the envoy of the 
 French Republic. But Catherine refuses to see the 
 Count von Schwerin, and seems on the point of break- 
 ing the Mecklenberg alliance with cannon-shots. The 
 Duke of Sudermania bends before the storm ; a secret 
 agent of the French refugees, Christian the Genevese, 
 formerly secretary of Calonne, has succeeded in gaining 
 him over to more conciliatory and favourable views in 
 regard to the anti-revolutionary alliance. With the aid 
 of Mademoiselle Huss, the French actress, who is the 
 mistress of Markof, the confidential friend of the new 
 favourite, he succeeds in winning over Zubof himself, 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 11^21 
 
 to the point at all events of a compromise, satisfactory 
 to both parties. The Baron Budberg, a wary diplo- 
 matist, who has already served in Germany in regard 
 to matrimonial negotiations, is sent from St. Petersburg 
 to Stockholm on a semi-official mission. Soon after 
 Le Hoc receives his congi, and the Regent, whom 
 Catherine has been abusing as a " scoundrel," writes to 
 her to assure her that the marriage with the Princess 
 of Mecklenberg shall never come off while he is in 
 power, and that the French alliance is abandoned. The 
 Empress has insisted on the formal rupture of the 
 betrothal celebrated in November, and the visit of the 
 prince and his nephew to St. Petersburg to ask for the 
 hand of Alexandra Pavlovna, and, before the threat of 
 military operations with which this demand is accom- 
 panied, the Duke of Sudermania has half pledged 
 himself : he has given his formal promise that the 
 betrothal to which she so greatly objects shall never 
 be followed up, and he consents to come to St. Peters- 
 burg, without, however, making any engagement, as he 
 does not feel justified in setting aside the obstacle of 
 difference of religion which exists in regard to the union 
 desired by Catherine. Catherine is once more annoyed ; 
 she declares that if the Regent and his ministers con- 
 tinue to talk of obstacles that have no common-sense, 
 " they are utterly God-forsaken " ; but she is obliged at 
 last to give in. The two princes once in her capital, 
 and at hand, she will soon find means to arrange things. 
 They arrive, and for two weeks there seems small 
 chance of ever coming to an agreement. The Duke of 
 Sudermania is still as reserved as ever ; and neither 
 Zubof, nor Markof, nor Catherine can see the way to get 
 him out of it. Now, the sovereign will not give way an 
 inch : no marriage, no alliance ; the altar or the battle- 
 field. But suddenly the unexpected happens : on 
 September 4, after a dinner at court, as they are going 
 down to the garden to take coffee, Gustavus approaches 
 the Empress, and, without further preamble, declares, 
 with all the ingenuous ardour of his seventeen years. 
 
424 PRIVATE LIFE— COURT LIFE 
 
 that he is in love with the Princess Alexandrine, and 
 that he asks her hand in marriage. 
 
 What has happened ? An idyll has suddenly come to 
 flower on this dunghill of dubious intrigues and under- 
 hand manoeuvres. Two young people have met under 
 the warm sun of August, and, across the mumbling 
 voices of prosing politicians, their hearts have spoken 
 the eternal language of youth and love. From the 
 first day that they have met the all-powerful charm 
 has done its work. On the day before, the princess had 
 lost a dog that she was deeply attached to, and had 
 cried all day. Madame de Lieven is distressed at the 
 thought of her being seen with red eyes. Ah, how 
 quickly those tears are dried under the sun of the 
 summer now drawing to an end ! So burning, indeed, 
 is that sun, so prodigal of its last rays, that the 
 devoted governess is quite concerned for a moment 
 when she sees the young couple unconsciously leave 
 the protecting shade of the trees, and go on their way 
 under the full blaze of light. But Catherine sees the 
 movement she makes to recall the rash young people, 
 and stops her with a smile. And the romance goes on 
 its swift and flitting course : she is fourteen, he seven- 
 teen ! After the walks, the dance. On August 28 
 there is a ball at the Grand-Duke's palace, and next day 
 the Grand-Duchess feels bound to report to the Empress 
 what has happened. This time it is not the wife of the 
 heir to the throne, it is a mother who writes : " My 
 dearest mother, I feel it my duty to tell Your Imperial 
 Majesty of what happened last night ; it seemed to me 
 to augur well, for the attentions of the King to Alexan- 
 drine were very marked. He scarcely danced with 
 any one else ; even when it was past midnight, seeing 
 that the child was asking me if she might have another 
 dance, he went up to the Regent, and said something in 
 his ear, at which the Regent began to laugh heartily. 
 I asked him what it was, and he said : ' What he asked 
 me was, whether the young princesses would be allowed 
 to dance again. Having told him yes, he said : Oh, 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 425 
 
 then I must have another dance too ! ' And he danced 
 again with Alexandrine." 
 
 Four days after, it is Catherine herself who, after 
 another ball, given at the Austrian Embassy, writes to 
 Grimm a yet more joyous note : " The ball was very 
 lively, for there was a report that everything was 
 definitely agreed. I do not know how it was, for fun 
 or not, but our young lover squeezed the hand of his 
 intended in dancing with her. She turns as pale as 
 death, and tells her governess : ' Just think what he 
 did ! He squeezed my hand as we were dancing. I 
 did not know what was going to happen.' ' What did 
 you do then .' ' 'I was so frightened I nearly dropped.' " 
 After leaving the ball, the young man makes up his 
 mind, and, not wishing to put the affair this time into 
 the hands of the Regent, he goes straight to the Empress, 
 as we have seen. 
 
 They are engaged forthwith, and from that moment 
 are inseparable. They pass their days together under 
 the mother's eyes, and she continues to recount the 
 progress of this happiness in which she is so happy to 
 have some share, now in letters to the grandmother, now 
 to the absent father, shut up in his gloomy solitude at 
 Pavlovsk. " My dear good friend, I send you two lines 
 while our two young people are sitting side by side and 
 talking in whispers, in which I can only distinguish his 
 voice. The general (Madame de Lieven), Helen, and I 
 nous faisons des pates, Anne sits on a chair, amusinpr 
 herself; the Regent and Stedingk are by us, looking at 
 cameos, and I have just told the Regent to go and smoke 
 on the sofa." She signs this family picture " Masha," 
 adding a big kiss for her viujenok (little husband). Then 
 she tells the grandmother how the King has wept at the 
 thought of leaving his fiande for eight long months, the 
 marriage having been arranged for the spring. She has 
 asked him the reason of this long delay. Why should 
 they not be married at once ? " But the court is not 
 assembled, and the rooms are not ready." "What 
 difference does that make 1 The court can soon be got 
 
426 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 together, and when one is in love, one never notices the 
 rooms. You can be married, the child can come with 
 you, and it would be all settled." "But the sea is 
 dangerous . . ." Here Alexandrine puts in a word : 
 " I should always feel safe with you." And the mother 
 adds : " Put your confidence in me, Monsieur Gustave ; 
 shall I speak to the Empress on your account 1 " He 
 was quite ready, and, adds the excellent princess, "he 
 was in such high spirits that everybody at supper noticed 
 it, and he was talking to the child, caressing her even, 
 before everybody." 
 
 On the following day there is a fresh note to the 
 father : " My dear good friend, return thanks to God : 
 the betrothal is arranged for Monday evening in the 
 diamond room. ... It will be done by the metro- 
 politan. . . . Afterwards there will be a ball in the 
 throne-room." Monday evening is the nth of Sep- 
 tember. At seven o'clock the persons invited to be 
 present at the ceremony are gathered together in the 
 diamond room. The fianch arrives, then the Empress. 
 Only the young King is missing. He is late in coming, 
 the sovereign begins to show signs of impatience, a 
 quarter of an hour passes, then another quarter of an 
 hour, and Markof enters, trembling and stupefied, and 
 whispers in her ear : " The King will not come ! " She 
 attempts to speak, but not a word leaves her lips ; 
 her valet de chamhre, Zotof, springs forward with 
 a glass of water ; she drinks a draught, takes a few 
 steps, then raises her hand, and strikes Markof twice 
 with the stick on which she leans in walking; Bezbo- 
 rodko interposes, but she pushes him aside : " I will 
 teach the brat ! " she is heard to mutter ; then the words 
 choke in her throat, and she drops heavily into a chair. 
 
 What has happened } It has happened that Zubof 
 and Markof, the favourite and his confidant, have set 
 themselves a difficult task without being even aware of 
 its difficulties, and that the Empress has let them act 
 without apparent consciousness that she was confiding 
 her dearest interests to two feather-brains. While the 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN /^^y 
 
 two lovers had exchanged caresses and tender vows, it 
 had been needful to discuss the conditions of the pro- 
 jected marriage, and Catherine had demanded from 
 Gustavus a written agreement that his future wife 
 should be allowed " entire liberty of conscience and of 
 worship according to the religion in which she was 
 born." The prince had replied by referring to the word 
 of honour he had already given to Her Majesty, "that 
 the Grand-Duchess should never be interfered with in 
 her conscience in regard to religion," and by " refusing 
 to give his signature to any written agreement to this 
 effect," as being "entirely superfluous." And at the 
 same time he contrived to attribute to this somewhat 
 ambiguous word of honour, behind which he intrenched 
 him.self, the weight that he chose to give to it. With 
 her habitual abruptness and rashness, Catherine had 
 been a little hasty in judging of this young man whom 
 she saw for the first time, and in finding in him, from 
 the very first (as her letters to Grimm prove), " intelli- 
 gence and goodness of heart, prudence and measure." 
 He had intelligence, perhaps, but a very singular sort of 
 intelligence, in which prudence and measure were just 
 the qualities which never appeared, and his goodness of 
 heart remained equally problematical. A very pro- 
 nounced tendency to mystical fanaticism seems to have 
 always been the most marked trait of his moral phy- 
 siognomy. Married, later on, to a princess of Baden, 
 he spent the evening of his wedding-day in reading 
 the Book of Esther to his wife, and, concerned in 
 the final coalition against Napoleon, he applied the 
 prophecies of the Apocalypse to the events which 
 were then happening. Now, while he is playing, ap- 
 parently with the utmost sincerity, the part of a fervid 
 lover, he has been trying to set traps for the poor un- 
 suspecting girl, by making her take oral engagements, 
 the sense of which she did not understand. " The fact 
 is," wrote Catherine to her son after the catastrophe, 
 "that the King pretended that Alexandrine had pro- 
 mised him to change her religion and take the sacra- 
 
428 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 ment in the Lutheran way, and that she had given him 
 her hand over it. . . . She told me, with the candour 
 and naivete natural to her, that he had told her that on 
 the coronation day she would have to take the sacra- 
 ment with him, and that she had replied : ' Certainly, if 
 I can, and if grandmamma consents.' And after that he 
 spoke to her about it again, and she always referred him 
 to me. I asked her if she had given her hand to the 
 King by way of promise on this point. At that she 
 cried with a sort of instinctive fright : ' Never in my 
 Hfe!'" 
 
 A sort of false understanding had thus been created, 
 which the reassuring declarations showered by Zubof 
 and his companion on the Empress, in regard to the 
 state of affairs, had kept up to the very day of the 
 betrothal. Both sides had counted on the last moment 
 for carrying everything before them and " patching up " 
 the ceremony, as Markof expressed it. But, the moment 
 having come, both parties found themselves at a dead 
 stand : the signature demanded by the Empress assert- 
 ing itself on one side, and the pretended engagements 
 of Paul's daughter, put forward by the prince, on the 
 other. Zubof had imagined that Gustavus would not 
 dare to absent himself from the ceremony. He dared, 
 and Catherine declared next day that the night of the 
 nth and 12th of July, 1762, when her life and fortune 
 were at stake, had been less cruel and distressing to her. 
 
 II. 
 
 She recovers herself, however, immediately, and does 
 not yet give up hope. The metropolitan of Novgorod, 
 sent for in such haste, forced to cover two hundred 
 versts in one day, in order to respond to the sovereign's 
 appeal, has bowed for hour after hour under the weight 
 of his priestly vestments and his fatigue ; the assembled 
 court has yawned till ten o'clock in the evening, waiting 
 for the great event, and the ball which is to follow: 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 
 
 429 
 
 these are but minor miseries. The energetic sovereign 
 sets negotiations on foot again at once, and requires her 
 grand-daughter to be present at another ball, which is to 
 be given on the occasion of her birthday, and at which 
 Gustavus is expected to appear. As the poor princess 
 begs to be allowed to hide her eyes, red this time with 
 tears not easily dried, she receives a scrap of paper with 
 these lines : " Why do you weep .■" What is put off is 
 not lost. Wash your eyes with ice and your ears too, 
 and take Bestujef's drops. Nothing is lost. It is I 
 who was ill yesterday. You are vexed about the delay : 
 that is all." 
 
 The ball takes place, Alexandra Pavlovna comes, but 
 the Gustavus that she meets is no longer the amorous 
 prince ; a militant Lutheran has taken his place. The 
 rupture is now final. Three years later Alexandra 
 Pavlovna marries the Archduke Joseph of Austria, and 
 dies soon after (poor frail creature, fated never to taste 
 of happiness) in childbirth. Though she shows no 
 signs of it, Catherine is quite overcome by this trial. 
 Her prestige once compromised, her assurance for the 
 first time impaired, it seems as if the very sources of her 
 life are invaded. She sees a comet, and declares that 
 it is a sign of her approaching end. They remind her 
 that formerly she refused to believe in these super- 
 stitions ; " Yes, formerly ! " she answers sadly. Colics, 
 which she has always suffered from under the stress of 
 violent emotions, now never leave her. Sores break out 
 on her legs. Another adventurer, the famous Lambro- 
 Cazzioni, whom Admiral Ribas has introduced to her, 
 and whose advice she takes as doctor after having em- 
 ployed him as corsair in the Archipelago, recommends 
 her to bathe her feet in iced water. Thereupon she is 
 threatened with congestion and apoplexy. At the 
 beginning of November, however, she feels better. On 
 the 5 th of that month, having learnt from a vessel of 
 LiJbeck of the retreat of General Moreau across the 
 Rhine, she sends the famous note to Cobenzl : " I hasten 
 to announce to his excellent Excellency that the excel- 
 
430 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 lent troops of the excellent court have completely 
 beaten the French." That evening at the Hermitage 
 she is very gay, and Leon Naryshkin, who comes in 
 disguised as a street-seller, amuses her greatly. She 
 retires, however, earlier than usual, saying that she has 
 got a colic by laughing so much. Next day she rises at 
 her usual hour, converses for some time with the favour- 
 ite, works with her secretaries, then, dismissing the last 
 one whom she has summoned, she tells him to await 
 her orders in the ante-room. After waiting an unusual 
 time, the man begins to be alarmed. The faithful Zotof 
 ventures, after half-an-hour, to go into the bedroom. 
 The Empress is not there, nor is she in the dressing- 
 room. He sounds an alarm, the attendants hasten in, 
 and after searching everywhere they find her in the 
 closet, rigid, her face convulsed, foaming at the mouth, 
 the death-rattle already in her throat. 
 
 A legend states that she had recently placed there a 
 piece of furniture brought from Warsaw among the 
 spoils of Poland : the throne of Poniatowski. It is a 
 vile and filthy idea. Only a " Catherinized Princess of 
 Zerbst," as Joseph called her, could have had such 
 an idea. A daughter of Peter the Great would have 
 remembered that on that throne, before the crowned 
 lover, who had never deserved this deadly insult, other 
 kings had sat, kings who had held the fate of Russia in 
 their mighty hands : Batory, the rude Transylvanian, 
 then Sigismund Vasa, and his son Ladislas. And now 
 the piece of gilded wood, the symbol profaned and 
 degraded by her, avenged itself. It was here that 
 death vanquished the victor. 
 
 Carried into her bedroom, stretched on a mattress at 
 the foot of her bed, she agonized for thirty-seven hours 
 without recovering consciousness. When the physicians 
 had declared that there was no more hope, it was observed 
 that Paul was there. Twenty couriers sent by the friends 
 of to-morrow had been sent to seek him at Pavlovsk. 
 A whole cortege had welcomed him at the outskirts of 
 the capital. But in the palace, still peopled by the 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 431 
 
 courtiers of Cariierine, and where, but a day before, he 
 counted for so little, in the stupefaction in which the 
 unlooked-for catastrophe had cast the whole crowd of 
 men and women, to whom it seems as if the end of the 
 world had come, his presence had not been noticed by 
 any one. An eye-witness, Shishkof, the writer of some 
 curious memoirs, who had come that day to pay court, 
 as usual, to the favourite, gives us in a few expressive 
 strokes an image of the anguish and stupor of this 
 moment. Entering the audience-chamber, he is amazed 
 to find it deserted. Only Lambro-Cazzioni is there, 
 motionless, pale as death, his eyes wide-open and seeing 
 nothing. He answers not a word when spoken to ; he 
 never moves, he looks like a wax figure. Then Nicholas 
 Zubof, one of the brothers of the favourite, appears : 
 he walks like an automaton, and seems to have also 
 lost his tongue. Shishkof decides to beat a retreat. 
 On the staircase he meets Gribovski ; he is about to 
 ask him what has happened ; but he himself becomes 
 voiceless, he cannot get a word out of his lips. He 
 begins to tremble, he knows not why, and his terror 
 increases when he sees that Gribovski also is trembling, 
 and that his lips move without uttering a sound. 
 Each goes his way, without having exchanged a 
 single word. When Shishkof has got out of doors, he 
 begins to run. He returns to his house shivering with 
 fever,' and takes to bed without having learnt what has 
 happened. 
 
 But Paul does not waste his time. While Rogerson, 
 Zotof, la Pierekussihina, Zubof, press about the dying 
 woman, trying to alleviate her sufferings, wiping away 
 the bloody foam from her lips, he is busy in the next 
 room with Bezborodko. He searches in the Empress's 
 writing-desk, and turns over the papers. The general 
 rumour is that he comes upon a will setting him 
 aside ; together with an explanatory manifesto, counter- 
 signed by two popular heroes, Rumiantsof and Suvo- 
 rof And the Pravda voli monarshe'i (law of sovereign 
 will), established by Peter the Great, remains in force, 
 
432 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 by which the monarch has absolute power over the 
 succession to the throne. 
 
 Does Paul really come upon this terrible document at 
 this moment ? Yes, according to the legend. He dis- 
 covers an envelope tied with black ribbon, bearing this 
 inscription : " To be opened after my death, in the 
 council." Without speaking, he looks at Bezborodko, 
 who, in equal silence, turns his eyes towards a fire 
 burning on the hearth, which had been lit, perhaps, only 
 the other morning, by Catherine her.self. 
 
 So far the legend ; all that is known to history is that, 
 a few weeks later, Suvorof is in complete disgrace, and 
 Rumiantsof, on learning of the death of the great 
 Empress and the accession of her son, dies suddenly 
 of an apoplectic fit. Among the papers of Catherine 
 which are still preserved there is a plan for the settle- 
 ment of the succession, and Paul is named as heir to 
 the throne. But it is of early date, contemporary, in 
 all probability, with the legislative commission (1767). 
 
 The accession of Paul is effected without difficulty, 
 and, outside the court, the effect produced by the death 
 of her into whose heritage he enters is far from corre- 
 sponding with the impression so eloquently rendered by 
 Shishkof. Langeron notes in his memoirs : " When I 
 received the official information, I made my regiment, 
 as I was ordered, take oath of allegiance to the 
 Emperor Paul. I was astonished by the indifference 
 with which the soldiers and officers of the army received 
 the news. They showed neither sorrow nor regret " 
 We have already observed, that though Catherine took 
 victory on pay, according to a courtly French volunteer, 
 and in spite of the military air of her whole reign, she 
 was not popular with the army, and the Russian people 
 as a whole were some time in realizing that, with her, 
 it buried a past glory which was not soon to live again. 
 Europe at that moment had no time to think of what 
 was happening at St. Petersburg : the very day when 
 the Empress heaved her last sigh, with the consoling 
 vision of the triumph of the coalition over the revo- 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 433 
 
 lutionary armies, a general other than Moreau crossed 
 the bridge of Areola in a storm of enthusiasm, which 
 prophesied of AusterHtz. 
 
 III. 
 
 The gratitude of Russia was slow in manifesting 
 itself, even in the erection of a monument worthy of the 
 modern Semiramis. Catherine, indeed, while she was 
 living, had refused to receive any such honours. " I 
 will not have a monument," she wrote to Grimm, 
 September 20, 1783, "and if the divine (Reiffenstein) 
 dreams of one, 1 do not grudge him the pleasure, but it 
 .shall never be carried out with my consent. The squares 
 at St. Petersburg are already crowded." She discouraged 
 statues, and professed to tolerate caricatures ; she was 
 the first to laugh over them, sometimes a rather forced 
 laugh, as in another letter to the "fag": "In Holland 
 they have made a medal, where the Queen-Empress and 
 the Empress of Russia are sitting together in a chariot, 
 and the King of Prussia is on the driver's seat. They 
 are asked where they are going, and they reply : ' Where 
 the driver likes to take us.' It seemed to me very 
 amusing. It only lacks truth or the music of a French 
 comic opera, the former to be piquant, the latter to be 
 an absolute platitude." Sometimes, indeed, she was 
 moved to anger, and caused certain designs, whose 
 licence and obscenity justly seemed to her to pass all 
 bounds, to be burnt by the hangman. A great quantity 
 of them are to be seen in contemporary collections : for 
 the most part they defy description, like that " Supper 
 of Catherine," the inscription on which may be thus 
 paraphrased : " Since you are so fond of men, eat their 
 flesh and drink their blood ; " or like that other, which 
 represents the Empress with one foot on Warsaw, the 
 other on Constantinople, covering with her vast skirts 
 all the princes of Europe, the Pope included. But 
 clpubtless she imagined that after her death some 
 
 F F 
 
434 PRIVATE LIFE.— COURT LIFE 
 
 Falconet, perhaps some Russian Falconet, would do for 
 her what she had done for Peter the Great. Employed 
 to paint the portrait for the capitulary hall of the Order 
 of St. George, Lampi placed a bust of the great Tsar in 
 the background of his canvas, with this inscription : 
 " What he began, she accomplished." 
 
 Falconet was late in coming. In 1848, some poor 
 German refugees settled at Saratof took the first 
 step, by setting on a modest pedestal the figure of 
 the sovereign to whom their fathers owed so much. 
 The gratitude of the direct heirs of a glory which 
 filled Europe for a quarter of a century was only 
 expressed in 1883, and then only by the erection 
 of a monument which is more pompous and less 
 happy. Set up in St. Petersburg, in the middle of a 
 vast square which stretches between the Imperial 
 Library, the Anitchkof Palace, the present abode of 
 the Tsar, and the Alexander Theatre, M. Mikieshin's 
 work is somewhat unattractive in aspect. With her 
 attitude, which is that of a person walking, and her 
 sceptre in her hand, the Empress looks as if she were 
 following a procession, carrying a candle. The plinth 
 of the column, which is done in imitation of the monu- 
 ment of Frederick at Berlin, is an attempt to do in 
 bronze something like what we have attempted to do 
 here. The principal figures in the Empress's entourage 
 are there : Patiomkin, with one foot on the Turkish 
 turban ; Orlof, the conqueror of Tchesme, and Rumian- 
 tsof the conqueror of Kagoul, the Princess Dashkof, 
 Betzki, and Dierjavin. But the bronze has done in- 
 justice to the artist's conception, the figures are awkward 
 and uncouth, the conqueror of the Crimea looks ill 
 rather than triumphant, the fierce Balafrd seems to be 
 doing penance. The ensemble of the monument calls 
 up the notion of those little bells that used to be seen on 
 every table, a Napoleon with folded arms for a handle. 
 
 Bronze and marble have alike done injustice to the 
 memory of Catherine. Printing ink has done her 
 better service : the sole monument worthy of her up to 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN 435 
 
 the present is that which the pubHcations of the Imperial 
 Historical Society of Russia have raised to her. But 
 this is but a collection of materials. " Happy the writer 
 of the future who shall write the life of Catherine H.," 
 said Voltaire. I do not pretend to this good fortune : I 
 have but endeavoured to open up a path, in which I am 
 certain that others will come after me. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 
 London & Bungay. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS 
 
 (CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA) 
 
 The Times. — " This book is based on the confessions of 
 the Empress herself; it gives striking pictures of the con- 
 dition of the contemporary Russia which she did so much 
 to mould as well as to expand. . . . Few stories in history 
 are more romantic than that of Catherine II. of Russia, 
 with its mysterious incidents and thrilling episodes ; few 
 characters present more curious problems." 
 
 Spectator. — " A singularly vivid picture of the Empress. 
 The atmosphere of her Court, too, has been rendered with 
 great success.'' 
 
 Guardian. — " M. Waliszewski has produced a book which 
 deserves very high praise." 
 
 Bookman. — -"A fascinating character for psychological study, 
 and M. Waliszewski has made the most of his opportunities 
 in this entertaining yet becomingly serious book." 
 
 Observer. — " M. Waliszewski's bright and eminently readable 
 biography of one of the most striking figures in modern 
 European history." 
 
 Westminster Gazette. — " A marvellous picture of the Russian 
 Court of those days. . . . M. Waliszewski's life of 
 Catherine is incomparably the best that has appeared, and 
 has been very well translated." 
 
livening Standard. — "While possessing much importance 
 as a valuable addition to our knowledge of an interest- 
 ing period of Russian history, the book will be welcomed 
 chiefly as a most careful and thorough study of the 
 character of one of the most extraordinary of women 
 . . . full of the highest interest, which is heightened by 
 the frankness with which Catherine acknowledges her own 
 foibles and weaknesses in her correspondence." 
 
 Morning Post. — " One of the best accounts of the famous 
 Empress that have yet appeared." 
 
 The World. — "The historical and political portions of the 
 book are full of interest, and important to such readers 
 as desire to understand the growth and mechanism of the 
 vast empire which has witnessed so many tragedies of the 
 base and sordid kind." 
 
 Truth. — " A book which will certainly and deeply interest 
 you." 
 
 St. James's Budget. — " To say that the book is interesting is 
 to give a very poor idea of it : for it is entertaining 
 and attractive from end to end." 
 
 Sketch. — "An intimate and a very interesting study from the 
 impartial pen of M. Waliszewski." 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 21, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.