The new empress, Elizabeth, had rewarded and punished, and with that
thought she had finished her imperial labors and forever dismissed all
her difficulties.
“I have shaken off my imperial burdens,” said she to her friends;
“let us now begin to enjoy the imperial pleasures. Ah! we shall lead
a pleasant life in this splendid palace. My first law is this: No one
shall speak to me of government business or state affairs. I will have
nothing to do with such things, do you hear! For what purpose do I have
my ministers and my council? Go you with such wearisome questions to my
grand chancellor, Tscherkaskoy, and my minister, Bestuscheff; they shall
govern for me. I can demand that of them, as I pay them for it. If you
seek an office, if you have invented any thing for promoting the welfare
of the country, if you have found any official abuse, or discovered
any conspiracy, then go to Bestuscheff or to Woronzow, or also to
Lestocq--spare me! But when you have a grace to demand, when you need
money, when you desire a title or orders, then come to me, and I will
satisfy your wishes. We have much money, many ribbons for orders, and
as for titles, they are the cheapest and most convenient of all, as they
cost absolutely nothing. Ah, a jest just now occurs to me. We will
amuse ourselves a little to-day. We will have a title-auction. Call our
courtiers, attendants, and servants. We shall have a gay time of it! We
will have a game at dice. Bring the dice! I will at each throw announce
the prize, and the dice shall then decide who is the winner!”
They all gathered around her; the noble gentlemen of her body-guard,
consisting of the grenadiers who had been raised to nobility and created
officers at the commencement of her reign. They came noisily, with
singing and laughing, and saluting their empress, Elizabeth, with a
thundering _viva_.
“First of all, let us drink your health, sir captain!” said she,
ordering wine to be brought, as well as brandy of the costly sort she
had lately received as a present from the greatest distiller of her
capital, to which she herself was very partial.
Loudly clinked their glasses, loudly was shouted a _viva_ to the
empress, which Elizabeth laughingly accepted by offering them her hands
to kiss, and was delighted when they fell into ecstasies over the beauty
and freshness of those hands.
“Now, silence, gentlemen of the body-guard!” she cried. “I, your
captain, command attention!”
And, when silence was established, she continued: “We will have a game
at dice, and titles and orders, gold and brandy, shall be the prizes for
which you shall contend!”
“Ah, that is magnificent, that is a glorious game!” exclaimed they all.
“The first prize,” said Elizabeth, “is the position of privy councillor!
Now take the dice, gentlemen!”
They began to throw the dice, with laughter and shouting when they had
thrown a high number--with lamentations and stamping of the feet when it
was a low one.
In the meanwhile Elizabeth listlessly stretched herself upon a divan,
and laughingly said to Alexis, who sat by her side: “Oh, it is very
pleasant to be an empress. Only see how happy they all are, and it is I
alone who make them so; for out of these common soldiers I have
created respectable officers, and have converted serfs into barons and
gentlemen! I thank you, Alexis, for impelling me to become an empress.
It is a noble pleasure, and I should now be unwilling to return to that
still and uneventful life that formerly pleased me so well! I will so
manage that the Empress Elizabeth shall be as little troubled with labor
and business as the princess, and the empress can doubtlessly procure
for herself more pleasures than could the princess! Yes, certainly, I
will now remain what I am, am empress by the grace of God!”
A thundering shout and loud laughter here interrupted Elizabeth.
The dice had decided! The cook of the empress had won, and become a
councillor of state.
Elizabeth laughed. “These dice are very witty,” said she, “for certainly
the cook must be a privy councillor! I establish you in your dignity,
Feodor, your title is recognized! Now for a new trial. Two thousand
rubles is the prize, which I think of more value than a title!”
There was a zealous pressing and shoving, a pushing and puffing; every
one desired to be the first to get hold of the dice and struggle for the
rich prize. There were many ungentle encounters, many a thrust in the
ribs, many invectives, many a gross, unseemly word; the empress saw all,
heard all, laughed at all, and said to Alexis: “These gentlemen are very
practical! Two thousand rubles are estimated by them at a higher rate
than the proudest title! I comprehend that a title is a nonsensical
thing, of which no real use can be made, but what beautiful dresses can
be bought with two thousand rubles! And that reminds me that you have
not yet told me how you like this dress of mine! You take so little
notice of my toilet, dearest, and yet it is only for you that I change
my dress seven or eight times a day; I would, every hour, please you
better and better.”
“Oh, no dressing is necessary for that,” tenderly responded Alexis; and
stooping, he whispered some words in her ear which pleased her well, and
made her laugh heartily.
Meanwhile the dicing continued. Blind luck scattered her gifts in the
strangest manner; under-officers of the palace attained to high titles,
and high officers with laughing faces won pipes of brandy; barons of the
body-guard made of men who but a few days before had been serfs, were
seen approaching the mirrors with vain coxcombry to see the effect of
orders just won by a cast of the dice, or with greedy avidity pocketing
the rubles which fortune had thrown to them!
It was a jovial and brilliant evening, and, in dismissing her friends,
Elizabeth promised them many repetitions of it.
And she kept her word. Frenzied merry-makings, pleasures and festivals
of the roughest sorts were now the principal occupation of the new
empress. The amusement of her court, the providing it with new festivals
and pleasures, she considered as the first and most important of her
imperial duties; and these alone she endeavored to fulfil.
But who composed her court, and of what elements did it consist?
Elizabeth found the presence of her serious official councillors very
tiresome, as they knew not how to make themselves agreeable; she found
the surrounding of herself with the respectable ladies of her court to
be very incommodious, as there might some day be found among them one
with a handsomer or more tasteful toilet than herself, or, indeed, one
who might dare to be of a finer type of beauty than she! She therefore
gladly avoided inviting the distinguished men of her court with
their wives, or the higher class of state officials. It was far more
convenient, far more agreeable, to surround herself with frivolous and
handsome young men. They knew how to laugh and be cheerful, and she was
thus sure that no other lady would be there to dispute with her the palm
of beauty.
Elizabeth was not proud. She cared not whether noble blood flowed in the
veins of those who were invited to her festivals. The youth, beauty, and
agreeable qualities which the empress found in any person, alone decided
the question of their admittance to the court.
Peasants, grooms, soldiers, servants, abandoned reprobates, who by their
beauty had won the favor of the empress, were seen to attain to the
highest stations.
On them were lavished the treasures of the state; they were adorned with
orders and titles, and the magnates bowed to the ground before these
potent favorites of the all-powerful empress, and the people shouted
with transport when their beloved czarina, with her magnificent train
of newly-created noblemen, made her appearance in the streets, and with
gracious smiles returned the humble salutations of her kneeling slaves.
That was the ruler in perfect accordance with Russian ideas; they
sympathized with her inclinations and pleasures--she was blood of their
blood and flesh of their flesh! The strangers were at length banished,
and a real Russian sat upon the throne of the czars!
And yet Elizabeth trembled upon her imperial throne, surrounded by the
band of magnates and nobles of whom she could truly say, “I am their
creator--they are my work!” She trembled before those secret daggers,
those lingering poisons, which always surround the imperial Russian
throne as its truest satellites, and lay low many a high-born head; she
trembled before Anna Leopoldowna, who was sighing away her days in the
closed citadel of Riga, and before Anna’s son, the infant Ivan, whom the
Empress Anna in her testament had named as Emperor of all the Russias!
She, indeed, would not work and trouble herself for her country and
her people, this good empress by the grace of God, but yet she would
be empress, that she might be enabled to enjoy life, and no cloud must
obscure the heaven of her earthly glory!
She therefore tore herself for some short hours from the pleasures in
which she was usually immersed, from the arms of her lover, the
object of her deepest interest; her own safety and her own peace were
concerned. That was well worth the effort to take the pen once more in
hand, and affix the troublesomely long name of Elizabeth to some few
official documents.
She consequently signed the command to bring back Anna Leopoldowna and
her husband from the citadel of Riga to the interior of Russia, and
place them in strict confinement in Raninburg.
She also signed another order, and that was to rend the young Ivan from
the arms of his mother, to take him to the castle of Schlusselburg, and
there to hold him in strict imprisonment, to grow up without teachers,
or any kind of instruction, and without the least occupation or
amusement.
“I well know,” said she, with a sigh, as she signed the document--“I
well know that it would be better for this Ivan to be executed for
high-treason than to remain in this condition, but I lack the courage
for it. It is so horrible to kill a poor, innocent child!”
“And in this way we attain our end more safely,” said Lestocq, with a
smile. “Your majesty has sworn to take the life of no one; very well,
you keep your word as to physical life--we do not destroy the body but
the spirit of this boy Ivan! We raise him as an idiot, which is the
surest means of rendering him innoxious!”
Elizabeth had signed the order, and her command was executed. They took
from Anna Leopoldowna her last joy, her only consolation--they took away
her son, whose smiling face had lighted her prison as with sunbeams,
whose childishly stammered words had sounded to her as the voice of an
angel from heaven.
They took the poor weeping child to Schlusselburg, and his crushed and
heart-broken parents first to Raninburg, and finally to the fortress
Kolmogory, situated upon an island in the Dwina, near to that gulf
which, on account of its never-melting ice, has obtained the name of the
_White Sea_.
No one could rescue poor Anna Leopoldowna from that fortress--no one
could release her son, the poor little Emperor Ivan, from Schlusselburg!
They were rendered perfectly inoffensive; Elizabeth had not killed them,
she had only buried them alive, this good Russian empress!
And, nevertheless, she still trembled upon her throne, she still felt
unsafe in her imperial magnificence! She yet trembled on account of
another pretender, the Duke Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein, who, as the
son of an elder daughter of Peter the Great, had a more direct claim to
the throne than Elizabeth herself.
That no party might declare for him and invite him to Russia, her
ministers advised the empress herself to send for him, and declare him
her successor. Elizabeth followed this advice, and the young Duke Peter
Ulrich of Holstein accepted her call. Declining the crown of Sweden,
he professed the Greek religion in St. Petersburg, was clothed with the
title of grand prince by Elizabeth, and declared her successor to the
throne of the czars.
Elizabeth could now undisturbedly enjoy her imperial splendor. The
successor to the throne was assured, Anna Leopoldowna languished in the
fortress of Kolmogory, and in Schlusselburg the little Emperor Ivan
was passing his childish dream-life! Who was there now to contest her
rights--who would dare an attempt to shake a throne which rested upon
such safe pillars of public favor, and which so many new-made counts and
barons protected with their broad shoulders and nervous arms?
Elizabeth had no more need to govern, no more occasion to tremble. She
let sink the hand which, with a single stroke of the pen, could give
laws to millions of men, which could give them interminable sorrow and
endless torments; she again took the heavy imperial crown from her
head, replacing it with wreaths of myrtles and ever-fragrant roses. She
permitted Tscherkaskoy to govern, and Bestuscheff to sell to England the
dearest interests of Russia. She permitted her ministers to govern with
unrestricted power, and was rejoiced when no one came to trouble her
about affairs of state or the interests of her people.