The people dispersed. The great returned to their palaces, and also
Alexis Razumovsky, who, that he might not excite the anger of the
empress, had likewise attended the execution, returned to the imperial
palace.
Elizabeth was standing before a large Venetian mirror, scrutinizing a
toilet which she had to-day changed for the fourth time.
“Well,” she asked of Alexis, as he entered, “was it an interesting
spectacle? Was the handsome countess soundly whipped?”
And, while so asking, she was smilingly occupied in attaching a purple
flower to her hair.
“She was flayed,” laconically replied Alexis. “Her blood streamed down a
back that was as red as your beautiful lips, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth offered him her lips to kiss.
“Now,” she jestingly asked, “who is now the handsomest woman in my
realm?”
“You are and always were!” responded Alexis, embracing her.
“And now tell me,” said she, with curiosity, “what did this proud
countess do? How did she behave, what did she say?”
Alexis, seating himself upon a tabouret at her feet, related to her all
about the fair Eleonore, and what a terrible curse she uttered.
“Ah, nonsense!” replied Elizabeth, shrugging her shoulders, “How can
one make such a stupid prayer to God! I shall never marry, and therefore
never have a daughter to be scourged with the knout.”
But while thus speaking, her eyes suddenly became fixed and her cheek
pale. She laid her trembling hand upon her heart--tears gushed from her
eyes.
Under her heart she had felt a movement of a new and mysterious life!
Heaven itself seemed to contradict her words! Elizabeth felt that she
was a mother, and Eleonore’s words now filled her with awe and terror!
Fainting, she sank into Razumovsky’s arms.
A few weeks later, a great and magnificent court festival was celebrated
at the imperial palace at St. Petersburg. It was not enough that
Elizabeth had chosen a successor in the person of Peter, Duke of
Holstein, she must also give this successor a wife, that the throne
might be fortified and assured by a numerous progeny.
She chose for him the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the young and beautiful
Sophia Augusta, who, embracing the Greek religion, received the name of
Catharine.
It was the marriage festival of this young German princess with the heir
to the Russian throne which was celebrated in the imperial palace at St.
Petersburg--a festival of splendor and enthusiasm, as it was attended
by two women of the most exciting beauty, Elizabeth the present and
Catharine the future empress--the one gorgeous with the splendor of
the present, the other irradiated with the glory of the future. People
looked at the fair youthful face of Catharine, and sought to read in her
majestic high forehead the hopes that Russia might cherish of her! It
was, therefore, a festival of the present and future that was there and
then celebrated, and the magnates humbly prostrated themselves before
this new star, and threw themselves upon the earth before the ever-new
sun of imperial majesty which shone upon them in the person of
Elizabeth.
Catharine with a joyful spirit and a proud smile laid her hand in that
of Peter, and as she stepped with him to the altar she thought: “I do
this that I may one day be empress! and as I can reach that position in
no other way--well, then, let them call me the wife of this under-aged
boy! I will suffer it until the time when I shall no longer suffer, but
command.”
With such thoughts did Catharine become the wife of the Grand-duke
Peter, who, as he with a loud and solemn “yes” vowed eternal truth to
his young wife, looked at the Countess Woronzow, and both exchanged a
stolen smile and a glowing glance of love.
“They may henceforth call this proud Catharine my wife,” thought Peter,
“but I shall never love her, as my heart will ever belong to my dear
Woronzow! But Elizabeth has decided that Catharine shall be my wife.
I accommodate myself to her command, and obey now, that I may one day
command! But then woe to the wife this day forced upon me!”
And when the ceremony was ended, the new-married pair received with
smiling faces and radiant glances the congratulations of the court,
which in loud and ecstatic exclamations commended the love and happiness
of this young princely pair.
On the same day a second marriage was celebrated in this same imperial
palace, perhaps not so splendid, but certainly a happier one, for it
was love that united the two--love had overcome Elizabeth’s aversion
to marriage, and decided her to raise her dear Alexis Razumovsky to the
position of her husband--love, and also a little superstition! As the
son born to Elizabeth some months previously had died soon after its
birth, and in this dispensation Elizabeth recognized the punishment of
heaven in disapproval of her connection with Alexis, she shudderingly,
remembered the words spoken by Eleonore Lapuschkin, and her heart was
filled with fear for the children which the future might bring her.
“I will destroy the curse which this Countess Lapuschkin has pronounced
against my children,” thought Elizabeth, as she now for the second time
felt herself to be a mother. “If God blesses my children, the curse
of no human being can affect them, and this revengeful prayer of the
countess will have no more power when the priest of God has consented
and blessed the child now quietly reposing under my heart!”
This was the reason why Elizabeth resolved to marry Alexis Razumovsky;
this was the reason why she, in a solitary chapel, accompanied only by
Lestocq and the priest, stood before the marriage-altar with Alexis, and
became his wife.
She breathed freer when the priest had pronounced his blessing upon her;
an oppressive weight was lifted from her heart; the child she was about
to bear was saved and sheltered, and Eleonore’s curse had no longer any
power over it!
On the next day Elizabeth appointed Alexis field-marshal, and raised him
in the ranks of the nobility.
“We must at any rate give our son a respectable father,” said she. “I
hope we shall have a son, who will be as beautiful as his father; whom
I will overload with honors, and place high above all the magnates of my
court. Ah, a son! No daughter, Alexis!”
“And why no daughter?” smilingly asked Razumovsky.
Elizabeth shuddered, and, clinging to her beloved, whispered:
“Has not Eleonore Lapuschkin said, ‘Give her a daughter, and let her,
before the eyes of her mother, experience what I now suffer!’ Oh,
Alexis, wish me therefore no daughter! I shall always tremble for her!”
And God seemed to have listened to the anxious prayer of the empress.
Again she bore a son, but again the son died shortly after his birth.
“It is very sad to lose a child, and especially a son,” sighed
Elizabeth, and involuntarily she thought of Anna, that poor mother whom
she had robbed of her son, that he might grow up in eternal joyless
imprisonment, that he might be morally murdered, and from a man be
converted into an idiot!
“This is God’s vengeance!” whispered something in her breast, but
Elizabeth shrank from these low whisperings of her conscience, and she
tremulously said: “I will not listen to it! Away, ye intrusive thoughts!
I am an empress--for me there are no crimes, no laws! An empress is
exalted above all law, and whatever she does is right! Away, away,
therefore, ye troublesome thoughts! This boy Ivan must remain in prison;
I cannot restore him to his mother. May she bear other children, and
then new joys will bloom for her!”
But these thoughts would not be thus be banished, they constantly
haunted her; they left not her nightly couch; they constantly renewed
their dismal, awful whisperings; and this all-powerful empress would
loudly shriek with mortal anguish, and she was dismayed at being left
alone with her thoughts.
“I will have society around me,” said she, “and will never be alone; the
people about me shall always laugh and jest, to cheer me and distract
my thoughts. Hasten, hasten--call my court; the most jovial men shall
be most welcome! And, do you hear, above all things, bring me wine, the
best and strongest wine. When I drink plenty of it, I shall again become
gay and happy; it drives away all cares, and renders the heart light and
free!”
And they came, the merriest gentlemen of the court; it also came, the
strong, fiery wine; and, after an hour, Elizabeth’s brow beamed with
renewed pleasure, while her heavy tongue with difficulty stammered:
“How beautiful it yet is to be an empress--for an empress there is only
joy and delight, and endless pleasures!”