gift. It was a treatise by a professor at Halle which discussed
at tedious length the differences between religious creeds. He
had prepared to go with this book a memorandum of instructions for
his daughter’s use. It was headed: “Pro Memoria, so ich meiner
gemahlen mitgegeben.” Somewhere along the route, how attentively
can be imagined, Fike had read this document, and had written one
of her primmest letters to dear Papa thanking him for his “gracious
instructions.” The first half of the memorandum was taken up with
religious counsel and the second half with her future marriage. The
General’s style is an awkward contrast to the fluent preciosity of his
wife. He addressed his daughter in the third person and outlined her
future duties thus:
“Next to the Empress, her Majesty, she has to respect the Grand Duke
above all as her Lord, Father, and Sovereign; and withal to win by care
and tenderness at every opportunity his confidence and love. Her Lord
and His will are to be preferred to all the pleasures and treasures of
the world; and do nothing which he dislikes or which causes him only a
little pain; and still less to insist on her own will.
“Never to enter into familiarity or badinage, but always have respect
as much as possible.
“To regard the domestics and favorites of her Lord with a gracious
mien; not to demand the services of her Lord but ever to respond to the
favor and love of her Lord.
“To speak with no one alone in the audience chamber and to conduct
herself always according to etiquette there.
“To detest and avoid playing cards for high stakes, which is a mark of
avarice and self-interest.
“To take charge herself of the pocket money which may be given her,
to guard it and to pay it out gradually to a servant on an account,
in order that she may not submit herself to the trusteeship of a
governess; to employ it for her use and pleasure, and with it to do
good, in order that she may win for herself and not for others instead
of her the love and inclination of her dependents.
“To intercede for no one, because one may not understand the laws and a
one-sided report cannot be trusted, and the side discriminated against
becomes a disgruntled enemy; and he whom one helps out with such
intercessions forgets the good deed and goes and sins again.
“Especially to enter into no affairs of government in order not to
irritate the Senate.”
At fifteen Fike was not mature enough to appreciate the irony of this
document and probably she never came to be. The abject submissiveness
which her father thought appropriate to her status as a wife had
certainly never been exemplified by her vivacious mother. She must have
been aware that her father played a minor part in the family life at
Stettin and at Zerbst, but it was a condition in her little world which
from sheer familiarity seemed only natural. What could be more normal
than that the man of the family should be kept in leading strings? Few
girls in her situation would have contrasted her father’s theories with
his actions and Fike certainly did not.
Frederick the Great always kept the delusion that he had played the
chief rôle in this German-Russian marriage. But he over-estimated his
actual part. If Elisabeth had found it necessary to spirit the young
Princess away against his royal will she would have done so. Since it
was not necessary she welcomed his timely and useful aid. At the right
moment Frederick promoted Prince Christian August to the post of Field
Marshal, and after Fike had gone to Russia he helped to reconcile her
father to her conversion. “My good Prince of Zerbst was very restive on
this point,” he wrote. “I had a great deal of trouble in overcoming his
religious scruples. He responded to all my representations with: ‘Meine
Tochter nicht Griechisch werden!’” His struggles died away gradually
under the tactful treatment of his free-thinking King who persuaded
him that Greek and Lutheran were the same. “Lutherisch-Griechisch,
Griechisch-Lutherisch, das gehet an,” the submissive General repeated.
If the King of Prussia said so what else could a Prussian officer reply?
The marriage was made by three women. It was begun by the Princess
of Zerbst and the Empress of Russia and carried through by the
fifteen-year-old Fike who took charge of the campaign herself when
her mother’s tactics failed. None of the men-folk who might have been
expected to influence the situation did so. Those like Lestocq and the
Prince of Zerbst who offered contrary advice were over-ridden. The
others were permitted to play the part of benevolent bystanders.
[Illustration]
V
FIKE BECOMES CATHERINE
“My daughter,” wrote Fike’s father, “is already so well grounded in her
religion that she knows the principles of the true redeeming faith, and
that no one can win or attain it by his own works, vows or the words of
the saints, but that all must proceed alone from the merit of Christ,
the Son of God. Whatever resembles this faith she can herself prove and
accept; the other not.... To compel or persuade my daughter to accept
a strange religion in which she herself finds errors is never to be
advised.... And rather eventually to give up the regency than to suffer
offense in her conscience.”
These solemn words made a deep impression on the girl. The admonitions
which related to her marriage, the Empress, and the Senate were not
so serious. She felt herself able to cope with these concrete forces
but the abstraction called conscience is a more terrifying thing. “I
beseech you,” she wrote, replying to her father in his own vein, “to be
assured that your admonitions and precepts will be forever implanted
within my heart, as is the seed-corn of our holy religion in my soul.
I pray God to give me the strength which I need to withstand the
temptations to which I shall be subjected. Through the prayers of your
Highness and of my dear mother, God will grant me this grace which my
youth and weakness cannot give.”
Fike still believed when she penned these lines that she would be
acceptable in Russia as an Evangelical Grand Duchess. In common with
her God-fearing father she put her trust in the precedent supplied
by the Grand Duchess Charlotte. Their trust was misplaced. Peter the
Great was liberal in religious matters, but his daughter was orthodox.
Peter did not himself go to church and took pleasure in exposing the
sham miracles of the wonder-working Virgins of Russia who were able to
shed real tears before their worshippers. His daughter did not inherit
his skeptical spirit. She was loyal to the Russian Church and a lover
of miracles. Her mother’s will provided that no one should occupy the
Russian throne who did not profess the orthodox faith. Fike perceived
the finality of this at once. “From my entrance into the empire,” she
said, “I had been firmly convinced that the heavenly crown could not
be separated from the earthly one.” On the threshold of her new life
she was plunged into a conflict with her conscience. She wrestled with
temptation and the scars of her struggle remained with her through life.
“The change of religion,” wrote Mardefeld to King Frederick, “gives the
Princess infinite pain and her tears flow abundantly when she is alone
with persons of whom she is not suspicious. Nevertheless ambition is
gaining finally the upper hand.” Remembering the religious conflict
of his own youth, Frederick was alarmed. But he put his faith in the
Princess Johanna Elisabeth. “It only remains, Madame, for me to beg
you to overcome the repugnance of your daughter for the Greek Church,
after which you will have crowned your work.”
Fike was converted by Simon Todorsky. Having studied four years at
the University of Halle, at that time a hot-bed of theology, he knew
the language of Luther well. What was more to the point in dealing
with the young person from Zerbst, Todorsky was familiar with the
subtleties of higher criticism which the intellectuals of Halle had
recently invented. These were things of which good Pastor Wagner,
who, after all, was only an army chaplain, had never even dreamed.
With the assistance of Todorsky’s hair-splitting, Fike was able to
see that there was very little real difference between the Lutheran
and the Greek Church. If only her father had not continued to harry
her conscience. “Thou shouldest not take this trial frivolously,”
he wrote, “must search thyself with care whether thou art really in
thy heart inspired by inclination; or whether, perhaps, without thy
being aware of it, the marks of favor shown thee by the Empress and
other high-placed persons have influenced thee in that direction. We
human beings often see only that which is before our eyes. But God in
His infinite justice searches the heart and our secret motives, and
manifests accordingly to us His mercy.”
As the awful shades of Judgment Day closed about her, Fike fell ill.
Once before in childhood she had succumbed to an attack of religious
terror complicated by pneumonia. In Russia she repeated the experience.
“The physicians ascribe the disease,” wrote her mother, “to the
inflaming of the blood caused by the hard journey.” For twenty-seven
days the child hovered between life and death. In unconsciousness and
delirium she made the decision which her father had urged her to weigh
so carefully. Believing that Fike might die, the Princess suggested
that a Lutheran clergyman should be called to her bedside. But the
sick girl said, coming for a moment to consciousness, “Why? Call Simon
Todorsky rather. I would like to speak with him.” It was a triumph of
diplomacy, anyway presence of mind which was to carry Fike through
every crisis of her life.
During her convalescence, Fike resumed her lessons with the Russian
priest, a fact which her mother carefully concealed from the Prince
of Zerbst. As soon as she was able to hold a pen, she wrote a stiff
respectful letter to her father asking permission to change her
religion. She sent her greetings to Uncle Johann Ludwig and promised to
write to him by the next post. “My hand is still very weak,” she said,
“so that I cannot do it to-day.” The two old Puritans at Zerbst with
their white wigs and pious ways were vastly important to Fike although
nobody else felt that they had to be conciliated.
In after years, when she had become Catherine the Great, Fike made
light of the whole business of conversion. When her daughter-in-law had
to go through the same experience, she spoke of it merely as a routine
chore. “As soon as we have her here we shall go about the conversion.
In order to convince her, we shall need about fourteen days. How much
time will be needed to teach her to read the confession of faith
correctly and distinctly in Russian, I do not know.” The fourteen
days were taken from Fike’s own experience; it was after two weeks of
Todorsky’s hair-splitting dogma that she had succumbed to pneumonia and
the temptings of ambition. Though she could speak of her conversion so
casually in after life it had almost killed her at the time. The great
crimes of which she was accused as Empress made less impression on her
conscience. As Catherine the Great she identified herself with Henri
le Grand of France, that brilliant wayward monarch who changed his
religion for the sake of a crown. It was only one of many ways in which
she tried to justify her departure from her father’s church.
On the twenty-eighth of June, pale from a three days’ fast, Fike was
confirmed and re-christened. The Empress had a gown made for her
exactly like her own, of red _gros de Tour_ worked with silver. Her
godmother was the aged Abbess of the Novodeviche Convent, bowed with
years and steeped in sanctity. The Empress with her fondness for
tableaux, had arranged all. Krazny, the gorgeous red so beloved by the
Russians, dominated the scene. Kneeling on a big square cushion, the
convert recited the creed in a clear unfaltering voice. She had learned
it, she says, “by heart, like a parrot.” Indeed she had learned it
twice, for Simon Todorsky, the priest, had taught her the Ukrainian
pronounciation, and Basil Adadurov, the tutor, had taught her the
Russian. For the public ceremony she chose the Russian. As her clear
young voice rang out in the first response, the tears of the assembled
company gushed forth. Fike maintained her self-control, which gave an
impression of deep sincerity and religious fervor and was much praised.
“Her bearing from the moment when she first entered the church,” wrote
her mother, “and throughout the entire ceremony was so full of nobility
and dignity that I should have admired her had she not been to me that
which she is.”
Standing before her in embroidered and bejewelled robes, the
Archbishop of Novgorod intoned: “Wherefore art thou come to the Holy
Orthodox Church of God and what seekest thou from her?” And Fike
recited in stereo-typed phrases a long melodious creed, in which among
other things she professed: “I believe and confess that faith alone
is not sufficient for our justification, but that good works also
which proceed from faith and charity, withal as badges of Christ are
necessary to salvation; without the same faith is dead according to the
testimony of holy writ....
“I believe and confess that the pictures of Christ and the mother of
God, the Virgin Mary, as those of other saints should be preserved and
should be duly venerated, but should not be worshipped.”
Fike’s mother sent an enthusiastic but discreet description of the
ceremony to her spouse. It was a detail to her that her daughter’s name
had been changed, but the girl’s father and her aunts would probably
be hurt. The name Sophie was a good Russian name, none better, but
it happened to be that of the rebellious sister whom Peter the Great
had locked up in a convent. Therefore Elisabeth hated it. So Fike was
baptized Catherine Alexeievna for Elisabeth’s mother and Sophie Auguste
Friedrike ceased to exist. The Princess of Zerbst broke the news to
her husband as tactfully as possible. “In order to seal publicly such
a confirmation,” she wrote, “a name is added; our daughter will be
Catherine and the Alexeievna follows the custom of the country and
means daughter of August; for the name August, according to the dialect
here, can not be rendered other than Alexei.” The Princess of Zerbst
had taken lessons in the Russian language to please the Empress but her
progress had not been so great. It is possible that she believed that
August and Alexei were the same in Russian though probably she knew
better. In any case her little fiction would scarcely be discovered by
the German General. The rumblings from Zerbst and Stettin died down.
The Prince was pleased because his daughter was a Grand Duchess and
addressed her by this sonorous title. The Princess continued to call
her daughter Fike and carped at her husband for adopting the title
of Grand Duchess. “Fike will think that you no longer love her,” she
wrote. But the Prince continued to be respectful. As his daughter had
once trusted him to understand her weakness for beer he now trusted her
to understand his weakness for etiquette. He was swaggering for them
both.
After her confirmation, Catherine Alexeievna followed the Empress from
cloister to cloister, for Elisabeth had come to spend more and more
of her time as a pious pilgrim. She had apartments in the Troitsky
Monastery where she sometimes lived with her court. The Abbot of
Troitsky and the Bishops of Moscow and Petersburg accompanied her
everywhere. With her three priests, she appeared in the box at the
opera and even at masquerade balls. The young Grand Duchess could not
imagine good Pastor Wagner in the rôle of polite escort and cavalier.
Her new church had undreamed-of possibilities of romance. Kiev, which
she visited with her aunt, seemed a kind of orthodox Arabian Nights.
“Here as in all cities which we had touched since Moscow,” she wrote,
“the clergy of Kiev came to meet us. As soon as the church banners were
visible, we left the carriages and entered the city on foot behind
the cross. The Empress betook herself to the Petchersky Cloister and
entered the church containing the wonder-working portrait of the Holy
Virgin said to have been painted by Saint Lukas. Never in my whole life
have I been so impressed as by the magnificent splendor of the church,
in which all the saints’ pictures were covered with gold, silver and
jewels....”
“Toward the end of our stay in Kiev, the Empress visited with us a
monastery where a comedy was to be played. The performance began
at seven in the evening. We had to go through the church to reach
the theatre. The play consisted really of several plays: there were
prologues, ballets, a piece in which Marcus Aurelius had his favorite
hanged, a battle in which Cossacks fought with the Poles, a fishing
scene on the Dnieper, and choruses without number. The Empress held out
until about two o’clock in the morning; then she sent to ask whether
it would not end soon. The answer came back that only half of the
performance had been given but if her Majesty so ordered they would
stop at once. She replied that they should finish soon; they begged
only for permission to burn some fire-works....”
Such was Christianity in Russia: images covered with gold and
silver, pieces about a pagan named Marcus Aurelius, and outbursts of
fire-works. As the pupil of Pastor Wagner, and the daughter of her
father, Catherine could not fail to realize that these things proceeded
from Satan and from Satan alone. She knew though she dared not admit
it that they were idolatrous. And yet she reveled in them. Dr. Martin
Luther had thrown an ink-stand at the Devil when he put his head
through the window. Every true Christian knew the Evil One on sight
and made short shrift of him. The Prince of Zerbst, her father, had
once encountered him. It was during a visit of the Prince at Rome that
the Pope had tempted him to become a Catholic. But the Prince had not
yielded to the blandishments of anti-Christ because, like the heroic
Doctor Luther, he recognized the Wicked One in spite of his pompous
disguise. The Prince of Zerbst returned to his army and his church
unharmed. As a matter of fact it is doubtful whether he had ever seen
Rome and still more doubtful whether the Pope had paid any attention to
an obscure German Protestant. But legend is as good as history if the
legend is believed, and the Prince’s daughter had been brought up to
admire this heroic steadfastness of her father’s. Of course the Russian
Church was like the Lutheran and not the Roman, as Father Todorsky
had explained to her and as she had explained to dear Papa. Catherine
Alexeievna, however, rebaptized in the Greek faith, found it tactful to
conceal a great deal from her father about her new faith and the things
the Russians did in the name of their religion.
2
The Empress’s attachment to the young Princess had been strengthened
by her illness, while the two elder women had been alienated from
each other. When Catherine fell ill the Empress was sojourning in her
Troitsky retreat. The court physician rushed to the sick girl’s aid and
prepared to bleed her. To their astonishment the Princess of Zerbst
forbade the operation. She had always been panicky about blood-letting,
and she stubbornly refused to have her daughter bled. The doctors were
outraged. They sent a messenger in haste to their Empress who could not
believe her ears. She ordered her carriage and her favorite and posted
to Moscow.
Arriving after candle-light, Elisabeth and Razumovsky entered the
sick-room and found the patient unconscious. The Empress seated herself
on the side of the bed, took the girl in her arms, and told the doctors
to go ahead. The mother was summarily excluded from the room and
Lestocq bolted the door. During her illness, Catherine was bled sixteen
times, often as much as four times a day. Her mother’s opposition was
set down by the court as showing a lack of natural maternal affection.
The Empress praised the girl’s courage and presented her with a pair of
ear-rings and a necklace worth twenty-five thousand rubles. She removed
the Princess of Zerbst as head nurse and put the Countess Rumiantsov in
her place. The chasm between the mother and daughter was broadening.
Though hurt by all these slights, the Princess of Zerbst could not
learn by experience. The climax of her tactlessness came at Easter.
Catherine had a piece of blue and silver brocade which Uncle Johann
Ludwig had given to her in parting, a rich fabric woven by one of
the looms of Zerbst. Her mother coveted the piece and at last sent
a messenger to ask for it outright. Catherine resigned her treasure
reluctantly, which the Countess Rumiantsov, who acted as spy as well
as nurse, observed and reported to the Empress. Elisabeth forthwith
sent two gorgeous lengths of stuff to the convalescent girl and openly
expressed her opinion of this thoughtless mother. Before they had been
in Russia two months, Catherine had won an ally in the Empress while
her mother had created in her a bitter enemy.
In the meantime the foreign offices of Prussia, France and Sweden were
leaning hard on the Princess of Zerbst to whom they looked for aid
in forming an alliance with Russia. The Princess was fascinated by
her political mission and did not realize that her mismanagement of
her daughter’s affairs failed to help the cause of Prussia with the
Empress. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bestushev, favored an
alliance with Austria against Prussia. He called the King of Prussia
“predatory” and the King of Prussia called Bestushev “corrupt.” History
has shown that both gentlemen were correct.
Bestushev’s influence with Elisabeth was supreme because he had been
a protégé of her father’s. At fifteen he had been sent abroad and
educated by Peter the Great. He then entered the diplomatic service and
lived for twenty years or more in western Europe. Bestushev was one of
the most versatile and gifted Russians of his day. His name was known
throughout Europe as the inventor of a medicine called Bestushev’s
Drops, which was popularly regarded both as an elixir of life and also
as a healing dose for hysterical ladies. When Catherine the Great
ascended the throne, she bought the formula for Bestushev’s Drops and
published it as a benefaction to the human race. With all her scorn
of doctors she had great respect for Bestushev’s Drops. She used them
always in her own family.
Bestushev’s researches in the black arts had other consequences. He
employed in the department of foreign affairs a German by the name of
Goldbach, who tampered scientifically with mail. In such matters the
Russians supplied the will but they usually employed a German to do the
deed. Goldbach opened the French Ambassador’s letters and read there a
great deal that was not intended for the eyes of the Empress of Russia.
He therefore laid the correspondence before Elisabeth who read that she
was frivolous and indolent and that her chief interest in life was in
changing her costume four or five times a day. She furthermore learned
of the secret correspondence going on between the King of Prussia and
the Princess of Zerbst and of the strong influence which the Princess
was supposed to wield upon herself. It would be mild to say that the
Empress was angry. Bestushev’s method of gaining his end was simple and
successful.
The Empress struck at once. She ordered the French Ambassador to leave
Moscow within twenty-four hours and to make for Riga without even
touching Petersburg. It was the same Chetardie who had provided French
money for her revolution, but he went at once. It was a famous exit.
Bestushev continued quietly to mix the cards. He was now after the head
of the meddling Princess of Zerbst.
At Troitsky the Empress and her train occupied a suite of pleasant
chambers with low ceilings, English clocks, and Dutch stoves. She had
domestic tastes and warm affections and satisfied in this retreat her
desire for a quiet family life. Here and at Monplaisir, where she had
a summer kitchen in which she cooked with her own hands, she lived
her happiest moments. The cosy family atmosphere was interrupted by a
painful explosion which took place between the Empress and the Princess
of Zerbst after Bestushev had pulled the strings quietly to this end.