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!”