The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (16 page)

The first week of Lent, I had a very strange encounter with the Grand Duke. One morning while I was in my room with my ladies, who were all very devout, listening to matins being sung in the antechamber, I received a messenger from the Grand Duke. He had sent his dwarf to ask me how I was feeling and to tell me that because it was Lent he would not come to my apartment that day. The dwarf found us all listening to the prayers and strictly observing Lent according to our rite. I communicated to the Grand Duke through his dwarf the usual compliments and he departed. Back in his master’s chamber, the dwarf—either because he was truly impressed by what he had seen or because he wished to encourage his dear lord and master, who was less than devout, to do the same, or out of thoughtlessness—began to praise highly the devout life that reigned in my apartment and with this, he made the Grand Duke very upset with me. The next time I saw the Grand Duke, he began by ignoring me. After I asked him the reason for this, he scolded me severely for what seemed to him the extreme devotion to which I was given. I asked him who had told him about this, whereupon he said that his dwarf was an eyewitness. I told him that I did no more than was proper and that everyone submitted to it, and that one could not disregard it without scandal, but he was of the opposite opinion. This dispute ended as most do, which is to say that each retained his point of view, and His Imperial Highness, having no one else but me with whom to talk during mass, little by little stopped snubbing me.

Two days later I was again distressed. In the morning, while matins were sung in my apartment, Mademoiselle Schenk entered my room utterly distressed and told me that my mother was ill and had fainted. I ran to her immediately and found her lying on a mattress on the floor, but not unconscious. I took the liberty of asking her what was wrong. She told me that she had wished to be bled, that the surgeon had clumsily cut four times—twice on her hands and twice on her feet—and that she had fainted. I knew that she was afraid of bloodletting. I had not known that she wanted to be bled nor why she needed to be; nevertheless, she reproached me for taking little interest in her health and said a number of disagreeable things to me on the subject. I apologized to her as best I could, swearing my ignorance, but seeing that she was in a very bad mood, I was silent and tried to hold back my tears and I left only when she had ordered me to with considerable bitterness. I returned to my room in tears and my ladies wanted to know the cause, which I very simply told them. I visited my mother’s apartment several times during the day, staying briefly so as not to be a burden, which was a major concern of hers, and to which I was so well accustomed that there was nothing I so avoided in my life as being a burden, and I always withdrew as soon as there arose in me the suspicion that I might be a burden and as a result cause boredom. But I know from experience that not everyone has the same principle, because my patience has often been tried by those who do not know when to leave before they have become a burden or induced boredom.

During Lent my mother suffered a real sorrow. Quite unexpectedly, she received the news that her daughter Elisabeth, my younger sister, had died suddenly at the age of three or four years.
³⁸
She was deeply afflicted by this and I mourned as well. One fine morning a few days later, I saw the Empress enter my room. She sent for my mother and went with her into my dressing room, where the two had a long conversation alone, after which they came back into my bedroom, and I saw that my mother’s eyes were very red and tearful as a result of the conversation. I understood that they had discussed the death of Charles VII, Emperor from the House of Bavaria, of which the Empress had just received news. At that time, the Empress was still unallied, and she hesitated between the King of Prussia and the House of Austria, each of which had its partisans. The Empress had had the same grievances against the House of Austria as against France, with whom the King of Prussia was allied, and while the Marquis de Botta, the Minister from the court of Vienna, had been expelled from Russia for unpleasant remarks about the Empress, which at the time had been presented as part of a plot, the Marquis de La Chétardie had also been expelled for the same reasons. I do not know the reason for this conversation, but my mother seemed to take great hope from it and left quite content. At the time, she did not at all lean toward the House of Austria; for my part, I was a very passive spectator in all this, very discreet and almost indifferent.

After Easter, well into spring, I declared to Countess Rumiantseva that I desired to learn to ride a horse; she obtained the Empress’s permission for me. I began to have chest pains on the anniversary of my pleurisy, which I had had upon arriving in Moscow, and I remained extremely thin; the doctors advised me to drink milk and seltzer water every morning. I had my first horseback-riding lesson at Countess Rumiantseva’s country house in the barracks of the Izmailov Regiment. I had already ridden several times in Moscow, but very badly.

In May the Empress went to live in the Summer Palace with the Grand Duke; my mother and I were assigned a stone building as our residence, which was along the Fontanka Canal next to the house of Peter I. My mother occupied one wing of this building and I the other. At this time all the Grand Duke’s visits to me ceased. He had me told by a servant that he was staying too far from my residence to come see me often.

I was fully aware of his lack of interest and how little I was loved. My self-esteem and my vanity were deeply shaken, but I was too proud to complain. I would have felt demeaned if anyone had demonstrated what I could have taken to be pity. Nevertheless, when I was alone I shed many tears, wiped them gently, and then went to amuse myself with my ladies. My mother too treated me with great coldness and formality. I never failed to visit her apartment several times a day. Deep down I felt a great boredom, but I kept myself from talking about it. However, one day Mademoiselle Zhukova noticed my tears and asked me about them; I gave her the best reasons I could, without telling her the true ones. I wanted more than ever to gain the affection of everyone in general, great and small. No one was neglected by me, and I made it a rule to believe that I needed everyone and as a result to act in such a way as to win their goodwill, in which I succeeded.

After a few weeks at the Summer Palace, they began to discuss the preparations for my wedding. The court left to reside at Peterhof, where people were at closer quarters than in the city. The Empress and the Grand Duke resided in the upper story of the house that Peter I had built, my mother and I below, under the Grand Duke’s apartment. We dined with him every day under a tent on the open gallery attached to his apartment; he had supper in our apartments. The Empress was often absent, going to the different country houses that she had here and there. We had a great many outings on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. I saw then clear as day that the Grand Duke’s entourage, and notably his governors, had lost all credibility with and authority over him; his military games, which up until then he had concealed, he now basically enacted in their presence. Count Brümmer and his head tutor saw him almost only in public, to follow in his train. He literally spent the rest of the time in the company of valets in infantile pursuits unbelievable for one his age, such as playing with dolls.

My mother took advantage of the Empress’s absences to take supper in the surrounding countryside and notably at the residence of the Prince and Princess of Hessen-Hamburg. One evening she had gone there on horseback. After supper I was in my room, which was on the same level as the garden with one door leading to it, when the fine weather tempted me, and I proposed to my ladies-in-waiting and my three maids of honor that we take a stroll in the garden. I had no difficulty in persuading them; there were eight of us, my chamber valet making a ninth, and two valets followed us. We walked around until midnight, as innocently as anything. My mother having returned, Mademoiselle Schenk, who had refused to walk with us and scolded our intended outing, could not wait to tell my mother that I had gone out despite her protests. My mother went to bed, and when I returned with my troupe, Mademoiselle Schenk said to me with a gloating air that my mother twice had sent to know if I had come back in, because she wanted to speak to me, and seeing that it was extremely late and tired of waiting, she had gone to bed. I wanted to run immediately to her apartment, but I found her door locked. I told Schenk that she could have sent for me; she claimed that she would not have been able to find us, but all of this was just a ploy to pick a quarrel in order to scold me. I sensed this clearly and went to bed with much uneasiness about what would come the following day. As soon as I was awake, I went to my mother’s apartment and found her in bed. I wanted to approach her to kiss her hand, but she pulled it back with great anger, and scolded me terribly for having dared to go for a walk at night without her permission. I told her that she had not been home. She said the hour had been ungodly, and said everything she could think of to hurt me, apparently to quell my desire for nocturnal outings, but what was certain is that while this walk may have been imprudent, it was the most innocent thing in the world. What hurt me most was that she accused us of having gone up to the Grand Duke’s apartment. I told her that this was an abominable calumny, which made her so angry that she seemed beside herself. In vain I got down on my knees to placate her anger; she called my submission playacting and sent me from the room. I returned to my apartment in tears. At dinnertime I went upstairs with my mother, still very upset, to the Grand Duke, who, seeing my red eyes, asked me what was wrong. I told him truthfully what had happened. This time he took my side and accused my mother of capriciousness and excessive anger. I begged him not to talk to her about it, which he did, and little by little her anger passed, but I was still treated very coldly.

Toward the end of July we returned from Peterhof to the city, where all the preparations were being made for my wedding ceremony.
³⁹
Finally August 21 was fixed by the Empress as the date for the ceremony. As this day approached, I grew more deeply melancholic. My heart did not foresee great happiness; ambition alone sustained me. At the bottom of my soul I had something, I know not what, that never for a single moment let me doubt that sooner or later I would succeed in becoming the sovereign Empress of Russia in my own right. The wedding was celebrated with great pomp and magnificence.

That evening in my apartment I found Madame Kruse, sister of the Empress’s first lady-in-waiting, whom she had just placed with me as first lady-in-waiting. The following day, I noticed that this woman had already struck fear in all my other ladies, because when I went to talk to one of them in my usual manner, she said to me, “In the name of God, do not come near me. We have been forbidden to talk to you in private.” At the same time, my dear spouse paid absolutely no attention to me, but was constantly playing soldier with his valets, drilling them in his room or changing uniforms twenty times a day. I yawned and I was bored, having no one to speak to, or else I appeared in public. The third day after my wedding, which was supposed to be a day of rest, Countess Rumiantseva had me informed that the Empress had excused her from staying with me and that she was going to return to her house with her husband and her children. Neither I nor anyone else greatly regretted this, because she had been the source of much gossip.

The marriage festivities lasted ten days, at the end of which the Grand Duke and I went to reside at the Summer Palace, where the Empress was living, and discussion began about my mother’s departure. I had not seen my mother since my wedding, but she had softened greatly toward me. Toward the end of September she departed and the Grand Duke and I accompanied her as far as Krasnoe Selo. Her departure sincerely pained me; I cried a great deal.
⁴⁰
When she had left we returned to the city.

Having returned to the Summer Palace, I asked for my lady Mademoiselle Zhukova. I was told that she had gone to see her mother, who had fallen ill; the following morning the same request from me, same response from my ladies. Toward noon, the Empress moved with great pomp from the summer residence into the winter one; we followed her into her apartment. Arriving in her ceremonial bedchamber, she stopped, and after several innocuous remarks, she began to talk about my mother’s departure and told me with seeming kindness not to be so pained about this, but I thought I would faint when she told me aloud in the presence of about thirty people that at my mother’s insistence she had dismissed Mademoiselle Zhukova from my entourage because my mother feared that I had too much affection for this girl who deserved so little, and then with a marked animosity she began to speak extremely ill of the poor Zhukova. In truth I was hardly impressed by this scene nor was I convinced by what Her Imperial Majesty claimed, but I was profoundly pained by the misfortune of Mademoiselle Zhukova, dismissed from the court only because she, by her sociable disposition, pleased me more than my other ladies, for I said to myself, why was she placed with me if she was not worthy? My mother could not have known her as she, not knowing Russian, could not have spoken to her, and Zhukova knew no other language. My mother could rely only on the idiotic reports of Mademoiselle Schenk, who had almost no common sense. I thought, this poor girl suffers for me, therefore I must not abandon her in her misfortune, which is caused solely by my affection. I was never able to find out if my mother truly had asked the Empress to dismiss this woman from my entourage. If it is so, then my mother preferred violent means to mild ones, because she never spoke to me about this girl. Nevertheless, a single word from her would have sufficed to at least put me on guard against an attachment that was basically very innocent. At the same time, the Empress too could have intervened less severely. The girl was young, they had only to find her a suitable match, which would have been very easy to do, but instead, they acted as I have just recounted. Having been dismissed by the Empress, the Grand Duke and I returned to our apartments. On the way, I saw that what the Empress had said had put him in favor of what had just been done. I told him my objections and made him see that this girl was suffering only because they had supposed I was partial to her, and I said that since she suffered out of love for me, I felt within my rights not to abandon her as long as I could do something. Indeed, I immediately sent her money with my chamber valet, but he told me that she had already left with her mother and sister for Moscow. I ordered that the money meant for her be sent to her via her brother, who was a sergeant in the guards. I was told that he and his wife had also been ordered to leave and that he had been placed in a rural regiment as an officer. Even now, I have difficulty finding the slightest plausible reason for all this, and it seems to me that this was gratuitous harm done on a whim without a shadow of a reason, not even a pretext. But things did not stop there, either. Through my chamber valet and my other servants, I sought to find some suitable match for Mademoiselle Zhukova. One was proposed to me, a sergeant of the guards and gentleman of means named Travin. He went to Moscow to marry her if she found him pleasing; she accepted and he was made a lieutenant in a rural regiment. As soon as the Empress learned of this, she exiled them to Astrakhan. It is even more difficult to discern the reasons for this persecution.