Finally, at seven on Saturday evening, which was the fifth day of my illness, the Empress returned from Trinity Monastery and, coming to my room as soon as she stepped from her coach, she found me unconscious. Following her were Count Lestocq and a surgeon and, after hearing the doctors’ opinion, she herself sat at the head of my bed and had me bled. Just as the blood began to flow, I came to, opened my eyes, and found myself in the arms of the Empress, who had lifted me up. I hung between life and death for twenty-seven days, during which I was bled sixteen times and sometimes four times a day. My mother was almost no longer allowed in my room. She remained opposed to these frequent bleedings and said aloud that they would kill me; nevertheless she began to believe that I would not come down with smallpox. The Empress had placed Countess Rumiantseva and several other women with me, and it seemed that my mother’s judgment was distrusted. Finally the abscess that I had on my right side burst under the care of the Portuguese doctor Sanchez; I vomited it up and thereafter recovered.18
I perceived immediately that my mother’s conduct during my illness had done her a disservice in the opinion of all. When she saw me gravely ill, she wanted a Lutheran pastor brought to me. I was told that I was awakened and this was proposed to me, and that I replied: “What is the use, send instead for Simeon Theodorsky; I will be happy to talk with him.” He was brought to me and he spoke to me in the presence of the attendants in a way that pleased everyone. This act gained me great favor in the opinion of the Empress and of the entire court. Another small affair further undermined my mother. Around Easter, one morning my mother decided to send a chambermaid to tell me to give her a blue-and-silver cloth that my father’s brother had given me when I left for Russia, because I liked the cloth very much. I sent word to her that she was free to take it, that it was true that I liked it very much because my uncle had given it to me knowing that it pleased me. My entourage, seeing that I gave the cloth against my will and that I had been between life and death for so long and only recently had begun to improve, said to one another that it was quite imprudent of my mother to cause a dying child the least displeasure, and that far from wanting to acquire this cloth, she would have done better not to mention it. This incident was recounted to the Empress, who immediately sent me several superb pieces of rich cloth, including a blue-and-silver one. But the incident hurt my mother in her esteem. My mother was accused of having neither tenderness nor concern for me.
During my illness, I grew accustomed to keeping my eyes closed and was thought to be asleep by Countess Rumiantseva and my ladies-in-waiting, who talked among themselves of personal concerns, and in this way I learned many things. When I began to feel better, the Grand Duke would come to spend the evening in the apartment I shared with my mother. He and everyone else had seemed to take the greatest interest in my health. The Empress had shed many a tear over it. Finally, on April 21, 1744, my birthday and the beginning of my fifteenth year, I was well enough to appear in public for the first time since that grave illness. I do not think that people had a very positive impression of me. I had become thin as a skeleton. I had grown, but my face and features had become elongated. My hair was falling out and I was deathly pale. I found myself frighteningly ugly and I could not recognize my physiognomy. That day, the Empress sent me a jar of rouge and ordered me to put some on.
With the advent of spring and fair weather, the Grand Duke’s daily visits to us ceased. He preferred to go for walks and to hunt outside Moscow. At times, however, he came to have lunch or dinner with us, and then he would continue his infantile confessions to me, while his entourage talked with my mother, to whose apartment many people came and where there were many many discussions. These could only be displeasing to those who were not included, among them Count Bestuzhev, all of whose enemies met at our home, and among others the Marquis de La Chétardie, who had not yet revealed himself as an official envoy from the French court, but who had his diplomatic credentials with him. In May the Empress again went to Trinity Monastery, where the Grand Duke, my mother, and I followed her.
Some time ago the Empress had begun to treat my mother with great coldness; at Trinity Monastery the cause for this became clear. One afternoon, when the Grand Duke had come to our apartment, the Empress entered unannounced and told my mother to follow her into the other apartment. Count Lestocq went too; the Grand Duke and I remained seated by a window and waited. This conversation lasted for quite a while, and as we saw Count Lestocq leave, he approached the Grand Duke and me, who were laughing, and said: “This great happiness is going to end immediately,” and then turning to me, he said: “You have only to pack your bags. You will leave immediately and return to your home.” The Grand Duke wanted to know why. He responded, “This you will know later,” and then went to deliver the message, still unknown to me, with which he was charged. He left the Grand Duke and me to ruminate on what he had just told us; the Grand Duke’s comments were in words, mine in thought. He said, “Even if your mother is at fault, you are not.” I replied, “My duty is to follow my mother and to do what she commands.” I saw clearly that he would have left me without regret; as for me, seeing his feelings, I was more or less indifferent to him, but not to the crown of Russia. Finally the door to the bedroom opened and the Empress appeared with a very flushed face and an irritated look, and my mother followed her with eyes red and wet from crying. As we hastened to get down from the rather high window where we had perched ourselves, the Empress smiled, kissed us both, and left.
After she had left, we learned more or less what was the matter. The Marquis de La Chétardie, who in the past or more precisely on his first trip or mission to Russia had been strongly in the Empress’s favor and confidence, found on this second trip or mission all his ambitions thwarted. His speech was more restrained than his letters, which were full of the most bitter gall. Opened and decoded, his letters revealed details of his conversations with my mother and many other people about current affairs; those details concerning the Empress were rather imprudent. Count Bestuzhev had not failed to place them in the Empress’s hands, and as the Marquis de La Chétardie had not presented any credentials, the order was given to expel him from the empire.19 The Order of St. Andrei and the portrait of the Empress were taken from him, and he was left with the other gifts of jewelry that this Princess had given him. I do not know if my mother succeeded in excusing herself in the Empress’s mind, but it happened that we did not leave; but my mother continued to be treated very coldly and with great reserve. I do not know what had been said between her and de La Chétardie, but I know that one day he spoke to me and praised me for being coiffed à la Moyse. I told him that to please the Empress I would wear whatever hairstyle pleased her; when he heard my response, he turned and went off in the other direction, and spoke to me no more.
Having returned to Moscow with the Grand Duke, my mother and I were more isolated. Fewer people came to our apartment and I was being prepared to make my profession of faith. June 28 had been fixed as the day of this ceremony, and the following day, the feast of St. Peter, for my betrothal to the Grand Duke. I remember that during this time Marshal Brümmer spoke to me on several occasions to complain about his pupil, and he wanted to use me to correct or improve his Grand Duke, but I told him that this was impossible and that by doing this I would become as odious to him as his entourage already was. Meanwhile, my mother formed an intimate attachment with the Prince and Princess of Hessen and even more so with the Princess’s brother, Chamberlain Betskoi. This liaison displeased Countess Rumiantseva, Marshal Brümmer, and everyone else, and while she was in her room with them, the Grand Duke and I would make a racket in the antechamber, which was now completely ours; neither of us lacked childish vivacity.
In July the Empress celebrated peace with Sweden in Moscow, and on this occasion a court was formed for me as the betrothed Grand Duchess of Russia, and immediately after this celebration, the Empress made us leave for Kiev.20 She herself left a few days after us. We proceeded by small stages,
my mother and I, Countess Rumiantseva and one of my mother’s ladies in one carriage, the Grand Duke, Brümmer, Bergholz, and Ducker in another. One afternoon, the Grand Duke, bored with his teachers, wanted to ride with my mother and me; once there, he refused to budge from our carriage. Then my mother, tired of traveling with him and me every day, decided to enlarge the company. She shared her idea with the young members of our group, among whom were Prince Golitsyn, since named Marshal, and Count Zakhar Chernyshev. They took one of the carts carrying our beds, arranged benches all around it, and the next day, my mother, the Grand Duke, and I, Prince Golitsyn, Count Chernyshev, and one or two of the youngest of our suite sat there, and in this way we completed the rest of the journey quite gaily as far as we were concerned; but those who were not in our carriage rebelled against this arrangement, which greatly displeased Grand Marshal Brümmer, Grand Chamberlain Bergholz, Countess Rumiantseva, my mother’s lady-in-waiting, and the rest of the company, because they could not sit with us, and while we laughed during the trip, they cursed and were bored. Thus things stood when we arrived after three weeks in Kozelets, where for three more weeks we awaited the Empress, whose journey had been delayed en route by several incidents.21 We heard in Kozelets that during the trip there had been several people dismissed from the Empress’s entourage and that she was in a very bad mood.
Finally in the middle of August she arrived in Kozelets; we stayed there with her until the end of August. We played faro for high stakes from morning to night in a large hall in the middle of the house, and the rest of the time everyone was packed in tightly; my mother and I slept in the same room, Countess Rumiantseva and my mother’s lady in the antechamber, and so forth. One day the Grand Duke entered our room while my mother was writing and had her writing case open next to her, and he wanted to rummage in it out of curiosity. My mother told him not to touch it, and he actually went jumping across the room away from her, but in jumping here and there to make me laugh, he caught the lid of the open case and knocked it over. At this my mother grew angry and there were heated words between them. My mother reproached him for having upset the case deliberately, while he decried her injustice, and both appealed to me, demanding my corroboration. Knowing my mother’s temper, I was afraid of being slapped if I did not agree with her, and wanting neither to lie nor offend the Grand Duke, I found myself caught in the cross fire. Nevertheless, I told my mother that I did not think that the Grand Duke had done it intentionally, but that his robe had caught the cover of the case, which had been placed on a very small stool. Then my mother took me to task because when she was upset, she needed someone to quarrel with. I fell silent and began to cry. The Grand Duke, seeing that all my mother’s anger fell on me because I had spoken in his favor and because I cried, accused my mother of injustice and excessive fury, while she told him that he was an ill-bred little boy. In a word, it would have been impossible to take the quarrel further without coming to blows, which neither of them did, however. From this moment, the Grand Duke took a great dislike to my mother and never forgot this quarrel; for her part, my mother also held a grudge against him, and their interactions with each other became awkward and distrustful with a tendency toward bitterness. Both of them could barely hide this from me. As hard as I worked to mollify them both, I succeeded only for brief moments. Each always had some sarcastic barb ready to sting the other. My situation grew thornier each day as a result. I strove to obey the one and to please the other, and in truth, at that time the Grand Duke bared his heart to me more than to anyone else, and he saw that my mother often scolded me when she could not quarrel with him. This did not hurt me in his esteem, because he felt he could trust me. Finally, on August 29, we entered Kiev. We stayed there for ten days, after which we returned to Moscow in exactly the same manner that we had come.
Back in Moscow, autumn passed by with plays, balls, and masquerades at court.22 Despite this, we saw that the Empress was often in bad humor. One day when my mother and I were at the theater with the Grand Duke in a loge across from that of Her Imperial Majesty, I noticed that the Empress was speaking quite heatedly and angrily with Count Lestocq. When she had finished, Monsieur Lestocq left her and came to our loge. He approached me and said, “Did you see how the Empress was speaking to me?” I said yes. “Well,” he said, “she is quite angry with you.” “With me? Why?” was my response. “Because,” he said, “you have many debts. She says that one can empty wells and that when she was a Princess, she had no more support than you have and an entire household to maintain and that she was careful not to indebt herself because she knew that no one would pay for her.”23 He said all this dryly and with irritation, apparently so that she could see from her loge how he acquitted himself of his errand. Tears came to my eyes and I fell silent. After he had said his piece, he left. The Grand Duke, who was next to me and who had heard almost the entire conversation, after asking me about what he had not heard, by his expression rather than by his words gave me to understand that he agreed with his aunt and that he was not upset that I had been scolded. This was indeed his method, and by this he hoped to please the Empress by imitating her opinion when she was angry with someone. As for my mother, when she learned of the situation she said that this was only one more attempt to loosen her hold on me, and since I had been encouraged to act without consulting her, she washed her hands of the affair; thus both lined up against me. As for me, I wanted to put my affairs in order immediately, and the next day I requested my accounts. They showed that I owed seventeen thousand rubles; before leaving Moscow for Kiev, the Empress had sent me fifteen thousand rubles and a large coffer of simple cloths, but I had to be richly dressed. In sum, then, I owed two thousand rubles; this did not seem to me an excessive amount. A variety of causes had forced these expenditures upon me. Primo, I had arrived in Russia very poorly outfitted; though I had three or four outfits, I was at the end of the world, and at a court where one changed outfits three times a day. A dozen chemises made up all my lingerie; I used my mother’s bed linens. Secondo, I had been told that they liked presents in Russia and that with generosity one made friends and became likable. Tertio, the most spendthrift woman in Russia, Countess Rumiantseva, had been placed in my company. Always surrounded by merchants, she presented me daily with piles of things that she encouraged me to purchase from these vendors, things I often only bought to give to her because she craved them. The Grand Duke as well cost me a great deal because he was greedy for presents. My mother’s ill humor was also easily pacified by things that pleased her, and as she was then often angry and especially with me, I did not fail to use this method once I had discovered it.
My mother’s ill humor derived in part from the fact that she was thoroughly in the bad graces of the Empress, who often mortified and humiliated her. Moreover, my mother, whom I had always obeyed, did not see without displeasure that I preceded her, which I avoided everywhere that I could, but which was impossible in public.24 In general I had made it a rule to show her the greatest respect and deference possible, but all this did not help me much, and on every occasion some bitter remark escaped her, which neither did her much good nor disposed people in her favor. With her repeated comments and much gossiping, Countess Rumiantseva along with many others contributed enormously to putting my mother in the Empress’s bad graces. The eight-seat carriage on the journey to Kiev played an important role in all this. All the older people had been excluded from it, all the young ones invited. God knows what meaning had been ascribed to this arrangement, which was at heart innocent. What was apparent was that it had upset all those who should have been invited because of their rank and had seen preference shown to the most amusing. The basic reason for all these complaints against my mother derived from the fact that Betskoi, whom she had decided to trust, and the Trubetskois had not been invited on the journey to Kiev, and Brümmer and Countess Rumiantseva surely had a hand in this. The carriage for eight, into which they had not been invited by my mother, was a kind of revenge.
In No
vember the Grand Duke came down with measles; as I had not had them, precautions were taken to prevent my infection. The prince’s entourage did not come to our rooms, and all entertainment ceased. As soon as the illness had passed and winter set in, we left Moscow for Petersburg in sleds, my mother and I in one, the Grand Duke and Count Brümmer in another.25 On December 18, we celebrated the Empress’s birthday at Tver, from which we departed the following day. Halfway through our journey, in the town of Shotilova, the Grand Duke fell ill one evening while in my room. They took him to his own room and put him to bed; he had a high fever during the night. The following day at noon my mother and I went to his room to see him, but hardly had I passed the threshold, when Count Brümmer came toward me and told me to go no farther. I wanted to know the reason and he told me that smallpox sores had just appeared on the Grand Duke. As I had not had it, my mother led me quickly from the room, and it was decided that my mother and I would leave the same day for Petersburg, leaving the Grand Duke and his entourage at Shotilova. Countess Rumiantseva and my mother’s lady-in-waiting would stay there as well to care for the patient. A message had been sent to the Empress, who had gone ahead of us and was already in Petersburg. At some distance from Novgorod we met the Empress, who, having learned that the Grand Duke had come down with smallpox, was returning from Petersburg to go meet him in Shotilova, where she lodged for the duration of his illness. As soon as the Empress saw us, although it was the middle of the night, she had her sled and ours stopped and asked us for news about the Grand Duke’s state.
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Page 12
