The Memoirs of Catherine the Great

by Catherine the Great

  One day, when I went into His Imperial Highness’s apartment for this purpose, my eyes were struck by a large rat that he had had hanged with all the ceremony of an execution in the middle of a small room that he had had made with a partition. I asked what this meant. He said that this rat had committed a criminal act and merited the ultimate punishment according to military laws, that it had climbed atop the ramparts of a cardboard fortress on a table in this room and eaten two papier-mâché sentries standing watch on one of the bastions, and that the Grand Duke had had the criminal judged according to the laws of war. His setter had caught the rat, which had immediately been hanged as I saw it, and it would stay there exposed to the eyes of the public for three days as an example. I could not keep myself from bursting with laughter at the extreme folly of the thing, but this displeased him very much in light of the importance he gave to it. I withdrew and took refuge in my ignorance, as a woman, of military laws; nevertheless he remained angry because of my laughter. It could at least be said in the rat’s defense that it had been hanged without anyone having asked or heard its defense.

  During the court’s stay in Moscow, it happened that a court lackey went mad and even became violent. The Empress ordered her chief doctor, Boerhave, to take care of this man. He was put in a room near the apartment of Boerhave, who resided at the court. Moreover, chance had it that several people lost their minds that year. When the Empress was informed of this, she brought them to the court and had them lodged near Boerhave, so that a little insane asylum was created at court. I remember that the most important patients were a major in the Semenovsky Guards, Chaadaev, a Lieutenant Colonel Leutrum, a Major Choglokov, a monk from Ascension Monastery, who had cut off his genitals with a razor,99 and several others. Chaadaev’s madness consisted in thinking that Shah-Nadir, also known as Tahmasp Kuli Khan, the Persian usurper and tyrant, was God himself.100 When the doctors were unable to cure him of his delusion, he was put in the hands of priests; they persuaded the Empress to have him exorcised. She herself attended the ceremony, but Chaadaev remained as mad as he appeared to be. However, there were people who doubted his madness, because he was rational about all other matters but Shah-Nadir. His old friends even went to consult him about their affairs, and he gave them very sensible advice. Those who did not think him mad found the cause for this affected mania in a bad situation from which he could extricate himself only with this ruse. Since the beginning of the Empress’s reign, he had been employed in the tax service. He had been accused of misappropriation of public funds and was supposed to be tried; out of fear he acquired this fantasy that got him through the affair.

  In mid-August, we returned to the country. On September 5, the Empress’s name day, she went to Ascension Monastery. While she was there, lightning struck the church. Fortunately, Her Imperial Majesty was in a chapel next to the main church. She learned of the event only because of the fright of her courtiers. However, no one was injured or killed in this accident. A short time later she returned to Moscow, where we also went from Liubertsy. Upon our return to the city, we saw the Princess of Courland kiss the Empress’s hand publicly for the permission granted her to marry Prince Georgy Khovansky. She had fallen out with her first fiancé, Peter Saltykov, who for his part immediately married Princess Solntseva.

  At three in the afternoon on November 1 of that year, I was in Madame Choglokova’s apartment when her husband, Sergei Saltykov, Lev Naryshkin, and several other gentlemen of our court left the room to go to Chamberlain Shuvalov’s apartment to congratulate him on his birthday, which was that day. Madame Choglokova, Princess Gagarina, and I chatted together. After hearing some noise in a little chapel that was near the apartment where we were, we saw a couple of these gentlemen return. They told us that they had been prevented from passing through the halls of the palace because there was a fire. I immediately went into my room, and crossing an antechamber, I saw that the balustrade in the corner of the great hall was on fire. It was twenty steps from our wing. I entered my rooms and found them already full of soldiers and servants, who were removing the furniture and carrying what they could. Madame Choglokova followed me closely, and as there was nothing more to do in the house but wait for it to catch fire, Madame Choglokova and I went out. Outside the door we found the carriage of the chapel master Araya, who had come for a concert in the Grand Duke’s apartment and whom I myself warned that the house was burning. She and I got into the carriage, the street being covered in mud because of the continual rains that had fallen for a few days, and there we watched both the fire and the way in which the furniture was carried from all directions out of the house. Then I saw a singular thing. It was the astonishing number of rats and mice that descended the staircase in a line, without even really hurrying. They could not save this vast wooden house because of a lack of equipment, and because the little there was, was located precisely under the burning hall. This hall was more or less at the center of the buildings around it, all of which may have measured two or three versts in circumference. I left precisely at three, and at six no vestige of the house remained. The heat of the fire became so great that neither I nor Madame Choglokova could tolerate it anymore, and we had our carriage go into the field several hundred feet away. Finally, Monsieur Choglokov came with the Grand Duke and told us that the Empress was going to her house at Pokrovskoe and that she had ordered us to go to Monsieur Choglokov’s house, which stood on the first corner to the right of the main street of the Sloboda. We went there immediately. There was a salon in the middle of this house and four rooms on each side. It is hardly possible to be more uncomfortable than we were there. The wind blew in from all directions, the windows and doors were half rotted, the floor was split with cracks two or three inches wide. Moreover, the vermin had the run of the house. The children and servants were living there when we arrived. They were sent out, and we were lodged in this horrible house, which was devoid of furniture.

  The second day of my stay in this house, I learned what a Kalmuck nose is. The little girl whom I had in my service told me as I awoke, while pointing at her nose, “I have a hazelnut in here.” I touched her on the nose and found nothing, but the whole morning this child kept repeating that she had a hazelnut in her nose. She was a child of four or five. No one knew what she meant by saying she had a hazelnut in her nose. Around noon, she fell while running and bumped her head against the table, which made her cry, and while crying she pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose. As she wiped it, the hazelnut fell out of her nose, which I myself saw, and at this I understood that a hazelnut, which could not fit into any European nose without one noticing it, could fit in the cavity of a Kalmuck nose, which is sunk into the head between two fat cheeks.

  Our clothes and everything we needed had stayed in the mud in front of the burned palace and were brought to us that night and the following day. What pained me most were my books. At the time, I was finishing the fourth volume of Bayle’s Dictionnaire.101 I had devoted two years to it. Every six months I finished a volume, and from this, one can imagine in what solitude I spent my life. Finally they were brought to me. Among my clothes were those of Countess Shuvalova. Out of curiosity Madame Vladislavova showed me this woman’s underskirts, which were all lined in back with leather because ever since her first confinement she had been incontinent, and the odor of urine permeated all her underskirts. I sent them back to their owner as quickly as possible.

  In that fire, the Empress lost everything in her immense wardrobe that had been brought to Moscow. She did me the honor of telling me that she had lost four thousand outfits and that of all of them, she regretted losing only the one made of the cloth I had given her, which I had received from my mother. She lost other precious things too in the fire, among them a bowl covered with engraved stones that Count Rumiantsev had bought in Constantinople for eight thousand ducats. All these possessions had been placed in a room above the hall in which the fire had started. This hall served as the entrance hall to the palace’s great hall.
At ten in the morning the stokers had come to heat this entrance hall. After putting the wood in the stove, they lit it as usual. This done, the room filled with smoke. They thought that it was escaping through a few imperceptible holes in the stove and began to cover the spaces between the stove tiles with clay. The smoke grew thicker, and they began to look for cracks in the stove; not finding any, they realized that the crack was inside the apartment’s walls, which were only made of wood. They went to look for some water and extinguished the fire in the stove. But as the smoke grew thicker, it filled the antechamber, where there was a sentry from the horse guards. Thinking he would suffocate, and not daring to budge from his post, he broke a window and began to shout, but when he saw that no one heard him or came to his aid, he shot his rifle out the window. This shot was heard in the main guardhouse opposite the palace. Guards ran to him and upon entering found thick smoke everywhere, from which they pulled the sentry. The stokers were put under arrest. They had believed that they could extinguish the fire or else prevent the smoke from spreading without warning anyone. They had struggled earnestly for five hours. This fire led to a discovery by Monsieur Choglokov. In his apartment, the Grand Duke had many very large dressers. When they were carried from his room, a few open or badly closed drawers revealed their contents to the spectators. Incredibly, these drawers contained nothing but a huge number of wine and hard liquor bottles. They served as His Imperial Highness’s wine cellar. Choglokov spoke to me about this. I told him that I was unaware of this situation, and I was telling the truth. I knew nothing of it, but very often, almost daily, I saw the Grand Duke drunk.

  After the fire, we stayed at the Choglokovs’ house for about six weeks, and when we went out we would often pass a wooden house, situated in a garden near the Saltykov bridge, which belonged to the Empress and was called the bishop’s house because the Empress had bought it from a bishop. We decided to ask the Empress, unbeknownst to the Choglokovs, to allow us to reside in this house, which seemed to us and was said to be more livable than the one we were in. Finally, after many exchanges, we received permission to go live in the bishop’s house. It was a very old wooden house without a view. It was built over a stone cellar and as a result was more elevated than the one we had just left, which had only a ground floor. The stoves were so old that when they were lit, one could see the fire in the furnace, so numerous were its cracks, and smoke filled the rooms. We all had headaches and sore eyes. We risked being burned alive in this house. There was only one wooden staircase, and the windows were high. Fire did in fact break out there two or three times during our stay, but they were extinguished. I came down with a sore throat and a very high fever. The same day that I fell ill, Monsieur de Bretlach, who had returned to Russia to represent the Viennese court, was supposed to come and have a farewell supper at our house, and he found me with red, swollen eyes. He thought that I had been crying, and he was not mistaken. The boredom, illness, and discomfort, both physical and mental, of my situation had made me very melancholy all day long. I had spent the day alone with Madame Choglokova, waiting for visitors who had not come. She repeatedly said, See how they abandon us. Her husband was dining out and had taken everyone with him. Despite all of Sergei Saltykov’s promises to slip away from this luncheon, he only returned with Choglokov. All this put me in a foul mood.

  Finally, a few days later, we were allowed to go to Liubertsy. Here we believed ourselves in paradise. The house was completely new and quite well furnished. We danced every evening, and our entire court was assembled there. During one of these balls, we saw the Grand Duke earnestly speaking into Monsieur Choglokov’s ear for a long time, after which the latter appeared upset, distracted, and more withdrawn and sullen than usual. Seeing this, and because Choglokov gave him an especially cold shoulder, Sergei Saltykov went to sit with Mademoiselle Marfa Shafirova and tried to find out from her the reason for this unusual intimacy between the Grand Duke and Choglokov. She told him that she did not know, but that she suspected what it might be because the Grand Duke had said to her several times, “Sergei Saltykov and my wife are utterly deceiving Choglokov. Choglokov is in love with the Grand Duchess, and she cannot stand him. Sergei Saltykov is Choglokov’s confidant. He makes Choglokov think that he is lobbying my wife on his behalf, when instead he is wooing her for himself, and she is happy to tolerate Sergei Saltykov, who is amusing. She uses him to deceive Choglokov as she pleases, and deep down she is toying with them both. I must open this poor devil Choglokov’s eyes because I pity him. I must tell him the truth and then he will see who is his true friend, my wife or I.” As soon as Sergei Saltykov learned of this dangerous talk and the scandal that could follow from it, he repeated it to me and then went to sit with Choglokov and asked him what was wrong. At first Choglokov did not want to explain and did nothing but sigh. Then he began to moan about how difficult it was to find faithful friends. Finally Sergei Saltykov brought him round and extracted a confession from him about the conversation that he had just had with the Grand Duke. Certainly one could not have predicted what they had said to each other unless one had been told. His Imperial Highness had poured forth solemn declarations of friendship to Choglokov, telling him that it was only in life’s most demanding situations that one could distinguish true from false friends. To prove the sincerity of his friendship, he was going to give him striking proof of his honesty. He knew without doubt that Choglokov was in love with me. He said that he did not condemn him for this, that I might well seem loveable to him, and that we are not the masters of our hearts. But he had to warn him that he chose his confidants poorly, that Choglokov might well believe that Sergei Saltykov was his friend, and that he was wooing me on Choglokov’s behalf, while Saltykov acted only for himself, and the Grand Duke suspected him of being Choglokov’s rival, and that for my part, I was deceiving both Saltykov and Choglokov, but that if he, Choglokov, wanted to follow the Grand Duke’s advice and confide in him, then he would see that he, the Grand Duke, was his true and only friend. Monsieur Choglokov thanked the Grand Duke profusely for his friendship and protestations of friendship, but deep down he considered the rest a chimera of the Grand Duke’s imagination. It is easy to believe that in any case Choglokov did not care to have a confidant who was by nature and character equally feckless and useless. Once Choglokov had said all this, Sergei Saltykov had little trouble in reestablishing calm and tranquility in his mind, since Choglokov was not accustomed to attaching much importance or paying much attention to the discourse of a man who had no judgment and was known for it. When I learned of all this, I admit that I was outraged with the Grand Duke. And in order to prevent him from repeating this accusation, I made him understand that I was not unaware of what had occurred between him and Choglokov. He blushed, said not a word, and went away and ignored me, and the matter ended there.

  Back in Moscow, we were moved from the bishop’s house into the apartments of what was called the Empress’s summer house, which had not caught fire. The Empress had had new apartments built in the space of six weeks. To this end, beams had been removed from the house at Perova, from that of Count Hendrikov, and from the house of the princes of Georgia, and transported there. She finally moved in toward the new year.

  1754

  Choglokova’s infidelity and Choglokov’s illness and death;

  Catherine’s pregnancy; Elizabeth’s talk with Catherine; Count

  Alexander Shuvalov replaces Choglokov; birth and baptism of heir,

  Paul; Elizabeth’s neglect of Catherine and miserable gift; a spell on

  the royal bed; Saltykov’s departure; Catherine sees her son;

  her melancholy and reading

  The Empress celebrated the first day of January 1754 in this palace, and the Grand Duke and I had the honor of dining with her in public under the dais. During the meal, Her Imperial Majesty appeared very gay and talkative. At the foot of the throne, tables were set for several hundred people of the highest ranks. During dinner the Empress asked who this very skinny and u
gly person with a crane’s neck, as she put it, was whom she saw seated there (she indicated the seat). She was told that it was Marfa Shafirova. She burst out laughing, and, speaking to me, she said that this reminded her of the Russian proverb “A long neck is good only for the hangman’s noose.” I could not keep myself from smiling at this imperial mischief and sarcasm, which did not go unnoticed and which the courtiers spread by word of mouth so that, as I rose from the table, I found several people already informed of it. As for the Grand Duke, I do not know if he heard it, but he certainly did not breathe a word of it, and I was careful not to mention it to him.

  No years had ever seen more fires than 1753 and 1754. More than once I saw two, three, four, and up to five fires at a time in different parts of Moscow, from the windows of my apartment in the Summer Palace. During carnival the Empress ordered different balls and masquerades in her new apartment. During one of these, I saw that the Empress had a long conversation with General Matiushkin. He did not want his son to marry Princess Gagarina, my maid of honor, but the Empress persuaded the mother, and Princess Gagarina, who was well into her thirty-eighth year, was given permission to marry Monsieur Dmitry Matiushkin. She was very pleased about this, and I was too; they married for love. At the time, Matiushkin was very handsome. Madame Choglokova did not come to live with us in the summer apartments. Under different pretexts she stayed with her children in her house, which was very near the court. But the truth was that this virtuous woman, who had loved her husband so much, had conceived a passion for Prince Peter Repnin and a quite marked aversion for her husband. She believed that she could not be happy without a confidante, and I seemed the most trustworthy person. She showed me all the letters she received from her lover. I kept her secret very faithfully, with scrupulous care and prudence. She would see the Prince very secretly. Despite this, the lady’s husband conceived a few suspicions. An officer of the horse guard, Kamynin, had given rise to them. By nature, this man was jealousy and suspicion personified. He was an old acquaintance of Choglokov’s. The latter confided in Sergei Saltykov, who sought to reassure him. I was careful not to tell Sergei Saltykov what I knew, for fear of some involuntary indiscretion. Finally the husband mentioned something to me too. I played dumb, acted astonished, and was silent.