There is no reason to be angry. But no, it’s time to stop giving you assurances. You must be most, most, most certain by now that I love you.… I want you to love me. I want to appear desirable to you.… If you want, I shall paraphrase this page for you in three words and cross out all the rest. Here it is: I love you.
Oh, my darling, you should be ashamed. What need do you have of saying that he who takes your place hasn’t long to live? Does using fear to compel someone’s heart look like the right thing to do? This most loathsome method is utterly contrary to your way of thinking in which no evil dwells.
Not only jealousy, but also Potemkin’s sensitivity to the possible impermanence of his new position provided a subject for argument. He refused to be treated as merely the empress’s favorite. There is a letter from him, annotated in the margins by Catherine and returned to him, which exhibits one of their arguments and its reconciliation:
IN POTEMKIN’S HAND:
Allow me, my precious dear, to say these final words that I think will end our quarrel. Do not be surprised that I am uneasy about our love. Beyond the innumerable gifts you have bestowed on me, you have placed me in your heart. I want to be there alone, preferred to all former ones, since no one has so loved you as I. And since I am the work of your hands. So I desire that you should secure my place, that you should find joy in doing me good, that you should devise everything for my comfort and find therein repose from the great labors that occupy your lofty station. Amen.
IN CATHERINE’S HAND:
I permit you.
The sooner the better.
Be calm.
One hand washes the other.
Firmly and solidly.
You are and will be.
I see it and believe it.
I am happy with all my soul.
My foremost pleasure. It will come by itself. Let your thoughts be calm. Your feelings are tender and will find the best way.
End of quarrel. Amen.
Thus began the period in Catherine’s life when she had a lover and partner who gave her almost everything she wanted. Their intimacy permitted Potemkin to walk into her bedroom in the morning with only a dressing gown over his naked body, although the room was crowded with visitors and court officials. He scarcely noticed because his thoughts were on the fascinating conversation interrupted a few hours before when Catherine, declaring that she must have some sleep, had left his apartment below and returned to her room.
Because they worked in different parts of the palace during the day, they wrote notes to each other; continuations of their conversations. These were protestations of love mingled with affairs of state, court gossip, reproachful chiding, and discussions of mutual health. Catherine’s names for him were “My golden pheasant,” “Dearest Pigeon,” “Kitten,” “Little dog,” “Papa,” “Twin Soul,” “Little parrot,” “Grisha,” and “Grishenka.” Also: “Cossack,” “Muscovite,” “Lion in the Jungle,” “Tiger,” “Giaour (Infidel),” “My good sir,” “Prince,” “Your Excellency,” “Your Serene Highness,” “General,” and “My sweet beauty to whom no king can compare.” Potemkin’s forms of address to her were more formal, emphasizing the difference in station:
For a person with an orderly German mind who exercised strict self-control, the emotional intensity Catherine experienced with Potemkin was both liberating and distracting. She had to choose between drawn-out, draining sexual pleasure and her duties as a ruler. She tried to have both, and both ran concurrently in her mind. She was not free to be with him whenever she wanted; she compensated by secretly surrounding herself with thoughts of him; she did this while reading papers or listening to officials delivering reports, hour after hour. Because she was not free to spend these honeymoon days alone with him, Catherine poured her love onto these little scribbled slips of paper.
Potemkin, too, was immersed in passion, but he was uneasy about something else. He realized that he owed his new preeminence exclusively to the empress, and that just as she had summoned and then dismissed Vasilchikov, so, too, she could, at any moment, replace him. There was, of course, a climactic step that would change his status. His plan was extravagant, impracticable—perhaps only a daydream: he wanted to legalize their union by marriage. He spoke to her about it soon after he became the official favorite, and it was a measure of his power over her that she considered it. For Catherine, it would not have been easy; she was wary of surrendering power. This time, because of her love for Potemkin, she may have agreed.
If there was a marriage, this is a widely believed version of how it happened:
