There was more to this tangled plot. Catherine, the court, and Countess Bruce soon learned that Rimsky-Korsakov had been using Bruce as a decoy with whom to pass the time and alleviate his boredom. His real object was a beautiful young countess, Catherine Stroganova, married to one of the wealthiest men in Russia. The Stroganovs had just returned from six years of living in Paris, and, on first seeing the handsome “king of Epirus,” the young countess fell in love. Only when the disgraced Rimsky-Korsakov left for Moscow and Countess Stroganova immediately followed him, was the extent of this operatic, labyrinthine double betrayal fully revealed. Count Stroganov behaved with patrician dignity. Worried that his young son would be affected by public scandal, he installed his wife in a Moscow palace, where she and her lover lived happily for thirty years. There, they brought up the three children they had together.
For six months following the Rimsky-Korsakov debacle, Catherine remained alone, but at Easter in 1780 a new favorite, Alexander Lanskoy, appeared. Then twenty-two, he came from an impecunious family of the provincial nobility and had served as an officer in the Horse Guards. When he found that he lacked sufficient funds to keep pace with his brother officers, he asked for reassignment to a provincial garrison, where his expenses would be lower. His application was rejected at the College of War by Potemkin himself, who then, surprisingly, appointed the young man his personal aide-de-camp and introduced him to Catherine. Lanskoy had an elegant bearing and a sensitive face; Catherine described him as “kind, gay, honest, and full of gentleness.” In November 1779, he was was officially installed in the palace apartment vacated by Rimsky-Korsakov. The usual shower of riches descended: jewels, a hundred thousand rubles, and a country estate. Two cousins became officers in the Preobrazhensky Guards; three sisters came to court as maids of honor, married noblemen, and became ladies-of-the-bedchamber.
Catherine’s admiration for this adoring acolyte stimulated her pedagogical belief that more Russians should be trained to serve the empire. Lanskoy responded wholeheartedly to this approach. His education had been modest, and his devotion to Catherine was based on her role as his teacher as much as her position as empress. When she discovered his desire to learn, she helped him write to Grimm in French.
Lanskoy did not arouse in Catherine the passion she had for Orlov or Potemkin, but his gentleness and devotion inspired in her an almost maternal affection. He was intelligent and tactful; he refused to take any part in public affairs; he was artistic, had good taste, and was seriously interested in literature, painting, and architecture. He became an ideal companion, accompanying her to concerts and the theater, sitting quietly and listening as she talked, even helping her to design new gardens at Tsarskoe Selo.
As the months stretched into years, Catherine’s young lover became indispensable to her. Even the cynical Bezborodko admitted that “compared to the others, he was an angel. He had friends, did not try to harm his neighbors, and often he tried to help people.” From time to time, there were rumors that Potemkin was jealous of this nonthreatening young man and that Lanskoy was on the brink of dismissal. This was far from the truth. Potemin was thoroughly satisfied, and Catherine was free to devote herself to Lanskoy, whose good humor, she said, had made Tsarskoe Selo “into the most charming and pleasant of places where the days passed so quickly one did not know what had become of them.”
Four years passed, a longer period than Catherine had spent with any lover since she had separated from Orlov twelve years earlier. On June 19, 1784, Lanskoy complained of a sore throat. It grew worse. A high fever set in. Suddenly, five days from the onset, he died of inflammation of the throat. It was said to have been diphtheria.
The suddenness of this death was overwhelming, and the reaction of the woman left behind was uncontrollable grief. She collapsed into bed and for three weeks refused to leave her room. Her son, his wife, and her beloved grandchildren all were refused admittance; they heard only endless sobbing behind her bedroom door. Potemkin came immediately from the south. He and others tried to comfort her, but, as Catherine later told Grimm, “they helped, but I could not endure the help. No one was able to speak, to think in accord with my feelings. One step at a time had to be taken, and with each step a battle had to be endured; one to be won; one to be lost.” Eventually, Potemkin managed to calm and distract her. “He succeeded in awakening us from the sleep of the dead,” she said.
Her weeping stopped, but her depression remained. As she described it to Grimm:
