I am plunged into the most profound grief and my happiness no longer exists. I thought that I myself would die from the irreparable loss of my best friend. I had hoped that he would become the support of my old age.… This was a young man whom I was educating, who was grateful, gentle and honest, who shared my pains and who rejoiced in my joys.… I have become a desperate, monosyllabic creature. I drag myself about like a shadow. I cannot set eyes on a human face without the tears choking my mouth. I do not know what will become of me, but I do know that in all my life I have never been so unhappy as now that my best, dearest, and kindest friend has abandoned me like this.
Lanskoy left to Catherine the fortune he had acquired as her favorite; she divided it equally among his mother, brother, and sisters. She could not face spending the rest of the summer at Tsarskoe Selo without him, did not appear in public until September, and refused to return to the Winter Palace until February. Eventually, when she went back to Tsarskoe Selo, it was to place a Grecian urn dedicated to his memory in the garden where they had worked together. The inscription read, “From Catherine to my dearest friend.”
In the procession of Catherine’s favorites, it seemed that the ending of a significant relationship was often followed by the appearance of a lesser figure. Orlov had been followed by Vasilchikov, and Zavadovsky by Zorich. Now, this sequence recurred: after the death of Lanskoy came Alexander Yermolov, although not immediately. The deep wound caused by Lanskoy’s death healed slowly, and the favorite’s apartment remained vacant for a year. When she resumed life, she found only tepid consolation in the thirty-year-old Yermolov.
He, like most of the others, was a Guards officer, and he, like Lanskoy, had served as an aide to Potemkin. The prince approved of Yermolov, whom he thought to be safe and knew to be ignorant and uninterested in being taught anything. He was handsome and seemed honest, which suited Catherine at that moment. She was in no mood for another ardent young student; in her mind, no one could compete with the charm, brilliance, and devotion of Lanskoy. By the spring of 1785, she was writing to Grimm, “I am once more inwardly calm and serene.… I have found a friend who is very capable.”
During his seventeen months as favorite, Yermolov made little claim on Catherine’s time or interest. In the end, he engineered his own demise. He had been Potemkin’s protégé, but he began behaving toward Potemkin as if he considered himself the prince’s equal. Secure, he thought, in his position, he began to criticize the prince to Catherine. He reported every scandalous story, true or false, that reached his ears. He passed along an accusation that Potemkin was pocketing the pension intended for the deposed khan of the Crimea. The denouement was predictable. In June 1786, an infuriated Potemkin descended on Yermolov at court and shouted, “You cur, you monkey, who dares to bespatter me with the mud of the gutters from which I have raised you.” Yermolov, who was proud, put his hand on his sword hilt, but a sudden blow from Potemkin sent him reeling. Then Potemkin burst into Catherine’s’s apartment and roared, “Either he or I must go! If this nonentity of nonentities is allowed to remain at court, then I quit the state’s services as of today.” Yermolov was dismissed immediately and was given 130,000 rubles in cash and permission to live abroad for five years. Catherine never saw him again.
