countenance when the Grand Duke Peter threw himself at her
feet, swearing that he had had nothing to do with these political
shenanigans and that Bestuzhev and Catherine alone were guilty
of fraud and treason. Disgusted by the baseness of her nephew,
Elizabeth sent him to his apartments, without a word. For her,
Peter no longer counted. Or existed.
Her attitude was quite the opposite when it came to the
“indescribable” conduct of her daughter-in-law. To clear herself,
Catherine sent her a long letter, written in Russian; she confided
that she was distraught, protested that she was innocent, and be-
seeched her to allow her to leave for Germany, to go back to her
mother and to pray at her father’s graveside (he having recently
passed away). The idea of voluntary exile for the grand duchess
appeared so absurd and so inappropriate in the current circum-
stances that Elizabeth did not even reply. She chose to punish
Catherine by depriving her of her best chambermaid, Miss
Vladislavov. This new blow completely demolished the young
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woman. Consumed by sorrow and fear, she took to bed and re-
fused any food, claiming to be sick in heart and body; on the verge
of inanition, she adamantly refused to be examined by a doctor.
She begged the obliging Alexander Shuvalov to call a priest to
hear her confession. Father Dubiansky, personal chaplain of the
tsarina, was alerted. Having received the grand duchess’s confes-
sion and contrition, he promised to plead her cause with Her Maj-
esty. In a visit to his Majestic penitent, the priest painted such a
picture of her daughter-in-law’s pain (a daughter-in-law, after all,
who could only be reproached for a maladroit devotion to the
cause of the monarchy), that Elizabeth promised to reflect on the
case of this strange parishioner. Catherine did not yet dare to ex-
pect a return to grace. However, Father Dubiansky must have
been persuasive in his intervention for, on April 13, 1759, Alexan-
der Shuvalov went to see Catherine in the room where she lay,
wasting away in anguish, and announced to her that Her Majesty
would receive her “this very day, at ten o’clock in the evening.”
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Footnotes
1. This was the beginning of the Seven Years War.
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XI
ANOTHER CATHERINE!
This meeting, as the empress and the grand duchess knew
full well, would define their relationship forever. They each pre-
pared carefully, marshaling all their arguments, objections, an-
swers and excuses. Elizabeth was imbued with discretionary
power, but she was mindful of the fact that her daughter-in-law
was just thirty years old, her skin still smooth and her teeth still
intact, giving her the advantage of youth and grace. It infuriated
the tsarina to find herself over the age of fifty, fat, and able to at-
tract men only by her title and her authority. Suddenly, the com-
petition between two political characters became a competition
between women. Catherine had the benefit of age; Elizabeth had
the hierarchical advantage.
In order to mark clearly her superiority over the upstart, the
tsarina decided to keep her waiting in the antechamber long
enough to fray her nerves and weaken her ability to charm. The
audience was set for 10:00 in the evening, on April 13; Elizabeth
gave orders to introduce Her Highness into the salon only at 1:30
in the morning. Wishing to have witnesses to the lesson that she
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proposed to inflict on her daughter-in-law, she asked Alexander
Shuvalov, her lover Ivan Shuvalov and even the Grand Duke Peter,
the culprit’s husband, to hide behind large folding screens. She
did not invite Alexis Razumovsky to this strange family event —
he was still Her Majesty’s designated confidant, Her “sentimental
memory,” but his star had faded recently and he had to yield place,
in “significant ways,” to younger, more vigorous newcomers.
Thus, “the Catherine-and-Peter issue” was outside his sphere of
involvement.
This interview was critical, in Elizabeth’s view, and she ar-
ranged every detail with the meticulous care of a seasoned impre-
sario. Just a few small candles shone in the half-light, accentuat-
ing the nerve-wracking character of the meeting. The empress
deposited the exhibits in a gold dish: letters from the grand duch-
ess, confiscated from Apraxin and Bestuzhev. Thus, from the first
moment, the schemer would be thrown off balance.1
However, nothing went as the empress had planned. As
soon as she stepped across the threshold, Catherine fell to her
knees, wringing her hands and wailing in her sorrow. Between
sobs, she claimed that no one in the court cared for her, nobody
understood her, and her husband could do nothing but invent
ways of humiliating her in public. She begged Her Majesty to al-
low her to leave for her home country. The tsarina reminded her
that it is a mother’s duty to remain at the sides of her children, no
matter what — to which Catherine retorted, still weeping and
