sighing: “My children are in your hands and could not receive bet-
ter care than that!” Touched at a sensitive point by this recogni-
tion of her talents as a teacher and protectress, Elizabeth helped
Catherine to her feet and gently reproached her for having forgot-
ten all the marks of interest and even affection that she had once
lavished upon her. “God is my witness, how I wept when you on
your deathbed,” she said. “If I had not loved you, I would not have
< 216 >
kept you here. . . . But you are extremely proud! You think that
nobody has a better mind than you!” At these words, flouting the
instructions he had been given, Peter stepped forward and inter-
jected,
“She is terribly spiteful and incredibly stubborn!”
“You must be speaking about yourself!” retorted Catherine.
“I have no problem telling you in front of Her Majesty that I really
am malicious with you, who advise me to do things that are
wrong, and that I certainly have become stubborn since I see that
by being agreeable I only earn your spite!”
Before the discussion degenerated into an everyday domestic
conflict, Elizabeth sought to regain control. Confronted by this
teary woman, she had almost forgotten that the alleged victim of
society was a faithless wife and a conspirator. Now, she went on
the attack. Pointing to the letters in the gold dish, she said,
“How dared you to send orders to Field Marshal Apraxin?
“I simply asked him to follow your orders,” murmured Cath-
erine.
“Bestuzhev says that there were many more!”
“If Bestuzhev says that, he lies!”
‘Well, if he is lying, then I will have him put to torture!” ex-
claimed Elizabeth, giving her daughter-in-law a fatal glance.
But Catherine did not stumble; indeed, the first
had boosted her confidence. And it was Elizabeth who suddenly
felt ill at ease in this interrogation. To calm herself, she began to
pace up and down the length of the room. Peter took advantage of
the hiatus to launch out in an enumeration of his wife’s misdeeds.
Exasperated by the invectives from her little runt of a nephew, the
tsarina was tempted to side with her daughter-in-law, whom she
had just condemned a few minutes before. Her initial jealousy of
the young and attractive creature gave way to a kind of female
complicity, over the barrier of the generations. In a moment, she
< 217 >
cut Peter short and told him to keep silent. Then, approaching
Catherine, she whispered in her ear:
“I still had many things to say to you, but I do not want to
make things worse [with your husband] than they already are!”
“And I cannot tell you,” answered Catherine, “what an ur-
gent desire I have to open to you my heart and my soul!”2
This time, it was the Empress whose eyes were filled with
tears. She dismissed Catherine and the grand duke, and sat qui-
etly a long time in front of Alexander Shuvalov, who in his turn
came out from behind the folding screen. After a moment, she
sent him to the grand duchess with a top secret commission: to
urge her not to suffer any longer, pointlessly, for Her Majesty
hoped to receive her soon for “a genuinely private conversation.”
This private conversation did, indeed, take place, in the
greatest secrecy, and allowed the two women finally to explain
themselves honestly. Did the empress demand, on that occasion,
that Catherine provide full details on her liaisons with Sergei
Saltykov and Stanislaw Poniatowski, on the exact parentage of
Paul and Anna, on the unofficial household of Peter and the dread-
ful young Vorontsov, on Bestuzhev’s treason, Apraxin’s incompe-
tence? In any event, Catherine found answers that alleviated
Elizabeth’s anger, for the very next day she authorized her daugh-
ter-in-law to come to see her children in the imperial wing of the
palace. During these wisely spaced visits, Catherine was able to
observe how well-raised and well-educated were the cherubim,
far from their parents.
With the help of these compromises, the grand duchess gave
up her desperate plan to leave St. Petersburg to return to her fam-
ily in Zerbst. Bestuzhev’s trial ended inconclusively, because of
the lack of material evidence and the death of the principal wit-
ness, the Field Marshal Apraxin. Since, in spite of everything,
some punishment must be given after so many abominable crimes
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had been announced, Alexis Bestuzhev was exiled — not to Sibe-
ria, but to his own lands, where he would not want for anything.
The principal winner at the end of this legal struggle was
Mikhail Vorontsov, who was offered the title of chancellor, re-
placing the disgraced Bestuzhev. Behind his back, the duke of
Choiseul, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in France, savored
his personal success. He knew that Vorontsov’s Francophile ten-
dencies would lead him quite naturally to win over Catherine, and
probably even Elizabeth, to side with Louis XV.
With regard to Catherine, he was not mistaken: anything
