That evening, after I had cried much and eaten very little, I was walking up and down in my room quite agitated in both body and mind, when I saw one of my ladies-in-waiting, named Katerina Ivanovna Sharogorodskaia, enter my bedroom, where I was alone as always. With tears and great affection, she said, “We all fear that you will succumb to the state in which we see you. Permit me to go today to my uncle, who is your own confessor as well as the Empress’s. I will talk to him and tell him everything you order me to, and I promise you that he will be able to speak to the Empress in a manner that you will be happy with.”154 Seeing her goodwill, I recounted to her very clearly the state of things, what I had written to the Empress, and everything else. She went to her uncle, and after speaking to him and disposing him in my favor, she returned around eleven o’clock to tell me that the confessor, her uncle, advised me to declare during the night that I was ill and to ask to make my confession, and for this purpose have him sent for, so that he would be able to tell Her Imperial Majesty what he heard from my own mouth. I very much approved of this idea and promised to carry it out, and then dismissed her, thanking both her and her uncle for the devotion they were displaying. As planned, I rang between two and three o’clock in the morning; one of my ladies entered. I told her that I felt so ill that I wanted to make my confession. Instead of the confessor, Count Alexander Shuvalov came running into my room, and in a weak and broken voice I repeated to him my request to have my confessor summoned. He sent for the doctors. I told them that I needed spiritual aid, that I was suffocating. One felt my pulse and said it was weak. I said that my soul was in danger and my body no longer needed doctors. Finally the confessor arrived and we were left alone. I had him sit next to my bed and we had a conversation for at least an hour and a half. I described and recounted to him the past and present state of affairs, the Grand Duke’s conduct toward me, mine toward His Imperial Highness, the Shuvalovs’ hatred, and how they were bringing Her Imperial Majesty’s disfavor down on me, and finally the continual exile or dismissal of many of my servants, and always those who were most devoted to me, and then where matters stood at present, which had brought me to write the Empress the letter by which I requested my dismissal. I begged him to obtain a prompt response to my plea. I found he had the best intentions in the world for me and that he was less stupid than he was said to be. He told me that my letter was having, and would have, the desired effect, that I should persist in asking to be dismissed, and that I would certainly not be sent away, because they could not justify this dismissal in the eyes of the public, whose attention was on me. He agreed that I was being treated cruelly and that the Empress, having chosen me at a very tender age, was abandoning me to the mercy of my enemies. She would do much better to dismiss my rivals, above all Elizabeth Vorontsova, and to rein in her favorites, who had become leeches on the people through all the monopolies that the Shuvalovs were constantly establishing. Moreover, everyone was crying out at their injustice: witness the affair of Count Bestuzhev, of whose innocence the public was convinced. He ended this interview by telling me that he would go to the Empress’s apartment immediately, where he would await her awakening to speak to her and hasten the interview that she had promised me, which was going to be decisive, and that I would do well to remain in my bed. He would say that sorrow and pain could kill me if a swift remedy was not applied and I was not rescued, one way or another, from the state I was in, alone and abandoned by everyone. He kept his word, and described my state to the Empress with such vivid and immediate colors that Her Imperial Majesty summoned Count Alexander Shuvalov and ordered him to see if I was in a state to come and talk to her the following night. Count Shuvalov came to tell me this. I told him that for this purpose I would gather all my remaining strength.
Toward evening I was getting up when Alexander Shuvalov came to tell me that after midnight he would come to accompany me to the Empress’s apartment. Through his niece, the confessor also informed me that things were going rather well and that the Empress would speak to me the same evening.155 I therefore got dressed toward ten o’clock in the evening and lay down fully dressed on a couch, where I fell asleep. At around half past one, Count Alexander Shuvalov came into my room and said that the Empress was asking for me. I got up and followed him; we crossed the antechambers, where there was no one. Arriving at the door of the gallery, I saw that the Grand Duke was crossing the opposite doorway and that just like me, he was going to see Her Imperial Majesty. I had not seen him since the day of the play. Even when I had said that my life was in danger, he had neither come nor sent to ask how I was doing. I learned afterward that on that same day he had promised Elizabeth Vorontsova that he would marry her if I happened to die, and that they both greatly rejoiced at my state. Finally, having reached Her Imperial Majesty’s apartment, where I found the Grand Duke, as soon as I saw the Empress I threw myself at her knees and begged her with tears to immediately send me back to my family. The Empress wanted to make me get up, but I stayed at her feet. She seemed to me to be more pained than angry, and said to me with tears in her eyes, “Why do you want me to send you back? Remember that you have children.” I said, “My children are in your hands and could not be better off. I hope that you will not abandon them.” Then she said, “But what shall I tell the public is the reason for sending you back?” I replied, “Your Imperial Majesty will tell them, if she sees fit, the reasons that I have incurred your disfavor and the hatred of the Grand Duke.” The Empress said, “And what will you live on at your family’s home?” I replied, “On that which I lived before you did me the honor of choosing me.” At this she said, “Your mother is in exile. She was obliged to withdraw from her home and went to Paris.”156 At this I said, “I know this. She was believed to be too devoted to the interests of Russia, and the King of Prussia drove her away.” The Empress told me a second time to get up, which I did, and she walked away from me a little, in thought. The room we were in was long and had three windows, between which there were two tables with the Empress’s gold toiletries. There was no one in the apartment aside from her, the Grand Duke, Alexander Shuvalov, and me. Across from the windows there were large screens before which a sofa had been placed. From the first, I suspected that Ivan Shuvalov was certainly behind these screens, and perhaps also Count Peter, his cousin. I learned later that I had guessed correctly in part and that Ivan Shuvalov was there. I stood next to the dressing table closest to the door by which I had entered and noticed that in the basin there were some folded letters. The Empress came toward me again and said to me, “God is my witness how much I cried when you were deathly ill upon your arrival in Russia, and if I had not loved you, I would not have kept you here.” Now with this, in my opinion, she was excusing herself after what I had said about incurring her disfavor. I responded by thanking Her Imperial Majesty for all the favors and kindness that she had shown me, then and later, saying that their memory would never be effaced from my mind, and that I would always consider having incurred her disfavor as the greatest of misfortunes. Then she came even closer to me and said, “You are extremely proud. Remember that at the Summer Palace I approached you one day and asked you if your neck hurt, because I saw that you hardly bowed to me and that it was out of pride that you greeted me with only a nod.” I said to her, “My God, Madame, how can you believe that I wanted to affect pride toward you? I swear to you that it never even crossed my mind that this question you posed to me four years ago could have meant such a thing.” At this she said, “You imagine that no one is more intelligent than you.” I replied, “If I did believe this, nothing would more thoroughly disabuse me than my present state and this very conversation, because I see that out of stupidity I have not understood until now what you deigned to say to me four years ago.” While the Empress was speaking to me, the Grand Duke whispered with Count Alexander Shuvalov. She noticed this and approached them. They were both standing in the middle of the room. I did not hear too well what they said among themselves. They did not speak very loudly, and
the room was large. At the end, I heard the Grand Duke say, raising his voice, “She is terribly wicked and very stubborn.” Then I saw that he was speaking of me, and addressing myself to the Grand Duke, I said to him, “If you are speaking of me, I am quite happy to tell you in the presence of Her Imperial Majesty that in truth I am spiteful toward those who advise you to commit injustices, and that I have become stubborn ever since I saw that my acts of kindness bring me nothing but your enmity.” He said to the Empress, “Your Imperial Majesty herself sees how wicked she is by what she says.” But my remarks made a different impression on the Empress, who had infinitely more intelligence than the Grand Duke. I saw clearly that as the conversation continued, although it had been recommended to her or she herself had resolved to be harsh with me, her mind was gradually softening in spite of herself and her resolutions. However, she turned toward him and said, “Oh, you do not know everything she has said to me against your advisers and Brockdorff regarding the man whom you had arrested.” To the Grand Duke, this must have seemed a formal act of treason on my part. He did not know a word of my conversation with the Empress at the Summer Palace, and now he saw his Brockdorff, who had become so dear and so precious to him, accused before the Empress and by me. This therefore put us more at odds than ever and perhaps made us irreconcilable and deprived me forever of the Grand Duke’s trust. I almost fell over hearing the Empress recount to the Grand Duke in my presence what I had told her for the well-being of her nephew, and seeing it turn into a lethal weapon against me. The Grand Duke, utterly astonished by this secret, said, “Ah, here is a nice little story that I did not know. It proves her wickedness.” I thought to myself, God knows whose wickedness it proves.
With a brusque transition the Empress went from Brockdorff to the uncovered connection between Stambke and Count Bestuzhev, and said to me, “I leave you to consider how having contact with a prisoner of the state could be excusable.” As my name did not appear in this affair and as there had been no mention made of me, I was silent, taking this as a remark that did not concern me. At this the Empress approached me and said, “You meddle in many things that do not concern you. I would not have dared to do as much during Empress Anna’s reign. How, for example, did you dare to send orders to Marshal Apraksin?” I said to her, “Me! The thought of sending him orders never entered my head.” “How,” she said, “can you deny having written to him? Your letters are there in this basin.” She pointed at them. “You are forbidden to write.” Then I said, “It is true that I transgressed this prohibition and I beg your pardon for it.
But since my letters are there, these three letters can prove to Your Imperial Majesty that I never sent him orders, but that in one I told him what was being said of his conduct.” Here she interrupted me, saying, “And why did you write him this?” I replied, “Quite simply because I took an interest in the Marshal, whom I liked a great deal. I asked him to follow your orders. The two other letters contain only congratulations on the birth of his son and best wishes for the new year.” At this she said, “Bestuzhev says that there were many others.” I replied, “If Bestuzhev says this, he is lying.” “Well then,” said she, “since he is lying about you I will have him put to torture.” She thought to frighten me with this. I replied to her that she was the sovereign mistress and could do what she judged fitting, but that I had certainly only written these three letters to Apraksin. She fell silent and appeared to gather her thoughts.
I am reporting the most striking details of this conversation that have remained in my memory, but it would be impossible for me to remember everything that was said during the at least one and a half hours that it lasted. The Empress walked about the room, alternately addressing herself to me, her nephew, and even more often Count Alexander Shuvalov, with whom the Grand Duke was in conversation most of the time while the Empress spoke to me. I have already said that I observed in Her Imperial Majesty less anger than worry. As for the Grand Duke, in all of his remarks during this interview he showed a great deal of venom, animosity, and even rage toward me. He sought to anger the Empress against me as much as he could. But as he went about this stupidly and showed more passion than justice, he missed his mark, and the Empress’s intelligence and perspicacity brought her to my side. She listened with particular attention and a kind of instinctive approbation to my firm and moderate responses to the immoderate remarks that Monsieur my husband made and in which one saw clear as day that he sought to clear out my position to have his mistress of the moment placed there, if he could. But this could not be to the Empress’s liking, nor would Messieurs Shuvalov scheme to make the Counts Vorontsov their masters. But this lay beyond the powers of judgment of His Imperial Highness, who always believed what he wished and who brushed aside all ideas contrary to the one that dominated him. And he carried on so much that the Empress approached me and said to me in a low voice, “I will have many more things to say to you, but I cannot speak because I do not want to put you two more at odds than you already are,” and with her eyes and head she showed me that it was because of those present. Seeing this sign of intimate goodwill that she gave me in such a critical situation, I was deeply touched, and I too said very quietly, “And I too cannot speak, as pressing as my desire is to open my heart and my soul to you.” I saw that what I had just said to her made a very vivid and favorable impression on her. Tears had come to her eyes, and to hide that she was moved, and to what extent, she dismissed us, saying that it was very late. In truth, it was almost three in the morning. The Grand Duke left first; I followed him. At the moment that Count Alexander Shuvalov wanted to pass through the door after me, the Empress called him, and he stayed in her room. The Grand Duke kept walking with long strides. I did not hurry this time to follow him. He went back into his rooms and I into mine. I began to undress to go to bed when I heard knocking at the door through which I had just entered. I asked who it was. Count Alexander Shuvalov said that it was he, asking me to open, which I did. He told me to dismiss my ladies; they left. Then he said to me that the Empress had summoned him, and after speaking to him some time, she had asked him to present her compliments to me, and to beg me not to be distressed, and that she would have a second conversation with me alone. I bowed deeply before Count Shuvalov and told him to present my very deepest respects to Her Imperial Majesty and to thank her for her kindness toward me, which had brought me back to life, and that I would wait for this second conversation with the keenest impatience and that I begged him to hasten the moment. He told me not to speak of it to a living soul and namely to the Grand Duke, whom the Empress regretted seeing so angry with me. I promised this. I thought, But if she is upset that he is angry, why therefore anger him even more by recounting to him the conversation at the Summer Palace about the people who made him behave stupidly? Nevertheless this unforeseen return of intimacy on the part of the Empress made me very happy.
The following day I told the confessor’s niece to thank her uncle for the exceptional service he had just rendered me in obtaining this conversation with the Empress. She returned from her uncle’s home and told me that the confessor knew the Empress had said that her nephew was an idiot, but that the Grand Duchess had much intelligence. This remark was repeated to me by more than one source, as was the fact that Her Imperial Majesty did nothing but boast of my abilities among her intimates, often adding, “She loves truth and justice. She is a woman with much intelligence, but my nephew is an idiot.” I shut myself up in my apartment as before, under the pretext of ill health. I remember that, at the time, I was reading the first five volumes of the Histoire des voyages with the map on the table, which amused and instructed me.157 When I was tired of this reading, I leafed through the first volumes of the Encyclopédie.158 I waited for the day when it would please the Empress to invite me for a second conversation. From time to time I repeated my request to Count Shuvalov, telling him I greatly wished for my fate to be decided at last.
As for the Grand Duke, I did not hear any more talk of him at all. I
knew only that he was waiting for my dismissal with impatience and that he was planning for sure to marry Elizabeth Vorontsova in a second wedding. She came to his apartment and already played the hostess there. Apparently her uncle, Vice Chancellor Count Vorontsov, who was a hypocrite if ever there was one, learned of the plans that were perhaps his brother’s or more likely his nephews’, who were only children at the time, the eldest being barely twenty years old or thereabouts. Fearing that his newly restored favor with the Empress would suffer from this plan, he requested the task of dissuading me from requesting my dismissal. For here is what happened. One fine morning it was announced to me that Vice Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov was asking to speak to me on behalf of the Empress. Utterly astonished by this extraordinary delegation, though not yet dressed, I had Monsieur the Vice Chancellor enter. He began by kissing my hand and squeezing it with great affection, after which he wiped his eyes, from which flowed a few tears. As at the time I had been somewhat warned against him, I did not put much faith in this prelude, which was supposed to signal his zeal, but I let him perform what I regarded as a kind of playacting. I asked him to sit down. He was a bit out of breath because of a kind of goiter from which he suffered. He sat down with me and told me that the Empress had asked him to speak with me and to dissuade me from insisting on being sent home. Her Imperial Majesty herself had ordered him to beg me on her behalf to give up this idea, to which she would never consent. In particular, he begged and beseeched me to give him my word not to talk about it anymore. This plan truly pained the Empress and all honorable people, among whose number he assured me that he counted. I replied to him that there was nothing that I would not do willingly to please Her Imperial Majesty and honorable people, but I believed my life and my health were in danger from the kind of life to which I was exposed. I only made people miserable, all those who drew near me were continually exiled and dismissed, the Grand Duke was poisoned against me to the point of hatred, and moreover he had never loved me. Her Imperial Majesty as well gave me almost continual signs of her disfavor, and seeing myself a burden to everyone and dying from boredom and sorrow myself, I had asked to be sent home so as to free everyone of this person who was such a burden and was wasting away from sorrow and boredom. He spoke to me of my children. I told him that I did not see them, and that since my churching ceremony I had not yet seen the youngest and could not see them without an express order from the Empress, two rooms from whom they resided, their apartment being part of hers. I did not doubt that she took excellent care of them, but being deprived of the satisfaction of seeing them, it did not matter to me whether I was a hundred steps or a hundred leagues from them. He told me that the Empress would have a second conversation with me, and he added that it was to be sincerely hoped that Her Imperial Majesty would be reconciled with me. I replied by asking him to hasten this second conversation and said that for my part, I would neglect nothing that could expedite his wish. He stayed in my room for more than an hour and spoke a long time and about many different things. I noticed that his improved favor had given him something attractive in his speech and his bearing that he did not have before, when I had considered him indistinguishable from everyone else. One day at the court, unhappy with the Empress, with political affairs, and with those who possessed Her Imperial Majesty’s favor and trust, seeing that the Empress spoke at length with the Ambassador of the Empress Queen of Hungary and Bohemia while he and I and everyone were standing around bored to death, he had said to me, “What do you want to bet that she is mouthing nothing but empty phrases?” Laughing, I replied, “My God, what are you saying?” He replied in Russian with this catchphrase: “she is by her nature a speaker of empty phrases.” Finally he left, assuring me of his zeal, and he took leave of me by kissing my hand once again. For the time being I was sure not to be sent away, because I was being asked not even to speak of it. But I judged it fitting not to appear in public and to continue to stay in my room, as if I expected the decision about my fate only in the second conversation that I was supposed to have with the Empress.
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Page 35