Terrible Tsarinas

them. Even Peter’s manservant, a certain Rombach, was thrown

into prison on a trumped up pretext.

Peter comforted himself after these affronts by indulging in

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extravagant whims. He began playing his violin ceaselessly,

scraping away for hours, tormenting his wife. His rhetoric be-

came so bizarre that sometimes Catherine thought he’d gone mad;

she wanted to flee. Whenever he saw her reading, he would rip

the book from her hands and order her to join him in playing with

his collection of wooden soldiers. Having recently developed a

passion for dogs, he moved ten barbet spaniels into the marital

bedroom, over Catherine’s protests. When she complained about

their barking and their odor, he insulted her and refused to sacri-

fice his pack for her.

Isolated, Catherine sought in vain for a friend or, at least, a

confidant. She finally turned Lestocq, the empress’s doctor, se-

cure in his tenure, who showed some interest and even sympathy

for Catherine. She hoped to make him an ally against the

“Prussian clique” as well as against Her Majesty, who was still

reproaching her for the sterility that was beyond her control. Un-

able to correspond freely with her mother, she asked the doctor to

see her letters on their way, more privately. However Bestuzhev,

who hated Lestocq and saw him as a potential rival, was delighted

to hear from his spies that the “quack” was flouting the imperial

instructions and rendering services to the grand duchess. Backed

by these revelations, he contacted Razumovsky and accused

Lestocq of being an agent in the pay of foreign chancelleries; and

he said that Lestocq was trying to take the shine off the favorite’s

reputation with Her Majesty. This denouncement agreed with

denunciations made by a secretary to the doctor, a certain Chapu-

zot who, under torture, acknowledged everything that he was

asked. Confronted with this sheaf of more or less convincing evi-

dence, Elizabeth was put on her guard. For several months al-

ready, she had avoided being under Lestocq’s care; if he was no

longer reliable, he would have to pay.

In the night of November 11, 1748, Lestocq was yanked from

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his bed and thrown into a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress. A

special commission, chaired by Bestuzhev in person, with General

Apraxin and Count Alexander Shuvalov as assessors, accused

Lestocq of having sold out to Sweden and Prussia, of correspond-

ing clandestinely with Johanna of Anhalt-Zerbst, mother of the

Grand Duchess Catherine, and of conspiring against the empress

of Russia. After being tortured, and despite his oaths of inno-

cence, he was shipped off to Uglich, and stripped of all his posses-

sions.

However, in a reflex of tolerance, Elizabeth granted that the

condemned man’s wife could join him in his cell and, later, in ex-

ile. Perhaps she felt sorry for the fate of this man whom she had to

punish, on royal principle, event though she had such positive

memories of the eagerness with which he had always offered his

services. Elizabeth may not have been good, but she was sensi-

tive, and even sentimental. Incapable of granting clemency, she

nonetheless had always been willing to shed tears for the victims

of an epidemic in some remote country or for the poor soldiers

who were risking their lives at the borders of the realm. Since she

was usually presented to her subjects in a familiar and smiling

guise, they, forgetting the torments, spoliations, and executions

ordered under her reign, called her “The Lenient.” Even her ladies

of honor, whom she sometimes thanked with a good hard slap or

an insult harsh enough to make a soldier blush, would melt when,

having wrongfully punished them, she would admit her fault. But

it was with her morganatic husband, Razumovsky, that she

showed her most affectionate and most attentive side. When the

weather was cold, she would button his fur-lined coat, taking care

that this gesture of marital solicitude was seen by all their entou-

rage. Whenever he was confined to his armchair by a bout of

gout — as often happened— she would sacrifice important ap-

pointments to bear him company, and life at the palace would re-

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turn to normal only after the patient had recovered.

However, she did allow herself to deceive him with vigorous

young men like the counts Nikita Panin and Sergei Saltykov. But,

of all her secondary lovers, her favorite was Shuvalov’s nephew,

Ivan Ivanovich. She was attracted by this new recruit’s alluring

youth and good looks, but also by his education and his knowl-

edge of France. She, who never spent a minute reading, was filled

with wonder to see him so impatient to receive the latest books

that were being sent to him from Paris. At the age of 23, he was

corresponding with Voltaire! With him, one could abandon one-

self to love and culture, both at the same time — and without

even tiring the eyes and taxing the brain! Certainly, being intro-