Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas 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 urgent 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 quietly 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 dreadful young Vorontsov, on Bestuzhev’s treason, Apraxin’s incompetence? In any event, Catherine found answers that alleviated Elizabeth’s anger, for the very next day she authorized her daughter-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 family in Zerbst. Bestuzhev’s trial ended inconclusively, because of the lack of material evidence and the death of the principal witness, the Field Marshal Apraxin. Since, in spite of everything, some punishment must be given after so many abominable crimes