Terrible tsarinas

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Machinations around the Throne were already being heard, might lead to marriage. Such a union would end up making the tsar totally subservient to his in-laws and would close the door on the other members of the Supreme Privy Council. Peter seemed to be so smitten by his Katya that he had hardly returned to St. Petersburg when he decided to leave again. If he bothered to stop in the capital at all, it was only to round out his hunting gear. Having bought 200 hunting hounds and 400 greyhounds, he headed back to Gorenky. But, back where he’d enjoyed such great exploits in the field, he no longer seemed very sure how much fun he was having. He was bored, counting the hares, foxes and wolves that he had killed in the course of the day. One evening, citing the three bears listed in his hunting record, somebody complimented him for this latest prowess. With a sarcastic smile, he replied: “I did better than take three bears; I’m taking with me four two-footed animals.” His interlocutor recognized that as an unkind allusion to prince Alexis Dolgoruky and his three daughters. Such mockery, in public, made people suppose that, after the initial combustion, perhaps the tsar no longer burned so intensely for Katya and that he might be on the verge of abandoning her.

Ostermann, an astute strategist, followed the ups and downs of this unpredictable couple from afar, through the gossip and rumor mills of the court. Now he set about preparing a counteroffensive. Her grief at the death of her sister Anna having run its course, Elizabeth was again available. Admittedly, her thoughts often turned toward that baby, her nephew, deprived of tenderness and growing up at a distance, practically becoming a stranger. She wondered, from time to time, whether she should not draw him back in, nearer to her. And then the events of the day would distract her from these thoughts, so worthy of a guardian. It was even said that after a mystical crisis, she was experiencing such a new zest for life that she had fallen under the spell