Chapter XVIII: The Princess at St. Petersburg

The fresh and clear atmosphere of the Muscovite environs began to be foggy. Clouds were gathering, lightning darting, thunder rolling. The Court also had its storms. Ekaterina had no easy task in investigating the insurrection of Pougachoff. He astonished every one by preserving to the very last minute the firm conviction that he would be pardoned, that they would never execute him. “The wretch has not much sense--he still hopes!” wrote the empress, after reading the interrogation of the Pretender. “Human nature is unfathomable.”

Pougachoff was executed in January.[35]

About the middle of May Ekaterina received information that the squadron under the command of Greig had anchored at Cronstadt. The empress sent her whole correspondence with Orloff about the Pretender to the governor-general of Petersburg, Prince Galitzin, and gave him the following order:--“Have the _voyageurs_ transferred secretly from the ship, and submit them to the severest interrogation.”

Prince Alexandre Michaelovitch Galitzin, defeated by Frederick the Great, and afterwards for his victories over the Turks elected to the post of field-marshal, seemed a very imposing personage; but in reality he was the best-hearted and most modest and just of men, and an entire stranger to all Court intrigues. He was loved and respected by all.

On the 24th May the prince summoned an officer of the Préobrajenski regiment, by name Tolstoï, made him take an oath of secrecy, and ordered him to start for Cronstadt to receive the prisoner who would be given over to him, and carefully hand her over to the commandant of the Petropavlovski fortress, André Gavrilovitch Tchernishoff.

Tolstoï fulfilled his mission on the night of the 25th of May. In a specially manned yacht, he sailed down the Neva very gently to the fortress, where he gave up his prisoner. At first she was lodged hastily in a room just under the apartment of the commandant. Afterwards she was transferred to the Ravelin Alexéef. Oushakoff, secretary to the Prince Galitzin, had already prepared a report about her from the papers sent by the empress. Oushakoff was brisk, paunchy, stout, and always panting and repeating with a knavish smile in his eyes--“Oh! my dear fellow, so much to do, so much to do! I only serve the prince for the honour of it, but I ought long ago to have taken my _abshiede_,[36] I am literally worn out.”

The Prince Galitzin pondered long over the report of Oushakoff, drew up a whole list of questions, and with a very important mien, which did not in the least become his good-natured face, entered the prison of the captive. He was very much put out by the news which he had just heard, that on the journey, not far from England, the captive had nearly escaped; that at Plymouth she had all at once thrown herself overboard into a small vessel, which was in readiness for her (as was easily to be seen), and that it was with great difficulty and disregard for her cries and groans that they had managed to get her on board again. The prince was afraid that some one might attempt to effect her escape here. The captive, terrified, confused by all that had happened, by her gloomy and dismal prison, did not deny that she was called and was looked upon as a Russian grand-duchess. She even went so far as to declare that, recollecting her childhood, she, on the strength of circumstances, believed herself to be the grand-duchess of whom mention was made in the will of the Emperor Peter I., which, she said, she had found among her papers, and which was all in favour of the late Empress Elizabeth, and by the will of Elizabeth made in favour of her daughter. A copy of this interrogation was sent to Moscow to the Empress Ekaterina, who was very indignant at the impudence of the captive, and especially when she found a letter addressed to herself, signed “Elizabeth.” “Well, that woman is a _fieffée canaille_,”[37] exclaimed Ekaterina, crumpling the letter in her hands, after having read it. Potemkin was at that time sitting in the study of the empress. “Of whom are you speaking?” he asked.

“Oh! always about the same vagrant, Batiushka; about that Italian vagabond.”

Potemkin,--who really pitied Tarakanova, for two reasons: first, because she was a woman; and then, because she was the prey of Orloff, to him hateful,--began to speak in her favour. The empress, without a word, handed him a whole parcel of German and French newspapers, and then told him that he would do better to look and see for himself all the calumnies spread about her and this Pretender; whereupon he, snuffling and grumbling, began to scan the papers with his short-sighted eyes.

“Well!” asked Ekaterina, looking up from some papers she had been glancing at.

“Incredible.--So much slander! It’s difficult to give an opinion.”

“To me, it’s all clear,” said Ekaterina. “Just a second edition of the Marquis Pougachoff; and you must agree, prince, with me, that it is impossible to have any pity for this ‘victim,’ if you like, ‘of foreign intrigues.’”

Galitzin received another order. He was to put down the impudence of the adventuress, especially, as in the words of the English ambassador, “she was no princess, but the daughter of an innkeeper of Prague.”

The information of the ambassador regarding her was told to the Princess, at which she was very indignant.

“If I only knew who slandered me thus,” she exclaimed furiously, “I would scratch his eyes out.”

“Good God! what can all this mean?” she would cry out, horrified at her position. “I so ardently, so blindly believed in myself, in my mission. Can it be that they are right? Is it possible that under the load of these horrible proofs which are constantly cropping up, I shall have to bid adieu to all my convictions, to all my hopes? Never, that shall never be. I will rise above all; I will never give in!” That her pride might be taken down, the captive was treated much more severely. She was deprived for some time of the services of her maid, and of many other little comforts. Her food was much more simple, almost coarse; but all in vain. Neither prayers, nor threats to take away from her her own garments and furnish her with prison clothes could awaken any repentance in her, or extort from her the confession that she was an impostor and not a princess.

“I am not a pretender, do you hear?” she would scream in furious indignation to Galitzin. “You are a prince; I only a feeble woman.… In the name of the All-Merciful God, do not torment me; have pity upon me.”

The prince, forgetting his orders, would begin consoling her.

“I am pregnant,” inadvertently said the captive, crying. “I shall perish, but not alone.… Send me where you like--to the Eskimos, to the snows of Siberia, to a convent.… No, on my word of honour, I’m innocent.…”

Galitzin became thoughtful.

“Who is the father of your unborn child?” he asked at last.

“Count Alexis Orloff.”

“Again a lie,” said Galitzin. “And why, what for? Are you not ashamed to answer like that? To a man whom the empress trusts so highly, to an old man?”

“It is only the truth. Before God!” answered the captive, sobbing. “The admiral, the officers, the whole fleet can bear witness to it.…”

The bewildered Galitzin put a stop to his interrogation, and sent a report of the new confession to the empress at Moscow.

* * * * *

“Miserable, impudent wretch!” screamed out Ekaterina, after reading this report to Potemkin. “See how this new edition of Pougachoff, sent to us by the Poles--how she knows how to slander and calumniate others!”

“Well; but if there should be some truth in it,” slowly said Potemkin. “It’s so easy to betray a poor, weak, confiding woman.”

“Oh, that’s impossible!” answered Ekaterina. “At any rate, Orloff will soon be here. He’ll soon tell us all about this false Elizabeth.… And you, prince, in your knightly defence of a woman, do not forget the most important thing--the peace of the kingdom. We went through enough in the last insurrection.”

Potemkin was silent.

From day to day Orloff was expected. He was hastening from Italy to be present at the celebration of the peace with Turkey. At this time Galitzin had received other orders,--to deprive the captive of everything except what was strictly necessary, to make her put on prison clothes, and having sent her maid away, to put two sentinels as a constant watch over her.