as many handkerchiefs were all that she had to pack for that mid-winter journey. The Baroness von Prinzen, who afterward said in her memoirs that she had helped Catherine the Great to pack her trunks for Russia, rather exaggerated the case. The packing of Fike's trunks must have been a simple matter. It was a source of lifelong chagrin to her that she came to Russia without a bridal chest. Her mother at least had had that. She had no bed-linen of her own, and was obliged to use her mother's sheets. No deeper humiliation for a German bride can be imagined. Even as an old woman Fike could not forget it. It was something which she had always to make up. Because she had come without sheets to Russia, she was obliged to put through the partition of Poland.

In the middle of January, the princess's coach rolled out of Berlin. Lumbering through the deep, frozen ruts of the outer streets, it took a northerly direction, as if homeward bound for Stettin. The snowless winter obliged the party to travel on wheels as far as Riga, while the bitter winds sweeping down from the Baltic waters made the journey a severe ordeal. They lost no time, however. Frederick the Great had ordered fresh relays of horses at every post. No expense had been spared; were not the rubles of the Russian empress to pay for everything?

The princess's memories of her arrival in Petersburg are appropriate to a fourteen-year-old girl. She remembered the names of the four young ladies of honor who came forward to welcome her and the names of the men they subsequently married; the fourteen elephants which the Shah of

Persia had given to the empress and which actually performed tricks in the snowy palace courtyard; the carnival and the wonderful coasting expedition led by Semion Kyrilovich Narishkin; above all she remembered and described to the last knot and ringlet the extraordinary style of hair-dressing favored by her new Russian friends.

Once in the Petersburg palace, the girl promptly forgot all the hardships of the journey. Her mother, a little tired, but ever busy with her pen, continued her stream of correspondence with Zerbst and Berlin. "Fike bears the fatigue better than I, yet we are both well, praise be to God! May He continue to guide and direct us!" This to her husband, the Prince of Zerbst; to King Frederick, she wrote rather less piously: "Considering the hardships of the season, the journey, and the change of air, I should need to have an iron constitution to keep up my resistance. My daughter is more fortunate. Her youth supports her health, and like young soldiers who scorn danger because they know nothing about it, she delights in the splendor by which she is surrounded." In some subtle way the conquering spirit of the Princess of Zerbst began to fail her as soon as she arrived in Russia. It was equally evident that Fike, from the moment when Narishkin helped her with a jest into the sleigh at Riga, was swimming with the current.

alone from the merit of Christ, the Son of God. Whatever resembles this faith she can herself prove and accept; the other not. . . . To compel or persuade my daughter to accept a strange religion in which she herself finds errors is never to be advised. . . . And rather eventually to give up the regency than to suffer offense in her conscience."

These solemn words made a deep impression on the girl. The prince's admonitions about respecting her future husband, the empress, and the senate were not so serious. She felt herself able to cope with these concrete duties, but the abstraction called conscience is a more terrifying thing. "I beseech you," she wrote, replying to her father in his own vein, "to be assured that your admonitions and precepts will be forever implanted within my heart, as is the seed-corn of our holy religion in my soul. I pray God to give me the strength which I need to withstand the temptations to which I shall be subjected. Through the prayers of your Highness and of my dear mother, God will grant me this grace, which my youth and weakness cannot give."

Fike still believed when she penned these lines that she would be acceptable in Russia as an evangelical grand duchess. In common with her Godfearing father, she put her trust in the precedents of Peter the Great, who was liberal in religious matters. But the daughter of Peter the Great did not inherit her father's liberal spirit. She was loyal to the Russian Church and a lover of miracles. Elisabeth held fast to her mother's will, which provided that no one should occupy the Russian throne who did not profess the orthodox faith. Fike perceived the

finality of this demand at once. "From my entrance into the empire," she said, "I had been firmly convinced that the heavenly crown could not be separated from the earthly one." On the threshold of her new life she was plunged into a conflict with her conscience. She wrestled with temptation, and the scars of her struggle remained with her through life.

With the assistance of Simon Todorsky, astutest of priests, Fike was able to see that there was very little real difference between the Lutheran and the Greek Church. If only her father had not continued to harry her conscience! "Thou shouldst not take this trial frivolously," he wrote, "must search thyself with care whether thou art really in thy heart inspired by inclination; or whether, perhaps, without thy being aware of it, the marks of favor shown thee by the Empress and other high-placed persons have influenced thee in that direction. We human beings often see only that which is before our eyes. But God in His infinite justice searches the heart and our secret motives, and manifests accordingly to us His mercy."

As the awful shades of judgment day closed about her, the girl fell ill. Once before in childhood she had succumbed to an attack of religious terror complicated by pneumonia. In Russia she repeated the experience. "The physicians ascribe the disease," wrote her mother, "to the inflaming of the blood caused by the hard journey." For twenty-seven days the sick girl hovered between life and death. In unconsciousness and delirium she made the decision which her father had urged her to weigh so carefully. Believing that Fike might die, her mother suggested that a Lutheran clergy

man should be called to her bedside. But the girl said, coming for a moment to consciousness: "Why? Call Simon Todorsky, rather. I would like to speak with him." It was a master stroke of diplomacy, an instance of superb presence of mind which characterized her in every crisis of her life.

Fike's mother sent an enthusiastic, but discreet, description of the confirmation to her spouse. It was a detail to her that her daughter's name had been changed, but the girl's father and the aunts would probably be hurt. The name Sophie was a good Russian name, none better, but it happened to be that of the rebellious sister whom Peter the Great had locked up in a convent. Therefore Elisabeth hated it. So Fike was baptized Catherine Alexeievna, and Sophie Augusta Friedrike of Anhalt-Zerbst ceased to exist. The Princess of Zerbst broke the news to her husband as tactfully as possible. "In order to seal publicly such a confirmation," she wrote, "a name is added; our daughter will be Catherine, and the Alexeievna follows the custom of the country and means daughter of August; for the name August, according to the dialect here, cannot be rendered other than Alexei." The Princess of Zerbst had taken lessons in the Russian language to please the empress, but her progress had not been great. It is possible that she believed that August and Alexei were the same in Russian, though probably she knew better. In any case, her little fiction would scarcely be detected by her husband.

In after years, when she had become Catherine the Great, Fike made light of the whole business of conversion. When her daughter-in-law had to go

through the same experience, she spoke of it merely as a bit of routine. "As soon as we have her here, we shall go about the conversion. In order to convince her, we shall need about fourteen days. How much time will be needed to teach her to read the confession of faith correctly and distinctly in Russian I do not know." The fourteen days were taken from Fike's own experience; it was after two weeks of Todorsky's hair-splitting dogma that she had succumbed to pneumonia and the temptings of ambition. Though she could speak of her conversion so casually in after life, it had almost killed her at the time. The great crimes of which she was accused as empress made less impression on her conscience. As Catherine the Great she identified herself with Henri le Grand of France, that brilliant, wayward monarch who changed his religion for the sake of a crown. It was only one of many ways in which she tried to justify her departure from her father's church.

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The Empress Elisabeth arranged the marriage for her two adopted children as if they had been puppets or balletdancers. No such marriage had ever been seen in Russia except perhaps the famous ice festival in the reign of Anna Ivanovna, when Prince Galitsin married his Lilliputian bride. To satisfy a whim of their empress, the couple had been escorted to an illuminated ice-palace on the Neva and put upon a bed made of ice. Fortunately for Catherine and Peter, they were to be married in midsummer. The date was originally set for July the first, but was postponed twice. Not until late in August was everything finally

ready. The whole summer through the empress was so taken up with preparations that she suspended all affairs of state. Her own ministers and the foreign ambassadors had nothing to do but to play cards and drive in the Nevsky Prospekt.

For months in advance the fashionable world was busy providing itself with the "richest clothes possible," since nothing less than this had been specified by the ukase issued by the empress. Bales of silk, velvet, and brocade were constantly arriving from England and Germany, for the Russians were no weavers. From German looms came the heavy cloth-of-silver from which Catherine's wedding-gown was made. It was a rigid structure, with a bodice shaped over a wooden form, to which was suspended a train more than three yards long. The fabric was spun silver, and the whole structure weighed upon her like a suit of armor.

Clad in this unyielding garment and bearing on her head a ponderous crown of jewels the grand duchess spent a miserable day. She held out bravely during the wedding ceremony in the church of Our Lady of Kazan and throughout the state repast in the Winter Palace afterward. But just before the ball began, she humbled her pride and begged to have the crown removed for a few minutes. The empress, who thought this might bring bad luck, reluctantly consented.

Although it was the wedding day of the grand duke as well, he played rather a minor part. The ill starred boy had managed to contract the smallpox recently, and appeared at his nuptials with a badly pockmarked face. His august aunt always dreaded his public appearances lest some piece of childish misbehavior on his part

should disgrace the family. Peter bore himself sufficiently well on his wedding day, however, to cause no comment among the on-lookers. His only caprice was privately to offend his bride. While the young couple were still kneeling opposite to each other, awaiting the final words of the priest, one of the court ladies whispered in the grand duke's ear. "I heard him say to her," says Catherine: "Clear out! Such nonsense!' Then he turned to me and told me that she had advised him not to turn his head while he stood before the priest, for whichever of us first turned the head would die first, and she did not wish him to be that one. I thought this compliment not very friendly on our wedding day, but I did not allow myself to notice it. She saw, however, that he had repeated to me her good advice. She grew red, and whispered reproaches, which he again repeated to me."

At ten o'clock the empress herself conducted the young people to their apartment and left the grand duchess with her maidens. She was relieved of her burdensome wedding garments and put to bed beneath an embroidered velvet coverlet. "All of them went away," Catherine's narrative relates; "I remained alone more than two hours and did not know what I should do. Should I get up again? Should I remain in bed? I knew nothing. Finally my new lady of honor, Madame Kruse, came and informed me with great merriment that the grand duke was waiting for his supper, which was about to be carried up to him. After his Imperial Highness had supped well, he came to bed; and as he laid himself down, he began to talk of how it would amuse his servant in the morning to see us both in bed. Then

he fell asleep and slept soundly until the next morning. The cloths of fine linen on which I lay were very uncomfortable, owing to the summer weather, and consequently I slept badly; all the more as the morning light disturbed me considerably, for the bed had no curtains, although otherwise furnished magnificently in red velvet with silver embroidery. Mme. Kruse attempted the next morning to question us young married people. Her hopes however proved unfounded. And in this condition our affairs remained during the next nine years without the least change."

With the year 1750 the problem of an heir began to grow desperate. In the grand ducal camp a realistic view was growing up. It was represented chiefly by Mme. Vladislav, Catherine's lady-in-waiting, and by the mother of young Sergei Saltikov, chamberlain of the grand duke. Slowly the idea took shape, without anybody's expressing it, that the grand duchess might, by ignoring her marriage vows, redeem the situation. Maria Choglokov suggested it to Catherine; put it to her, so to speak, as her patriotic duty. Apparently, Catherine would have gone on indefinitely in this dilemma if the older married women had not finally suggested this solution.

Whether the Empress Elisabeth was aware of the intrigue between Catherine and Sergei Saltikov, which began in 1752, we do not know. We do know, however, that two years after it began, her attitude toward the young court underwent a decided change. It was not until September of that year that the grand duchess actually became a mother. On September 20, 1754, she bore a son. "There was inexpressible joy over it," is her laconic comment.

The boy was born at noonday. The empress, who had swept upon the scene at early dawn in a mantle of blue satin, waited only for the midwife to bathe and swaddle the infant. Commanding the woman to carry the child in front of her, she then retired to her own apartments, where she arranged a nursery and cared for him with her own hands. If he whimpered, she ran to him at once; her devotion was the subject of general comment and high praise. It gave rise to a report that the child was actually Elizabeth's own and not Catherine's at all. The empress was not displeased with the rumor; there were moments in her last years, years given over to vapors and moods, when she almost believed the myth herself. That she had done violence to the young mother in kidnapping her child never entered her head.

Catherine was permitted to see her babe but rarely, and when she did, she consoled herself with criticisms of the way his foster-mother took care of him. "From sheer over-carefulness, he was literally smothered. He lay in a very hot room entirely wrapped in flannel, in a crib made of black fox fur and covered with a wadded satin coverlet. Above this was a red velvet coverlet lined with black fox fur. . . . The sweat ran down his face and down his whole body." Yet she made no attempt to rescue him. To try it would have been useless, for the autocrat of all the Russias was easily supreme in her own household. Catherine also probably had too little confidence in her own rights of possession. It was as if she also had stolen him.

We must rely upon Catherine's memoirs for the little that we know about the Saltikovs. Sergei and his brother Peter were both in the service