The Daughter of an Empress

It was, as we have said, about four weeks after the commencement of the

regency of the Duke of Courland, when a sedan-chair was set down before

a small back door of the Duchess Anna Leopoldowna's palace; it had

been borne and accompanied by four serfs, over whose gold-embroidered

liveries, as if to protect them from the weather, had been laid a

tolerably thick coat of dust and sweat. Equally splendid, elegant, and

unclean was the chair which the servants now opened for the purpose of

aiding their age-enfeebled master to emerge from it. That person,

who now made his appearance, was a shrunken, trembling, coughing old

gentleman; his small, bent, distorted form was wrapped in a fur cloak

which, somewhat tattered, permitted a soiled and faded under-dress

to make itself perceptible, giving to the old man the appearance of

indigence and slovenliness. Nothing, not even the face, or the thin and

meagre hands he extended to his servants, was neat and cleanly; nothing

about him shone but his eyes, those gray, piercing eyes with their fiery

side-glances and their now kind and now sly and subtle expression. This

ragged and untidy old man might have been taken for a beggar, had not

his dirty fingers and his faded neck-tie, whose original color was

hardly discoverable, flashed with brilliants of an unusual size, and had

not the arms emblazoned upon the door of his chair, in spite of the dust

and dirt, betrayed a noble rank. The arms were those of the Ostermann

family, and this dirty old man in the ragged cloak was Count Ostermann,

the famous Russian statesman, the son of a German preacher, who had

managed by wisdom, cunning, and intrigue to continue in place under five

successive Russian emperors or regents, most of whom had usually been

thrust from power by some bloody means. Czar Peter, who first appointed

him as a minister of state, and confided to him the department of

foreign affairs, on his death-bed said to his successor, the first

Catherine, that Ostermann was the only one who had never made a false

step, and recommended him to his wife as a prop to the empire. Catherine

appointed him imperial chancellor and tutor of Peter II.; he knew how to

secure and preserve the favor of both, and the successor of Peter II.,

the Empress Anna, was glad to retain the services of the celebrated

statesman and diplomatist who had so faithfully served her predecessors.

From Anna he came to her favorite, Baron of Courland, who did not

venture to remove one whose talents had gained for him so distinguished

a reputation, and who in any case might prove a very dangerous enemy.

But with Count Ostermann it had gone as with Count Munnich. Neither

of them had been able to obtain from the regent any thing more than a

confirmation of their offices and dignities, to which Biron, jealous

of power, had been unwilling to make any addition. Deceived in their

expectations, vexed at this frustration of their plans, they had both

come to the determination to overthrow the man who was unwilling to

advance them; they had become Biron's enemies because he did not show

himself their friend, and, openly devoted to him and bowing in the

dust before him, they had secretly repaired to his bitterest enemy,

the Duchess Anna Leopoldowna, to offer her their services against the

haughty regent who swayed the iron sceptre of his despotic power over

Russia.