The Daughter of an Empress

On the next day Elizabeth appointed Alexis field-marshal, and raised him

in the ranks of the nobility.

"We must at any rate give our son a respectable father," said she. "I

hope we shall have a son, who will be as beautiful as his father; whom

I will overload with honors, and place high above all the magnates of my

court. Ah, a son! No daughter, Alexis!"

"And why no daughter?" smilingly asked Razumovsky.

Elizabeth shuddered, and, clinging to her beloved, whispered: "Has not Eleonore Lapuschkin said, 'Give her a daughter, and let her,

before the eyes of her mother, experience what I now suffer!' Oh,

Alexis, wish me therefore no daughter! I shall always tremble for her!"

And God seemed to have listened to the anxious prayer of the empress.

Again she bore a son, but again the son died shortly after his birth.

"It is very sad to lose a child, and especially a son," sighed

Elizabeth, and involuntarily she thought of Anna, that poor mother whom

she had robbed of her son, that he might grow up in eternal joyless

imprisonment, that he might be morally murdered, and from a man be

converted into an idiot!

"This is God's vengeance!" whispered something in her breast, but

Elizabeth shrank from these low whisperings of her conscience, and she

tremulously said: "I will not listen to it! Away, ye intrusive thoughts!

I am an empress--for me there are no crimes, no laws! An empress is

exalted above all law, and whatever she does is right! Away, away,

therefore, ye troublesome thoughts! This boy Ivan must remain in prison;

I cannot restore him to his mother. May she bear other children, and

then new joys will bloom for her!"

But these thoughts would not be thus be banished, they constantly

haunted her; they left not her nightly couch; they constantly renewed

their dismal, awful whisperings; and this all-powerful empress would

loudly shriek with mortal anguish, and she was dismayed at being left

alone with her thoughts.

"I will have society around me," said she, "and will never be alone; the

people about me shall always laugh and jest, to cheer me and distract

my thoughts. Hasten, hasten--call my court; the most jovial men shall

be most welcome! And, do you hear, above all things, bring me wine, the

best and strongest wine. When I drink plenty of it, I shall again become

gay and happy; it drives away all cares, and renders the heart light and

free!"

And they came, the merriest gentlemen of the court; it also came, the

strong, fiery wine; and, after an hour, Elizabeth's brow beamed with

renewed pleasure, while her heavy tongue with difficulty stammered: "How beautiful it yet is to be an empress--for an empress there is only

joy and delight, and endless pleasures!"