The Daughter of an Empress

The Empress Anna was dead, and--an unheard-of case in Russian imperial

history--she had even died a natural death. Again was the Russian

imperial throne vacated! Who is there to mount it? whom has the empress

named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was

read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of

an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and

unfulfilled, would be construed into the crime of high-treason as soon

as another than the one thus indicated should be called to the throne!

Who will obtain that throne? So asked each man in his heart. The

courtiers and great men of the realm asked it with shuddering and

despair. For, to whom should they now go to pay their homage and thus

recommend themselves to favor in advance? Should they go to Biron, the

Duke of Courland? Was it not possible that the dying empress had chosen

him, her warmly-beloved favorite, her darling minion, as her successor

to the throne of all the Russias? But how if she had not done so? If,

instead, she had chosen her niece, the wife of Prince Anton Ulrich, of

Brunswick, as her successor? Or was it not also possible that she had

declared the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Czar Peter the Great,

as empress? The latter, indeed, had the greatest, the most incontestable

right to the imperial throne of Russia; was she not the sole lawful heir

of her father? How, if one therefore went to her and congratulated her

as empress? But if one should make a mistake, how then?

The courtiers, as before said, shuddered and hesitated, and, in order

to avoid making a mistake, did nothing at all. They remained in their

palaces, ostensibly giving themselves up to deep mourning for the

decease of the beloved czarina, whom every one of them secretly hated so

long as she was yet alive.

There were but a few who were not in uncertainty respecting the

immediate future, and conspicuous among that few was Field-Marshal Count

Munnich.

While all hesitated and wavered in anxious doubt, Munnich alone was

calm. He knew what was coming, because he had had a hand in shaping the

event.

"Oh," said he, while walking his room with folded arms, "we have at

length attained the object of our wishes, and this bright emblem for

which I have so long striven will now finally become mine. I shall be

the ruler of this land, and in the unrestricted exercise of royal power

I shall behold these millions of venal slaves grovelling at my feet,

and whimpering for a glance or a smile. Ah, how sweet is this governing

power!

"But," he then continued, with a darkened brow, "what is the good of

being the ruler if I cannot bear the name of ruler?--what is it to

govern, if another is to be publicly recognized as regent and receive

homage as such? The kernel of this glory will be mine, but the shell,--I

also languish for the shell. But no, this is not the time for such

thoughts, now, when the circumstances demand a cheerful mien and every

outward indication of satisfaction! My time will also come, and, when

it comes, the shell as well as the kernel shall be mine! But this is the

hour for waiting upon the Duke of Courland! I shall be the first to wish

him joy, and shall at the same time remind him that he has given me his

ducal word that he will grant the first request I shall make to him as

regent. Well, well, I will ask now, that I may hereafter command."