The year following the assassination attempt in the Summer Garden, 1867, began with an event for which Russia still had not forgiven Alexander II. Negotiations to sell Alaska had begun under his father and continued for fifteen years. The great monarchist Nicholas was prepared to befriend even republican America against royal England.
Guests from the New World were taken to visit Peterhof, where a young oak now grew on Tsaritsyn Island. A bronze plaque next to it read: “This acorn planted in the ground came from the oak shading the grave of the unforgettable Washington and was given as a sign of extreme respect for the Emperor of All Russia.”
Nicholas I had planted the acorn personally. The sale of Alaska was a nod in the direction of the young state. But immeasurable Russia has a paradoxically heightened sense of its “own territory,” and even Nicholas I preferred that the negotiations be held in great secrecy and that they never come to an end.
The warm relations between the two countries continued under Alexander II, as did the negotiations over the sale of Alaska. The tsar sensed that it was time to move things along, because Russian holdings in Alaska could become an apple of discord between the countries.
The Russian-American Trading Company that owned Alaska “with the right to monopoly use of all game and minerals” had long been losing money. Only a few hundred people worked for the company. If the Americans had decided to take Alaska, Russia would not have been able to defend it. It would only spoil the good relations between the countries. St. Petersburg had little doubt that it could happen sooner or later, especially after rumors of gold in Alaska circulated. Gold could provoke an attack. Fighting so far from home was unrealistic, and the tsar could not permit another Sevastopol.
He decided to complete the negotiations on March 18, 1867. The agreement that Russia would cede its North American colonies was ratified in Washington. On March 23 the editors of St. Petersburg newspapers received news of this by Atlantic telegraph.
The emperor learned quickly that irritating discussions were taking place in Russia. There were articles about the error of the sale, pointing out that they sold for a mere $7.2 million islands of 31,204 square kilometers and part of the North Atlantic mainland of 548,902 square kilometers with everything built on those lands, fortifications, barracks, and other buildings, and that with the appearance of the Atlantic Telegraph connecting the continents, Alaska had taken on a new significance, and so on.
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti printed a description of the ceremony that had to embitter its Russian readers. “Russian and American troops stood at the flagpole. Two Russian junior officers began lowering the Russian flag. The audience and officers took off their hats, the soldiers were at attention. The drum roll continued. But the Russian flag did not want to come down. It was tangled at the top of the staff. On the commander’s orders, several Russian sailors climbed up to untangle the flag that hung in tatters. One of the sailors finally reached it and threw it down. The flag fell right on the Russian bayonets.”
Alexander still did not wish to speak in public. He did not explain why he sold Alaska, and he did not explain that he could not get more from America, because the news of the sale to the United States did not please the American public. The newspapers were filled with headlines like “Seward’s Folly” (Seward was secretary of state), “Polar Bear Zoo,” and “Seward’s Ice Chest.” The influential New York Herald was sarcastic about Seward’s Napoleonic plan, buying “fifty thousand Eskimo inhabitants, each of whom was capable of drinking half a bucket of fish oil for breakfast.”
Another mistake was added to Alexander’s list: more territorial losses after the Peace of Paris. It might have been far away, but it was still lost. Once more people called him “Unlucky Tsar,” a dangerous reputation to have in Russia.
May 1867 brought a new disaster. The situation in Europe, as Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich wrote in his diary, “was threatening the world with a bloody commotion.” King of Prussia Wilhelm “has decided to eat up France.” Ever since Alexander I had persuaded Napoleon to preserve the crown of his Prussian grandfather, the Russian tsars had been very high-handed with their Prussian relatives. Nicholas I was the worst offender. But things had changed dramatically, all due to a single man, Bismarck.
Prussia’s position as poor European relation did not suit the young Prussian bourgeoisie and the militant rich landowners. Barons and capitalists dreamed of uniting the German lands around Prussia. Once ambassador to Russia and now head of the conservative party, Bismarck demanded enormous sums from the Prussian parliament to fund a powerful army. The liberal majority was outraged. The situation in Berlin was turning revolutionary, with a parliamentary delegation threatening King Wilhelm, reminding him of the fate of Louis XVI. His queen begged him to relent: After all, Europe had just undergone terrible revolutions. The aging king was about to acquiesce when Bismarck came to see the king and made an inspired speech.
As Bismarck later told it, he said, “Your Majesty must not think about Louis XVI—he was weak in spirit. Better recall Charles I—won’t he always be one of the most noble monarchs for fearlessly unsheathing his sword in defense of the rights of the monarch? Yes, he lost the battle, but he proudly strengthened his royal convictions with his own blood! Your task is to create a great army in order to gather all Germans under the wing of your dynasty. You cannot yield to Parliament, even if it endangers your life. Your Majesty is facing the necessity to fight for the divine right of the Prussian monarch to decide everything himself.”
The more he spoke, the more animated Wilhelm grew. Bismarck understood him well. He wrote, “Wilhelm is the ideal type of Prussian officer who in the line of duty will fearlessly go to certain death with the single word: command. But when such an officer is supposed to act on his own, he fears more than death the condemnation of his superiors, and that fear keeps him from taking decisions.”
After the conversation with Bismarck, to the horror of the terrified court, King Wilhelm understood his role, “The role of a Prussian officer who is grabbed by the sword belt even as he is commanded to hold a certain position at the cost of his life.”
Wilhelm began playing the role with daunting success. With his huge army, the king, in alliance with Austria, shamelessly took Schleswig and Holstein away from Denmark. Then the Prussians destroyed their former ally, Austria. Bismarck created his Northern German Union, headed by Prussia, and became its chancellor.
Alexander II’s old friend Bismarck and his uncle Willy placated the tsar with sweet talk while they gobbled up all the independent German lands around Prussia. Alexander saw that he had allowed a new Prussia to form, with 11 million subjects. The specter of a new aggressive empire rose on Russia’s borders. Bismarck did not intend to stop there. His next victim was France. Germany had superior artillery and the famous French forts were not prepared for modern warfare. The Russian military analysts predicted that France would be crushed and that the Prussians would take Alsace and Lotharingia and become the most powerful state in Europe. Alexander could not permit this alarming breach of European equilibrium.
The tsar decided to go to Paris for the opening of the World’s Fair, which all the European monarchs would attend. There he would show Uncle Willy Russia’s support of France. He had long discussions with War Minister Milyutin before coming to this decision. They were in accord: France should be supported.
But at afternoon tea, the empress made a scene. She begged him not to go to Paris, which was teeming with Polish émigrés. They were the children of the people suppressed by his father and the ones who had recently risen up against him. They were filled with ideas of revenge. Maria Alexandrovna pleaded with him to send Prince Gorchakov to Paris instead. Yet he was determined to go.
She knew him well, and naturally, she guessed the real reasons for his passionate desire to go to Paris and why he was implacable.
On May 20 at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Emperor Napoleon III, military mustache bristling, met Emperor Alexander II. The French emperor extended every courtesy to the tsar. He needed an alliance with Russia. The tsar was given the Elysée Palace, where some forty-five years earlier, his uncle, Alexander I, had lived after conquering Napoleon Bonaparte, uncle of the French emperor.
But while Alexander’s retinue proceeded from the train station to the palace, some of the people lining the streets shouted, “Long live Poland!”
That evening the emperor went to the Opéra Comique for a show that had been highly praised by the newspaper critics. It turned out to be a rather ribald story about his great-grandmother, Catherine the Great. He had to leave during the second act.
The rest of the night was later recounted by Count Peter Shuvalov, chief of the secret police, to lady-in-waiting Countess Alexandra Tolstaya. He would remember the events to the end of his days.
Coming back to the Elysée Palace, the retinue gladly went to bed. But close to midnight, the emperor knocked on the door of the soundly sleeping and elderly minister of the court Adlerberg. To the minister’s complete surprise (and fear) the emperor announced that he was going to take a walk through Paris at night.
“But I don’t need anyone to accompany me, I’ll manage on my own. But, my dear man, give me a little money.”
“How much does His Majesty require?”
“I have no idea, how about a hundred thousand francs?”
The minister turned pale at the sum, but one does not question an autocrat. Adlerberg brought the money. The tsar headed out into the Parisian night, alone with an enormous sum of cash.
Adlerberg immediately awoke Shuvalov. The chief was not particularly worried because his agents (as well as the French police) would be following the sovereign unseen, wherever he might go.
Everyone awaited the tsar’s speedy return. Hours passed, and he was still gone. No one slept in the palace—the court waited in terror to find out the conclusion of the mysterious walk. The most incredible theories were invented about where the tsar could have gone with one hundred thousand francs.
The tsar came back at dawn. The Elysée Palace was completely lit up; everyone was awake. Count Shuvalov greeted him in tears. They had written him off as dead and were dying of fear themselves, and he seemed simply to have forgotten their existence.
By the next day, Shuvalov knew everything from his agents. The tsar hailed a fiacre outside the palace and drove to rue Bas-du-ramparts, near the palace. He let the cab go and consulted a piece of paper, apparently with an address, under the lamppost. At last he entered the courtyard of the nearest house.
He quickly realized he had the wrong address, but he couldn’t figure out how to get out of the courtyard. The gates had swung shut and would not budge. Tossing the portfolio with the cash on the ground, the emperor vainly struggled with the door to the street. He was trapped. The agent (who was supposed to guard the tsar unobtrusively) finally came over and pointed to the rope hanging by the gate. A pull on the rope opened it.
The happy emperor was freed. He vanished next door, where a certain someone lived. It was the start of his happiest week in Paris. It turned out that the omniscient Third Department knew very little about her. The secret police primarily watched the tsar and were required to know everything about him; the careers of many people depended on it. But Shuvalov, like the court, had underestimated the tsar. They thought he was open and simple. The “strong secretiveness” remarked upon by the perceptive de Custine allowed him to keep his affair private for a long time.
His mystery woman would outlive Alexander by many years. She would see his death and then learn of the death of the tsar’s family. She died in 1922 in a villa in Nice, the heroine of one of the most dramatic affairs in the history of the lusty Romanov men, an affair that was one of the factors in the demise of the empire. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks found very frank erotic drawings of a female nude, of her body, which drove the emperor wild until his dying day.
Alexander II was forty years old when he first saw her. He was observing military maneuvers near Poltava on the 150th anniversary of Peter the Great’s victory over the Swedish king Charles XII. Alexander was staying at the estate of retired guards captain Prince Mikhail Dolgoruky. The Dolgoruky line went back to the Rurik princes and even had a saint, Prince Mikhail Chernigovsky, a legendary warrior who was a prince in Novgorod and grand prince of Kiev in the thirteenth century, tortured to death by the Tatars of the Golden Horde.
Prince Dolgoruky was well-married to a wealthy landowner. After a marvelous lunch, the emperor went for a walk in their vast park. He met a walking doll, in a pink cape and with a thick chestnut braid.
“And who are you, my child?”
The doll answered seriously, “I am Ekaterina Mikhailovna.” Despite the adult use of name and patronymic, she was twelve.
“And what are you doing here?”
“Looking for the emperor,” she replied just as seriously.
She never forgot that first meeting, although he probably never gave it a second thought.
Four years later, old Adlerberg, his minister of the court, brought him a letter from the girl’s mother. Prince Mikhail had died, having managed to go through one of the major fortunes in Russia. He left the family penniless, but he did pass along one thing: good looks. Four handsome sons and two beautiful daughters were now impoverished.
Alexander did not leave the noble family in misery; he took them under his wing. The double-mortgaged estate where he had met “Ekaterina Mikhailovna” was taken under royal care. He paid for the children’s education: The boys were sent to the prestigious Page Corps and military schools, and Ekaterina and her sister went to the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies. Their mother, Princess Vera, moved to St. Petersburg and rented a small apartment with her remaining funds.
The Smolny Institute, “that lovely hothouse,” as Karamzin called it, was a type of convent, a finishing school where the future wives of Russian aristocrats were brought up. “An excess of education” (that is, natural sciences and literature) was considered not only unnecessary, but dangerous. Music, sewing, domestic management, dancing, etiquette, choral singing, and cooking were the subjects of the institute. Classes spent hours on court ceremonies, such as “the ceremony of kissing the hands of August Persons on holidays.”
That ceremony, developed by Paul I himself, called for “a deep bow, then bending one knee, make a precise kiss on the hand of the Emperor. Then it is proper to do the same to the Empress. And depart, backing up.”
There was also “Reception of August Persons.” “You must make a deep bow and curtsy from the waist, and afterward pleasantly say a phrase of greeting in French.”
These things were rehearsed for hours.
On an autumn day in 1864, Katya needed all that knowledge. The August Persons came to Smolny and the emperor saw her again.
The petite young woman (she was of average height, but she always seemed small to the very tall Alexander) with thick chestnut hair looked up at him with her enormous eyes, made her bow and curtsy, and spoke her French greeting in a trembling voice.
He was smitten. Since every new love showed on his face, everyone noticed, including the empress. But they did not pay particular attention. He was continually falling in love. The mistresses changed so quickly that even the Third Department stopped watching the women. They saw that the beauties had no influence on state affairs. Their sole function was to end up in the tsar’s bed and vanish soon afterward.
Interestingly, the last dangerous mistress, Alexandra Dolgorukaya, was also from the same line and was a distant relative of Katya’s.
The director of Smolny knew her job. Katya was given a hint of her good fortune, but for some reason she did not appreciate her luck and was in no hurry to fall into Alexander’s arms, as a good, and more important, poor subject should do. The tsar took steps. A relative of the director, a Mme Vera Shebeko, a “very pleasant and charming lady,” went into action.
Mme Shebeko called on Katya’s mother in her poor apartment and told her that fortune smiled upon them. In view of the family’s hopeless finances, Katya had the opportunity to assure her own situation and that of the whole family. And really, what else did the future hold for her? Rich men in St. Petersburg did not marry beauties as a rule. They married money. Poor graduates of Smolny usually stayed on to become teachers there, and usually became old maids.
Shebeko warned Princess Vera: Katya was very pretty, but so many young beauties dreamed of finding a place in the tsar’s heart that she had better act swiftly. She became a friend of the family and soon received permission from Katya’s mother to give the girl advice. Quite delicately (as befitted the age and the family) she pushed Katya toward the tsar’s bed. But Katya remained oddly slow to understand. She clearly liked the tsar and she was thrilled when he visited her in Smolny Institute hospital during her illness. (The tsar had come incognito, and the hospital was guarded like a military outpost.)
But still, nothing. And then, to the total surprise of Shebeko and Princess Vera, the tsar became even more enamored of the girl. He began taking walks with her in the Summer Garden. Girls were allowed to leave Smolny only on the weekend, but the tsar wanted daily walks. So her mother and Mme Shebeko asked Katya to leave the institute.
She did it gladly, because she needed the walks with the tsar, too. But they did not go beyond taking walks. She and the tsar walked next to each other, the dog ran in front, and behind them followed his adjutant. The other park visitors began whispering, “The tsar is taking his mademoiselle out for an airing.”
They had to change the venue for their meetings. Now they walked in the parks on the islands. The Don Juan’s platonic affair continued. They walked and they kissed under the trees. The tsar’s carriage would bring her home. The lovers looked happy—the seventeen-year-old girl and the forty-eight-year-old tsar. He was approaching fifty and behaving like a schoolboy.
Katya was appointed lady-in-waiting to the empress. This was the usual spot for the tsar’s mistresses. But even when she became a lady-in-waiting, she did not become his lover. The tsar was burning with desire, but for some reason did not make demands. Once again, it was up to Vera Shebeko to explain things to Katya delicately—to no avail.
The young woman also did not appear in court. That was not because the tsar was protecting the empress, who had long grown accustomed to having ladies-in-waiting who were his mistresses. No, it was Katya who did not want to be presented to the court. It was the secret of the affair that neither her mother nor Vera Shebeko could understand. She was different.
Alexander’s reforms affected the Smolny Institute as they did the entire country. The winds of change burst into that conservative institution, bringing with it the well-known pedagogue Ushinsky, who reformed the curriculum. Literature and mathematics were now taught, and young ladies were given a real education. And even though Ushinsky was eventually forced out of the institute, his spirit, as well as the instructors he had hired, remained. Celebrated works of literature and well-known characters from them, once banned, were now taught and discussed. During their walks, the little beauty from the institute told the tsar about the world he himself had helped create and of which he knew almost nothing. It was the world of the new Russia. Katya was the product of his perestroika, and that is why she was not interested in being in the court.
Social position, wealth, intrigues—the main values of the tsar’s mistresses—were a waste of time for her. She saw the court with the same unforgiving eyes as that other intelligent young woman, Anna Tyutcheva. “This is an empty world…it comes alive only in evening light…. Only evening gives it a mysterious beauty. Only one word rules this world—toilette. In that vain sea of lace and precious stones you can be only one more dressed-up doll. You have to be dressed up continually—for the tsar, going to a ball, or for God, going to the palace chapel…. Here even God is treated like a boring host who is giving a ball. They visit him…and immediately forget about him.”
Like the rest of her generation, Katya dreamed of devoting herself to something very important. The tsar fell in love with her completely, totally, forever. But like all the girls in St. Petersburg society, she had heard much about his love affairs, and she feared becoming one in a long series.
The eventual consummation came out of pity for him, so powerful in young women like her. Hadn’t he been through two terrible years, starting at the beginning of 1865 when his beloved son had died, and later there was the assassination attempt in the Summer Garden—making her realize what it would be to lose him. Her own mother had died in May 1866, and she was all alone.
It happened in July 1866, on the day of the anniversary of his late parents’ wedding. There is a small hunting palace with columns and a classical portico on the road between Peterhof and St. Petersburg, on a small hill called Babigon. It stands to this day. Its windows open on the domes of a distant church, a pond, and green expanses.
It is said that his uncle, Alexander I, used this romantic spot for his assignations. The building had a surprise like the palaces of Louis XVI: When a small pedal in the dining room was pressed, a table set for two rose through the floor to the strains of a minuet.
The tsar settled her in the small palace with Vera Shebeko. To the end, Katya considered Vera a selfless patron of their affair. She had trusted her. The anniversary was being celebrated in Peterhof, in the Big Palace. The parade, which Nicholas I had so enjoyed in his day, was followed by a formal dinner and fireworks. That night, the emperor galloped to Katya in Babigon.
What happened that night is hidden from us, except for the words he spoke in the dark bedroom, where her naked, youthful body lay. “Now you are my secret wife. I swear that if I am ever free, I will marry you.” She knew he was telling the truth and that was why he had chosen his father’s wedding day to be their first time.
The very next day the court knew she had been deflowered. Apparently Vera Shebeko had spread the word, so that her own important position would be known as the friend of the tsar’s favorite. The tsar was amazed to see how much Katya suffered from the gossip. What she feared had come to pass. Not allowed to be his secret wife, she was his recognized mistress.
In order to spare her the intrusive gossip, he decided to send her out of St. Petersburg. This was done delicately. His brother, Mikhail, was married to a cheerful and beautiful Italian marquise, whom Katya liked very much. The marquise invited Katya on a trip to Naples to see her family.
Once Katya left, the court and the Third Department had their own explanation. They decided that it was the usual story. The inexperienced girl had bored the tsar immediately, and the affair was over. Vera Shebeko interpreted it that way, too. Soon after Ekaterina’s departure, she told the tsar about the difficult position of her younger sister, Maria Dolgorukaya. She asked him to help her, too. The tsar agreed to see her. Maria was also a beauty, and Shebeko expected the usual result. But to her great surprise, the tsar gave the beauty money, and asked for nothing.
An even greater surprise for Vera Shebeko followed. The tsar wrote to Naples almost daily. He summoned Mme Shebeko and sent her to Paris to rent a house not far from the Elysée Palace. The lovers had decided to meet in Paris.
The affair with Dolgorukaya was a blow for Shuvalov. He had missed a very important part of the tsar’s life. He now demanded total surveillance on the tsar and his mistress. In a brief time, the chief of the secret police would be able to assess the young woman’s influence on the tsar and the danger of that influence—for Shuvalov himself and for the throne.
In the meantime, Alexander’s visit to Paris went according to plan: The next day a reception and dinner in his honor were held in Versailles. Bismarck has described similar dinners at Versailles with Napoleon III’s pathetic court. Once the VIPs had eaten and began leaving the dining room, they were met by hungry second-rate guests, who showed an appalling lack of manners. Gentlemen in gold-trimmed uniforms and lovelies in lavish Parisian gowns pushed and shoved, cursing and even fighting to get to the food. Alexander could have quoted Bismarck’s comment, “Gone are the days of the Louises, when the French court was the school of politeness and manners for all of Europe.”
Every night the hired fiacre brought her to the Elysée Palace.
In Paris, Alexander became very youthful. Passion is the magical elixir of Mephistopheles, and it worked on the tsar. But during a happy walk in the Tuileries, so the memoirs of contemporaries recount, he had his palm read by a gypsy, who saw seven attempts on his life—six times his life would hang by a thread; the seventh attempt would be the last.
The prediction of so many assassination attempts (if in fact, there was a prediction) had to seem crazy to Alexander. But a second attempt on his life occurred right in Paris. He had attended a military show at Longchamp with Napoleon and Wilhelm. On the way back, as a demonstration of his friendship, Alexander got into the carriage with Napoleon. It was not needed: Uncle Willy understood on whose side Russian neutrality lay. Bismarck even permitted himself a threat, saying that Prussia was a powerful friend of its friends and a powerful enemy of its enemies. When this was related to Alexander, he merely smiled.
They were traveling in an open carriage. Napoleon sat next to Alexander, behind them the tsarevich and Vladimir. The carriage was crawling along in the Bois de Boulogne through a heavy crowd. When they reached the Grand Cascade, a man came out of the crowd on the side where the French emperor was sitting. The man quickly raised his pistol and Alexander heard a bullet whiz by. And then a second shot. The coachman struck the horses and the carriage dashed forward, the crowd leaping back.
Alexander thanked God and wondered how the man could have missed at that range. He was told that Napoleon’s riding master had reacted quickly when he saw the man and pushed aside his arm.
That evening, Alexander received Empress Eugenie. She wept and begged him not to shorten his visit. Next came the French emperor with the details. The criminal was a Pole, of course—an émigré named Anton Berezovski, twenty years old. He had been seeking an opportunity for the last few days. Fortunately, he was a bad shot. His double-barreled pistol exploded from too much gunpowder, changing the bullets’ trajectories. The riding master had done nothing. The next day, they brought him the prisoner’s statement. The Pole made a full confession. He said that he had always wanted to kill the tsar, but had never spoken of it and had acted alone.
The French newspapers commiserated with the assassin. Alexander was furious. Why had he come to protect them if those senseless people hated Russia so much? No wonder his father detested the eternally rebellious French. Now he no longer loved beautiful France. He applauded his son’s sentiment, “I hope we’ll be leaving this den soon?”
The tsar was determined to complete the scheduled visit, so that no one would dare think that the tsar of all Russia could be scared off by one Pole’s pistol. Empress Eugenie sweetly tried to sit next to him on the street side of the carriage, but he, naturally, asked her never to do that.
Back in St. Petersburg he learned the results of the trial. The tsar had been sure that his would-be assassin would be condemned to death and then he would be required to make the obligatory gesture of mercy, asking for a pardon. But the French spared him this hypocritical gesture. Berezovski’s lawyer, to the courtroom’s applause, abused Russia, and helped his client. The Pole was given a life sentence, and the newspapers gleefully guessed that he would soon be released.
Alexander had returned to St. Petersburg with the firm conviction that Russia would be better off having a union with Germany. The French and Sevastopol were one of the reasons for his father’s death. He should have never forgotten that. He was punished for it by the Pole. In what now would inexorably happen to France he saw the hand of providence, punishing the French emperor for his past injustice. He was sure that Napoleon III’s days were numbered.
He was right. Prussia attacked France and destroyed it. His father’s old enemy, Napoleon III, surrendered at Sedan. But the results would have dire effects for the Romanov dynasty. The mighty German Empire would now arise on Russia’s borders, with its motivating idea of “marching on the East.”
The empress met him with tear-filled eyes. She reminded him that she had begged him not to go to Paris. They chatted. It was only as he was leaving that she said, “I ask you to respect the woman in me, even if you will not be able to respect the empress.”
He could no longer live without Katya. He wrote her passionate love letters in a mix of Russian and French.
His letters of 1866 (in the private collection of S. Baturin) are filled with rapture:
August 14: “When I saw you at a distance in the allée, my heart beat so hard that I trembled all over and my knees grew weak, and I kept wanting to simply squeal with joy.”
November 12: “Don’t forget that you are my whole life, angel of my soul, and its only goal is to see you happy, as happy as one can only be in this world.”
He underlined those words.
The court had aligned itself against Katya, secretly of course. Alexander’s great-grandmother Catherine had been right—the heartfelt hatred for one another was the main trait of the Russian court. Now they all pitied “our saint,” the empress, because they hated and envied Katya.
Shuvalov was particularly worried. As chief of the Third Department, he had to think of the future, and it was problematic. Instead of the revolving door of endless ladies-in-waiting, there was the strange young woman with whom the tsar was clearly besotted. He saw her every day. And when he wasn’t with her, he wrote her letters. What if she had a child by him? The empress was failing visibly. The tsar might marry her. And then, instead of the dull-witted heir, who had enjoyed listening to the late Muravyev the Hangman and to Shuvalov’s ideas of reviving his grandfather’s autocracy, there could be another heir.
Shuvalov hurried into battle. Trying to poison the large Romanov family against the new favorite, he dared to say, “It turns out we went to Paris because of her! We risked the sovereign’s precious life over her!”
The tsar was informed. But the chief of the Third Department handled his duties in an exemplary manner, so the tsar put up with him. For the time being.