Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (30 page)

One night, Bestuzhev and his assistant, General Stepan Apraksin, came to the palace and spent many hours talking in the Choglokovs’ apartment. This seemed to imply that the empress’s illness was grave. Catherine begged Peter to remain calm. She told him that, although they were forbidden to leave their apartment, if Elizabeth were to die, she would arrange for Peter to escape from their rooms; she pointed out that their ground-floor windows were low enough to enable them to jump down into the street. She also told him that Count Zakhar Chernyshev, on whom she knew she could rely, was with his regiment in the city. Peter was reassured, and several days later,
the empress’s health began to improve.

During this stressful time, Choglokov and his wife remained silent. The young couple did not speak of it either; had they dared to ask whether the empress was better, the Choglokovs would immediately
have demanded to know who had told them that she was ill—and those named would immediately have been dismissed.

While Elizabeth was still in bed recovering, one of her maids of honor married. At the wedding banquet, Catherine sat next to Elizabeth’s close friend Countess Shuvalova. The countess unhesitatingly told Catherine that the empress was still so weak that she had not been able to appear at the wedding ceremony, but that, sitting up in bed, she had performed her traditional function of crowning the bride. As Countess Shuvalova was the first to speak openly about the illness, Catherine told her of her worry about the empress’s condition. Countess Shuvalova said that Her Majesty would be pleased to learn of this sympathy. Two mornings later, Madame Choglokova stormed into Catherine’s room and announced that the empress was angry with Peter and Catherine because of the lack of concern they had shown during her illness.

Catherine furiously told Madame Choglokova that the governess knew very well what the situation had been; that neither she nor her husband had spoken a word about the empress’s illness, and that, having been left in complete ignorance, she and her husband had been unable to show concern.

“How can you say you knew nothing about it?” Madame Choglokova asked. “
Countess Shuvalova told the empress that you spoke to her at dinner about Her Majesty’s illness.”

Catherine retorted, “It is true that I spoke to her about it, because she told me that Her Majesty was still weak and could not appear in public. It was then that I asked her for details about the illness.”

Later, Catherine found the courage to tell Elizabeth that neither Choglokov nor his wife had informed her or her husband of the illness, which was why it had not been in their power to express concern. Elizabeth seemed to appreciate this and said, “
I know that. We will not speak of it any further.” In retrospect, Catherine commented, “It seemed to me that the prestige and credibility of the Choglokovs had diminished.”

In the spring, the empress began visiting the countryside around Moscow with Catherine and Peter. At Perova, an estate belonging to Alexis Razumovsky, Catherine was seized by a violent headache. “
It was the worst I have ever had in my life,” she said later. “The extreme pain gave
me violent nausea. I vomited repeatedly, and every movement, even the sound of footsteps in my room, increased my pain. I remained in this state for twenty-four hours and then fell asleep. The following day, it was gone.”

From Perova, the imperial party went to a hunting ground belonging to Elizabeth forty miles from Moscow. Because there was no house, the imperial party camped in tents. The morning after their arrival, Catherine went to the empress’s tent and found her shouting at the man who administered the estate. She had come to hunt hares, she was saying, and there were no hares. She accused him of accepting bribes to permit neighboring noblemen to hunt on her estate; if there had been no such hunting, there would certainly be many hares. The man was silent, pale, and trembling. When Peter and Catherine approached to kiss her hand, she embraced them, and then quickly turned back to continue her diatribe. From her youth in the country, she said, she perfectly understood the administering of country estates; this enabled her to see every detail of the administrator’s incompetence. Her tirade lasted three-quarters of an hour. Finally, a servant approached, bringing a baby porcupine, which he presented to her in his hat. She went over to look at it, but the instant she saw the little animal, she screamed. She said that it looked like a mouse and fled to her tent. “
She was mortally afraid of mice.” Catherine observed. “We saw no more of her that day.”

That summer, Catherine’s principal pleasure was riding:

One day, Catherine and Peter dined with Elizabeth in the empress’s tent. The empress sat at the end of a long table, Peter was on her right, Catherine was on her left, next to Catherine was Countess Shuvalova, and next to Peter was General Buturlin. Peter, with the help of General
Buturlin—“
himself no enemy of wine,” Catherine said—drank so much that he became completely drunk:

Meanwhile, Catherine unknowingly attracted another admirer. Kyril Razumovsky, the younger brother of Elizabeth’s favorite, Alexis Razumovsky, was living on the other side of Moscow, but he came to visit Catherine and Peter every day.

In mid-September, as the weather grew colder, Catherine suffered a severe toothache. She developed a high fever, slipped into delirium, and was moved from the country back to Moscow. She remained in bed for ten days; every afternoon at the same time, the pain in her tooth returned. A few weeks later, Catherine was ill again, this time with a sore throat and another fever. Madame Vladislavova did what she could to distract her: “
She sat by my bed and told me stories. One concerned a Princess Dolgoruky, a woman who used to get up often at night and
go to the bedside of her sleeping daughter whom she idolized. She wanted to make sure that the daughter was asleep and had not died. Sometimes, to be absolutely certain, she shook the young woman hard and woke her up just to convince herself that slumber was not death.”

23
Choglokov Makes an Enemy and Peter Survives a Plot

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at the beginning of 1749, it appeared to Catherine that Monsieur Choglokov remained intimate with the chancellor, Count Bestuzhev. They were constantly together, and, to hear Choglokov talk, “
one would have thought that he was Bestuzhev’s closest adviser.” For Catherine, this was hard to believe, because “Count Bestuzhev had too much intelligence to allow himself to be guided by an arrogant fool like Choglokov.” In August, whatever intimacy existed abruptly ceased.

Catherine was certain that something Peter had said was responsible. After the affair of Maria Kosheleva’s pregnancy, Choglokov had become less flagrantly offensive to the young court. He knew that the empress continued to bear him a grudge; his relationship with his wife had deteriorated; and he sank into depression. One day, Peter, drunk, met Count Bestuzhev, himself tipsy. In this encounter, Peter complained to Bestuzhev that Choglokov was always rude to him. Bestuzhev replied, “
Choglokov is a conceited fool with a swollen head, but leave it in my hands. I will see to it.” When Peter told Catherine about this conversation, she warned him that if Choglokov heard what Bestuzhev had said, he would never forgive the chancellor. Nevertheless, Peter decided that he could win over Choglokov by confiding in him how he had been described by Bestuzhev. The opportunity soon presented itself.

Soon after, Bestuzhev invited Choglokov to dinner. Choglokov grimly accepted, but remained silent during the meal. Bestuzhev, himself half-drunk after dinner, tried to talk to his guest, but found him unapproachable. Bestuzhev lost his temper and the conversation became heated. Choglokov reproached Bestuzhev for having criticized him to Peter. Bestuzhev rebuked Choglokov for his adventure with
Maria Kosheleva and reminded his guest of the support he, Bestuzhev, had given him in surviving this scandal. Choglokov, the last person to listen to anything critical about himself, flew into another rage and decided that he had been unforgivably insulted. General Stepan Apraksin, Bestuzhev’s lieutenant, who was present, tried to make peace, but Choglokov became even more belligerent. Feeling that his services were uniquely valuable; that, whatever he did, everyone would run after him, he swore that he would never again set foot in Bestuzhev’s house. From that day on, Choglokov and Bestuzhev were bitter enemies.

With his jailors quarreling, Peter should have been cheerful. Instead, during the autumn of 1749, Catherine found him in a state of intense anxiety. He had stopped training his hunting dogs and he came into her room many times a day with a distracted, even frightened, look. “
As he could never keep what was bothering him to himself for long, and had no one to confide in but me, I waited patiently for him to tell what the problem was. At last, he told me and I found the matter more serious than I had supposed.”

Through the summer in and around Moscow, Peter had spent most of his time hunting. Choglokov had acquired two packs of dogs, one of Russian dogs, the other of foreign dogs. Choglokov managed the Russian pack and Peter assumed responsibility for the foreign pack. He took charge in minute detail, going frequently to his pack’s kennel or having his huntsmen come to talk to him about the pack’s condition and needs. Peter became intimate with these men, eating and drinking as well as hunting with them.

At this time, the Butirsky Regiment was stationed in Moscow. In this regiment there was a headstrong lieutenant named Yakov Baturin, a gambler, deeply in debt. Peter’s huntsmen lived near the regimental camp. One day, one of the huntsmen told Peter that he had met an officer who expressed great devotion for the grand duke and who had said that, with the exception of the senior officers, his entire regiment agreed with him. Peter, flattered, wanted more details. Eventually, Baturin asked the huntsman to arrange a meeting between himself and the grand duke during a hunt. Unwilling at first, Peter eventually agreed. On the day arranged, Baturin waited in an isolated spot in the forest. When Peter appeared on horseback, Baturin fell to his knees, swearing to recognize no other master and to do whatever the grand duke commanded. Peter later told Catherine that on hearing this oath, he was
alarmed and, fearing connection to any sort of plot, had spurred his horse, leaving the other man on his knees in the woods. He also said that none of the huntsmen had heard what Baturin had said. Since then, Peter claimed, he and his huntsmen had had no contact with Baturin. Peter had since learned that Baturin had been arrested for interrogation. Peter feared that his huntsman or even he himself might have been compromised. His fear increased when a number of the huntsmen were, in fact, arrested.