The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (20 page)

1748

Catherine’s debts; measles; collapse of house at Gostilitsa; letters
from her mother; Choglokov’s a fair; summer at Oranienbaum;
Mme. Vladislavova put in charge of her entourage; Count Lestocq’s
arrest; move to Moscow for winter

On January 6, 1748, I came down with a high fever accompanied by a rash. When it passed, since there was no entertainment at court during carnival that year, the Grand Duke decided to hold masquerades in my room. He had his and my servants and my ladies wear masks and had them dance in my bedroom; he himself played the violin and danced along. This would last rather late into the night. For my part, under different pretexts of a headache or fatigue, I would lie down on a couch, but always dressed in a mask and bored to death by the insipidness of these masked balls that amused him to no end. With the arrival of Lent, four more people were removed from his service, including three pages that he liked more than the others. These frequent dismissals disturbed him, but he did not take a single step to stop them or else took steps that were so awkward that they could only make things worse.

During that winter we learned that Prince Repnin, ill as he was, would command the troops that were being sent to Bohemia to aid Queen Empress Maria Theresa.
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This was a formal disgrace for Prince Repnin; he went there and never returned, because he died of despondency in Bohemia. It was Princess Gagarina, my maid of honor, who gave me the first inkling of this, despite all the prohibitions against allowing the least word of what was happening in the city or at court to reach us. One can see by this the real worth of such prohibitions, which are never executed rigorously, because there are too many people interested in contravening them. All those in our service and even the Choglokovs’ closest relatives sought to reduce the harshness of what was in effect a political prison, in which we were kept with great effort. Even Madame Choglokova’s own brother, Count Hendrikov, often slipped me useful and necessary information, and others too used him to get news to me, a task that he always undertook with the sincerity of a fine and upstanding man, deriding the stupid and brutal actions of his sister and brother-in-law, so that with him everyone was at ease and without any sort of suspicion, since he had never compromised or failed a living soul. He was a man of fairness, but narrow-minded, ill-mannered, and very ignorant, though solid and without malice.

One day toward noon during this same Lent, I entered the room where the ladies and gentlemen waited; the Choglokovs had not yet arrived, and while speaking to various people, I approached the door next to which stood Chamberlain Ovtsyn. He gave forth in a low voice on the boring life we were leading and, moreover, on how others had put us in the Empress’s bad graces. A few days earlier, while dining, Her Imperial Majesty had said that I was overloaded with debts, that everything I did was marked by stupidity, that I imagined myself to have great intelligence, but that I was the only one who thought this of myself, and that I deceived no one, that my complete stupidity was known to everyone, and that because of this, it was less necessary to watch out for what the Grand Duke did than what I did, and he added with tears in his eyes that he had received an order from the Empress to tell me this, but he begged me to act as if I did not know that he had told me that he had been ordered to transmit this message. I replied to him that concerning my stupidity, the fault could not be attributed to me, each person being as the good Lord created him, that with respect to my debts, it was not too astonishing that I had some, because though I had thirty thousand rubles of support, my mother had left me sixty thousand rubles of her debt to pay off; that moreover, Countess Rumiantseva had urged me to make a thousand expenditures that she regarded as indispensable, that Madame Choglokova alone was costing me seventeen thousand rubles that year, and that he himself knew the hellish amount I had to gamble with them at cards every day, that he could give this response to those from whom he had received his commission, and that otherwise, I was very angered to know that I had been put in the bad graces of Her Imperial Majesty, to whom however I had never failed to show respect, obedience, or deference, and that the more they spied upon me, the more they would be convinced of this. I promised to keep his secret as he asked and did so. I do not know if he reported what I asked him to, but believe that he did, though I did not hear any more talk on this matter, and did not seek to continue such a disagreeable conversation.

The last week of Lent, I came down with measles; I could not appear for Easter mass, and on Saturday I took communion in my room. During this illness, Madame Choglokova, although hugely pregnant, hardly ever left me and did what she could to amuse me. I had at that time a little Kalmuck girl whom I loved greatly; this child caught measles from me.

After Easter we went to the Summer Palace, and from there at the end of May for Ascension to Count Razumovsky’s at Gostilitsa; on the twenty-third of the same month, the Empress had brought there Ambassador of the Imperial Court Baron von Bretlach, who was leaving for Vienna. He spent the evening there and had supper with the Empress. This evening meal ended quite late at night, and we returned to the little house in which we were lodged after sunrise. This little wooden house was situated on a small rise and next to the sleigh runs. The location of this little house had pleased us the winter that we had gone to Gostilitsa for the Grand Master of the Hunt’s birthday, and to please us he had lodged us there this time as well. It had three stories; the upper one had a staircase, a salon, and three small rooms. We slept in one, the Grand Duke dressed in another, and Madame Kruse occupied the third; below were lodged the Choglokovs, my maids of honor, and my ladies-in-waiting. Upon returning from supper, everyone went to bed. Around six in the morning, a sergeant of the guards named Levashov arrived from Oranienbaum to speak with Choglokov about the buildings that were being constructed there. Finding everyone asleep in the house, he sat down next to the sentry, and heard creaking noises that aroused his suspicions. The sentry told him that these creaking sounds had occurred several times since he had been on duty. Levashov got up and ran outside the house. He saw that large blocks of stone underneath the house were breaking off. He ran to awaken Choglokov and told him that the house’s foundation was giving way and that he had to try to evacuate everyone who was inside. Choglokov put on a bathrobe and ran upstairs, where finding the doors— which had glass panes—locked, he broke the locks. Thus he arrived in the little room where we slept, and drawing the curtain, he awoke us and told us to get up as quickly as possible and to get out because the house’s foundation was giving way. The Grand Duke leaped from the bed, took his bathrobe, and fled. I told Choglokov that I was going to follow him, and he left. I dressed in haste; while dressing myself I remembered that Madame Kruse was sleeping in the other room and went to wake her up. As she slept deeply, I succeeded with difficulty in waking her up and then making her understand that we had to leave the house. I helped her get dressed, and when she was ready, we moved beyond the threshold and entered the salon, but at the moment that we set foot there, there was a tremendous tremor, accompanied by a sound like that of a ship being launched from the shipyard. Madame Kruse and I fell to the floor; as we fell, Levashov entered through the door of the staircase facing us. He lifted me off the floor and carried me out of the room. I happened to glance at the sleigh run. It had been level with the third floor; it was no longer there but at least an arshin higher.
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Arriving with me at the main staircase by which he had ascended, Levashov could no longer find it. It had collapsed, but several people had climbed onto the rubble. Levashov handed me to the nearest person, who handed me to the next, and so from one set of hands to another, I arrived at the foot of the staircase in the vestibule, and from there I was carried out of the house and into a field. There I found the Grand Duke in his bathrobe. Once out of the house, I began to look at what was happening around it, and I saw that several people were walking out covered in blood and that others were being carried. Among the most seriously wounded was Princess Gagarina, my maid of honor. She had wanted to escape from the house like the others, and while she passed through a room attached to hers, a collapsing stove fell on a screen, which knocked her onto a bed that was in the room. Several bricks fell on her head and seriously wounded her and a girl who was escaping with her. On this lower floor there was also a little kitchen where several servants slept, three of whom were killed by the fireplace’s collapse. This was nothing in comparison to what had happened between the house’s foundation and the ground floor. Sixteen workers assigned to the sleigh run slept there, and all had been crushed by the building’s collapse.

The cause for all this was that the house had been built hastily in the autumn. It had four courses of limestone blocks for the foundation; on the ground floor the architect had placed twelve beams to serve as pillars in the vestibule. He had had to leave for Ukraine, and when he left, he told the steward of Gostilitsa to allow no one to touch these twelve beams until his return. Despite the architect’s prohibition, when the steward learned that we were to stay in this little house, he could not wait to have these twelve beams knocked down, since they disfigured the vestibule. With the coming of the spring thaw, everything settled on the four limestone courses, which slid in different directions, and the building itself slid against a rise that held it up. I escaped with a few bruises and a great scare, for which I was bled. The scare had been so great for everyone that during the next four months, every door that was closed with even a little force caused us to tremble. When the initial fright had passed that day, the Empress, who was staying in another house, called us to her residence, and as she wanted to make light of the accident, everyone tried to discount the danger and some even saw none. My own shock displeased her greatly and she hardly spoke to me. The Grand Master of the Hunt wept and despaired, he spoke of killing himself with a pistol; apparently he was prevented from this, because he did not do it, and on the following day we returned to Petersburg and after several weeks returned to the Summer Palace.

I do not recall exactly, but it seems to me that it was around this time that Chevalier Sacromoso arrived in Russia. It had been a long time since a Knight of Malta had come to Russia, and generally we saw very few foreigners come to Petersburg. His arrival was therefore a kind of event. He was treated in the best possible manner and taken to see all of the most remarkable things in Petersburg, and in Kronstadt a distinguished naval officer was named to accompany him; this was Monsieur Poliansky, then a captain of a warship and since named admiral. He was presented to us; while he kissed my hand, Sacromoso slipped a very tiny note into my hand and said to me in a very low voice, “This is from Madame your mother.” I was almost overcome with fright at what he had just done. I was dying from fear that someone might have seen him and above all the Choglokovs, who were very near. Nevertheless I took the note and slipped it into my glove; no one noticed. Back in my room, I found in this rolled-up note, which informed me that a response was expected through an Italian musician who was coming to the Grand Duke’s concert, another note that was in fact from my mother, who, anxious about my involuntary silence, asked me the reason for it and wanted to know my situation. I responded to my mother and informed her of what she wanted to know. I told her that I had been forbidden to write to her or anyone else, under the pretext that it was not fitting for a Grand Duchess of Russia to write any letters other than those composed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to which I only had to affix my signature, that I should never say what should be written, because the Ministry knew better than I what was proper to include, and that Monsieur Olsufiev had almost been charged with a crime because I had sent him a few lines that I had asked him to insert in a letter to my mother. I informed her about several other things that she asked me about. I rolled up my note in the same manner as that which I had received and waited impatiently for the moment when I could dispose of it. At the first concert held at the Grand Duke’s residence, I made a tour of the orchestra and stopped behind the chair of the cellist d’Ologlio, who was the man who had been indicated to me. When he saw me stop behind his chair, he pretended to take his handkerchief from his coat pocket and in this manner opened the pocket wide, into which I slipped my note without seeming to and then went off in the other direction and no one suspected anything. During his stay in Petersburg, Sacromoso slipped me two or three other notes on the same subjects, and my responses were given in the same way, and no one ever found out. From the Summer Palace we went to Peterhof, which was then being rebuilt.

We were housed on the upper floor of Peter I’s old building, which was still standing. Here, out of boredom, the Grand Duke began to play two-handed ombre with me every afternoon; when I won he would get angry, and when I lost he would demand payment immediately. I did not have a cent, so he began to play hazard with me. I remember that one day his night bonnet served as our marker for ten thousand rubles. But when he would lose, at the end of the game he would become furious and was capable of sulking for several days; I was in no way comfortable with this game.

During the stay at Peterhof, from our windows that looked out on the garden toward the sea, we saw that Monsieur and Madame Choglokov were constantly coming and going from the palace on the hill toward that of Monplaisir by the water, in which the Empress was then living. This intrigued us and Madame Kruse. In order to learn the reason for these frequent comings and goings, Madame Kruse went to the residence of her sister, who was the Empress’s first lady-in-waiting. She returned beaming, having learned that all these trips were occurring because the Empress had learned that Monsieur Choglokov was having an affair with one of my maids of honor, Mademoiselle Kosheleva, and that she was pregnant. The Empress had sent for Madame Choglokova and had told her that her husband was deceiving her, whereas she loved this husband madly, that she had been blind to the point that she had had this girl, the good friend of her husband, live with her and that if she wanted to separate from her husband immediately, she would do something that did not displease the Empress, who had not looked with pleasure in the first place upon Madame Choglokova’s marriage with her husband. The Empress flatly declared to her that she did not want her husband to remain with us, that she would dismiss him and leave the position to his wife. At first the wife denied her husband’s passion to the Empress and claimed that this was a slander, but Her Imperial Majesty, while speaking to the wife, had also had the young woman questioned. She had divulged everything completely, which made the wife furious with her husband. She returned to her house and blasted her husband with insults; he fell to his knees and begged her pardon and used all of his power over her to calm her down. Their brood of children helped them to patch up their relationship, which however was hardly any more honest thereafter. Apart in love, they were united by interest. The wife pardoned her husband, went to the Empress’s residence, and told her that she had forgiven her husband everything, and she wished to stay with him out of love for her children. On her knees she begged the Empress not to dismiss her husband from the court in shame, that this would dishonor her, and would overwhelm her with sorrow. In the end, she behaved on this occasion with as much firmness as generosity, and her sorrow moreover was so real that she disarmed the Empress’s anger. She did more. She brought her husband before Her Imperial Majesty, scolded him severely, and then kneeled with him at the Empress’s feet and begged her to pardon her husband out of regard for her and her six children, whose father he was. All these different scenes lasted five or six days, and we learned almost hour by hour what had occurred, because we were less watched during this period and because everyone hoped to see these people dismissed. But the conclusion did not at all meet the expectations that we had formed, because only the maiden was dismissed, and returned to her uncle, Grand Marshal of the Court Shepelev, and the Choglokovs remained, less proud, however, than they had been before. The day was chosen when we would go to Oranienbaum, and while we departed in one direction, the maiden was sent off in the other.