The Summer Garden possessed the inevitable “grotto,” met with in all French gardens; it was a square edifice on the banks of the river Fontanna, rather awkward from the outside, suggesting a Dutch church, while the inside resembled a cave, laid out with large shells, mother of pearl, corals and porous stones; numerous fountains and water jets flowed into marble basins with that abundance of water, too great for the damp city of Petersburg, yet so dear to the heart of Peter.
Here staid old men, senators, and dignitaries, were also conversing about love and women.
“In olden days true wedlock was sacred, whereas nowadays, lust is considered gallantry, even by the husbands themselves, who with a calm heart watch their wives make love to others and call us fools for staking our honour on so weak a spot. They have given women their freedom; just wait a bit, they will soon master every one of us,” grumbled the oldest among them.
A younger one remarked that “free intercourse between the sexes is agreeable natural to all men, not fossilised by ancient customs. The real love passion, unknown in barbarous ages, had begun to possess sensitive hearts;” that “nowadays marriage boorishly reaps in one day all the flowers love tenderly rears for years; and jealousy is the pest of love.”
“Fair women have always been facile,” decided a middle-aged man, “but no doubt the devils themselves have set up their abode inside the ribs of the present giddy generation. They will hear of nothing but love-making.”
“And little girls, stirred by this example, begin to flirt, and only can’t do it, poor things, because they are too innocent. Oh! how the desire to please dominates women!”
Here entered her Majesty Catherine, attended by the Kammerjunker Mons and Mary Hamilton, her lady in waiting, a proud Scotchwoman with the face of Diana. The least elderly of the two old men, aware that Catherine was listening to their conversation, began amiably to defend the ladies.
“Truth herself proves the dignified nature of womankind by the fact, that God, at the end of His work, on the last day created Adam’s wife, as if without her the world were incomplete. Woman’s body alone is composed of all that is most charming in the universe. Add to these advantages her beauty of mind, and how can we help wondering at her perfection, and what excuses can be given by him who does not show due deference to her? Should there be some weakness about women, it is right to remember, how delicately they are made.” The oldest of the speakers only shook his head. His face clearly expressed that he was not convinced, that in his opinion “woman was as far removed from a human being, as a crab was from a fish; a woman and the devil make a fine match.”
In the opening, between the cloven clouds, on the transparent melancholy sky bathed in golden-emerald, appeared the narrow sickle of the newborn moon; it cast a gentle beam into the depths of a dark alley, where near a fountain surrounded by the semicircle of a tall clipped hedge, on a wooden bench, at the foot of a marble Pomona, there sat a solitary girl of seventeen. She wore a wide dress of pink taffeta embroidered with small yellow florets; she had a slender waist and a fashionable head-dress; yet so Russian and simple was her face, that it was evident she had only recently left a calm country life, where she had grown up surrounded by nurses, under the thatched roof of an old house. Casting a timid look around her, she undid two or three buttons of her frock and swiftly pulled out a roll of paper, hid in her bosom and warm from the contact. It was a love missive from her nineteen year old cousin, who by the Tsar’s command had first been torn from the same peaceful spot, sent to Petersburg, then placed in the navy school connected with the admiralty, and a few days ago had been sent on a man-of-war with other gardes-marines, either to Cadiz or Lisbon—to quote his own expression “to the world’s end.” By the light of the white night and the moon the young girl read the note, written on ruled lines in large round childish characters: