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[PART I.:]
[1744.] [PART II.:] [1752.] [1753.] [1754.] [1755.] [1756.] [1757.] [1759.] [Appendix.] [Footnotes] (etext transcriber's note) |
MEMOIRS
OF THE
EMPRESS CATHERINE II.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF.
WITH A PREFACE BY A. HÉRZEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
346 & 348 BROADWAY.
M.DCCC.LIX.
PREFACE.
SOME hours after the death of the Empress Catherine, her son, the Emperor Paul, ordered Count Rostoptchine to put the seals upon her papers. He was himself present at the arrangement of these papers. Among them was found the celebrated letter of Alexis Orloff,[1] in which, in a cynical tone and with a drunken hand, he announced to the Empress the assassination of her husband Peter III. There was also a manuscript, written entirely by the hand of Catherine herself, and enclosed in a sealed envelope, bearing this inscription:—“To his Imperial Highness, the Cesarewitch and Grand Duke Paul, my beloved son.” Under this envelope was the manuscript of the Memoirs which we now publish.
The manuscript terminates abruptly towards the close of the year 1759. It is said that there were with it some detached notes, which would have served as materials for its continuation. Some persons affirm that Paul threw these into the fire; but nothing certain is known upon this point. Paul kept his mother’s manuscript a great secret, and never entrusted it to any one but the friend of his childhood Prince Alexander Kourakine. The Prince took a copy of it. Some twenty years after the death of Paul, Alexander Tourgeneff and Prince Michael Worontzoff obtained copies from the transcript of Kourakine. The Emperor Nicholas having heard of this, gave orders to the Secret Police to seize all the copies. Amongst them was one written at Odessa, by the hand of the celebrated poet Pouschkine. A complete stop was now put to the further circulation of the Memoirs.