From day to day Orloff was expected. He was hastening from Italy to be present at the celebration of the peace with Turkey. At this time Galitzin had received other orders,—to deprive the captive of everything except what was strictly necessary, to make her put on prison clothes, and having sent her maid away, to put two sentinels as a constant watch over her.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE HISTORIOGRAPHER, MILLER.
The obstinacy of the captive astonished and angered Ekaterina very much.
“How is this?” she reasoned. “I have conquered Turkey; Pougachoff has been caught, has acknowledged his imposture, and been publicly executed; … and that miserable, puny woman, that adventuress, … will not acknowledge anything, and dares to threaten me, from her cellar … from her den.”
Potemkin, after having heard from Christianok all the details of the arrest of the Princess, was very morose and silent. Ekaterina ascribed it to his frequent fits of melancholy.
Soon it became known to many of those about the empress, what means Orloff had employed to entice and then betray the unfortunate captive, and these were soon communicated to the empress through the medium of her maid Perekousikhin. At first Ekaterina would not believe any of these rumours, and severely reprimanded her maid on this account. The secret report of the honest and incorruptible Galitzin concerning the position and condition of the captive, all the courtiers had made known to the empress. The womanly heart of Ekaterina was moved with indignation. “Not Radzivill,” she said; “he, threatened with confiscation of his enormous estates, did not betray the devoted woman!”
“Betrayer by nature!” shot through the brain of Ekaterina, when she recollected the services of Orloff; … “ready for anything, unscrupulous in all; stopping at nothing in his own interests,” and then Ekaterina remembered the phrase, “Matoushka Tzaritza, pardon. You didn’t think, you did not guess—”[38]
“Not for nothing do they call him butcher,” contemptuously murmured Ekaterina. “Oh! he’ll just say that, out of devotion, he ‘oversalted it.’ … Well! he’ll soon be here. He must be made to mend that affair. That fallen one, without family, nameless, tribeless; a toy in the hands of the wicked, in his arms she’ll be powerless.… And she, after selling beer at Prague, well! how dares she disdain Russian dignitary or count? Where’s—the mésalliance?”