Raising her eyes toward heaven with flaming glances, she exclaimed:
“Woe to this merciless Elizabeth! Woe to this woman who has no compassion for another woman! What she now does to me, do Thou also to her, my God and Lord! Grant that she be flayed as she has now flayed me! Grant her a daughter, and let that daughter before her mother’s eyes suffer what I now suffer, O my God! Woe to Elizabeth, and woe to you, ye cowardly slaves, who can look on and see a woman flayed and tortured! Shame and perdition to Russia and its Empress Elizabeth!”
These were Eleonore’s last words. With a wild rage her executioners seized her for the purpose of tearing out her tongue. And when that was accomplished, and her husband and son had suffered a similar martyrdom, all three were placed upon a kibitka, to be conveyed to Siberia.
Eleonore could no longer speak with her tongue, but her eyes spoke, and those eyes continued to repeat the prayer for vengeance she had addressed to Heaven: “Grant to this Empress Elizabeth a daughter, and let that daughter’s sufferings be like mine.”
A WEDDING
The people dispersed. The great returned to their palaces, and also Alexis Razumovsky, who, that he might not excite the anger of the empress, had likewise attended the execution, returned to the imperial palace.
Elizabeth was standing before a large Venetian mirror, scrutinizing a toilet which she had to-day changed for the fourth time.
“Well,” she asked of Alexis, as he entered, “was it an interesting spectacle? Was the handsome countess soundly whipped?”
And, while so asking, she was smilingly occupied in attaching a purple flower to her hair.