Count Orloff respectfully kissed the hem of her garment.
“You are the daughter of an empress,” said he, “and will yourself be an empress! That was what Paulo wished, and therefore have they condemned him as a criminal. What he was unable to accomplish must be done by me, and for that purpose have I come. Princess Natalie, your fatherland calls you, your throne awaits you! Follow me to your crowning in the city of your fathers—follow me, that I may place the crown of your grandfather, Peter the Great, upon your noble and beautiful head!”
THE WARNING
From this time forward Alexis Orloff was the inseparable companion of Natalie. With the most reverential submission, and at the same time with the tenderest affection, seemed he to be devoted to her, and equally to adore her as his empress and his beloved.
He took pains to represent to her that she was necessarily and inevitably destined to become an empress.
And she had comprehended him but too well. Ambition was awakened in this young maiden of eighteen years; it was an imperial crown that called her—why should she not listen to this call coming from the lips of one in whom she had unlimited confidence, and toward whom she felt infinitely grateful?
He had unfolded and explained all to her. He had told her of her mother, the good Empress Elizabeth, who had made Russia so great and happy; he had explained to her how Count Paulo Rasczinsky had flown with her on the day of her mother’s death, in order to preserve her from the pursuits of her mother’s successor, the cunning and cruel Peter III., and to insure to her the realm at a later period. He had then spoken to her of Catharine, who had forcibly possessed herself of the throne of her unworthy husband, and taken the reins of government into her own hands. He had spoken to her of Catharine’s cruelty and despotic tyranny; he had told her that all Russia groaned under the oppression of this foreigner, and that a universal cry was heard through the whole realm, of lamentation and longing, a cry for her, the Russian princess, the grand-daughter of Peter the Great, the daughter of the beloved Elizabeth.
“You are called for by all these millions of your oppressed subjects now trodden in the dust,” said he; “toward you they stretch forth their trembling hands, from you they expect relief and consolation, from you they expect happiness!”
“And I will bring them happiness,” exclaimed Natalie, with emotion. “I will dry the tears of misery and console the suffering. Oh, my people shall love me as my mother once did!”