“Ah, now are you really your great father’s great daughter!” cried Lestocq, and bending a knee before the princess, he continued: “Let me be the first to pay you homage, the first to swear eternal fidelity to you, our Empress Elizabeth.”
“Receive also my oath, Empress Elizabeth,” said Alexis, falling upon his knees before her, “receive the oaths of your slaves who desire nothing but to devote their bodies and souls to your service!”
“Let me, also, do homage to you, Empress Elizabeth!” exclaimed Woronzow, falling to the earth.
“And I, too, will lie at your feet and declare myself your slave, Empress Elizabeth!” said Grunstein, kneeling with the others.
But Elizabeth’s anger was already past; only a momentary storm-wind had lashed her gently flowing blood into the high foaming waves of rage; now all again was calm within her, and consequently this solemn homage scene of her four kneeling friends made only a comic impression upon her.
She burst into a loud laugh; astonished and half angry, the kneeling men looked up to her, and that only increased her hilarity.
“Ah, this is infinitely amusing,” said the princess, continuing to laugh; “there lie my vassals, and what vassals! Herr Lestocq, a physician; Herr Grunstein, a bankrupt shopkeeper and now under-officer; Herr Woronzow, chamberlain; and Alexis Razumovsky, my private secretary. And here I am, the empress of such vassals, and what sort of an empress? An empress of four subjects, an empress without a throne and without a crown, without land and without a people—an empress who never was and never will be an empress! And in this solemn buffoonery you cut such serious faces as might make one die with laughter.”
The princess threw herself upon the divan and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
“Princess,” said Lestocq, rising, “these four men, at whom you now laugh, will make you empress, and then it will be in your power to convert this chirurgeon into a privy councillor and court physician, this bankrupt merchant into a rich banker, this chamberlain into an imperial lord-marshal, and your private secretary into a count or prince of the empire.”
The eyes of the princess shone yet brighter, and with a tender glance at Alexis Razumovsky she said: “Yes, I will make him a prince and overload him with presents and honors. Ah, that is an object worth the pains of struggling for an imperial crown.”