A letter written by her trembling hand in her last hours, full of humble, earnest love, of forgiving gentleness, which her husband the prince found on his writing-table, as well as another, directed to Elise Gotzkowsky, and enclosed in the first, bore witness to this fact.
Lodoiska had loved her husband sufficiently to be aware of the cause of his wild and extravagant life, to know that in the bottom of his heart he was suffering from the only true love of his life—his love for Elise; and that all the rest was only a mad and desperate effort to deaden his feelings and smother his desire.
Elise's image followed him everywhere; and his love for her, which might have been the blessing of a good man's life, had been a cruel curse to that of a guilty one. In the midst of the wild routs, the private orgies of the imperial court, her image rose before him from these waves of maddening pleasure as a guardian angel, hushing him often into silence, and stopping the wanton jest on his quivering lips.
At times during these feasts and dances, he was seized with a boundless, unspeakable dread, a torturing anxiety. He felt inexpressibly desolate, and the consciousness of his lost, his wasted existence haunted him, while it seemed as if an inner voice was whispering—"Go, flee to her! with Elise is peace and innocence. If you are to be saved, Elise will save you."
But he had not the strength to obey the warning voice of his heart; he was bound in gilded fetters, and, even if love were absent, pride and vanity prevented him from breaking these bonds. He was the favorite of the young empress, and the great of the empire bowed down before him, and felt themselves happy in his smile, and honored by the pressure of his hand. But every thing is changeable. Even the heart of the Empress Catharine was fickle.
One day the Prince Stratimojeff received a note from his imperial mistress, in which she intrusted him with a diplomatic mission to Germany, and requested him, on account of the urgency of the occasion, to start immediately.
Feodor understood the hidden meaning of this apparently gracious and loving letter; he understood that he had fallen into disgrace—not that he had committed any error or crime. It was only that Count Orloff was handsomer and more amiable than himself, or at least that he seemed so to the empress. Therefore Feodor's presence was inconvenient to her; for at that time in the commencement of her reign, Catharine had still some modesty left, and the place of favorite had not yet become an official position at court, but only a public secret. As yet, she avoided bringing the discharged favorite in contact with the newly appointed one, and therefore Feodor had to be removed before Count Alexis Orloff could enter on his duties.
Prince Feodor Stratimojeff crushed the perfumed imperial note in his hand, and muttered through his set teeth: "She has sacrificed me to an Orloff! She wishes to send me away, that she may more securely play this new farce of love. Very well; I will go, but not to return to be deceived anew by her vows of love and glances of favor. No! let this breach be eternal. Catharine shall feel that, although an empress, she is a woman whom I despise. Therefore let there be no word of farewell, not even the smallest request. She bids me go, and I go. And would it not seem as if Fate pointed out to me the way I am to go? Is it not a strange chance that Catharine should choose me for this mission to Germany?"
It was indeed a singular accident that the empress unintentionally should have sent back her discharged favorite to the only woman whom he had ever loved. He was sent as ambassador extraordinary to Berlin, to press more urgently her claims on a Prussian banker, to bring up before the Prussian department for foreign affairs the merchant John Gotzkowsky with regard to her demand for two millions of dollars; and, in case he refused to pay it, to try in a diplomatic way whether Prussia could not he induced to support this demand of the empress, and procure immediate payment.
This was the mission which Catharine had confided to Prince Stratimojeff, who, when he determined to undertake it, said to himself: "I will take vengeance on this proud woman who thinks to cast me off like a toy of which she has tired; I will show her that my heart is unmoved by her infidelity; I will present to her my young wife, whose beauty, youth, and innocence will cause her to blush for shame."