He flattered, he entreated, he implored; but all in vain.
Gustavus was immovable; and enraged at the attempt to deceive him, he flung the papers away.
“No,” he cried furiously, “I will not have it! I will not sign!” and he shut himself up in his own apartment.
Here was an unexpected contretemps. Who would dare to relate this pleasing news to the empress-queen, surrounded by her expectant court?
For some time no one could be prevailed upon to do it, but finally her favorite, Zuboff, approached Catherine and whispered to her. The blood rushed to her face and, attempting to rise, she staggered. But she controlled herself with a mighty effort, and dismissing her court under the pretence that the king of Sweden was suddenly indisposed, retired to her cabinet.
The poor Princess Alexandrina was conducted to her apartment, where she fainted away. In her tender heart, a sad and crushing sorrow mingled with mortification and wounded pride; but Catherine the imperial, Catherine the imperious,—what were her sensations?
“Braved on her throne, insulted in her court, overreached in her policy, she could only sustain herself by the hope of vengeance. Pride and state etiquette forbade any expression of temper, but the effect on her frame was perhaps more than fatal. The king of Sweden took his departure a few days afterward, and Catherine, who from that instant meditated his destruction, was preparing all the resources of her great empire for war,—war on every side,—when the death stroke came, and she fell, like a sorceress, suffocated among her own poisons.”
Upon the 9th of November, 1796, she was found by her attendants stretched upon the floor of her apartment, struck by apoplexy. All attempts to reanimate her were in vain; and on the following day, without having had one moment granted her to think, to prepare, or to repent, this terrible and depraved old woman was hurried out of the world, with all her sins upon her head.
Such was the end of her whom the Prince de Ligne had pompously styled “Catherine la Grande.”
Though her political crimes and private sins were such as to consign her to universal execration, she seems to have possessed all the graces of an accomplished Frenchwoman.