Without any more words he left the room and went to the apartments of his wife, who accompanied him on all his campaigns.
He intended soon to marry her publicly and proclaim her as Czarina.
Not that Katherina had ever demanded this of him (indeed she had not expected him to marry her at all), but to please his own passion for this woman, who still continued to entirely please his curious fancy.
There were those who believed that if she had had a living child he could have disinherited Prince Alexis in favor of the offspring of Katherina, since the heir was not only the son of a disgraced and imprisoned mother, but showed already strong reactionary tendencies towards the barbaric customs Peter was so painfully eliminating from Russia.
Katherina was now clothed in Western fashion; a tight bodice and full skirt of blue silk, a pearl necklace, and her hair rolled into long curls.
She was now very stout, and her teeth were ruined through eating sweetmeats; her complexion was greasy, and her hands ill kept; she had acquired no air of dignity, but an expression of complete good nature showed still on her handsome features.
A Tartar maidservant with Asiatic features was seated on a scarlet cushion, singing as she worked a piece of orange and gold embroidery on a frame.
Peter spoke to neither but seated himself on the low covered chair beside his wife who knew better than to speak to him when he was silent.
The little maid, with an unchanged countenance, continued singing, in a low, melancholy, and monotonous voice, an old Tartar song:
The gentle baby died, mother, died when it was born.
He will never saddle horse, mother, nor eat the cakes of corn,
Or ride before his soldiers in the glory of the morn,
Nor chase the bitter tiger or the fleet and lovely fawn.
The gentle baby died, mother, died when he was born.