Catherine.
The Russian made the sign of the cross as he read this manifesto. Yes, the judgments of God are indeed inscrutable! The former emperor had experienced in his last days so many sorrows, so many reverses—no wonder his feeble, sickly nature, which had already suffered from attacks of hemorrhage, would not withstand these shocks; in the matter of death nobody is free: he had fallen ill and died. To the common people his death appeared natural; even the upper classes, although they might hear even if they did not know something, did not admit any thoughts of Catherine’s having had any share in his death. The empress “must not be suspected” and she remained unsuspected. On the night between Sunday, the 7th of July, and Monday, the 8th, the body was brought straight to St. Petersburg, directly to the present monastery of St. Alexander Nevski to the same place where the body of the princess Anna of Brunswick was exposed for reverence, and later on the body of the princess Anna Petrovna, Catherine’s daughter.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[49] It is said that when the infant Ivan heard the shouts of the soldiers in front of the palace, he endeavoured to imitate their vociferations, when Elizabeth exclaimed, “Poor babe! thou knowest not that thou art joining in the noise that is raised at thy undoing.”
[50] The mother died in childbed, 1746; the father survived until 1780.
[51] She is said to have been privately married to a singer; but this is doubtful. What is certain is that her lovers were as numerous after as before the alleged union.
[52] The exact expression in Russian is Matushka (little mother), a title of endearment given by the people to the sovereign.
[53] Prince Theodore Sergeivitch Bariatinski.
