Fortune, which has furnished us with many extraordinary scenes in this part of the world, and who had raised Catherine from the lowest abyss of misery and distress to the pinnacle of human grandeur, wrought another extraordinary incident in her favour some few years after her marriage with the czar, and which I find thus related in a curious manuscript of a person who was at that time in the czar's service, and who speaks of it as a thing to which he was eye-witness.
An envoy from king Augustus to the court of Peter the Great, being on his return home through Courland, and having put up at an inn by the way, heard the voice of a person who seemed in great distress, and whom the people of the house were treating in that insulting manner which is but too common on such occasions: the stranger, with a tone of resentment, made answer, that they would not dare to use him thus, if he could but once get to the speech of the czar, at whose court he had perhaps more powerful protectors than they imagined.
The envoy, upon hearing this, had a curiosity to ask the man some questions, and, from certain answers he let fall, and a close examination of his face, he thought he found in him some resemblance of the empress Catherine; and, when he came to Dresden, he could not forbear writing to one of his friends at Petersburg concerning it. This letter, by accident, came to the czar's hands, who immediately sent an order to prince Repnin, then governor of Riga, to endeavour to find out the person mentioned in the letter. Prince Repnin immediately dispatched a messenger to Mittau, in Courland, who, on inquiry, found out the man, and learned that his name was Charles Scavronsky; that he was the son of a Lithuanian gentleman, who had been killed in the wars of Poland, and had left two children then in the cradle, a boy and a girl, who had neither of them received any other education than that which simple nature gives to those who are abandoned by the world. Scavronsky, who had been parted from his sister while they were both infants, knew nothing further of her than that she had been taken prisoner in Marienburg, in the year 1704, and supposed her to be still in the household of prince Menzikoff, where he imagined she might have made some little fortune.
Prince Repnin, agreeable to the particular orders he had received from the czar, caused Scavronsky to be seized, and conducted to Riga, under pretence of some crime laid to his charge; and, to give a better colour to the matter, at his arrival there, a sham information was drawn up against him, and he was soon after sent from thence to Petersburg, under a strong guard, with orders to treat him well upon the road.
When he came to that capital, he was carried to the house of an officer of the emperor's palace, named Shepleff, who, having been previously instructed in the part he was to play, drew several circumstances from the young man in relation to his condition; and, after some time, told him, that although the information, which had been sent up from Riga against him, was of a very serious nature, yet he would have justice done him; but that it would be necessary to present a petition to his majesty for that purpose; that one should accordingly be drawn up in his name, and that he (Shepleff) would find means that he should deliver it into the czar's own hands.
The next day the czar came to dine with Shepleff, at his own house, who presented Scavronsky to him; when his majesty, after asking him abundance of questions was convinced, by the natural answers he gave, that he was really the czarina's brother; they had both lived in Livonia, when young, and the czar found every thing that Scavronsky said to him, in relation to his family affairs, tally exactly with what his wife had told him concerning her brother, and the misfortunes which had befallen her and her brother in the earlier part of their lives.
The czar, now satisfied of the truth, proposed the next day to the empress to go and dine with him at Shepleff's; and, when dinner was over, he gave orders that the man, whom he had examined the day before, should be brought in again. Accordingly he was introduced, dressed in the same clothes he had wore while on his journey to Riga; the czar not being willing that he should appear in any other garb than what his unhappy circumstances had accustomed him to.
He interrogated him again, in the presence of his wife; and the MS. adds, that, at the end, he turned about to the empress, and said these very words:—'This man is your brother; come hither, Charles, and kiss the hand of the empress, and embrace your sister.'
The author of this narrative adds further, that the empress fainted away with surprise; and that, when she came to herself again, the czar said, 'There is nothing in this but what is very natural. This gentlemen is my brother in-law; if he has merit, we will make something of him; if he has not, we must leave him as he is.'