"Gentlemen," said the Marquis, "I have the honour of presenting you to your future empress, the daughter of Peter the Great."
Half the guard had been bribed by the cunning Lestoc. The other half, seeing their comrades advance and pay homage to the Princess, followed the example of loyalty. Elizabeth was escorted into a room on the ground-floor by a military court formed in the course of five minutes. The Marquis and the faithful thirty-three went up-stairs to the sleeping apartments of the palace. Lestoc ran out, and ordered a carriage to be got ready—then joined the Marquis and the conspirators. The Duchess Regent and her child were just retiring for the night, when the German surgeon and the French ambassador politely informed them that they were prisoners. Entreaties were of no avail; resistance was out of the question. Both mother and son were led down to the carriage that Lestoc had ordered, and were driven off, under a strong guard, to the fortress of Riga.
The palace was secured, and the Duchess was imprisoned, but Lestoc and the Marquis had not done their night's work yet. It was necessary to make sure of three powerful personages connected with the government. Three more carriages were ordered out when the Duchess's carriage had been driven off; and three noblemen—among them Count Osterman, the original cause of the troubles in Russia—were woke out of their first sleep with the information that they were state prisoners, and were started before daylight on their way to Siberia. At the same time, the thirty-three conspirators were scattered about in every barrack-room in St. Petersburg, proclaiming Elizabeth Empress, in right of her illustrious parentage, and in the name of the Russian people. Soon after daylight, the moment the working population was beginning to be astir, the churches were occupied by trusty men under Lestoc's orders, and the oaths of fidelity to Elizabeth were administered to the willing populace as fast as they came in to morning prayers. By nine o'clock the work was done; the people were satisfied; the army was gained over; Elizabeth sat on her father's throne, unopposed, unquestioned, unstained by the shedding of a drop of blood; and Lestoc and the Marquis could rest from their labours at last, and could say to each other with literal truth, "The government of Russia has been changed in nine hours, and we two foreigners are the men who have worked the miracle!"
This was the Russian revolution of seventeen hundred and forty-one. It was not the less effectual because it had lasted but a few hours, and had been accomplished without the sacrifice of a single life. The Imperial inheritance which it had placed in the hands of Elizabeth was not snatched from them again. The daughter of the great Czar lived and died Empress of Russia.
And what became of the two men who had won the throne for her? The story of the after-conduct of the Marquis and Lestoc must answer that question. The events of the revolution itself are hardly more strange than the events in the lives of the French Ambassador and the German surgeon, when the brief struggle was over, and the change in the dynasty was accomplished.
To begin with the Marquis. He had laid the Princess Elizabeth under serious obligations to his courage and fidelity; and his services were repaid by such a reward as, in his vainest moments, he could never have dared to hope for. His fidelity had excited Elizabeth's gratitude, but his personal qualities had done more—they had touched her heart. As soon as she was settled quietly on the throne, she proved her admiration of his merits, his services, and himself by offering to marry him.
This proposal, which conferred on the Marquis the highest distinction in Russia, fairly turned his brain. The imperturbable man who had preserved his coolness in a situation of the deadliest danger, lost all control over himself the moment he rose to the climax of prosperity. Having obtained leave of absence from his Imperial mistress, he returned to France to ask leave from his own sovereign to marry the Empress. This permission was readily granted. After receiving it, any man of ordinary discretion would have kept the fact of the Empress's partiality for him as strictly secret as possible, until it could be openly avowed on the marriage-day. Far from this, the Marquis's vanity led him to proclaim the brilliant destiny in store for him all over Paris. He commissioned the King's genealogist to construct a pedigree which should be made to show that he was not unworthy to contract a royal alliance. When the pedigree was completed he had the incredible folly to exhibit it publicly, along with the keepsakes which the Empress had given to him, and the rich presents which he intended to bestow as marks of his favour on the lords and ladies of the Russian court. Nor did his imprudence end even here. When he returned to St. Petersburg, he took back with him, among the other persons comprising his train, a woman of loose character, dressed in the disguise of a page. The persons about the Russian court, whose prejudices he had never attempted to conciliate—whose envy at his success waited only for the slightest opportunity to effect his ruin—suspected the sex of the pretended page, and took good care that the report of their suspicions should penetrate gradually to the foot of the throne. It seems barely credible, but it is, nevertheless, unquestionably the fact, that the infatuated Marquis absolutely allowed the Empress an opportunity of seeing his page. Elizabeth's eye, sharpened by jealousy, penetrated instantly to the truth. Any less disgraceful insult she would probably have forgiven, but such an outrage as this, no woman—especially no woman in her position—could pardon. With one momentary glance of anger and disdain, she dismissed the Marquis from her presence, and never, from that moment, saw him again.
The same evening his papers were seized, all the presents that he had received from the Empress were taken from him, and he was ordered to leave the Russian dominions for ever, within eight days' time. He was not allowed to write, or take any other means of attempting to justify himself; and, on his way back to his native country, he was followed to the frontier by certain officers of the Russian army, and there stripped, with every mark of ignominy, of all the orders of nobility which he had received from the Imperial court. He returned to Paris a disgraced man, lived there in solitude, obscurity, and neglect for some years, and died in a state of positive want—the unknown inhabitant of one of the meanest dwellings in the whole city.
The end of Lestoc is hardly less remarkable than the end of the Marquis.
In their weak points, as in their strong, the characters of these two men seem to have been singularly alike. Making due allowance for the difference in station between the German surgeon and the French ambassador, it is undeniable that Elizabeth showed her sense of the services of Lestoc as gratefully and generously as she had shown her sense of the services of the Marquis. The ex-surgeon was raised at once to the position of the chief favourite and the most powerful man about the Court. Besides the privileges which he shared equally with the highest nobles of the period, he was allowed access to the Empress on all private as well as on all public occasions. He had a perpetual right of entry into her domestic circle, which was conceded to no one else; and he held a place, on days of public reception, that placed him on an eminence to which no other man in Russia could hope to attain. Such was his position; and, strange to say, it had precisely the same maddening effect on his vanity which the prospect of an imperial alliance had exercised over the vanity of the Marquis. Lestoc's audacity became ungovernable; his insolence knew no bounds. He abused the privileges conferred upon him by Elizabeth's grateful regard, with such baseness and such indelicacy, that the Empress, after repeatedly cautioning him in the friendliest possible terms, found herself obliged, out of regard to her own reputation and to the remonstrances which assailed her from all the persons of her Court, to deprive him of the privilege of entry into her private apartments.