Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

36 страница из 50

A party was formed for his dethronement; so one evening in July, 1762, when he was surrounded by his guard of Holsteiners, and amusing himself with his flower gardens (he was a great botanist), and with some of his beautiful mistresses at the palace of Orienbaum,—particularly the Countess of Woronzow, to whose allurements he had abandoned himself,—the exasperated Empress prepared to strike a final blow for Russia and for herself.

Putting on a uniform of old Russian Guards belonging to her future favourite, Captain Vlasfief, with the most coquettish grace, this young and beautiful, but in some respects terrible, woman borrowed from the nobles around her all the accessories of a complete military toilette: of Basil Mierowitz, a hat; of Count Orloff, a scarf; of Colonel Bernikoff, a belt; of some one else, a sword. Over all, she wore the blue ribbon of the first order of the Empire, which her impolitic husband had laid aside for that of Prussia.

The drums beat to arms: in this strange guise she showed herself to the troops, who were now mustered to the number of twenty thousand men in the great square of St. Petersburg, where the sight of the uniform of the old guard, which had been forced to give place to Peter's cherished Holsteiners, raised bursts of acclamation, quite as much as the appearance of Catharine, who was then "in the full flower of her robust beauty, perfectly elegant in figure, and purely feminine from her shoulders to her feet, which were remarkably handsome, and of which she was very proud." Her nose was aquiline, her eyes blue with black lashes, and her hair, a brilliant auburn, was curling on her shoulders. Thus has an eyewitness described her.