ilingly occupied in attaching a purple
flower to her hair.

"She was flayed," laconically replied Alexis. "Her blood streamed down a
back that was as red as your beautiful lips, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth offered him her lips to kiss.

"Now," she jestingly asked, "who is now the handsomest woman in my
realm?"

"You are and always were!" responded Alexis, embracing her.

"And now tell me," said she, with curiosity, "what did this proud
countess do? How did she behave, what did she say?"

Alexis, seating himself upon a tabouret at her feet, related to her all
about the fair Eleonore, and what a terrible curse she uttered.

"Ah, nonsense!" replied Elizabeth, shrugging her shoulders, "How can
one make such a stupid prayer to God! I shall never marry, and therefore
never have a daughter to be scourged with the knout."

But while thus speaking, her eyes suddenly became fixed and her cheek
pale. She laid her trembling hand upon her heart--tears gushed from her
eyes.

Under her heart she had felt a movement of a new and mysterious life!
Heaven itself seemed to contradict her words! Elizabeth felt that she
was a mother, and Eleonore's words now filled her with awe and terror!

Fainting, she sank into Razumovsky's arms.

A few weeks later, a great and magnificent court festival was celebrated
at the imperial palace at St. Petersburg. It was not enough that
Elizabeth had chosen a successor in the person of Peter, Duke of
Holstein, she must also give this successor a wife, that the throne
might be fortified and assured by a numerous progeny.

She chose for him the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the young and beautiful
Sophia Augusta, who, embracing the Greek religion, received the name of
Catharine.

It was the marriage festival of this young German princess with the heir
to the Russian throne which was celebrated in the imperial palace at St.
Petersburg--a festival of splendor and enthusiasm, as it was attended
by two women of the most exciting beauty, Elizabeth the present and
Catharine the future empress--the one gorgeous with the splendor of
the present, the other irradiated with the glory of the future. People
looked at the fair youthful face of Catharine, and sought to read in her
majestic high forehead the hopes that Russia might cherish of her! It
was, therefore, a festival of the present and future that was there and
then celebrated, and the magnates humbly prostrated themselves before
this new star, and threw them