eak to withstand, she had
given him up; she had sacrificed him to procure peace and quiet for
herself, and in the same hour in which she had tenderly pressed
his hand, and called him her friend, had she signed his sentence of
banishment! Lestocq had for nine years languished in Siberia.

Where was Grunstein? Banished, cast off, like Lestocq.

Where was Alexis Razumovsky?

Ah, well for her! He stood at her bedside, he pressed her cold hand in
his; he yet, in the face of death, thanked her for all the benefits she
had heaped upon him. But alas! she was also surrounded by others--by
wild, pale, terrible forms, which were unseen by all except the dying
empress! She there saw the tortured face of Anna Leopoldowna, whom she
had let die in prison; there grinned at her the idiotic face of Ivan,
whose mind she had destroyed; there saw she the angry-flashing eyes and
bloody form of Eleonore Lapuschkin, and, springing up from her bed, the
empress screeched with terror, and folded her trembling hands in prayer
to God for grace and mercy for her daughter, for Natalie, that He would
turn away the horrible curse that Eleonore had hurled at her child.

Alexis Razumovsky stood by her bedside, weeping. Overcome, as it seemed,
by his sorrow, another left the death-chamber of the empress, and rushed
to his horse, standing ready in the court below! This other was Count
Rasczinsky, the confidant of the empress.

The bells rang in St. Petersburg, the cannon roared; there were both joy
and sorrow in what the bells and cannon announced!

The Empress Elizabeth was dead; the Emperor Peter III. ascended the
throne of the czars as absolute ruler of the Russian realm. The first to
bow before him was his wife. With her son of five years old in her arms,
she had thrown herself upon her knees, and touching the floor with her
forehead, she had implored grace and love for herself and her son; and
Peter, raising her up, had presented her to the people as his empress.

In St. Petersburg the bells rang, the cannon thundered--"The empress is
dead, long live the emperor!"

Before the villa stopped a foam-covered steed, from which dismounted a
horseman, who knocked at the closed door. To the porter who looked out
from a sliding window he showed the written order of Elizabeth for his
admission. The porter opened the door, and with the loud cry, "Natalie,
Natalie!" the Count Rasczinsky rushed into the hall of the house.

The bells continued to ring, the