Within an hour he was racing back to St Petersburg, resting
neither night nor day until he had covered the thousand leagues that
separated him from the capital.

Before, however, his sweating horses could enter it, he was stopped by
Catherine's emissaries and ordered to repair to the Imperial Palace at
Gatshina. And then he realised that his sun had indeed come to its
setting. His honours were soon stripped from him, and although he was
allowed to keep his lands, his gold and jewels, the spoils of Cupid, the
diamond-framed miniature, was taken away to adorn the breast of his
successor, the lieutenant.

Under this cloud of disfavour Orloff conducted himself with such
resignation--none knew better than he how futile it was to fight--that
Catherine, before many months had passed, not only recalled him to
Court, but secured for him a Princedom of the Holy Empire. "As for
Prince Gregory," she said amiably, "he is free to go or stay, to hunt,
to drink, or to gamble. I intend to live according to my own pleasure,
and in entire independence."

After a tragically brief wedded life with a beautiful girl-cousin, who
died of consumption, Orloff returned to St Petersburg to spend the last
few months of his life, "broken-hearted and mad." And to his last hour
his clouded brain was tortured with visions of the "avenging shade of
the murdered Peter."

CHAPTER XV

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CINDERELLA

It was to all seeming a strange whim that caused Cardinal Mazarin, one
day in the year 1653, to summon his nieces, daughters of his sister,
Hieronyme Mancini, from their obscurity in Italy to bask in the sunshine
of his splendours in Paris.

At the time of this odd caprice, Richelieu's crafty successor had
reached the zenith of his power. His was the most potent and splendid
figure in all Europe that did not wear a crown. He was the avowed
favourite and lover of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, to whose vanity
he had paid such skilful court--indeed it was common rumour that she had
actually given him her hand in secret marriage. The boy-King, Louis
XIV., was a puppet in his strong hands. He was, in fact, the dictator of
France, whose smiles the greatest courtiers tried to win, and before
whose frowns they trembled.

In contrast to such magnificence, his sister, Madame Mancini, was the
wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five
daughters on a pathetically scanty purse--as far removed from her
magn