kin played it under similar circumstances in later
years. But Alexis cared as little for power as for rank and wealth. He
smiled at his honours. "Fancy," he said, with his hearty laugh, "a
peasant's son, a Count; and a man who ought to be tending sheep, a
Field-Marshal!"

When courtly genealogists spread before him an elaborate family-tree,
proving that he sprang from the princely stock of Bogdan, with many a
Grand Duke of Lithuania among his lineal ancestors, he laughed loud and
long at them for their pains. "Don't be so ridiculous," he said. "You
know as well as I that my parents were simple peasants, honest enough,
but people of the soil and nothing else. If I am Count and Field-Marshal
and Viceroy, I owe it all to the good heart of your Empress and mine,
whose humble servant I am. Take it away, and let me hear no more of such
foolery."

Such to the last was the unspoiled, child-like nature of the man who so
soon was to be not merely the first favourite but husband of an Empress.
Probably Alexis would have lived and died Elizabeth's unlicensed lover
had it not been for the cunning of the cleverest of her Chancellors,
Bestyouzhev, who saw in his mistress's infatuation for her peasant the
means of making his own position more secure. Elizabeth was still a
young and attractive woman, who might pick and choose among some of the
most eligible suitors in Europe for a sharer of her throne; for there
were many who would gladly have played consort to the good-looking
autocrat of Russia.

Such a husband, especially if he were a strong man, might seriously
imperil the Chancellor's position; might even dispense with him
altogether. On the other hand, he was high in the favour of the
shepherd's son, who had such a contempt for power, and who thus would be
a puppet in his hands. Why not make him husband in name as well as in
fact? It was, after all, an easy task the Chancellor thus set himself.
Elizabeth was by no means unwilling to wear a wedding-ring for the man
who had loved her so loyally and so long; and any difficulties she might
raise were quickly disposed of by her father-confessor, who was
Bestyouzhev's tool. Thus it came to pass that one day Elizabeth and
Alexis stood side by side before the village altar of Perovo; and the
words were spoken which made the shepherd's son husband of the Empress.
The secrecy with which the ceremony was performed was but a fiction. All
the world knew that Alexis Gregorovitch was Emperor