She therefore tore herself for some short hours from the pleasures in
which she was usually immersed, from the arms of her lover, the
object of her deepest interest; her own safety and her own peace were
concerned. That was well worth the effort to take the pen once more in
hand, and affix the troublesomely long name of Elizabeth to some few
official documents.
She consequently signed the command to bring back Anna Leopoldowna and
her husband from the citadel of Riga to the interior of Russia, and
place them in strict confinement in Raninburg.
She also signed another order, and that was to rend the young Ivan from
the arms of his mother, to take him to the castle of Schlusselburg, and
there to hold him in strict imprisonment, to grow up without teachers,
or any kind of instruction, and without the least occupation or
amusement.
"I well know," said she, with a sigh, as she signed the document--"I
well know that it would be better for this Ivan to be executed for
high-treason than to remain in this condition, but I lack the courage
for it. It is so horrible to kill a poor, innocent child!"
"And in this way we attain our end more safely," said Lestocq, with a
smile. "Your majesty has sworn to take the life of no one; very well,
you keep your word as to physical life--we do not destroy the body but
the spirit of this boy Ivan! We raise him as an idiot, which is the
surest means of rendering him innoxious!"
Elizabeth had signed the order, and her command was executed. They took
from Anna Leopoldowna her last joy, her only consolation--they took away
her son, whose smiling face had lighted her prison as with sunbeams,
whose childishly stammered words had sounded to her as the voice of an
angel from heaven.
They took the poor weeping child to Schlusselburg, and his crushed and
heart-broken parents first to Raninburg, and finally to the fortress
Kolmogory, situated upon an island in the Dwina, near to that gulf
which, on account of its never-melting ice, has obtained the name of the
White Sea.
No one could rescue poor Anna Leopoldowna from that fortress--no one
could release her son, the poor little Emperor Ivan, from Schlusselburg!
They were rendered perfectly inoffensive; Elizabeth had not killed them,
she had only buried them alive, this good Russian empress!
And, nevertheless, she still trembled upon her throne, she still felt
unsafe in her imperial magnificence! She yet trembled on account of
another pretender, the Duke Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein, who, as the
son of an elder daughter of Peter the Great, had a more direct claim to
the throne than Elizabeth herself.
That no party might declare for him and invite him to Russia, her
ministers advised the empress herself to send for him, and declare him
her successor. Elizabeth followed this advice, and the young Duke Peter
Ulrich of Holstein accepted her call. Declining the crown of Sweden,
he professed the Greek religion in St. Petersburg, was clothed with the
title of grand prince by Elizabeth, and declared her successor to the
throne of the czars.