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 cannon to thunder. There was great
rejoicing in St. Petersburg.
Issuing from the villa, Count Rasczinsky again mounted his foaming
steed.
Like a storm-wind swept he over the plain--but not toward St.
Petersburg, not toward the city where the people were saluting their new
emperor!
Away, away, far and wide in the distance, his horse bounded and panted,
bleeding with the spurs of his rider. Excited constantly to new speed,
he as constantly bounds onward.
Like a nocturnal spectre flies he through the desert waste; the
storm-wind drives him forward, it lifts the mantle that enwraps him like
a cloud, and under that mantle is seen an angel-face, the smile of a
delicate little girl, two tender childish arms clasping the form of
the count, a slight elfish form tremblingly reposing upon the count's
breast.