Catherine the Great

The Austrian minister to Russia at this time was Count de Bernis, an intelligent, amiable man of fifty, respected by both Catherine and Peter. “If this man or someone like him had been placed in the grand duke’s service, it would have resulted in great good,” she wrote. Peter agreed and decided to consult Bernis about the negotiations. Unwilling to speak to the ambassador himself, he asked Catherine to do it for him. She was willing and, at the next masked ball, she approached the count. She spoke frankly, admitting her youth, lack of experience, and poor understanding of affairs of state. Nevertheless, she declared, it appeared to her that the affairs of Holstein were not as desperate as people were saying. Moreover, concerning the exchange itself, this appeared to be far more profitable for Russia than for the grand duke personally. Certainly, she admitted, as heir to the Russian throne, he must concern himself with the interests of the Russian empire. And, at some point, if these interests made it absolutely necessary to abandon Holstein in order to terminate the endless disputes with Denmark, the grand duke would consent. At present, however, the whole affair had such an air of intrigue about it that if it succeeded, it would make the grand duke appear so weak that he might never recover in the public eye. He loved Holstein, yet, despite this, the negotiators persisted in trying to persuade him to exchange it, without him really knowing why.

Count de Bernis listened and replied, “As ambassador, I have no instructions on this matter, but as Count de Bernis, I think you are right.” Peter told her later that the ambassador had said to him, “All I can say to you is that I believe your wife is right and that you will do well to listen to her.” As a result, Peter cooled toward these negotiations, and eventually the proposal for an exchange of territories was dropped. And in her first venture into international diplomacy, Catherine had succeeded in besting Count Bestuzhev

26

Reading, Dancing, and a Betrayal

PETER’S BEHAVIOR was always unpredictable. For an entire winter, he immersed himself in plans to build a country house near Oranienbaum in the style of a Capuchin monastery. There, he, Catherine, and their court would dress in brown robes as Capuchin friars; each person would have a personal donkey and take turns leading the animal to carry water and bring provisions to the “monastery.” The more details he produced, the more excited he became over his creation. To please him, Catherine made pencil sketches of the building and changed architectural features every day. These conversations left her exhausted. His talk was “of a dullness,” she said, “that I have never seen equaled. When he left me, the most boring book seemed delightful.”

Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket. She discovered the letters of Madame de Sévigné describing life at the court of Louis XIV. When a General History of Germany by Father Barre, recently published in France in ten volumes, arrived in Russia, Catherine read a volume every week. She acquired the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique by the French philosopher Pierre Bayle, a seventeenth-century philosophical freethinker and precursor of Montesquieu and Voltaire; Catherine read it from beginning to end. Gradually, guided by her own curiosity, she was acquiring a superior education.

As she grew intellectually, Catherine was also becoming perceived as more physically attractive. “I had a slender waist; all I lacked was a little flesh for I was very thin. I liked to go without powder, for my hair was of an exceedingly fine brown, very thick and strong.” She had admirers. For a while, the most persistent of these was none other than Nicholas Choglokov, who, after his adventure with Mlle Kosheleva, became infatuated with the grand duchess. Catherine noticed him smiling and nodding foolishly at her. His attention was abhorrent to her. “He was blond and foppish, very fat, and as thick in mind as in body. He was universally hated; everyone considered him a disagreeable toad. I managed to evade all of his attentions, without ever failing to be polite to him. This was perfectly clear to his wife who was grateful to me.”