In the spring of the year 1772 the fashionable world of Paris was ful of speculation and gossip about a stranger, as mysterious as she was beautiful, who had appeared from no one knew where, in its midst, and who cal ed herself the Princess Aly Emettee de Vlodimir. That she was a woman of rank and distinction admitted of no question. Her queenly carriage and the graciousness and dignity of her deportment were in keeping with the Royal character she assumed; but more remarkable than these evidences of high station was her beauty, which in its brilliance eclipsed that of the fairest women of Versailles and the Tuileries.
Tal , with a figure of exquisite model ing and grace, her daintily poised head crowned with a coronal of golden-brown hair, with a face of perfect oval, dimpled cheeks as delicately tinted as a rose, her chief glory lay in her eyes, large and lustrous, which had the singular quality of changing colour--"now blue, now black, which gave to their dreamy expression a peculiar, mysterious air."
Who was she, this woman of beauty and mystery? It was rumoured that she was a Circassian Princess, "the heroine of strange romances." She was living luxuriously in a fine house in the most fashionable quarter of Paris, in company with two German "Barons"--one, the Baron von Embs, who claimed to be her cousin; the other, Baron von Schenk, who appeared to play the role of guardian. To her _salon_ in the Ile St Louis were flocking many of the greatest men in France, infatuated by her beauty, and paying homage to her charms. To a man, they adored the mysterious lady--from Prince Ojinski and other illustrious refugees from Poland to the Comte de Rochefort-Velcourt, the Duke of Limburg's representative at the French Court, and the wealthy old _beau_ M. de Marine, who, it was said, placed his long purse at her disposal.
But while the men were thus her slaves, the women tossed their heads contemptuously at their dangerous rival. She was an adventuress, they declared with one voice; and great was their satisfaction when, one day, news came that the Baron von Embs had been arrested for debt and that, on investigation, he proved to be no Baron at al , but the good-for-nothing son of a Ghent tradesman.
The "bubble" had soon burst, and the attentions of the police became so embarrassing that the Princess was glad to escape from the scene of her brief triumphs with her cavaliers (Von Embs' liberty having been purchased by that "credulous old fool," de Marine) to Frankfort, leaving a wake of debts behind.
Arrived at Frankfort, the fair Circassian resumed her luxurious mode of life, carrying a part of her retinue of admirers with her, and making it known that she was daily expecting a large remittance from her good friend, the Shah of Persia. And it was not long before, thanks to the offices of de Rochefort-Velcourt, she had at her feet no less a personage than Philip, Duke of Limburg, and Prince of the Empire, one of those petty German potentates who assumed more than the airs and arrogance of kings. Though his duchy was no larger than an English county, Philip had his ambassadors at the Courts of Vienna and Versailles; and though he had neither courtiers, army, nor exchequer, he lavished his titles of nobility and surrounded himself with as much state and ceremonial as any Tsar or Emperor.
But exalted and serene as was His Highness, he was caught as helplessly in the toils of the Princess Aly as any lovesick boy; and within a week of making his first bow had her instal ed in his Castle of Oberstein, after satisfying the most clamorous of her creditors with borrowed money. That there might be no question of obligation, the Princess repaid him with the most lavish promises to redeem his heavily mortgaged estate with the millions she was daily expecting from Persia, and to use her great influence with Tsar and Sultan to support his claim to the Schleswig and Holstein duchies. And that he might be in no doubt as to her ability to discharge these promises, she showed him letters, addressed to her in the friendliest of terms by these august personages.
Each day in the presence of this most al uring of princesses forged new fetters for the susceptible Duke, until one day she announced to him, with tears streaming down her pretty cheeks, that she had received a letter recalling her to Persia--to be married. The crucial hour had arrived. The Duke, reduced to despair, begs her to accept his own exalted hand in marriage, vowing that, if she refuses, he will "shut himself up in a cloister"; and is only restored to a measure of sanity when she promises to consider his offer.
When Hornstein, the Duke's ambassador to Vienna, appears on the scene, ful of suspicion and doubts, she makes an equally easy conquest of him.
She announces to his gratified ears her wish to become a Catholic; flatters him by begging him to act as her instructor in the creed that is so dear to him; and she reveals to him "for the first time" the true secret of her identity. She is real y, she says, the Princess of Azov, heiress to vast estates, which may come to her any day; and the first use she intends to make of her millions is to fill the empty coffers of the Limburg duchy.
Hornstein is not only converted; he becomes as ardent an admirer as his master, the Duke. The Princess takes her place as the coming Duchess of Limburg, much to the disgust of his subjects, who show their feelings by hissing when she appears in public. Her hour of triumph has arrived--when, like a bolt from the blue, an anonymous letter comes to Hornstein revealing the story of her past doings in several capitals of Europe, and branding her as an "impostor."
For a time the Duke treats these anonymous slanders with scorn. He refuses to believe a word against his divinity, the beautiful, high-born woman who is to crown his life's happiness and, incidental y, to save him from bankruptcy. But gradually the poison begins to work, supplemented as it is by the suspicions and discontent of his subjects.
At last he summons up courage to ask an explanation--to beg her to assure him that the charges against her are as false as he believes them.
She listens to him with quiet dignity until he has finished, and then replies, with tears in her eyes, that she is not unprepared for disloyalty from a man who is so obviously the slave of false friends and of public opinion, but that she had hoped that he would at least have some pity and consideration for a woman who was about to become the mother of his child. This unexpected announcement, with its appeal to his manhood, proves more eloquent than a world of proofs and protestations. The Duke's suspicions vanish in face of the news that the woman he loves is to become the mother of his child, and in a moment he is at her knees imploring her pardon, and uttering abject apologies. He is now more deeply than ever in her toils, ready to defy the world in defence of the Princess he adores and can no longer doubt.
It is at this stage that a man who was to play such an important part in the Princess's life first crosses her path--one Domanski, a handsome young Pole, whose passionate and ill-fated patriotism had driven him from his native land to find an asylum, like many another Polish refugee, in the Limburg duchy. He had heard much of the romantic story of the Princess Aly, and was drawn by sympathy, as by the rumour of her remarkable beauty, to seek an interview with her, during her visit to Mannheim. Such a meeting could have but one issue for the romantic Pole.
He lost both head and heart at sight of the lovely and gracious Princess, and from that moment became the most devoted of al her slaves.
When she returned to Oberstein he was swift to follow her and to instal himself under her castle walls, where he could catch an occasional glimpse of her, or, by good-fortune, have a few blissful moments in her company. Indeed, it was not long before stories began to be circulated among the good folk of Oberstein of strange meetings between the mysterious young stranger who had come to live in their midst and an equal y mysterious lady. "The postman," it was rumoured, "often sees him on the road leading to the castle, talking in a shadow with someone enveloped in a long, black, hooded cloak, whom he once thought he recognised as the Princess."
No wonder tongues wagged in Oberstein. What could be the meaning of these secret assignations between the Princess, who was the destined bride of their Duke, and the obscure young refugee? It was a delicious bit of scandal to add to the many which had already gathered round the
"adventuress."
But there was a greater surprise in store for the Obersteiners, as for the world outside their wal s. Soon it began to be rumoured that the Duke's bride-to-be was no obscure Circassian Princess; this was merely a convenient cloak to conceal her true identity, which was none less than that of daughter of an Empress! She was, in fact, the child of Elizabeth, Tsarina of Russia, and her peasant husband, Razoum; and in proof of her exalted birth she actual y had in her possession the will in which the late Empress bequeathed to her the throne of Russia.
How these rumours originated none seemed to know. Was it Domanski who set them circulating? We know, at least, that they soon became public property, and that, strangely enough, they won credence everywhere. The very people who had branded her "adventuress" and hissed her in the streets, now raised cheers to the future Empress of Russia; while the Duke, delighted at such a wonderful transformation in the woman he loved, was more eager than ever to hasten the day when he could cal her his own. As for the Princess, she accepted her new dignities with the complaisance to be expected from the daughter of a Tsarina. There was now no need to refer the sceptics to Circassia for proof of her station and her potential wealth. As heiress to one of the greatest thrones of Europe, she could at last reveal herself in her true character, without any need for dissimulation.
The curtain was now ready to rise on the crowning act of her life-drama, an act more brilliant than any she had dared to imagine. Russia was seething with discontent and rebel ion; the throne of Catherine II. was trembling; one revolt had followed another, until Pugatchef had led his rabble of a hundred thousand serfs to the very gates of Moscow--only, when success seemed assured, to meet disaster and death. If the ex-bandit could come so near to victory, an uprising headed by Elizabeth's own daughter and heiress could scarcely fail to hurl Catherine from her throne.
It would have been difficult to find a more powerful al y in this daring project than Prince Charles Radziwill, chief of Polish patriots, who was then, as luck would have it, living in exile at Mannheim, and who hated Russia as only a Pole ever hated her. To Radziwill, then, Domanski went to offer the help of his Princess for the liberation of Poland and the capture of Catherine's throne.
Here indeed was a valuable pawn to play in Radziwill's game of vengeance and ambition. But the Prince was by no means disposed to snatch the bait hurriedly. Experience had taught him caution. He must count the cost careful y before taking the step, and while writing to the Princess, "I consider it a miracle of Providence that it has provided so great a heroine for my unhappy country," he took his departure to Venice, suggesting that the Princess should meet him there, where matters could be more safely and successfully discussed. Thus it was that the Princess said her last good-bye to her ducal lover, full of promises for the future when she should have won her throne, and as "Countess of Pinneberg" set forth with a retinue of fol owers to Venice, where she was regal y received at the French embassy.
Here she tasted the first sweets of her coming Queendom--holding her Courts, to which distinguished Poles and Frenchmen flocked to pay homage to the Empress-to-be, and having daily conferences with Radziwill, who treated her as already a Queen. That her purse was empty and the bankers declined to honour her drafts was a matter to smile at, since the way now seemed clear to a crown, with al it meant of wealth and power. When the Venetian Government grew uneasy at the plotting within its borders, she went to Ragusa, where she blossomed into the "Princess of al the Russias," assumed the sceptre that was soon to be hers, issued proclamations as a sovereign, and crowned these regal acts by sending a ukase to Alexis Orloff, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, "signed Elizabeth II., and instructing him to communicate its contents to the army and fleet under his command."
Once more, however, fortune played the Princess a scurvy trick, just when her favour seemed most assured. One night a man was seen scaling the garden-wal of the palace she was occupying. The guard fired at him, and the fol owing morning Domanski was found, lying wounded and unconscious in the garden. The tongues of scandal were set wagging again, old suspicions were revived, and once again the word
"adventuress"--and worse--passed from mouth to mouth. The men who had fawned on her now avoided her; worse still, Radziwill, his latent suspicions thoroughly awakened, and confirmed by a hundred stories and rumours that came to his ears, declined to have anything more to do with her, and returned in disgust to Germany.
But even this crushing rebuff was powerless to damp the spirits and ambition of the "adventuress," who shook the dust of Ragusa off her dainty feet, and went off to Rome, where she soon cast her spell over Sir William Hamilton, our Ambassador there, who gave her the warmest hospitality. "For several days," we learn, "she reigns like a Queen in the _salon_ of the Ambassador, out of whose penchant for beautiful women she has no difficulty in wiling a passport that enables her to enter the most exclusive circles of Roman society."
In Rome she lays aside her regal trappings, and wins the respect of all by her unostentatious living and her prodigal charities. She becomes a favourite at the Vatican; Cardinals do homage to her goodness, with perhaps a pardonable eye to her beauty. But behind the brave and pious front she thus shows to the world her heart is growing more heavy day by day. Poverty is at her door in the guise of importunate creditors, her servants are clamouring for overdue wages, and consumption, which for long has threatened her, now shows its presence in hectic cheeks and a hacking cough. Fortune seems at last to have abandoned her; and it requires al her courage to sustain her in this hour of darkness.
In her extremity she appeals to Sir William Hamilton for a loan, much as a Queen might confer a favour on a subject, and Hamilton, pleased to be of service to so fair and pious a lady, sends her letter to his Leghorn banker, Mr John Dick, with instructions to arrange the matter.
* * * * *
While the Princess Aly was practising piety and cultivating Cardinals in Rome, with an empty purse and a pain-racked body to make a mockery of her claim to a crown, away in distant Russia Catherine II. was nursing a terrible revenge on the woman who had dared to usurp her position and threaten her throne. The succession of revolutions, at which she had at first smiled scornfully, had now roused the tigress in her. She would show the world that she was no woman to be trifled with, and the first victim of her vengeance should be that brazen Princess who dared to masquerade as "Elizabeth II."She sent imperative orders to her trusted and beloved Orloff, fresh from his crushing defeat of the Turkish fleet, to seize her at any cost, even if he had to raze Ragusa to the ground; and these orders she knew would be executed to the letter. For was not Orloff the man whose strong hands had strangled her husband and placed the crown on her head; also her most devoted slave? He was, it is true, the biggest scoundrel (as he was also one of the handsomest men) in Europe, a man ready to stoop to any infamy, and thus the best possible tool for such an infamous purpose; but he was also her greatest admirer, eager to step into the place of
"chief favourite" from which his brother Gregory had just been dismissed.
When, however, Orloff went to Ragusa, with his soldiers at his back, he found that the Princess had already flown, leaving no trace behind her.
He ransacked Sicily in vain, and it was only when Sir William Hamilton's letter to his Leghorn banker came to his hands that he discovered that she was in Rome, a much safer asylum than Ragusa. It was hopeless now to capture her by force; he must try diplomacy, and, by the hands of an aide-de-camp, he sent her a letter in which he informed her that he had received her ukase and was anxious to pay due homage to the future Empress of Russia.
Such was the "Judas" message Kristenef, Orloff's emissary, carried to the Princess, whom he found in a pitiful condition, wasted to a shadow by disease and starvation--"in a room cold and bare, whose only furniture was a leather sofa, on which she lay in a high fever, coughing convulsively." To such pathetic straits was "Elizabeth II." reduced when Kristenef came with his fawning airs and lying tongue to tel her that Alexis Orloff, the greatest man in Russia, had instructed him to offer her the throne of the Tsars, and, as an earnest of his loyalty, to beg her acceptance of a loan of eleven thousand ducats.
In vain did Domanski, who was still by her side, warn her against the smooth-tongued envoy. She was flattered by such unexpected homage, her eyes were dazzled by the near prospect of the coveted crown which was to be hers, at last, just when hope seemed dead. She would accept Orloff's invitation to go to Pisa to meet him. "As for you," she said, "if you are afraid, you can stay behind. I am going where Destiny calls me."
This revolution in her fortunes acted like magic. New life coursed through her veins, colour returned to her cheeks, and brightness to her eyes, as one February day in 1775 she left Rome, with the devoted Domanski for companion and a brilliant escort, for Pisa, where Orloff greeted her as an Empress. He gave regal fetes in her honour and filled her ears with honeyed and flattering words.
Affecting to be dazzled by her beauty, he even dared to make passionate love to her, which no man of his day could do more effectively than this handsomest of the Orloffs; and so infatuated was the poor Princess by the adoration of her handsome lover and the assurance of the throne he was to give her, that she at last consented to share that throne with him, and by his side went through a marriage ceremony, at which two of his officers masqueraded as officiating priests.
Nothing remained now between her and the goal of her desires, except to make the journey to Russia as speedily as possible, and a few hours after the wedding banquet we see her in the Admiral's launch, with Orloff and Domanski and a brilliant suite of officers, leaving Leghorn for the Russian flagship, where she was received with the blare of bands and the booming of artillery. The crowning moment arrived when, as she was being hoisted to the deck in a gorgeous chair suspended from the yard-arm, her future sailors greeted her with thunders of shouts, "Long live the Empress!"
The moment she set foot on deck she was seized, handcuffs were snapped on her wrists, and she was carried a helpless captive to a cabin. At the same moment Domanski was overpowered before he had time to use his sword, and made a prisoner.
The Princess's cries for Orloff, her husband and saviour, are met with derision. Orloff she is told is himself a prisoner. He has, in fact, vanished, his dastardly mission executed; and she never saw him again.
Two months later the victim of a man's treachery and a woman's vengeance is looking with tear-dimmed eyes on "her capital" through a barred window of a cel in the fortress of Saints Peter and Paul.
Over the tragic closing of her days we may not dwell long. The scene is too pitiful, too harrowing. In vain she implores an interview with Catherine, who blazes into anger at the request. "The impudence of the wretch," she exclaims, "is beyond all bounds! She must be mad. Tell her if she wishes any improvement in her lot to cease the comedy she is playing." Prince Galitzin, Grand Chancellor, exerts all his skill in vain to force a confession of imposture from her. To his wiles and threats alike she opposes a dignified and calm front. She persists in the story of her birth; refuses to admit that she is an impostor.
Even when she is flung into a loathsome cell, with bread and water for diet, she does not waver a jot in her demeanour of dignity or in her Royal claims. Only when she is charged with being the daughter of a Prague innkeeper does she al ow indignation to master her, as she retorts, "I have never been in Prague in my life, and if I knew who had thus slandered me I would scratch his eyes out." Domanski, too, proves equal y intractable; even the promise of marriage to her will not wring from him a word that might discredit his beloved Princess.
But although the Princess keeps such a brave heart under conditions that might wel have broken it, her spirit is powerless against the insidious disease that is working such havoc with her body. In her damp, noisome cell consumption makes rapid headway. Her strength ebbs daily; the end is coming swiftly near. She makes a last dying appeal to Catherine to see her if but for a few moments, but the appeal falls on deaf ears.
When she sends for a priest to minister to her last hours, and, by Catherine's orders, he makes a final attempt to wrest her secret from her, she moans with her failing breath, "Say the prayers for the dead.
That is all there is for you to do here."
Four days later death came to her release. Catherine's throne was safe from this danger at least, and she was left to dal iance with her legion of lovers, while the woman on whom she had wreaked such terrible vengeance lay deeply buried in the courtyard of her prison, the very soldiers who dug her grave being sworn to secrecy. Thus in mystery her life opened, and in secrecy it closed.