performed immediately. Once the incisions had healed, and after Madame Groot had finished her private lessons, the grand duke was ready to become a complete husband. And thereafter, if Peter’s wife became pregnant, who could say that Sergei Saltykov was responsible?
As it happened, Saltykov’s worries were unnecessary. Madame Choglokova, having carried out the empress’s command with respect to Peter, was already turning to the problem of Catherine, whom the governess supposed still to be a virgin. There was no certainty that Peter’s success in embracing Madame Groot would ensure the same success with Catherine. And even if he managed the physical act, there was no guarantee that this would result in a conception. More certainty was required. Perhaps, even, a more reliable male.
Understanding the wide latitude of the imperial command she had been given, Madame Choglokova took Catherine aside one day and said, “I must speak to you very seriously.” The conversation that followed astonished Catherine.
Madame Choglokova began in her usual way with a long preamble about her attachment to her husband, her own virtue and prudence, and what was necessary and not necessary for ensuring mutual love and facilitating conjugal relations. But then, in midstream, she reversed course and said that there were sometimes situations in which a higher interest demanded an exception to these rules; where one’s patriotic duty to one’s country took precedence over duty to one’s husband. I let her talk without interruption, having no idea what she was driving at, and uncertain whether she was setting a trap for me. While I was deliberating, she said, “I do not doubt that in your heart you have a preference for one man over another. I leave you to choose between Sergei Saltykov and Lev Naryshkin. If I am not mistaken, it is the latter.” To this, I cried out, “No, no, not at all.” “Well, then,” Madame Choglokova said, “if it is not Naryshkin, it can only be Saltykov.”
Catherine remained silent, and the governess continued, “You will see that I shall not put difficulties in your way.” Madame Choglokova was as good as her word. Thereafter she and her husband stood aside when Sergei Saltykov entered Catherine’s bedroom.
The three principals—Catherine, Peter, and Sergei —found themselves in a complicated situation. She loved a man who had sworn he loved her, and who, thrusting aside seven years of virginal marriage, was teaching her about physical love. She had a husband who had not touched her since their marriage, who still did not desire her, who was aware of her lover, and thought it was all a titillating joke. Sergei considered Peter’s inclusion a necessary alibi.
Catherine should have been happy, but something in Sergei Saltykov’s attitude was changing. In the autumn, when the court moved back to the Winter Palace, he seemed restless; his passion seemed to be waning. When she reproached him, he emphasized the need for caution, explaining that, if she gave it more thought, she would understand the wisdom and prudence of his behavior.
Catherine and Peter departed from St. Petersburg in December 1752 and followed the empress and the court to Moscow. Catherine was already feeling signs of pregnancy. The sleigh traveled night and day, and at the last relay station before Moscow, Catherine suffered violent contractions and heavy bleeding. It was a miscarriage. Soon after, Sergei Saltykov arrived in Moscow, but his attitude remained distant. Nevertheless, he repeated the reasons for his behavior: the need to be discreet and avoid arousing suspicion. She still believed him. “As soon as I had seen and spoken to him,” she said, “my worries vanished.”
Reassured and hoping to please, Catherine agreed to a political proposal from Saltykov. He asked that she reach out on his behalf and request Chancellor Bestuzhev to help him advance his career. It was not easy for Catherine to agree. For seven years, she had considered the chancellor her most powerful enemy in Russia. He had subjected her to provocation and humiliation; he was behind the campaign against her mother; it was he who had assigned the watchdog Choglokovs; he was the author of the ban on her writing or receiving personal letters. Catherine had never publicly protested; she had carefully avoided alignment with any faction at court; she believed that her own uncertain position dictated that her best course was to cultivate friendships in all directions; she had not seemed interested in political maneuvering. Her priority had been to erase her Prussian identity by enthusiastically adopting every characteristically Russian trait. Now, influenced by her love for the man who had made her pregnant, and frightened by her fear of losing him, she put these considerations aside and did what he asked.
Her first step was to send Count Bestuzhev “a few words that would allow him to believe that I was less hostile to him than before.” She was surprised by the chancellor’s reaction. He was delighted by her overture and declared that he was at the grand duchess’s disposal. He asked that she indicate a safe channel by which they might communicate. On hearing this news, Saltykov, impatient, decided to visit the chancellor immediately under the pretext of a social call. The old man received him warmly, took him aside, and spoke to him of the inner world of the court, stressing particularly the stupidity of the Choglokovs. “I know that you can see through them as well as I do because you are a sensible young man,” Bestuzhev said. Then he spoke of Catherine: “In gratitude for the good will that the grand duchess has shown me, I am going to do her a little service for which I think she will thank me. I will make Madame Vladislavova as gentle as a lamb for her and the grand duchess will be able to do as she pleases. She will see that I am not the ogre she thinks I am.” At a stroke, Catherine had transformed the enemy she had feared for many years. This powerful man was now offering to support her and, in the bargain, Saltykov. “He gave him [Saltykov] a good deal of advice which was as useful as it was wise,” she said. “All this made him very intimate with us, without any living soul being the wiser.”
The new alliance offered advantages to both sides. Despite the humiliations Bestuzhev had heaped on her and her family, Catherine recognized the chancellor’s intelligence and administrative skill. This could be useful to her as well as to Saltykov. From Bestuzhev’s perspective, Catherine’s offer of reconciliation came at an unusually opportune time. The rise of Elizabeth’s new favorite, Ivan Shuvalov, was undermining the chancellor’s position. The new favorite was not simply amiable and indolent, as Razumovsky had been. Shuvalov was intelligent, ambitious, and strongly pro-French, and he was actively securing influential positions in government for his uncles and cousins. In addition, Bestuzhev worried about Elizabeth’s health. Her illnesses had become more frequent and required ever-lengthening periods of recovery. If—or rather, when—the empress died, Peter would inherit the throne. This was Peter who worshipped Frederick of Prussia; Peter who hated the Austrian alliance, the bedrock of the chancellor’s diplomacy; and Peter who was quite prepared to sacrifice the interests of the Russian empire to those of tiny, insignificant Holstein. Bestuzhev had long realized that Catherine was far more intelligent than her husband and that she was as sympathetic to Russian interests as Peter was indifferent or hostile. To have Catherine as an ally would mean buttressing his position at the moment and perhaps adding greater strength for the future. When Catherine suggested that they work together, he was quick to agree.
In May 1753, five months after her miscarriage, Catherine was pregnant again. She spent several weeks at a country estate near Moscow, where she restricted herself to walks and gentle carriage rides. By the time she returned to Moscow, she was so overcome by drowsiness that she slept until noon and it was difficult to wake her for midday dinner. On June 28, she felt pain in her lower back. The midwife was summoned, shook her head, and predicted another miscarriage. The following night, the prediction came true. “I must have been pregnant two or three months,” she conjectured. “For thirteen days, my life was in danger and it was suspected that part of the after-birth had not been expelled. Finally, on the thirteenth day, it came out without pain or effort.”
Peter spent most of this time in his own room, where his servants kept him supplied not only with military toys but with alcohol. During these days, the grand duke often found himself ignored and even flagrantly disobeyed by his servants, they being as drunk as he. Angry, Peter would strike about him with his stick or the flat of his sword, but his entourage dodged and laughed. After Catherine’s recovery, Peter asked her to make them behave. “When this happened,” she said, “I would go to his rooms and scold them, reminding them of their place and their duties. They always resumed their proper places. This made the grand duke say to me that he did not understand how I managed his servants; he flogged them, but could not make himself obeyed, while I obtained what I wanted with a single word.”
Moscow, the largest city of eighteenth-century Russia, was built primarily of wood. Palaces, mansions, houses, and hovels were constructed of logs and planks, sometimes carved and painted
