The Daughter of an Empress Part 1

The Daughter of an Empress.

by Louise Muhlbach.

COUNTESS NATALIE DOLGORUCKI

"No, Natalie, weep no more! Quick, dry your tears. Let not my executioner see that we can feel pain or weep for sorrow!"

Drying her tears, she attempted a smile, but it was an unnatural, painful smile.

"Ivan," said she, "we will forget, forget all, excepting that we love each other, and thus only can I become cheerful. And tell me, Ivan, have I not always been in good spirits? Have not these long eight years in Siberia pa.s.sed away like a pleasant summer day? Have not our hearts remained warm, and has not our love continued undisturbed by the inclement Siberian cold? You may, therefore, well see that I have the courage to bear all that can be borne. But you, my beloved, you my husband, to see you die, without being able to save you, without being permitted to die with you, is a cruel and unnatural sacrifice! Ivan, let me weep; let your murderer see that I yet have tears. Oh, my G.o.d, I have no longer any pride, I am nothing but a poor heart-broken woman! Your widow, I weep over the yet living corpse of my husband!" With convulsive sobs the trembling young wife fell upon her knees and with frantic grief clung to her husband's feet.

Count Ivan Dolgorucki no long felt the ability to stand aloof from her sorrow. He bent down to his wife, raised her in his arms, and with her he wept for his youth, his lost life, the vanishing happiness of his love, and the shame of his fatherhood.

"I should joyfully go to my death, were it for the benefit of my country," said he. "But to fall a sacrifice to a cabal, to the jealousy of an insidious, knavish favorite, is what makes the death-hour fearful.

Ah, I die for naught, I die that Munnich, Ostermann, and Biron may remain securely in power. It is horrible thus to die!"

Natalie's eyes flashed with a fanatic glow. "You die," said she, "and I shall live, will live, to see how G.o.d will avenge you upon these evil-doers. I will live, that I may constantly think of you, and in every hour of the day address to G.o.d my prayers for vengeance and retribution!"

"Live and pray for our fatherland!" said Ivan.

"No," she angrily cried, "rather let G.o.d's curse rest upon this Russia, which delivers over its n.o.blest men to the executioner, and raises its ign.o.blest women to the throne. No blessing for Russia, which is cursed in all generations and for all time--no blessing for Russia, whose bloodthirsty czarina permits the slaughter of the n.o.ble Ivan and his brothers!"

"Ah," said Ivan, "how beautiful you are now--how flash your eyes, and how radiantly glow your cheeks! Would that my executioner were now come, that he might see in you the heroine, Natalie, and not the sorrow-stricken woman!"

"Ah, your prayer is granted; hear you not the rattling of the bolts, the roll of the drum? They are coming, Ivan, they are coming!"

"Farewell, Natalie--farewell, forever!"

And, mutually embracing, they took one last, long kiss, but wept not.

"Hear me, Natalie! when they bind me upon the wheel, weep not. Be resolute, my wife, and pray that their torments may not render me weak, and that no cry may escape my lips!"

"I will pray, Ivan."

In half an hour all was over. The n.o.ble and virtuous Count Ivan Dolgorucki had been broken upon the wheel, and three of his brothers beheaded, and for what?--Because Count Munnich, fearing that the n.o.ble and respected brothers Dolgorucki might dispossess him of his usurped power, had persuaded the Czarina Anna that they were plotting her overthrow for the purpose of raising Katharina Ivanovna to the imperial throne. No proof or conviction was required; Munnich had said it, and that sufficed; the Dolgoruckis were annihilated!

But Natalie Dolgorucki still lived, and from the b.l.o.o.d.y scene of her husband's execution she repaired to Kiew. There would she live in the cloister of the Penitents, preserving the memory of the being she loved, and imploring the vengeance of Heaven upon his murderers!

It was in the twilight of a clear summer night when Natalie reached the cloister in which she was on the next day to take the vows and exchange her ordinary dress for the robe of hair-cloth and the nun's veil.

Foaming rushed the Dnieper within its steep banks, hissing broke the waves upon the gigantic boulders, and in the air was heard the sound as of howling thunder and a roaring storm.

"I will take my leave of nature and of the world," murmured Natalie, motioning her attendants to remain at a distance, and with firm feet climbing the steep rocky bank of the rushing Dnieper. Upon their knees her servants prayed below, glancing up to the rock upon which they saw the tall form of their mistress in the moonlight, which surrounded it with a halo; the stars laid a radiant crown upon her pure brow, and her locks, floating in the wind, resembled wings; to her servants she seemed an angel borne upon air and light and love upward to her heavenly home!

Natalie stood there tranquil and tearless. The thoughtful glances of her large eyes swept over the whole surrounding region. She took leave of the world, of the trees and flowers, of the heavens and the earth.

Below, at her feet, lay the cloister, and Natalie, stretching forth her arms toward it, exclaimed: "That is my grave! Happy, blessed Ivan, thou diedst ere being coffined; but I shall be coffined while yet alive! I stand here by thy tomb, mine Ivan. They have bedded thy n.o.ble form in the cold waves of the Dnieper, whose rushing and roaring was thy funeral knell, mine Ivan! I shall dwell by thy grave, and in the deathlike stillness of my cell shall hear the tones of the solemn hymn with which the impetuous stream will rock thee to thine eternal rest! Receive, then, ye sacred waves of the Dnieper, receive thou, mine Ivan, in thy cold grave, thy wife's vow of fidelity to thee. Again will I espouse thee--in life as in death, am I thine!"

And drawing from her finger the wedding-ring which her beloved husband had once placed upon it, she threw it into the foaming waves.

Bending down, she saw the ring sinking in the waters and murmured: "I greet thee, Ivan, I greet thee! Take my ring--forever am I thine!"

Then, rising proudly up, and stretching forth her arms toward heaven, she exclaimed aloud: "I now go to pray that G.o.d may send thee vengeance.

Woe to Russia, woe!" and the stream with its boisterous waves howled and thundered after her the words: "Woe to Russia, woe!"

COUNT MUNNICH

The Empress Anna was dead, and--an unheard-of case in Russian imperial history--she had even died a natural death. Again was the Russian imperial throne vacated! Who is there to mount it? whom has the empress named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and unfulfilled, would be construed into the crime of high-treason as soon as another than the one thus indicated should be called to the throne!

Who will obtain that throne? So asked each man in his heart. The courtiers and great men of the realm asked it with shuddering and despair. For, to whom should they now go to pay their homage and thus recommend themselves to favor in advance? Should they go to Biron, the Duke of Courland? Was it not possible that the dying empress had chosen him, her warmly-beloved favorite, her darling minion, as her successor to the throne of all the Russias? But how if she had not done so? If, instead, she had chosen her niece, the wife of Prince Anton Ulrich, of Brunswick, as her successor? Or was it not also possible that she had declared the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Czar Peter the Great, as empress? The latter, indeed, had the greatest, the most incontestable right to the imperial throne of Russia; was she not the sole lawful heir of her father? How, if one therefore went to her and congratulated her as empress? But if one should make a mistake, how then?

The courtiers, as before said, shuddered and hesitated, and, in order to avoid making a mistake, did nothing at all. They remained in their palaces, ostensibly giving themselves up to deep mourning for the decease of the beloved czarina, whom every one of them secretly hated so long as she was yet alive.

There were but a few who were not in uncertainty respecting the immediate future, and conspicuous among that few was Field-Marshal Count Munnich.

While all hesitated and wavered in anxious doubt, Munnich alone was calm. He knew what was coming, because he had had a hand in shaping the event.

"Oh," said he, while walking his room with folded arms, "we have at length attained the object of our wishes, and this bright emblem for which I have so long striven will now finally become mine. I shall be the ruler of this land, and in the unrestricted exercise of royal power I shall behold these millions of venal slaves grovelling at my feet, and whimpering for a glance or a smile. Ah, how sweet is this governing power!

"But," he then continued, with a darkened brow, "what is the good of being the ruler if I cannot bear the name of ruler?--what is it to govern, if another is to be publicly recognized as regent and receive homage as such? The kernel of this glory will be mine, but the sh.e.l.l,--I also languish for the sh.e.l.l. But no, this is not the time for such thoughts, now, when the circ.u.mstances demand a cheerful mien and every outward indication of satisfaction! My time will also come, and, when it comes, the sh.e.l.l as well as the kernel shall be mine! But this is the hour for waiting upon the Duke of Courland! I shall be the first to wish him joy, and shall at the same time remind him that he has given me his ducal word that he will grant the first request I shall make to him as regent. Well, well, I will ask now, that I may hereafter command."

The field-marshal ordered his carriage and proceeded to the palace of the Duke of Courland.

A deathlike stillness prevailed in the streets through which he rode. On every hand were to be seen only curtained windows and closed palaces; it seemed as if this usually so brilliant and noisy quarter of St.

Petersburg had suddenly become deserted and desolate. The usual equipages, with their gold and silver-laced attendants, were nowhere to be seen.

The count's carriage thundered through the deserted streets, but wherever he pa.s.sed curious faces were seen peeping from the curtained windows of the palaces; all doors were hastily opened behind him, and he was followed by the runners of the counts and princes, charged with the duty of espying his movements.

Count Munnich saw all that, and smiled.

"I have now given them the signal," said he, "and this servile Russian n.o.bility will rush hither, like fawning hounds, to bow before a new idol and pay it their venal homage."

The carriage now stopped before the palace of the Duke of Courland, and with an humble and reverential mien Munnich ascended the stairs to the brilliant apartments of Biron.

He found the duke alone; absorbed in thought, he was standing at the window looking down into streets which were henceforth to be subjected to his sway.

"Your highness is surveying your realm," said Munnich, with a smile.

"Wait but a little, and you will soon see all the great n.o.bility flocking here to pay you homage. My carriage stops before your door, and these sharp-scenting hounds now know which way to turn with their abject adoration."

"Ah," sadly responded Biron, "I dread the coming hour. I have a misfortune-prophesying heart, and this night, in a dream, I saw myself in a miserable hut, covered with beggarly rags, shivering with cold and fainting with hunger!"

"That dream indicated prosperity and happiness, your highness,"

laughingly responded Munnich, "for dreams are always interpreted by contraries. You saw yourself as a beggar because you were to become our ruler--because a purple mantle will this day be placed upon your shoulders."

"Blood also is purple," gloomily remarked the duke, "and a sharp poniard may also convert a beggar's blouse into a purple mantle! Oh, my friend, would that I had never become what I am! One sleeps ill when one must constantly watch his happiness lest it escape him. And think of it, my fortunes are dependent upon the eyes of a child, a nurseling, that with its mother's milk imbibes hatred to me, and whose first use of speech will be, perhaps, to curse me!"

"Then it must be your task to teach the young emperor Ivan to speak,"