a lofty friendly
strain; his Son continuing at Court, though Papa had withdrawn. Supreme
Munnich had lasted about four months; Supreme Bieren hardly three
weeks;--and Siberia is still agape.

"Munnich being gone to his own Town-Mansion, and Regent Anne sitting
in hers in a huddle of undress; little accessible to her long-headed
melancholic Ostermann, and too accessible to her Livonian maid: with
poor little Anton Ulrich pouting and remonstrating, but unable to
help,--this state of matters, with such intrigues undermining it,
could not last forever. And had not Princess Elizabeth been of indolent
luxurious nature, intent upon her prayers and flirtations, it would have
ended sooner even than it did. Princess Elizabeth had a Surgeon called
L'Estoc; a Marquis de la Chetardie, a high-flown French Excellency (who
used to be at Berlin, to our young Friedrich's delight), was her--What
shall I say? La Chetardie himself had no scruple to say it! These two
plotted for her; these were ready,--could she have been got ready; which
was not so easy. Regent Anne had her suspicions; but the Princess was so
indolent, so good: at last, when directly taxed with such a thing, the
Princess burst into ingenuous weeping; quite disarmed Regent Anne's
suspicions;--but found she had now better take L'Estoc's advice, and
proceed at once. Which she did.

"And so, on the morrow morning, 5th December, 1741, by aid of the
Preobrazinsky Regiment, and the motions usual on such occasions,--in
fact by merely pulling out the props from an undermined state of
matters,--she reduced said state gently to ruin, ready for carting to
Siberia, like its foregoers; and was hereby Czarina of All the Russias,
prosperously enough for the rest of her life. Twenty years or rather
more. An indolent, orthodox, plump creature, disinclined to cruelty;
'not an ounce of nun's flesh in her composition,' said the wits. She
maintained the Friedrich Treaty, indignant at Botta and his plots; was
well with Friedrich, or might have been kept so by management, for there
was no cause of quarrel, but the reverse, between the Countries,--could
Friedrich have held his witty tongue, when eavesdroppers were by. But he
could not always; though he tried. And sarcastic quizzing (especially
if it be truth too), on certain female topics, what Improper Female,
Czarina of All the Russias, could stand it? The history is but a
distressing one, a disgusting one, in human affairs. Elizabeth was
ortho