to Prince Peter,
and from that moment began a career which was to make her the most
powerful woman in the world.

At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair.
Her complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She
had a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself
with such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in
fact she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her
figure was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become
stout. Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive,
pure-minded German maiden, with a character well disciplined, and
possessing reserves of power which had not yet been drawn upon.

Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold his
sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which
must have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere
boy in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his
vices. Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon
insanity. Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial
aunt, he occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.

Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with a
number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
half-idiot husband.

When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopat