ney. A huge retinue
accompanied her, together with the foreign ambassadors, Cobenzl,
Fitzherbert, and Segur, the last of whom has described this strange
procession. Forty miles were covered every day. There is a palace at
every stopping-place; towns and villages dot what six months ago had
been a howling wilderness. Painted forests seem to clothe the horizon:
fertile solitudes swarm with gayly dressed peasants--imported for this
occasion only. From Kiev floating pavilions carry them down the Dnieper:
the prince-magician alone has a hundred twenty of his beloved musicians.
Again the same _mise-en-scene_: operatic Cossacks rowing out from either
shore, the village of yesterday in the foreground, roofless facades in
the middle distance; the same reviews in successive provinces of hussars
out of her own escort! The greatest of optimists saw everything and
affected to see through nothing--the works of his highness surpass
conception. Suddenly spring appears, glittering on the enamelled meadows
and majestic river; they journey to the music of the galleys between
throngs of spectators from thirty nations. Every morning a fresh scene
opens, the days "travel more quickly than they themselves."

At Kanioff she is met by his majesty of Poland, none other than
Poniatowski, the lover, of Peterhoff in the old days! At Kherson, on an
eastern gate, appears the famous legend "The road to Byzantium"; and
there it is the Holy Roman Emperor who is drawn into her train--they
have already mapped out the Ottoman dominions. So with excursions and
alarums eastward by Poltava of glorious memory to the new "Glory of
Catharine," her city of Ekaterinoslaff; and last of all through
undulating steppes to the gorgeous palace piled upon the sand at
Inkerman, where after banquetings a curtain falls away, and behold--the
pasteboard fortifications of Sebastopol! where a green-wood squadron
anchored beneath them splutters forth its husky artillery. _Splendide
mendax!_ The West applauded frantically: never had such a
travelling-show been seen in Europe.

At home, too, the cult of appearances went hand in hand with generosity
and enthusiasm. "_C'est presque un monde_," she writes to Voltaire, "_a
creer, a unir, a conserver!_" First comes the administration of justice,
and her ukase of 1762, on its abuses, has a ring of sincerity that can
hardly be mistaken. There is a real courage again in her dealings with
the clergy. Four years later she summons a great a