ecome sovereign empress of Russia in my own right."

The marriage was celebrated with much pomp; but a more cold and
heartless union was perhaps never solemnized. Catharine very
distinctly intimates that her husband, who was as low in his tastes
and companionship as he was degraded in his vices, left her at the
altar, to return to his more congenial harem.

"My beloved spouse," she writes, "did not trouble himself in the
slightest degree about me; but was constantly with his valets, playing
at soldiers, exercising them in his room, or changing his uniform
twenty times a day. I yawned and grew weary, having no one to speak
to."

Again she writes, "A fortnight after our marriage he confessed to me
that he was in love with Mademoiselle Carr, maid of honor to her
imperial majesty. He said that there was no comparison between that
lady and me. Surely, said I to myself, it would be impossible for me
not to be wretched with such a man as this were I to give way to
sentiments of tenderness thus requited. I might die of jealousy
without benefit to any one. I endeavored to master my feelings so as
not to be jealous of the man who did not love me. I was naturally
well-disposed, but I should have required a husband who had common
sense, which this one had not."

For amusement, the grand duke played cruelly with dogs in his room,
pretending to train them, whipping them from corner to corner. When
tired of this he would scrape execrably on a violin. He had many
little puppet soldiers, whom, hour after hour, he would marshal on the
floor in mimic war. He would dress his own servants and the maids of
Catharine in masks, and set them dancing, while he would dance with
them, playing at the same time on the fiddle.

"With rare perseverance," writes Catharine, "the grand duke trained a
pack of dogs, and with heavy blows of his whip, and cries like those
of the huntsmen, made them fly from one end to the other of his two
rooms, which were all he had. Such of the dogs as became tired, or got
out of rank, were severely punished, which made them howl still more.
On one occasion, hearing one of these animals howl piteously and for a
long time, I opened the door of my bed-room, where I was seated, and
which adjoined the apartment in which this scene was enacted, and saw
him holding this dog by the collar, suspended in the air, while a boy,
who was in his service, a Kalmuck by birth, held the animal by the
tail. It was a poor little King Ch