hildren and great grandchildren whom he had never
seen. When the heroic old man presented himself before the tzar
dressed in the sheep-skin coat he had worn in Siberia, Peter said,

"I hope, notwithstanding your age, you may still serve me."

Munich replied, "Since your majesty has brought me from darkness to
light, and called me from the depths of a cavern, to admit me to the
foot of the throne, you will find me ever ready to expose my life in
your service. Neither a tedious exile nor the severity of a Siberian
climate have been able to extinguish, or even to damp, the ardor I
have formerly shown for the interests of Russia and the glory of its
monarch."]

In the afternoon, the empress returned to St. Petersburg. She entered
the city on horseback, accompanied by a brilliant retinue of nobles,
and followed by her large army of fifteen thousand troops. All the
soldiers wore garlands of oak leaves. The immense crowds in the city
formed lines for the passage of the empress, scattered flowers in her
path, and greeted her with constant bursts of acclaim. All the streets
through which she passed were garlanded and spanned with triumphal
arches, the bells rang their merriest peals, and military salutes
bellowed from all the ramparts. As the high ecclesiastics crowded to
meet her, they kissed her hand, while she, in accordance with Russian
courtesy, kissed their cheeks.

Catharine summoned the senate, and presided over its deliberations
with wonderful dignity and grace. The foreign ministers, confident in
the stability of her reign, hastened to present their congratulations.
Peter found even a few hours in the solitude of the palace of Ropscha
exceedingly oppressive; he accordingly sent to the empress, soliciting
the presence of a negro servant to whom he was much attached, and
asking also for his dog, his violin, a Bible and a few novels.

"I am disgusted," he wrote, "with the wickedness of mankind, and am
resolved henceforth to devote myself to a philosophical life."

After Peter had been six days at Ropscha, one morning two nobles, who
had been most active in the revolution which had dethroned the tzar,
entered his apartment, and, after conversing for a time, brandy was
brought in. The cup of which the tzar drank was poisoned! He was soon
seized with violent colic pains. The assassins then threw him upon the
floor, tied a napkin around his neck, and strangled him. Count Orlof,
the most intimate friend of the empress, a