what good spirits and jollity
the Empress enlivened these gatherings. Count Stachelberg and the
Count de Segur were invited to Catherine's small parties. When she
broke with France and dismissed the Count de Segur, the French
Ambassador, she expressed deep regret at losing him. "But," she added,
"I am an autocrat. Every one to his trade." Many persons have
attributed Catherine's death to the keen sorrow brought her by the
failure of the marriage arranged between her granddaughter, the
Duchess Alexandrina, and the King of Sweden. That Prince arrived at
St. Petersburg, with his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, in August,
1796. He was only seventeen years old, but his tall figure and his
proud and noble bearing made him respected in spite of his youth.
Having been very carefully brought up, he showed a most unusual
politeness. The Princess whom he had come to marry, and who was
fourteen, was lovely as an angel, and he speedily fell deeply in love
with her. I remember that when he came to my house to see the portrait
I had done of his bride elect, he looked at it with such rapt
attention that his hat fell from his hand.

The Empress wished for this marriage more than anything, but she
insisted that her granddaughter should have a chapel and clergy of her
own religion in the palace at Stockholm, but the young King, all his
love for the young Duchess Alexandrina notwithstanding, would not
consent to anything that would violate the laws of his country.
Knowing that Catherine had sent for the patriarch to pronounce the
betrothal after a ball in the evening, the King remained absent from
the ball despite M. de Markoff's repeated calls urging him to come. I
was then doing the portrait of Count Diedrichstein. We went to my
window several times to see if the young King would yield and go to
the ball, but he did not. In the end, according to what Princess
Dolgoruki told me, when every one was assembled, the Empress half
opened the door of her room and said in a very subdued voice, "Ladies,
there will be no ball to-night." The King of Sweden and the Duke of
Sudermania left St. Petersburg the next morning.

Whether or no it was the grief arising from this occurrence that cut
short the days of Catherine, Russia was soon to lose her. The Sunday
preceding her death, I went to Her Majesty after church to present her
with the portrait that I had made of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth. She
congratulated me upon my work and then said: "They in