least--and he the greatest in all
Russia--she was beautiful. His allegiance never wavered, nor indeed did
that of his army, which idolised her to a man. She might have no boudoir
graces, but at least she was the typical soldier's wife, and cut a brave
figure, as she reviewed the troops or rode at their head in her uniform
and grenadier cap. She shared all the hardships and dangers of
campaigns with a smile on her lips, sleeping on the hard ground, and
standing in the trenches with the bullets whistling about her ears, and
men dropping to right and left of her.

Nor was there ever a trace of vanity in her. She was as proud of her
humble origin as if she had been cradled in a palace. To princes and
ambassadors she would talk freely of the days when she was a household
drudge, and loved to remind her husband of the time when his Empress
used to wash shirts for his favourite. "Though, no doubt, you have other
laundresses about you," she wrote to him once, "the old one never
forgets you."

The letters that passed between this oddly assorted couple, if couched
in terms which could scarcely see print in our more restrained age, are
eloquent of affection and devotion. To Peter his kitchen-Queen was
"friend of my Heart," "dearest Heart," and "dear little Mother." He
complains pathetically, when away with his army, "I am dull without
you--and there is nobody to take care of my shirts." When Catherine once
left him on a round of visits, he grew so impatient at her absence that
he sent a yacht to bring her back, and with it a note: "When I go into
my rooms and find them deserted, I feel as if I must rush away at once.
It is all so empty without thee."

And each letter is accompanied by a present--now a watch, now some
costly lace, and again a lock of his hair, or a simple bunch of dried
flowers, while she returns some such homely gift as a little fruit or a
fur-lined waistcoat. On both sides, too, a vein of jocularity runs
through the letters, as when Catherine addresses him as "Your
Excellency, the very illustrious and eminent Prince-General and Knight
of the crowned Compass and Axe"; and when Peter, after the Peace of
Nystadt, writes: "According to the Treaty I am obliged to return all
Livonian prisoners to the King of Sweden. What is to become of thee, I
don't know." To which she answers, with true wifely (if affected)
humility: "I am your servant; do with me as you will; yet I venture to
think you won't send _me_ back."

Q