uite idyllic, this post-nuptial love-making between the great Emperor
and his low-born Queen, who has so possessed his heart that no other
woman, however fair, could wrest it from her. And in her exalted
position of Empress she practised the same diplomatic arts by which she
had won Peter's devotion. Politics she left severely alone; she turned a
forbidding back on all attempts to involve her in State intrigues, but
she was ever ready to protect those who appealed to her for help, and to
use her influence with her husband to procure pardon or lighter
punishment for those who had fallen under his displeasure.

Nor did she forget her poor relations in Livonia. One brother, a
postillion, she openly acknowledged, introduced to her husband, and
obtained a liberal pension for him; and to her other brothers and
sisters she sent frequent presents and sums of money. More she could not
well do during her husband's lifetime, but when she in turn came to the
throne, she brought the whole family--postillion, shoemaker,
farm-labourer and serf, their wives and families--to her capital,
installed them in sumptuous apartments in her palaces, decked them in
the finest Court feathers, and gave them large fortunes and titles of
nobility.

When the Tsar's quarrel with his eldest son came to its tragic
_denouement_ in Alexis' death, her own son became heir presumptive to
the throne of Russia. And thus the chain that bound Peter to his Empress
received its completing link. It only remained now to place the crown
formally on the head of the mother of the new heir, and this supreme
honour was hers in the month of May, 1729.

Wonderful tales are told of the splendours of Catherine's coronation. No
existing crown was good enough for the ex-maid-of-all-work, so one of
special magnificence was made by the Court jewellers--a miracle of
diamonds and pearls, crowned by a monster ruby--at a cost of a million
and a half roubles. The Coronation gown, which cost four thousand
roubles, was made at Paris; and from Paris, too, came the gorgeous coach
with its blaze of gold and heraldry, in which the Tsarina made her
triumphal progress through the streets of the capital from the Winter
Palace. The culminating point of this remarkable ceremony came when,
after Peter had placed the crown on his wife's head, she sank weeping at
his feet and embraced his knees.

Catherine, however, had not worn her crown many months when she found
herself in considerable dang