was safe behind barred doors at Mopsa; Catherine was now
Empress in fact as well as name. Three weeks later Peter was dead; was
he done to death by Catherine's orders? To this day none can say with
certainty. The story of this tragedy as told by Castera makes gruesome
reading.

One day Alexis Orloff and Teplof appeared at Mopsa to announce to the
deposed sovereign his approaching deliverance and to ask a dinner of
him. Glasses and brandy were ordered, and while Teplof was amusing the
Tsar, Orloff filled the glasses, adding poison to one of them.

"The Tsar, suspecting no harm, took the poison and swallowed it. He was
soon seized with agonising pains. He screamed aloud for milk, but the
two monsters again presented poison to him and forced him to take it.
When the Tsar's valet bravely interposed he was hurled from the room. In
the midst of the tumult there entered Prince Baratinski, who commanded
the Guard. Orloff, who had already thrown down the Tsar, pressed upon
his chest with his own knees, holding him fast at the same time by the
throat. Baratinski and Teplof then passed a table-napkin with a sliding
knot round his neck, and the murderers accomplished the work of death by
strangling him."

Such is the story as it has come down to us, and as it was believed in
Russia at the time. That Gregory Orloff was innocent of a crime in which
his own brother played a leading part is as little to be credited as
that Catherine herself was in ignorance of the design on her husband's
life. But, however this may be, we are told that when the news of her
husband's death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all
appearance overcome with horror and grief. She left the table with
streaming eyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable solitude
in her rooms.

Thus at last Catherine was free both from the tyranny of Elizabeth and
from the brutality of her bestial husband. She was sole sovereign of all
the Russias, at liberty to indulge any caprice that entered her
versatile brain. That her subjects, almost to a man, regarded her with
horror as her husband's murderer, that this detestation was shared by
the army that had put her on the throne, and by the nobles who had been
her slaves, troubled her little. She was mistress of her fate, and
strong enough (as indeed she proved) to hold, with a firm grasp, the
sceptre she had won.

High as Gregory Orloff had stood in her favour before she came to her
crown, his positi