e shepherd from the first place in
Elizabeth's favour, it must not be imagined that he was her only lover.
The daughter of the hot-blooded Peter and the lusty scullery wench had
always as great a passion for men as the second Catherine, who had
almost as many favourites in her boudoir as gowns in her wardrobes. She
had her lovers before she was emancipated from the schoolroom; and not
the least favoured of them, it is said, was her own nephew, Peter the
Second, whom she would no doubt have married if it had been possible.

She turned her back on one great alliance after another, preferring her
freedom to a wedding-ring that brought no love with it; and she found
her pleasure alike among the gentlemen of the Court and among her own
servants. In the long list of her favourites we find a General
succeeded by a Sergeant; Boutourlin, the handsome courtier, giving place
to Lialin, the sailor; and Count Shouvalov retiring in favour of
Voytshinsky, the coachman. Thus one liaison succeeded another from
girlhood to middle-age--indeed long after she had passed the altar. But
through all these varying attachments her heart remained constant to her
shepherd-lover, to whom she was ever the devoted wife, and, when he was
ill, the tenderest of nurses. To please him, she even accompanied him on
a visit to his native village, smiling graciously on his humble friends
of other days, and partaking of the hospitality of the poorest
cottagers; while on all who had befriended him in the days of his
obscurity she lavished her favours.

Of one man who had been thus kind she made a General on the spot; the
friendly priest was given a highly paid post at Court; high rank in the
army was given to many of his humble relatives; and a husband was found
for a favourite niece in Count Ryoumin, the Chancellor's son.

As for Alexis himself, nothing was too good for him. Although he had
probably never handled a gun in his life she made him Field-Marshal and
head of her army; and, at her request, Charles VII. dubbed him Count of
the Holy Roman Empire, a distinction which Gregory Orloff in later years
prized more than all the honours Catherine II. showered on him; while
the estates of which she made him lord were a small kingdom in
themselves. Alexis, the shepherd's son, was now, beyond any question,
the most powerful man in Russia. If he would, he might easily have
taken the sceptre from the yielding hands of the Empress and played the
autocrat, as Patiom