ousehold drudge--"a servant-girl in a German
inn." But Peter the Great, who was ever abnormal in all his tastes and
appetites, was always more ready to make love to a woman of the people
than to the most beautiful and refined of his Court ladies. His standard
of taste, as of manners, has not inaptly been likened to that of a Dutch
sailor.

But whatever it was in the low-born laundry-woman that attracted the
Tsar of Russia, we know that this first unconventional meeting led to
many others, and that before long Catherine (for we may now call her by
the name she made so famous) was removed from his favourite's household
and installed in the Imperial harem where, for a time at least, she
seems to have shared her favours indiscriminately between her old master
and her new--"an obscure and complaisant mistress"--until Menshikoff
finally resigned all rights in her to his sovereign.

When Catherine took up her residence in her new home, Waliszewski tells
us, "her eye shortly fell on certain magnificent jewels. Forthwith,
bursting into tears, she addressed her new protector: 'Who put these
ornaments here? If they come from the other one, I will keep nothing but
this little ring; but if they come from you, how could you think I
needed them to make me love you?'"

If Catherine lacked physical graces, this and many another story prove
that she had a rare gift of diplomacy. She had, moreover, an unfailing
cheerfulness and goodness of heart which quickly endeared her to the
moody and capricious Peter. In his frequent fits of nervous irritability
which verged on madness, she alone had the power to soothe him and
restore him to sanity. Her very voice had a magic to arrest him in his
worst rages, and when the fit of madness (for such it undoubtedly was)
was passing away she would "take his head and caress it tenderly,
passing her fingers through his hair. Soon he grew drowsy and slept,
leaning against her breast. For two or three hours she would sit
motionless, waiting for the cure slumber always brought him, until at
last he awoke cheerful and refreshed."

Thus each day the Livonian peasant-woman took deeper root in the heart
of the Emperor, until she became indispensable to him. Wherever he went
she was his constant companion--in camp or on visits to foreign Courts,
where she was received with the honours due to a Queen. And not only
were her presence and her ministrations infinitely pleasant to him; her
prudent counsel saved him