Again she writes, “A fortnight after our marriage he confessed to me that he was in love with Mademoiselle Carr, maid of honor to her imperial majesty.  He said that there was no comparison between that lady and me.  Surely, said I to myself, it would be impossible for me not to be wretched with such a man as this were I to give way to sentiments of tenderness thus requited.  I might die of jealousy without benefit to any one.  I endeavored to master my feelings so as not to be jealous of the man who did not love me.  I was naturally well-disposed, but I should have required a husband who had common sense, which this one had not.”

For amusement, the grand duke played cruelly with dogs in his room, pretending to train them, whipping them from corner to corner.  When tired of this he would scrape execrably on a violin.  He had many little puppet soldiers, whom, hour after hour, he would marshal on the floor in mimic war.  He would dress his own servants and the maids of Catharine in masks, and set them dancing, while he would dance with them, playing at the same time on the fiddle.

“With rare perseverance,” writes Catharine, “the grand duke trained a pack of dogs, and with heavy blows of his whip, and cries like those of the huntsmen, made them fly from one end to the other of his two rooms, which were all he had.  Such of the dogs as became tired, or got out of rank, were severely punished, which made them howl still more.  On one occasion, hearing one of these animals howl piteously and for a long time, I opened the door of my bed-room, where I was seated, and which adjoined the apartment in which this scene was enacted, and saw him holding this dog by the collar, suspended in the air, while a boy, who was in his service, a Kalmuck by birth, held the animal by the tail.  It was a poor little King Charles spaniel, and the duke was beating him with all his might with the heavy handle of a whip.  I interceded for the poor beast; but this only made him redouble his blows.  Unable to bear so cruel a scene, I returned to my room with tears in my eyes.  In general, tears and cries, instead of moving the duke to pity, put him in a passion.  Pity was a feeling that was painful and even insupportable in his mind.”

At one time there was a little hunchback girl in the court, upon whom the duke fixed his vagrant desires, and she became his unconcealed favorite.  The duke was ever in the habit of talking freely with Catharine about his paramours and praising their excellent qualities.

“Madame Vladisma said to me,” writes Catharine, “that every one was disgusted to see this little hunchback preferred to me.  ’It can not be helped,’ I said, as the tears started to my eyes.  I went to bed; scarcely was I asleep, when the grand duke also came to bed.  As he was tipsy and knew not what he was doing, he spoke to me for the purpose of expatiating on the eminent qualities of his favorite.  To check his garrulity I pretended to be fast asleep.  He spoke still louder in order to wake me; but finding that I slept, he gave me two or three rather hard blows in the side with his fist, and dropped asleep himself.  I wept long and bitterly that night, as well on account of the matter itself and the blows he had given me, as on that of my general situation, which was, in all respects, as disagreeable as it was wearisome.”