One of the ridiculous and disgraceful amusements of the vulgar men and women collected in the court of Elizabeth, was what was called masquerade balls, in which all the men were required to dress as women, and all the women as men, and yet no masks were worn.

“The men,” Catharine writes, “wore large whaleboned petticoats, with women’s gowns, and the head-dresses worn on court days, while the women appeared in the court costume of men.  The men did not like these reversals of their sex, and the greater part of them were in the worst possible humor on these occasions, because they felt themselves to be hideous in such disguises.  The women looked like scrubby little boys, while the more aged among them had thick short legs which were any thing but ornamental.  The only woman who looked really well, and completely a man, was the empress herself.  As she was very tall and somewhat powerful, male attire suited her wonderfully well.  She had the handsomest leg I have ever seen with any man, and her foot was admirably proportioned.  She danced to perfection, and every thing she did had a special grace, equally so whether she dressed as a man or a woman.”

Enervating and degrading pleasure and ambitious or revengeful wars, engrossed the whole attention of the Russian court during the reign of Elizabeth.  The welfare of the people was not even thought of.  The following anecdote, illustrative of the character of Peter III., is worthy of record in the words of Catharine: 

“One day, when I went into the apartments of his imperial highness, I beheld a great rat which he had hung, with all the paraphernalia of an execution.  I asked what all this meant.  He told me that this rat had committed a great crime, which, according to the laws of war, deserved capital punishment.  It had climbed the ramparts of a fortress of card-board, which he had on a table in his cabinet, and had eaten two sentinels, made of pith, who were on duty in the bastions.  His setter had caught the criminal, he had been tried by martial law and immediately hung; and, as I saw, was to remain three days exposed as a public example.  In justification of the rat,” continues Catharine, “it may at least be said, that he was hung without having been questioned or heard in his own defense.”

It is not surprising that a woman, young, beautiful and vivacious, living in a court where corruption was all around her, where an unmarried empress was rendering herself notorious by her gallantries, stung to the quick by the utter neglect of her husband, insulted by the presence of his mistresses, and disgusted by his unmitigated boobyism, should have sought solace in the friendship of others.  And it is not strange that such friendships should have ripened into love, and that one thus tempted should have fallen.  Catharine in her memoirs does not deny her fall, though she can not refrain from allowing an occasional word to drop from her pen, evidently intended in extenuation.  Much which is called virtue consists in the absence of temptation.