ever enjoy genial heat.  This garden was covered with fine brass wire, that the birds from all countries, singing among the trees and shrubs, or hopping along the grass plots and gravel walks, and which the empress was accustomed to feed with her own hand, might not escape.  While the storms of a Russian winter were howling without, the empress here could tread upon verdant lawns and gravel walks beneath luxuriant vegetation, listening to bird songs and partaking of fruits and flowers of every kind.

In this artificial Eden the empress often received Henry, the Prussian prince, and matured her plan for the partition of Poland.  The festivities which dazzled the eyes of the frivolous courtiers were hardly thought of by Catharine and Henry.  Mr. Richardson, an English gentleman who was in the family of Lord Cathcart, then the British embassador at the Russian court, had sufficient sagacity to detect that, beneath this display of amusements, political intrigues of great moment were being woven.  He wrote from St. Petersburg, on the 1st of January, 1771, as follows: 

“This city, since the beginning of winter, has exhibited a continued scene of festivities; feasts, balls, concerts, plays, and masquerades in continued succession; and all in honor of, and to divert his royal highness, Prince Henry of Prussia, the famous brother of the present king.  Yet his royal highness does not seem to be much diverted.  He looks at them as an old cat looks at the gambols of a young kitten; or as one who has higher sport going on in his mind than the pastime of fiddling and dancing.  He came here on pretense of a friendly visit to the empress; to have the happiness of waiting on so magnanimous a princess, and to see, with his own eyes, the progress of those immense improvements, so highly celebrated by Voltaire and those French writers who receive gifts from her majesty.

“But do you seriously imagine that this creature of skin and bone should travel through Sweden, Finland and Poland, all for the pleasure of seeing the metropolis and the empress of Russia?  Other princes may pursue such pastime; but the princes of the house of Brandenburg fly at a nobler quarry.  Or is the King of Prussia, as a tame spectator, to reap no advantage from the troubles in Poland and the Turkish war?  What is the meaning of his late conferences with the Emperor of Germany?  Depend upon it these planetary conjunctions are the forerunners of great events.  A few months may unfold the secret.  You will recollect the signs when, after this, you shall hear of changes, usurpations and revolutions.”

In one of these interviews, in which the dismemberment of Poland was resolved on, Catharine said,

     “I will frighten Turkey and flatter England.  Do you take it upon
     yourself to buy over Austria, and amuse France.”

Though the arrangements for the partition were at this time all made, the portion which was to be assigned to Austria agreed upon, and the extent of territory which each was to appropriate to itself settled, the formal treaty was not signed till two years afterwards.