Elizabeth laughed.  “Well,” said she, “I shall finally be obliged to comply with your wishes, that you may leave me in peace.  For three years I have patiently borne your importunities for this signature.  My patience is now at an end, and I will sign the letter, that I may be freed from your solicitations.  Give me, therefore, that intolerable pen, but first pour out a glass of Malvoisie, and hold it ready, that I may strengthen myself with it after the labor is accomplished.”

Elizabeth, sighing, took the pen and slowly and anxiously subscribed her name to this three-years-delayed letter of congratulation to the King of France.

“So,” said she, throwing down her pen after the completion of her task—­“so, but you must not for a long time again trouble me with any such work, and to-day I have well earned the right to a very pleasant evening.  Nothing more of business—­no, no, not a word more of it!  I will not have these delightful hours embittered by your absurdities!  Away with you, Bestuscheff, and let my field-marshal, Count Razumovsky, be called!”

And when Alexis came, Elizabeth smilingly said to him:  “Alexis, the air is to-day so fine and fresh that we will take a ride.  Quick, quick!  And know you where?”

Razumovsky nodded.  “To the villa!” said he, with a smile.

“Yes, to the villa!” cried Elizabeth, “to see my daughter at the villa!”

She therefore now had a daughter, and this daughter had not died like her two sons.  She lived, she throve in the freshness of childhood, and Elizabeth loved her with idolatrous tenderness!

But precisely on account of this tenderness did she carefully conceal the existence of this daughter, keeping her far from the world, ignorant of her high birth, unsuspicious of her mother’s greatness!

The fatal words of the Countess Lapuschkin still resounded in the ears of the empress:  “Give this Elizabeth a daughter, and let that daughter experience what I now suffer!”

Such had been the prayer of the bleeding countess, flayed by the executioners of the empress, and the words were continually echoing in Elizabeth’s heart.

Ah, she was indeed a lofty empress; she had the power to banish thousands to Siberia, and was yet so powerless that she could not banish those words from her mind which Eleonore Lapuschkin had planted there.

Eleonore was therefore avenged!  And while the countess bore the torments of her banishment with smiling fortitude, Elizabeth trembled on her throne at the words of her banished rival—­words that seemed to hang, like the sword of Damocles, over the head of her daughter!

Perhaps it was precisely for the reason that she so much feared for her daughter, that she loved her so very warmly.  It was a passionate, an adoring tenderness that she felt for the child, and nevertheless she had the courage to keep her at a distance from herself, to see her but seldom, that no one might suspect the secret of her birth.