“I suppose you are going to say that we do not celebrate Christmas in the winter solstice as should properly be done.  We know it, but it seems to me a matter of no account.  I would rather bear with this small mistake than grievously afflict vast numbers of my subjects by depriving them of their birthdays.  If I did so, there would be no open complaints uttered, as that is not the fashion in Russia; but they would say in secret that I was an Atheist, and that I disputed the infallibility of the Council of Nice.  You may think such complaints matter for laughter, but I do not, for I have much more agreeable motives for amusement.”

The czarina was delighted to mark my surprise.  I did not doubt for a moment that she had made a special study of the whole subject.  M. Alsuwieff told me, a few days after, that she had very possibly read a little pamphlet on the subject, the statements of which exactly coincided with her own.  He took care to add, however, that it was very possible her highness was profoundly learned on the matter, but this was merely a courtier’s phrase.

What she said was spoken modestly and energetically, and her good humour and pleasant smile remained unmoved throughout.  She exercised a constant self-control over herself, and herein appeared the greatness of her character, for nothing is more difficult.  Her demeanour, so different from that of the Prussian king, shewed her to be the greater sovereign of the two; her frank geniality always gave her the advantage, while the short, curt manners of the king often exposed him to being made a dupe.  In an examination of the life of Frederick the Great, one cannot help paying a deserved tribute to his courage, but at the same time one feels that if it had not been for repeated turns of good fortune he must have succumbed, whereas Catherine was little indebted to the favours of the blind deity.  She succeeded in enterprises which, before her time, would have been pronounced impossibilities, and it seemed her aim to make men look upon her achievements as of small account.

I read in one of our modern journals, those monuments of editorial self-conceit, that Catherine the Great died happily as she had lived.  Everybody knows that she died suddenly on her close stool.  By calling such a death happy, the journalist hints that it is the death he himself would wish for.  Everyone to his taste, and we can only hope that the editor may obtain his wish; but who told this silly fellow that Catherine desired such a death?  If he regards such a wish as natural to a person of her profound genius I would ask who told him that men of genius consider a sudden death to be a happy one?  Is it because that is his opinion, and are we to conclude that he is therefore person of genius?  To come to the truth we should have to interrogate the late empress, and ask her some such question as: 

“Are you well pleased to have died suddenly?”

She would probably reply: