Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save to accept the result of excessive zeal.  She issued a note to the foreign ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic.  When his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been placed upon them.  No one believed the story of the colic; and some six years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure.  The whole incident was characteristically Russian.

It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of Catharine the Great—­the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature.  Yet these things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman whom Voltaire once styled “the Semiramis of the North.”  Because she was so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in private a life which has been almost more exploited than her great imperial achievements.  And yet, though she had lovers whose names have been carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood—­which is to love deeply and intensely only once,

One should not place all her lovers in the same category.  As a girl, and when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to Gregory Orloff.  She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness.  But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost more brute than man.  She could not turn to him for any of those delicate attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathy which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses.  A writer of the time has said that Orloff would hasten with equal readiness from the arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed Finn or filthy Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might encounter in the streets.

It happened that at the time of Catharine’s appeal to the imperial guards there came to her notice another man who—­as he proved in a trifling and yet most significant manner—­had those traits which Orloff lacked.  Catharine had mounted, man—­fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with a helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks.  At that moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her, observed that her helmet had no plume.  In a moment his horse was at her side.  Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet and fastened it to hers.  This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised over his imperial mistress!

When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched them with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then until the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had ever been.  With others she might flirt and might go even further than flirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence, to give advice, or to direct her policies.