with her generous heart, complete ignorance of poison being administered to her husband.  It was said that she had acted rightly, and that the Czar’s fate was a just one, for he was a wicked man; and finally, it was asserted that the whole statement was untrue, and that no one had killed Czar Peter, who died from intense inflammation of the stomach.  He drank too much brandy.  The immortal Voltaire is responsible for this last assertion.  Whatever may have happened, Czar Peter was buried, and the Czarina Katharine now saw that her late husband belonged to those dead who do not sleep quietly.  They rise—­rise from their graves—­stretch out their hands from their shrouds, and touch with them those who have forgotten them.  They turn over in their last resting-place, and the whole earth seems to tremble under the feet of those who walk above them!

Amongst the numerous contradictory stories told, one difficult to believe, but which the people gladly credited, and which caused much bloodshed before it was wiped out of their memory, was this—­that Czar Peter died neither by his own hand, nor by the hands of others, but that he still lived.  It was said that a common soldier, with pock-marked face resembling the Czar, was shown in his stead to the public on the death-couch at St. Petersburg, and that the Czar himself had escaped from prison in soldier’s clothes, and would return to retake his throne, to vanquish his wife, and behead his enemies!  Five Czar pretenders rose one after the other in the wastes of the Russian domains.  One followed the other with the motto, “Revenge on the faithless!” The usurpers conquered sometimes a northern, sometimes a southern province, collected forces, captured towns, drove out all officials, and put new ones in their places, so that it was necessary to send forces against them.  If one was subjugated and driven away into the ice deserts, or captured and hung on the next tree, another Czar Peter would rise up in his place and cause rebellion, alarming the Court circle whilst they were enjoying themselves; and so things went on continually and continually.  The murdered husband remained unburied, for to-day he might be put in the earth and to-morrow he would rise again, one hundred miles off, and exclaim, “I still live!” He might be killed there, but would pop out his head again from the earth, saying, “Still I live.”  He had a hundred lives!  When five of these Peter pretenders went the way of the real Czar a sixth rose, and this one was the most dreaded and most daring of all, whose name will perpetually be inscribed in the chronicles of the Russian people as a dreadful example to all who will not be taught wisdom, and his name is Jemeljan Pugasceff!  He was born as an ordinary Cossack in the Don province, and took part in the Prussian campaign, at first as a paid soldier of Prussia, later as an adherent of the Czar.  At the bombardment of Bender he had become a Cossack hetman.  His extraordinary physical strength, his natural common