The palace of Prince Razumowski was blazing with light; every room was crowded with guests. Emperor Alexander had borrowed his ambassador’s residence for a fête offered to the sovereigns in honour of his sister’s birthday. The utmost interest was always evinced in the charming Catherine of Oldenburg, and perhaps the more because the Prince Royal of Würtemberg was constantly by her side. At every gathering, these two young people, rarely far apart, reminded one of the couple figuring so conspicuously in the opening pages of Mme. de Genlis’s novel _Mademoiselle de Clermont_. [Illustration: MARIE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.] Love unquestionably owed a good turn to this sweet, pretty, and graceful young woman, to indemnify her for the very unpleasant episodes of her first marriage. In 1809, there had been a question of an alliance between France and Russia, an alliance which would have consolidated peace in Europe. The young sister of the Czar was to be the pledge of that alliance. Napoleon, who at that period was justified in looking upon Alexander as a friend, caused diplomatic overtures to be made. The Russian monarch freely gave his consent,[83] but all at once a hitherto unthought-of obstacle arose, in the shape of the invincible repugnance of the dowager-empress to Napoleon, a repugnance that ought to have been removed by Napoleon’s magnanimous conduct to her son. When Alexander wished to sound his mother on that marriage by evincing a kind of partiality for it, she replied that it was henceforth out of the question, that two days previously she had given her word to the Grand-Duke of Oldenburg, to whom Catherine’s hand was promised. Alexander was a most respectful and submissive son. He offered no objections; negotiations were broken off; the marriage of Napoleon with an Austrian arch-duchess was concluded, and there was a prospective sovereign for the island of Elba. Sacrificed to a feeling of political repugnance, Catherine became Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg and established her Court at Tiver, a pretty town between Moscow and St. Petersburg--a small Court, recalling those of Ferrara and Florence during the most brilliant days of their artistic glory. Art, however, does not invariably contribute to a woman’s happiness. United to a man whom she could not love, the grand-duchess fretted under her lot. At first people sympathised with her, finally they took no heed of, or became used to, her grief. Then, as if to realise sweeter dreams, came on the one hand the death of her husband, and on the other the love of a prince, young, handsome, brave, and amiable--a prince placed on the steps of a throne.