"Munnich being gone to his own Town-Mansion, and Regent Anne sitting in hers in a huddle of undress; little accessible to her long-headed melancholic Ostermann, and too accessible to her Livonian maid: with poor little Anton Ulrich pouting and remonstrating, but unable to help,--this state of matters, with such intrigues undermining it, could not last forever. And had not Princess Elizabeth been of indolent luxurious nature, intent upon her prayers and flirtations, it would have ended sooner even than it did. Princess Elizabeth had a Surgeon called L'Estoc; a Marquis de la Chetardie, a high-flown French Excellency (who used to be at Berlin, to our young Friedrich's delight), was her--What shall I say? La Chetardie himself had no scruple to say it! These two plotted for her; these were ready,--could she have been got ready; which was not so easy. Regent Anne had her suspicions; but the Princess was so indolent, so good: at last, when directly taxed with such a thing, the Princess burst into ingenuous weeping; quite disarmed Regent Anne's suspicions;--but found she had now better take L'Estoc's advice, and proceed at once. Which she did. "And so, on the morrow morning, 5th December, 1741, by aid of the Preobrazinsky Regiment, and the motions usual on such occasions,--in fact by merely pulling out the props from an undermined state of matters,--she reduced said state gently to ruin, ready for carting to Siberia, like its foregoers; and was hereby Czarina of All the Russias, prosperously enough for the rest of her life. Twenty years or rather more. An indolent, orthodox, plump creature, disinclined to cruelty; 'not an ounce of nun's flesh in her composition,' said the wits. She maintained the Friedrich Treaty, indignant at Botta and his plots; was well with Friedrich, or might have been kept so by management, for there was no cause of quarrel, but the reverse, between the Countries,--could Friedrich have held his witty tongue, when eavesdroppers were by. But he could not always; though he tried. And sarcastic quizzing (especially if it be truth too), on certain female topics, what Improper Female, Czarina of All the Russias, could stand it? The history is but a distressing one, a disgusting one, in human affairs. Elizabeth was orthodox, too, and Friedrich not, 'the horrid man!' The fact is,--fact dismally indubitable, though it is huddled into discreet dimness, and all details of it (as to what Friedrich's witticisms were, and the like) are refused us in the Prussian Books,--indignation, owing to such dismal cause, became fixed hate on the Czarina's part, and there followed terrible results at last: A Czarina risen to the cannibal pitch upon a man, in his extreme need;--'INFAME CATIN DU NORD,' thinks the man! Friedrich's wit cost him dear; him, and half a million others still dearer, twenty years hence."--Till which time we will gladly leave the Czarina and it.