Catherine II. was thirty-three years of age; she was beautiful, benevolent and pious; up to that age she had been considered faithful to her husband, Peter III., when, all at once, she learnt that the emperor intended to repudiate her, in order to marry Countess Vorontsov, and as an excuse for this repudiation he proposed to declare that the birth of Paul-Petrovitch had been illegitimate. She quickly perceived that it was a matter of life and death for her, and of the throne for her son; there was a game to be played, and he who was first in the field would win. The tidings were announced to her at ten one night. By eleven, she had left the castle of Peterhof, where she lived, and, as she did not wish her departure to be known by ordering her carriage to be made ready, she stopped a peasant's cart and mounted beside him, the carter imagining he was merely taking up a country woman. She reached St. Petersburg just as day was beginning to dawn. Directly she arrived, she ordered out the regiments in the garrison there without revealing for what object, got together the few friends upon whom she believed she could rely, and went on parade with them before the assembled soldiers. She rode on horseback up and down the lines, addressed the officers, invoking their chivalry as men of honour and appealing to their loyalty as soldiers; then she seized hold of a sword, drew it from its scabbard, flung the scabbard far from her, and, fearing lest the sword might drop out of her unaccustomed hands, asked for a sword-knot to tie it to her wrist. A young officer of twenty-eight heard his sovereign's request through the din of the shouts of enthusiasm raised by the regiments, broke through the ranks, ran up to her side offering her his sword-knot; then, when Catherine had accepted his offer with the gracious smile of a woman bent on reigning as empress, a queen in quest of a throne, the young officer turned aside to fall back in his place; but his horse, which was one day to share in his master's good fortune, refused to turn aside; it reared and danced about, and, being used to cavalry manœuvres, persisted in ranging itself by the side of the empress's horse. Catherine, who was as superstitious as all are who stake their fortunes upon the cast of a die, fancied she augured from the horse's persistency that its rider would become one of her most powerful defenders; and she promoted him. A week later, after Peter III., who had been made prisoner by the very person whom he thought to make captive, had resigned into Catherine's hands the crown which he had intended to snatch from her, the empress sent for the young officer from the _place du Sénat_, made him one of her suite and appointed him groom of the chamber in her palace. This young man's name was Potemkin. From that day, without hindering in the least the reign of the twelve Cæsars, as the new régime was dubbed, Potemkin became the favourite of