For some time no one could be prevailed upon to do it, but finally her favorite, Zuboff, approached Catherine and whispered to her. The blood rushed to her face and, attempting to rise, she staggered. But she controlled herself with a mighty effort, and dismissing her court under the pretence that the king of Sweden was suddenly indisposed, retired to her cabinet. The poor Princess Alexandrina was conducted to her apartment, where she fainted away. In her tender heart, a sad and crushing sorrow mingled with mortification and wounded pride; but Catherine the imperial, Catherine the imperious,—what were her sensations? “Braved on her throne, insulted in her court, overreached in her policy, she could only sustain herself by the hope of vengeance. Pride and state etiquette forbade any expression of temper, but the effect on her frame was perhaps more than fatal. The king of Sweden took his departure a few days afterward, and Catherine, who from that instant meditated his destruction, was preparing all the resources of her great empire for war,—war on every side,—when the death stroke came, and she fell, like a sorceress, suffocated among her own poisons.” Upon the 9th of November, 1796, she was found by her attendants stretched upon the floor of her apartment, struck by apoplexy. All attempts to reanimate her were in vain; and on the following day, without having had one moment granted her to think, to prepare, or to repent, this terrible and depraved old woman was hurried out of the world, with all her sins upon her head. Such was the end of her whom the Prince de Ligne had pompously styled “_Catherine la Grande_.” Though her political crimes and private sins were such as to consign her to universal execration, she seems to have possessed all the graces of an accomplished Frenchwoman. In her personal deportment, and in the circle of her court, she was kind, easy, and good-humored. Her serenity of temper and composure of manner were remarkable; and the contrast between the simplicity of her deportment in private and the grandeur of her situation rendered her exceedingly fascinating. She possessed so many accomplishments, was so elegant and dignified, and performed with such majesty and decorum all the external functions of royalty, that none approached her without respect and admiration; but her selfishness and her depravity spoiled all, and made her what we have seen her. Among all the famous queens of history, there is not one, save Catherine de’ Medici, whose career is so utterly devoid of noble acts, so entirely dictated by “selfishness, lust, and sordid greed,” as that of Catherine II., removed by the grace of God on the 10th of November, 1796, from being longer empress of all the Russias, and from the world which she had done so much to pollute. MARIE ANTOINETTE. A.D. 1755-1793. “It is our royal state that yields This bitterness of woe.”—WORDSWORTH.