Anne, the successor of Peter and Catharine, had two publicly avowed lovers--Dolgorouki and Ernest John Biren. The latter was the better known, as his influence and importance during Anne's reign were very great. Dolgorouki had become one of the deputies to announce to Anne her succession to the throne, which office he accepted, with the hope of being able to resume his former intimate relations with his future sovereign. When he entered the apartments, he found a man in mean apparel seated by the side of the princess. He ordered him to withdraw, and, upon his inattention to the order, took him by the arm to turn him out, when the empress stopped him. This unknown person was Biren, who became regent of the empire.[275] Anne was not sunk in the same abyss of profligacy as her successor Elizabeth, nor in brutality as her ancestor Peter. She had been brought up in Courland, and had acquired some little refinement of ideas and manners. Gluttony and drunkenness were somewhat less in vogue at her court, but dissipation, ruinous gambling, and boundless extravagance were in full fashion. The whole court became a body of buffoons and jokers, and the most absurd and preposterous fashions of dress, the rudest and most boisterous romps and gambols were generally practiced. As a specimen of court manners, the practical joke played on Prince Galitzin, in which there was as much malice as fun, may be remembered. Having given offense by changing his religion, the prince was compulsorily married to a girl of the lowest birth. A palace was built in his honor, but the material was ice, and all the furniture was composed of the same. The wedding procession, consisting of more than three hundred persons in their national costumes, who had been collected from all the provinces of Russia, passed along the streets. The newly-married couple were mounted in a pagoda on the back of an elephant. When the ball was over, the bride and bridegroom were conducted to their nuptial chamber, like the rest of the house, all of ice, and were there installed in an ice bedstead, and guards were posted at the door to prevent them escaping from the room before morning.