Catharine II. of Russia was, like Peter, a compound of the noblest intellectual endowments, with a moral organization of unsurpassed depravity. She has usually been considered a monster of lust; but she was no less infamous for her cruelty, and for the total absence of all those qualities and feelings which form the chief grace and beauty of woman's inner life. Her favorite dining-room in the Tauric palace was adorned with pictures representing the sacking of Ohkzakoff and Ismail, in which the painter had surpassed the gloomy vision of a Carravaggio, and had depicted the assault, the carnage, the mutilation, and all the hideous details of such scenes. In these Catharine is said to have taken great delight. She hated music, and never could permit other sounds than those of drums, trumpets, and similar barbaric instruments within her hearing; and yet it is said that, in her outset in life as Princess of Anhalt Zerbst, she had a womanly heart, delicacy of taste, and refinement of intellect;[276] that it was not till long after her husband, Peter III., had insulted her by open neglect of her very winning person and youthful graces, and had abandoned her for the vulgar and ugly Princess Woronzoff, that she committed herself to the terrible career which she afterward pursued so steadily. The Duchesse d'Abrantes, in her memoir of Catharine, tells us that her first lover, Soltikoff, was forced upon her as a matter of public policy by the crafty and unscrupulous Bestujeff, the able minister of Elizabeth, for the sake of procuring an heir to the Grand Duke Peter. Catharine remonstrated, and threatened to complain. "To whom will you complain?" asked the minister, coldly. Catharine submitted, and accepted the lover thus imposed upon her. At the time of this adultery for expediency sake, Catharine was deeply intent upon study, with a view to qualify herself worthily for her future destiny, disgusted as she was with the indecencies of the Russian court! Subsequently, it was considered expedient to remove Soltikoff. Catharine had given birth to a child, and was not pleased with this dismissal; but the impassible Bestujeff only sneered at her remonstrances and professions of affection for the dismissed lover, and recommended her to choose another. This was a lesson she was not slow to carry out. The list of her paramours was little less numerous than that of Elizabeth. After Catharine had caused Peter III. to be murdered, and had ascended the throne as empress in her own right, she abandoned herself to the fullest gratification of her passions, both royal and personal. Besides the vulgar crowd whom she selected as the recipients of her filthy favors, the world knew, as the public and recognized paramours, the names of Orloff, by whom she had a son called Count Bobruski, Wassilitchikoff, Potemkin, Louskoi, Mornonoff, and Zuboff.