The bottle was thrown overboard, with the diary and a note. The last was written in French: “Whoever finds this diary is requested to forward it to Livorno, to the Russian lady, Mistress Pchelkina. Should she not be found, to Russia, Chernigoff, Brigadier Leon Rakitin, for his daughter, Irena Rakitin. May 15th, 1775. Pavel Konsov, lieutenant of the Russian fleet.” END OF PART I. PART II. _RAVELIN ALEXEEF._ CHAPTER XVII. _EKATERINA AT MOSCOW._ The Empress Ekaterina spent the summer of 1775 in the _alentours_ of Moscow, honouring with her presence the village of Kolomensk, and then that of Chërnaya-griaz, which she had bought from Prince Kantomir. It had been named in honour of its new mistress Tzaritzin. She, in buying it, intended it to take the place of the Muscovite Tzarskoë-selo. On the borders of a dark forest, in the midst of fallen maples, a two-storied wooden palace had been hastily erected, with a few outhouses, some stables and a poultry yard. From the windows of her new palace the empress could admire the extensive and deep clear lakelets shaded by wooded hills, the boundless newly-mown plains, with, scattered here and there, the white shirts of the mowers, and the blue and red _sarafans_ of the hay-makers. Beyond these plains others could be seen, yet untouched by the sickle, sparkling in all their emerald beauty; and again, beyond these, the newly-ploughed corn-fields, and behind these, as far as the eye could reach, green plains and wooded hills; all this coloured and warmed by a lovely sun in a blue cloudless sky. Life here was simple and free. Through the constantly open windows the scent of the newly-mown hay and of the forest depths penetrated everywhere. Often would a blackbird fly in from the river, and from the plains came the grasshoppers and the moths. From the early morning the whole Court would be scattered in the forest, picking flowers, looking for mushrooms, fishing or sailing on the lakes, riding and driving in the neighbourhood. Ekaterina, for the time being clothed in a simple white morning robe, and wearing a cap over her simply twisted hair, would be seated at her writing table, writing out schemes and drafts of various ukases, or letters to the Parisian philosopher and _publiciste_ Baron Grimme. She complained to him that her servants would not give her more than two quills a day, as they knew very well that she could not regard with indifference a piece of white paper and a well-trimmed quill, but must sit down and indulge her mania for paper soiling. At the very time when all the world were tiring their brains over the politics of the Russian empress, as to what she would undertake in regard to Turkey, which she had desolated, or were discussing the delayed news of that recently-stifled insurrection on the Volga, the late execution of Pougachoff, and of the mysterious Princess Tarakanova arrested lately at Livorno, Ekaterina was describing to the Baron Grimme the lives of her pet dogs.