On the 24th May the prince summoned an officer of the Préobrajenski regiment, by name Tolstoï, made him take an oath of secrecy, and ordered him to start for Cronstadt to receive the prisoner who would be given over to him, and carefully hand her over to the commandant of the Petropavlovski fortress, André Gavrilovitch Tchernishoff. Tolstoï fulfilled his mission on the night of the 25th of May. In a specially manned yacht, he sailed down the Neva very gently to the fortress, where he gave up his prisoner. At first she was lodged hastily in a room just under the apartment of the commandant. Afterwards she was transferred to the Ravelin Alexéef. Oushakoff, secretary to the Prince Galitzin, had already prepared a report about her from the papers sent by the empress. Oushakoff was brisk, paunchy, stout, and always panting and repeating with a knavish smile in his eyes--“Oh! my dear fellow, so much to do, so much to do! I only serve the prince for the honour of it, but I ought long ago to have taken my _abshiede_,[36] I am literally worn out.” The Prince Galitzin pondered long over the report of Oushakoff, drew up a whole list of questions, and with a very important mien, which did not in the least become his good-natured face, entered the prison of the captive. He was very much put out by the news which he had just heard, that on the journey, not far from England, the captive had nearly escaped; that at Plymouth she had all at once thrown herself overboard into a small vessel, which was in readiness for her (as was easily to be seen), and that it was with great difficulty and disregard for her cries and groans that they had managed to get her on board again. The prince was afraid that some one might attempt to effect her escape here. The captive, terrified, confused by all that had happened, by her gloomy and dismal prison, did not deny that she was called and was looked upon as a Russian grand-duchess. She even went so far as to declare that, recollecting her childhood, she, on the strength of circumstances, believed herself to be the grand-duchess of whom mention was made in the will of the Emperor Peter I., which, she said, she had found among her papers, and which was all in favour of the late Empress Elizabeth, and by the will of Elizabeth made in favour of her daughter. A copy of this interrogation was sent to Moscow to the Empress Ekaterina, who was very indignant at the impudence of the captive, and especially when she found a letter addressed to herself, signed “Elizabeth.” “Well, that woman is a _fieffée canaille_,”[37] exclaimed Ekaterina, crumpling the letter in her hands, after having read it. Potemkin was at that time sitting in the study of the empress. “Of whom are you speaking?” he asked. “Oh! always about the same vagrant, Batiushka; about that Italian vagabond.”