Her will--or the document which Menshikoff had composed and she was supposed to have signed--was read to the dignitaries and notabilities. The son of Alexis and Charlotte was named Peter II, and there was little disinclination to take the oath to a grandson of the great monarch. Few, in the agitation of the hour, saw the possibility of a reaction from a son of Alexis, and the few who perceived that possibility thought that they had provided against it. The Privy Council, headed by Menshikoff, was entrusted with the Regency; and Menshikoff would see that his relation to the boy-Emperor would soon become more intimate. In the event of the boy’s death the crown must pass to Anne: in case of her death to Elizabeth. Never before had there been so clearly conceived and far-seeing a plan of succession; yet within the next three years there were to be two revolutions, with the usual terrible consequences, at that court of greed and passion. CHAPTER IX ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE PETER II was a fine, handsome lad of eleven summers, the fruit of the unhappy union of the miserable Alexis and hardly less miserable Charlotte of Wolfenbüttel. From such a stock Peter the Great had expected no good. He disliked to think of the boy, and, careful as he generally was about education, he allowed the child to pass to the hands of ignorant and incompetent trainers. Catherine, or Menshikoff, who may have early conceived his plan of the future, altered this state of things at the death of Peter the Great. The conscientious German minister Ostermann was charged with the education of the young prince, and we perceive by his scheme of lessons, which survives, that he was prepared even for the duties of a monarch. Unhappily, the best scheme of education depends for its result upon the co-operation of the pupil, and Peter was a bad pupil. He liked Ostermann, but he disliked lessons; and the consciousness that he was now a monarch did not dispose his lively imagination to submit to prosy toil. There was a strain of nervous instability in nearly the whole of the Romanoffs at this stage, Peter liked sport and riding and play. His sister Natalia, two years older than he, was a good playmate; even better was Aunt Elizabeth, the younger daughter of the late Empress. Elizabeth was now a very sprightly and pretty young lady of sixteen, the exact opposite of what a Russian princess ought to be on the old standards. She shunned books, but took like a boy to riding and hunting and fencing. Her lively tongue and merry blue eyes attracted young officers; and she was the daughter of Catherine and Peter in such matters.