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Go to, Count Ostermann, you are very innocent. Princess Elizabeth has but one passion, but it is not the desire of ruling; and when she chats with handsome men, she speaks not of conspiracy, believe me." And, laughing, the regent essayed a new head-dress. "And how do you explain the secret meetings of Lestocq and the Marquis de la Chetardie?" asked Ostermann, with painfully-suppressed agitation.
"Ah, our good Russians," laughingly exclaimed the regent, "they shout only for those who make them drunk, and for that the poor princess lacks the means!" "The Marquis de la Chetardie has, in the name of his king, offered her an unlimited credit, and she is already provided with almost a million of silver rubles." "You have a reason for every thing," laughed the regent.
The Marquis de la Chetardie has it in charge to bring about a revolution here at any price, and as an expert diplomatist, he very well comprehends that Princess Elizabeth is the best means he can employ for that purpose; for she, as the daughter of Czar Peter, has the sympathies of the old Russians in her favor, and they will flock to her with shouts of joy whenever she may announce to the people that she is ready to drive the foreign rulers from Russia!"
And had not Princess Elizabeth been of indolent luxurious nature, intent upon her prayers and flirtations, it would have ended sooner even than it did. La Chetardie himself had no scruple to say it! These two plotted for her; these were ready, could she have been got ready; which was not so easy.
The foreign embassadors presented to him their credentials, and the Marquis of Chetardie, the French minister, reverentially approaching the cradle, made the imperially majestic baby a congratulatory speech, addressing him as Ivan V., Emperor of all the Russias, and assuring him of the friendship of Louis XV., sovereign of France.
To M. Amelot he transmitted the news of the court; to M. Maurepas, that of Paris; to M. d' Havrincourt, the news from Sweden; to M. de Chetardie, that from Petersbourg; and sometimes to each of those the news they had respectively sent to him, and which I was employed to dress up in terms different from those in which it was conveyed to us.
Now the touch, the vicinity of Elizabeth's friends became an evil-breathing pest, a death-bringing terror; they anxiously avoided the vicinity of Lestocq, they crowded back from Woronzow and Razumovsky, whom they had before sought with every demonstration of friendliness; they even avoided looking at the French ambassador; for, if the regent knew all, she must know of the intimate relations of Lestocq with the Marquis de la Chetardie, and he was therefore doomed like the other three.
We find he takes a good deal to the French Ambassador, one Marquis de la Chetardie; a showy restless character, of fame in the Gazettes of that time; who did much intriguing at Petersburg some years hence, first in a signally triumphant way, and then in a signally untriumphant; and is not now worth any knowledge but a transient accidental one.
France is your enemy, France meditates your destruction, and the Marquis de la Chetardie is exciting the princess and Lestocq to an insurrection." "And to what end, if I may be allowed to ask?" scornfully inquired Anna.
In December he marched towards Wybourg; but receiving letters from the prince of Hesse-Hombourg, and the marquis de la Chetardie, the French ambassador at Petersburgh, informing him of the surprising revolution which had just happened in Russia, and proposing a suspension of hostilities, he retreated with his army in order to wait for further instructions; and the two courts agreed to a cessation of arms for three months.
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