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Perhaps it was a jest, with which he sought to console me when I complained of being a homeless orphan, a poor child, who knew not even the name of her mother!" "Do you not know that?" exclaimed Orloff, with astonishment. She sadly shook her head. "They would never tell it me," said she. "But I have her image in my heart, and that, at least, I shall never lose or forget!"
In talking of these they had forgotten all other events; they spoke no more of the giant fish which had destroyed the friendship of France and Spain; they no longer entertained each other with anecdotes in connection with the festival of Cardinal Bernis, at which the entree of that fish upon his long silver platter was hailed with shouts and vivats yes, even that Russian princess, who had momentarily shown herself on the horizon of society, all these were quickly forgotten, and people now interested themselves only about the extirpation of the order of the Jesuits, which Pope Clement had now really effected, and of the arrival of the Russian ambassador-extraordinary, the famous Alexis Orloff, whose visit to Rome seemed the more important and significant as they well knew in what near and confidential relations his brother, Count Gregory Orloff, stood with the Empress Catharine, and what participation Alexis Orloff had in the sudden death of the Emperor Peter III.
They honored and treated her as an empress, and she believed them, smiling with delight when the people of Leghorn whenever she with her splendid retinue appeared at her husband's side shouted with every demonstration of respect for her as an empress. And finally, one day the long-expected Russian fleet arrived! Radiant with joy, Alexis Orloff rushed into Natalie's apartment.
Beggars were forbidden to enter Moscow, lest she should see them; but a rumor ran after her return from the South that Alexis Orloff led her into a barn where were laid out the bodies of all who had died of hunger on the day of her triumphal entry. Like Peter the Great, she even in some ways intensified serfdom.
"It must, however, yield to us," laughingly responded Alexis Orloff, "and she shall yet acknowledge us as conquerors. We are undermining, Stephano, and when the building crushes her in its crashing fall, will she first discover that she has long been in danger. And what said you that we have not yet advanced a step?
Suspicion pointed to Orloff as the thief; he was arrested, and, when brought into Peter's presence, not only confessed to the thefts and to his share in making away with the undesirable infants, but betrayed the partner of his guilt. There was short shrift for poor Mary Hamilton when she was put on her trial on these grave charges.
And while, as we have said, the whole diplomacy had declared against the order of the holy fathers of Jesus, it must have been the more striking that this Russian Count Orloff had compassion upon them, and lent a willing ear to the complaints of the unfortunate members of the order.
A weeping statue was Democritus; another, with grinning mouth, was labelled Heraclitus; an old man with a long beard was Sappho; and an old woman, Avicenna; and so on. As I was smiling at this extraordinary collection, I saw the czarina, preceded by Count Gregorius Orloff, and followed by two ladies, approaching. Count Panin was on her left hand.
From the commencement of this march, hardly a day elapsed in which some new calamity did not befall those hitherto invincible legions. The Cossacks of Platoff came on one division at Kolotsk, near Borodino, on the 1st of November, and gave them a total defeat. A second division was attacked on the day after, and with nearly equal success, by the irregular troops of Count Orloff Denizoff.
When the Venetian Government grew uneasy at the plotting within its borders, she went to Ragusa, where she blossomed into the "Princess of all the Russias," assumed the sceptre that was soon to be hers, issued proclamations as a sovereign, and crowned these regal acts by sending a ukase to Alexis Orloff, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, "signed Elizabeth II., and instructing him to communicate its contents to the army and fleet under his command."
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