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Updated: May 6, 2025
Her four favorites stood together at some distance, observing her with silent sympathy. "It is now for you, Alexis Razumovsky, to complete the work we have begun," whispered Lestocq to him. "Elizabeth loves you; you must nourish in her this abhorrence of a marriage with the prince. You must make yourself so loved, that she will dare all rather than lose you!
With their persons they would preserve their rights and their claims, and Elizabeth would always stand in fear of this regent and this young growing emperor, whose claims to the imperial Russian crown are incontestable. You alone, Razumovsky, can turn away this danger from the head of the empress, by convincing her of its reality, and inducing her to change her mind.
A movement suddenly arose in the rooms, the crowd divided and respectfully withdrew to the sides, and through the rows of smiling, humbly bowing courtiers passed the Princess Elizabeth, followed by her chamberlain Woronzow, her private secretary Alexis Razumovsky, and her physician Lestocq, in the splendor of her beauty and grace, all kindness, all smiles.
Herr Lestocq, a physician; Herr Grunstein, a bankrupt shopkeeper and now under-officer; Herr Woronzow, chamberlain; and Alexis Razumovsky, my private secretary. And here I am, the empress of such vassals, and what sort of an empress? An empress of four subjects, an empress without a throne and without a crown, without land and without a people an empress who never was and never will be an empress!
Swear to me that I shall not be constrained to labor, swear that you will govern for me, that I may devote my time to the enjoyment of life!" "I swear it to you by all that is most sacred to me." "Well, then, I will be your empress!" said Elizabeth, satisfied. At this moment a secret door opened and gave admission to Alexis Razumovsky.
Her fair brow lighted up as with a reflected sunbeam on his approaching her throne, and, holding out to him both hands, she said aloud: "Alexis Razumovsky, I have you most to thank for my success in dispossessing the usurpers who have robbed me of my father's throne; for your wise counsels gave me courage and force: be then, henceforth, next to my throne, my chamberlain, Count Razumovsky!"
Surprised and excited by the beauty of his form and the sweetness of his voice, Elizabeth had begged him of the lord-marshal for her private service, and since then Alexis Razumovsky had entered her house as her private secretary and the manager of her small estate.
Elizabeth was pale and had a convulsive twitching about her mouth, her form trembled feverishly, and she was obliged to cling to Razumovsky, to prevent falling. "Did you hear the opening of the court-yard gate?" she breathed low. "Lestocq is not yet here, and it is past midnight. Certainly he is arrested, all is discovered, and we are lost!
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.
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