But who composed her court, and of what elements did it consist?

Elizabeth found the presence of her serious official councillors very tiresome, as they knew not how to make themselves agreeable; she found the surrounding of herself with the respectable ladies of her court to be very incommodious, as there might some day be found among them one with a handsomer or more tasteful toilet than herself, or, indeed, one who might dare to be of a finer type of beauty than she!  She therefore gladly avoided inviting the distinguished men of her court with their wives, or the higher class of state officials.  It was far more convenient, far more agreeable, to surround herself with frivolous and handsome young men.  They knew how to laugh and be cheerful, and she was thus sure that no other lady would be there to dispute with her the palm of beauty.

Elizabeth was not proud.  She cared not whether noble blood flowed in the veins of those who were invited to her festivals.  The youth, beauty, and agreeable qualities which the empress found in any person, alone decided the question of their admittance to the court.

Peasants, grooms, soldiers, servants, abandoned reprobates, who by their beauty had won the favor of the empress, were seen to attain to the highest stations.

On them were lavished the treasures of the state; they were adorned with orders and titles, and the magnates bowed to the ground before these potent favorites of the all-powerful empress, and the people shouted with transport when their beloved czarina, with her magnificent train of newly-created noblemen, made her appearance in the streets, and with gracious smiles returned the humble salutations of her kneeling slaves.  That was the ruler in perfect accordance with Russian ideas; they sympathized with her inclinations and pleasures—­she was blood of their blood and flesh of their flesh!  The strangers were at length banished, and a real Russian sat upon the throne of the czars!

And yet Elizabeth trembled upon her imperial throne, surrounded by the band of magnates and nobles of whom she could truly say, “I am their creator—­they are my work!” She trembled before those secret daggers, those lingering poisons, which always surround the imperial Russian throne as its truest satellites, and lay low many a high-born head; she trembled before Anna Leopoldowna, who was sighing away her days in the closed citadel of Riga, and before Anna’s son, the infant Ivan, whom the Empress Anna in her testament had named as Emperor of all the Russias!  She, indeed, would not work and trouble herself for her country and her people, this good empress by the grace of God, but yet she would be empress, that she might be enabled to enjoy life, and no cloud must obscure the heaven of her earthly glory!

She therefore tore herself for some short hours from the pleasures in which she was usually immersed, from the arms of her lover, the object of her deepest interest; her own safety and her own peace were concerned.  That was well worth the effort to take the pen once more in hand, and affix the troublesomely long name of Elizabeth to some few official documents.