When the Tsarevitch, Alexis, was brought to trial in 1718 on a charge of conspiracy against his father, Peter, suspecting that Eudoxia had had a hand in the rebellion, ordered a descent on the nunnery and an inquiry.  Nothing was found to connect her with her son’s ill-fated venture; but the inquiry revealed the whole story of her relations with the too friendly officer.  The evidence of the nuns and servants alone—­evidence of frequent and long meetings by day and night, of embraces exchanged—­was sufficiently conclusive, without the incriminating letters which were discovered in the Major’s bureau, labelled “Letters from the Tsarina,” or Eudoxia’s confession which was extorted from her.

This was an opportunity of vengeance such as exceeded all the Tsar’s hopes.  Glebof was arrested and put on his trial.  Evidence was forced from the nuns by the lashing of the knout, so severe that some of them died under it.  Glebof, subjected to such frightful tortures that in his agony he confessed much more than the truth, was sentenced to death by impalement.  In order to prolong his suffering to the last possible moment, he was warmly wrapped in furs, to protect him from the bitter cold, and for twenty-eight hours he suffered indescribable agony, until at last death came to his release.

As for Eudoxia, her punishment was a public flogging and consignment to a nunnery still more isolated and miserable than that in which she had dragged out twenty years of her broken life.  Here she remained for seven years, until, on the Tsar’s death, an even worse fate befell her.  She was then, by Catherine’s orders, taken from the convent, and flung into the most loathsome, rat-infested dungeon of the fortress of Schlussenberg, where she remained for two years of unspeakable horror.

Then at last, after nearly thirty years of life that was worse than death, the sun shone again for her.  One day her dungeon door flew open, and to the bowing of obsequious courtiers, the prisoner was conducted to a sumptuous apartment.  “The walls were hung with splendid stuffs; the table was covered with gold-plate; ten thousand roubles awaited her in a casket.  Courtiers stood in her ante-chamber; carriages and horses were at her orders.”

Catherine, the “scullery-Empress,” was dead; Eudoxia’s grandson, Peter II., now wore the crown of Russia; and Eudoxia found herself transported, as by the touch of a magic wand, from her loathsome prison-cell to the old-time splendours of palaces—­the greatest lady in all Russia, to whom Princesses, ambassadors, and courtiers were all proud to pay respectful homage.  But the transformation had come too late; her life was crushed beyond restoration; and after a few months of her new glory she was glad to find an asylum once more within convent walls, until Death, the great healer of broken hearts, took her to where, “beyond these voices, there is peace.”

* * * * *