This was a scheme which commended itself strongly to her Chancellor, Vorontsov.  There was a most useful precedent to lend support to it—­the alliance of the Empress Elizabeth with a man of immeasurably lower rank than Catherine’s favourite; but it was important that this precedent should be established beyond dispute.  Thus it was that one day, when Count Alexis was poring over his Bible by his country fireside, Chancellor Vorontsov made his appearance with ingratiating words and promises.  Her Majesty, he informed the Count, was willing to confer Imperial rank on him in return for one small favour—­the possession of the documents which proved his marriage to her predecessor, Elizabeth.

On hearing the request, the ex-shepherd rose, and, with words of quiet scorn, refused both the request and the proffered honour.  “Am not I,” he said, “a Count, a Field-Marshal, a man of wealth? all of which I owe to the kindness of my dear, dead mistress.  Are not such honours enough for the peasant’s son whom she raised from the mire to sit by her side, that I should purchase another bauble by an act of treachery to her memory?

“But wait one moment,” he continued; and, leaving the room, he returned carrying a small bundle of papers, which he proceeded to examine one by one.  Then, collecting them, he placed the bundle in the heart of the fire, to the horror of the onlooking Chancellor; and, as the flames were reducing the precious documents to ashes, he said, “Go now and tell those who sent you, that I never was more than the slave of my august benefactress, the Empress Elizabeth, who could never so far have forgotten her position as to marry a subject.”

Thus with a lie on his lips—­the last crowning evidence of loyalty to his beloved Queen and wife—­Alexis Razoum makes his exit from the stage on which he played so strangely romantic a part.  A few years later his days ended in peace at his St Petersburg palace, with the name he loved best, “Elizabeth,” on his lips.

CHAPTER IV

A CROWN THAT FAILED

Henri of Navarre, hero of romance and probably the greatest King who ever sat on the throne of France, had a heart as weak in love as it was stout in war.  To his last day he was a veritable coward before the battery of bright eyes; and before Ravaillac’s dagger brought his career to a tragic end one May day in the year 1610 he had counted his mistresses to as many as the years he had lived.

But of them all, fifty-seven of them—­for the most part lightly coming and lightly going—­only one ever really reached his heart, and was within measurable distance of a seat on his throne—­the woman to whom he wrote in the hey-day of his passion, “Never has man loved as I love you.  If any sacrifice of mine could purchase your happiness, how gladly I would make it, even to the last drop of my life’s blood.”