But a greater than Menshikoff was soon to appear on the scene—­none other than the Emperor Peter himself.  One day the Tsar, calling on his favourite, was astonished to see the cleanliness of his surroundings and his person.  “How do you contrive,” he asked, “to have your house so well kept, and to wear such fresh and dainty linen?” Menshikoff’s answer was “to open a door, through which the sovereign perceived a handsome girl, aproned, and sponge in hand, bustling from chair to chair, and going from window to window, scrubbing the window-panes”—­a vision of industry which made such a powerful appeal to His Majesty that he begged an introduction on the spot to the lady of the sponge.

The most daring writer of fiction could scarcely devise a more romantic meeting than this between the autocrat of Russia and the red-armed, bustling cleaner of the window-panes, and he would certainly never have ventured to build on it the romance of which it was the prelude.  What it was in the young peasant-woman that attracted the Emperor it is impossible to say.  Of beauty she seems to have had none—­save perhaps such as lies in youth and rude health.

We look at her portraits in vain to discover a trace of any charm that might appeal to man.  Her pictures in the Romanof Gallery at St Petersburg show a singularly plain woman with a large, round peasant-face, the most conspicuous feature of which is a hideously turned-up nose.  Large, protruding eyes and an opulent bust complete a presentment of the typical household drudge—­“a servant-girl in a German inn.”  But Peter the Great, who was ever abnormal in all his tastes and appetites, was always more ready to make love to a woman of the people than to the most beautiful and refined of his Court ladies.  His standard of taste, as of manners, has not inaptly been likened to that of a Dutch sailor.

But whatever it was in the low-born laundry-woman that attracted the Tsar of Russia, we know that this first unconventional meeting led to many others, and that before long Catherine (for we may now call her by the name she made so famous) was removed from his favourite’s household and installed in the Imperial harem where, for a time at least, she seems to have shared her favours indiscriminately between her old master and her new—­“an obscure and complaisant mistress”—­until Menshikoff finally resigned all rights in her to his sovereign.

When Catherine took up her residence in her new home, Waliszewski tells us, “her eye shortly fell on certain magnificent jewels.  Forthwith, bursting into tears, she addressed her new protector:  ’Who put these ornaments here?  If they come from the other one, I will keep nothing but this little ring; but if they come from you, how could you think I needed them to make me love you?’”