The curtain was now ready to rise on the crowning act of her life-drama, an act more brilliant than any she had dared to imagine.  Russia was seething with discontent and rebellion; the throne of Catherine II. was trembling; one revolt had followed another, until Pugatchef had led his rabble of a hundred thousand serfs to the very gates of Moscow—­only, when success seemed assured, to meet disaster and death.  If the ex-bandit could come so near to victory, an uprising headed by Elizabeth’s own daughter and heiress could scarcely fail to hurl Catherine from her throne.

It would have been difficult to find a more powerful ally in this daring project than Prince Charles Radziwill, chief of Polish patriots, who was then, as luck would have it, living in exile at Mannheim, and who hated Russia as only a Pole ever hated her.  To Radziwill, then, Domanski went to offer the help of his Princess for the liberation of Poland and the capture of Catherine’s throne.

Here indeed was a valuable pawn to play in Radziwill’s game of vengeance and ambition.  But the Prince was by no means disposed to snatch the bait hurriedly.  Experience had taught him caution.  He must count the cost carefully before taking the step, and while writing to the Princess, “I consider it a miracle of Providence that it has provided so great a heroine for my unhappy country,” he took his departure to Venice, suggesting that the Princess should meet him there, where matters could be more safely and successfully discussed.  Thus it was that the Princess said her last good-bye to her ducal lover, full of promises for the future when she should have won her throne, and as “Countess of Pinneberg” set forth with a retinue of followers to Venice, where she was regally received at the French embassy.

Here she tasted the first sweets of her coming Queendom—­holding her Courts, to which distinguished Poles and Frenchmen flocked to pay homage to the Empress-to-be, and having daily conferences with Radziwill, who treated her as already a Queen.  That her purse was empty and the bankers declined to honour her drafts was a matter to smile at, since the way now seemed clear to a crown, with all it meant of wealth and power.  When the Venetian Government grew uneasy at the plotting within its borders, she went to Ragusa, where she blossomed into the “Princess of all the Russias,” assumed the sceptre that was soon to be hers, issued proclamations as a sovereign, and crowned these regal acts by sending a ukase to Alexis Orloff, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, “signed Elizabeth II., and instructing him to communicate its contents to the army and fleet under his command.”

Once more, however, fortune played the Princess a scurvy trick, just when her favour seemed most assured.  One night a man was seen scaling the garden-wall of the palace she was occupying.  The guard fired at him, and the following morning Domanski was found, lying wounded and unconscious in the garden.  The tongues of scandal were set wagging again, old suspicions were revived, and once again the word “adventuress”—­and worse—­passed from mouth to mouth.  The men who had fawned on her now avoided her; worse still, Radziwill, his latent suspicions thoroughly awakened, and confirmed by a hundred stories and rumours that came to his ears, declined to have anything more to do with her, and returned in disgust to Germany.