When, however, Orloff went to Ragusa, with his soldiers at his back, he found that the Princess had already flown, leaving no trace behind her.  He ransacked Sicily in vain, and it was only when Sir William Hamilton’s letter to his Leghorn banker came to his hands that he discovered that she was in Rome, a much safer asylum than Ragusa.  It was hopeless now to capture her by force; he must try diplomacy, and, by the hands of an aide-de-camp, he sent her a letter in which he informed her that he had received her ukase and was anxious to pay due homage to the future Empress of Russia.

Such was the “Judas” message Kristenef, Orloff’s emissary, carried to the Princess, whom he found in a pitiful condition, wasted to a shadow by disease and starvation—­“in a room cold and bare, whose only furniture was a leather sofa, on which she lay in a high fever, coughing convulsively.”  To such pathetic straits was “Elizabeth II.” reduced when Kristenef came with his fawning airs and lying tongue to tell her that Alexis Orloff, the greatest man in Russia, had instructed him to offer her the throne of the Tsars, and, as an earnest of his loyalty, to beg her acceptance of a loan of eleven thousand ducats.

In vain did Domanski, who was still by her side, warn her against the smooth-tongued envoy.  She was flattered by such unexpected homage, her eyes were dazzled by the near prospect of the coveted crown which was to be hers, at last, just when hope seemed dead.  She would accept Orloff’s invitation to go to Pisa to meet him.  “As for you,” she said, “if you are afraid, you can stay behind.  I am going where Destiny calls me.”

This revolution in her fortunes acted like magic.  New life coursed through her veins, colour returned to her cheeks, and brightness to her eyes, as one February day in 1775 she left Rome, with the devoted Domanski for companion and a brilliant escort, for Pisa, where Orloff greeted her as an Empress.  He gave regal fetes in her honour and filled her ears with honeyed and flattering words.

Affecting to be dazzled by her beauty, he even dared to make passionate love to her, which no man of his day could do more effectively than this handsomest of the Orloffs; and so infatuated was the poor Princess by the adoration of her handsome lover and the assurance of the throne he was to give her, that she at last consented to share that throne with him, and by his side went through a marriage ceremony, at which two of his officers masqueraded as officiating priests.

Nothing remained now between her and the goal of her desires, except to make the journey to Russia as speedily as possible, and a few hours after the wedding banquet we see her in the Admiral’s launch, with Orloff and Domanski and a brilliant suite of officers, leaving Leghorn for the Russian flagship, where she was received with the blare of bands and the booming of artillery.  The crowning moment arrived when, as she was being hoisted to the deck in a gorgeous chair suspended from the yard-arm, her future sailors greeted her with thunders of shouts, “Long live the Empress!”