Such is the story as it has come down to us, and as it was believed in Russia at the time.  That Gregory Orloff was innocent of a crime in which his own brother played a leading part is as little to be credited as that Catherine herself was in ignorance of the design on her husband’s life.  But, however this may be, we are told that when the news of her husband’s death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all appearance overcome with horror and grief.  She left the table with streaming eyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable solitude in her rooms.

Thus at last Catherine was free both from the tyranny of Elizabeth and from the brutality of her bestial husband.  She was sole sovereign of all the Russias, at liberty to indulge any caprice that entered her versatile brain.  That her subjects, almost to a man, regarded her with horror as her husband’s murderer, that this detestation was shared by the army that had put her on the throne, and by the nobles who had been her slaves, troubled her little.  She was mistress of her fate, and strong enough (as indeed she proved) to hold, with a firm grasp, the sceptre she had won.

High as Gregory Orloff had stood in her favour before she came to her crown, his position was now more splendid and secure.  She showered her favours on him with prodigal hand.  Lands and jewels and gold were squandered on her “First Favourite”—­the official designation she invented for him; and he wore on his broad chest her miniature in a blazing oval of diamonds, the crowning mark of her approval.  And to his brothers she was almost equally generous, for in a few years of her ascendancy the Orloffs were enriched by vast estates on which forty-five thousand serfs toiled, by palaces, and by gold to the amount of seventeen million roubles.  Such it was to be in the good books of Catherine II., Empress of Russia.

With riches and power, Gregory’s ambition grew until he dreamt of sitting on the throne itself by Catherine’s side; and in her foolish infatuation even this prize might have been his, had not wiser counsels come to her rescue.  “The Empress,” said Panine to her, “can do what she likes; but Madame Orloff can never be Empress of Russia.”  And thus Gregory’s greatest ambition was happily nipped in the bud.

The man who had played his cards with such skill and discretion in the early days of his love-making had now, his head swollen by pride and power, grown reckless.  If he could not be Emperor in name, he would at least wield the sceptre.  The woman to whom he owed all was, he thought, but a puppet in his hands, as ready to do his bidding as any of his minions.  But through all her dallying Catherine’s smiles masked an iron will.  In heart she was a woman; in brain and will-power, a man.  And Orloff, like many another favourite, was to learn the lesson to his cost.

The time came when she could no longer tolerate his airs and assumptions.  There was only one Empress, but lovers were plentiful, and she already had an eye on his successor.  And thus it was that one day the swollen Orloff was sent on a diplomatic mission to arrange peace between Russia and Turkey.  When she bade him good-bye she called him her “angel of peace,” but she knew that it was her angel’s farewell to his paradise.