who succeeded him on the throne; the second Catherine gave her hand as well as her heart to Patiomkin, the gigantic, ill-favoured ex-sergeant of cavalry; and Elizabeth, daughter of Peter and his kitchen-Queen, proved herself worthy of her parentage when she made Alexis Razoum, a peasant's son, husband of the Empress of Russia. You will search history in vain for a story so strange and romantic as this of the great Empress and the lowly shepherd's son, whom her love raised from a hovel to a palace, and on whom one of the most amorous and fickle of sovereign ladies lavished honours and riches and an unwavering devotion, until her eyes, speaking their love to the last, were closed in death.

It was in the humblest hovel of the village of Lemesh that Alexis Razoum drew his first breath one day in 1709. His father, Gregory Razoum, was a shepherd, who spent his pitiful earnings in drink—a man of violent temper who, in his drunken rages, was the terror not only of his home but of the entire village. His wife and children cowered at his approach; and on more than one occasion only accident (or Providence) saved him from the crime of murder. On one such occasion, we are told, the child Alexis, who from his earliest years had a passion for reading, was absorbed in a book, when his father, in ungovernable fury, seized a hatchet and hurled it at the boy's head. Luckily, the missile missed its mark, and Alexis escaped, to find refuge in the house of a friendly priest, who not only gave him shelter and protection, but taught him to write, and, above all, to sing—little dreaming that he was thus paving the way which was to lead the drunken shepherd's lad to the dizziest heights in Russia. For the boy had a beautiful voice. When he joined the choir of his village church, people flocked from far and near to listen to the sweet notes that soared, pure and liquid as a nightingale's song, above the rest. "It was," all declared, "the voice of an angel—and the face of an angel," for Alexis was as beautiful in those days as any child of picture or of dreams.

One day a splendidly dressed stranger chanced to enter the Lemesh church during Mass—none other than Colonel Vishnevsky, a great Court official, who was on his way back to Moscow from a diplomatic mission; and he listened entranced to a voice sweeter than any he had ever heard. The service over, he made the acquaintance of the young chorister, interviewed his guardian, the "good Samaritan" priest, and persuaded him to allow the boy to accompany him to the capital. Thus the shepherd's son took weeping farewell of the good priest, of his mother, and of his brothers and sisters; and a few weeks later the Empress and her ladies were listening enchanted to his voice in the Imperial choir at Moscow—but none with more delight than the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, to whom Alexis' beauty appealed even more strongly than his sweet singing.

Elizabeth, true daughter of her father, had already, young as she was, counted her lovers by the score—lovers chosen indiscriminately, from Royal princes to grooms and common soldiers. She was already sated with the licence of the most dissolute Court of Europe, and to her the young Cossack of the beautiful face and voice, and rustic innocence, opened a new and seductive vista of pleasure. She lost her heart to him, had him transferred to her own Court as her favourite singer, and, within a few years, gave him charge of her purse and her properties.

The shepherd's son was now not only lover-elect, but principal "minister" to the daughter of an Emperor, who was herself to wear the Imperial crown. And while Alexis was thus luxuriating amid the splendour of a Court, he by no means forgot the humble relatives he had left behind in his native village. His father was dead; his mother was reduced for a time to such a depth of destitution that she had to beg her bread from door to door. His sisters had found husbands for themselves in their own rank; and the favourite of an Imperial Princess had for brothers-in-law a tailor, a weaver, and a shepherd. When news came to Alexis of his mother's destitution he had sent her a sum of money sufficient to install her in comfort as an innkeeper: the first of many kindnesses which were to work a startling transformation in the fortunes of the Razoum family.

Events now hurried quickly. The Empress Anna died, and was succeeded on the throne by the infant Ivan, her grand-nephew, who had been Emperor but a few months when, in 1741, a coup d'état gave the crown to Elizabeth, mistress of the Lemesh peasant. Alexis was now husband in all but name of the Empress of all the Russias; honours and riches were showered on him; he was General, Grandmaster of the Hounds, Chief Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and lord of large estates yielding regal revenues.

But all his grandeur was powerless to spoil the man, who still remained the simple peasant who, so many years earlier, had left his low-born mother with streaming eyes. His great ambition now was to share his good-fortune with her. She must exchange her village inn for the luxuries and splendours of a palace. And thus it was that one day a splendid carriage, with gay-liveried postillions, dashed up to the door of the Lemesh inn and carried off the simple peasant woman, her youngest son, Cyril, and one of her daughters, to the open-mouthed amazement of the villagers. At the entrance to the capital she was received by a magnificently attired gentleman, in whom she failed to recognise her son Alexis, until he showed her a birthmark on his body.

Picture now the peasant-woman sumptuously lodged in the Moscow palace, decked in all the finery of silks and laces and jewels, receiving the respectful homage of high Court officials, caressed and petted by an Empress, while her splendid son looks smilingly on, as proud of his cottage-mother as if she were a Princess of the Blood Royal. That the innkeeper was not happy in her gilded cage, that her thoughts often wandered longingly to her cronies and the simple life of the village, is not to be wondered at.

It was all very well for such a fine gentleman as her son, Alexis; but for a poor, simple-minded woman like herself—well, she was too old for such a transplanting. And we can imagine her relief when, on the removal of the Court to St Petersburg, she was allowed to bring her visit to an end and to return to her inn with wonderful stories of all she had seen. Her son and daughter, however, elected to remain. As for Cyril, a handsome youth, almost young enough to be his brother's son, he was quick to win his way into the favour of the Empress. Before he had been many months at Court he was made a Count and Gentleman of the Bedchamber. He was given for bride a grand-niece of Elizabeth; and at twenty-two he was Viceroy of the Ukraine, virtual sovereign of a kingdom of his own, with his peasant-mother, who declined to share his palace, comfortably installed in a modest house near his gates.

Cyril, in fact, was to his last day as unspoiled by his unaccustomed grandeur as his brother Alexis. Each was ready at any moment to turn from the obsequious homage of nobles to hobnob with a peasant friend or relative. How utterly devoid of false pride Alexis was is proved by the following anecdote. One day when, in company with the Empress, he was paying a visit to Count Löwenwolde, he rushed from Elizabeth's side to fling his arms round the neck of one of his host's footmen. "Are you mad, Alexis?" exclaimed the Empress, in her astonishment. "What do you mean by such senseless behaviour?" "I am not mad at all," answered the favourite. "He is an old friend of mine."

But although no man ever deposed the shepherd from the first place in Elizabeth's favour, it must not be imagined that he was her only lover. The daughter of the hot-blooded Peter and the lusty scullery wench had always as great a passion for men as the second Catherine, who had almost as many favourites in her boudoir as gowns in her