CHAPTER VII

Memoirs of a German Princess1

35.

A Visit from Peter the Great

I forgot to mention, in the preceding year,³ the arrival of Peter the Great at Berlin. The anecdote is curious enough to deserve a place in these memoirs. The tsar, who was uncommonly fond of traveling, was coming from Holland. As he disliked magnificence and society, he requested the king to lodge him in a summer-house which the queen had in one of the suburbs of Berlin. Her Majesty was extremely sorry for this; she had erected a very pretty building which she had decorated in a style of great splendor. The porcelain-gallery was superb, and all the rooms were adorned with beautiful glasses. As this charming retreat was really a jewel, it was called Mon-Bijou. A very pretty garden on the banks of the river heightened its beauty.

In order to prevent the mischief which the Russian gentlemen had done in other places where they had lodged, the queen ordered the principal furniture, and whatever was most brittle, to be removed. The tsar, his spouse, and their court arrived some days after by water at Mon-Bijou. The king and the queen received them on their landing, and the king handed the tsarina from the boat. The tsar was no sooner landed than he held out his hand to the king and said: "I am glad to see you, brother Frederick." He afterward approached the queen with the intention to salute her, but she pushed him back. The tsarina first kissed the queen’s hands several times, and afterward introduced to her the duke and duchess of Mecklenburg, who had accompanied them, and four hundred pretended ladies of their suite. These were mostly German servant-girls, who officiated as maids of honor, waiting-maids, cooks, and washerwomen. The queen would not speak to these creatures, and the tsarina, to be revenged, treated the princesses of the blood with much haughtiness; and it was with very great difficulty that the king prevailed with the queen to notice the Russian ladies. I saw the whole of this court the next day, when the tsar and tsarina came to visit the queen. Her Majesty received them in the state-rooms of the palace, and went to meet them in the hall of the guards. The queen gave her hand to the tsarina, placing her at her right, and conducted her into the audience hall.

The king and the tsar followed. As soon as the latter saw me he knew me again, having seen me five years before. He took me up in his arms and rubbed the very skin off my face with his rude kisses. I boxed his ears and struggled as much as I could, saying that I would not allow any such familiarities, and that he was dishonoring me. He laughed very much at this idea, and amused himself a long time at my expense. I had previously been instructed what to say; and I spoke to him of his fleet and his conquests, which delighted him so much that he several times told the tsarina that if he could have a child like me he would willingly give up one of his provinces; the tsarina also tenderly caressed me. She and the queen placed themselves under the canopy, each in an armchair; I was by the side of the queen, and the princesses of the blood opposite to her Majesty.

The tsarina was short and stout, very tawny, and her figure was altogether destitute of gracefulness. Its appearance sufficiently betrayed her low origin. To have judged by her attire one would have taken her for a German stage-actress. Her robe had been purchased of an old-clothes broker; it was made in the antique fashion, and heavily laden with silver and grease. The front of her stays was adorned with jewels, singularly placed; they represented a double eagle, badly set, the wings of which were of small stones. She wore a dozen orders, and as many portraits of saints and relics, fastened to the facing of her gown, so that when she walked, the jumbling of all these orders and portraits one against the other made a tinkling noise like a mule in harness.

The tsar, on the contrary, was very tall and pretty well made; his face was handsome, but his countenance had something savage about it which inspired fear. He was dressed as a navy officer, and wore a plain coat. The tsarina, who spoke very bad German, and did not well understand what was spoken to her by the queen, beckoned to her fool and conversed with her in Russian. This poor creature was a Princess Galitzin who had been compelled to fulfill that office in order to save her life; having been implicated in a conspiracy against the tsar, she had twice undergone the punishment of the knout. I do not know what she said to the tsarina, but the latter every now and then laughed aloud.

At length we sat down to table, where the tsar placed himself near the queen. It is well known that this prince had been poisoned in his youth; a very subtle venom had attacked his nerves, whence he was frequently subject to certain involuntary convulsions. He was seized with a fit whilst at table; he made many contortions, and as he was violently gesticulating with a knife in his hand near the queen, the latter was afraid and wanted several times to rise from her seat. The tsar begged her to be easy, protesting that he should not do her any harm, and at the same time seized her hand, which he squeezed so violently that the queen screamed for mercy, which made him laugh heartily, and he observed that the bones of her Majesty were more delicate than those of his Catherine. Everything was prepared for a ball after supper; but he ran away as soon as he rose from table, and went back alone and on foot to Mon-Bijou.

Two days afterward this court of barbarians at length set out on their journey back. The queen immediately hastened to Mon-Bijou, and what desolation was there visible! I never beheld anything like it. . . . This elegant palace was left by them in so ruinous a state that the queen was absolutely obliged to rebuild nearly the whole of it.

¹ , edited by W. D. Howells. 2 vols. Boston, 1877. James R. Osgood and Company.

² , vol. i, pp. 54–58.

³I.e., in 1718.