Princes Also Must Die

None were with her! They had all hastened thence for the preservation
of their ill-gotten wealth, to crawl in the dust before Peter, to be the
first to pay him homage, that he might pardon their greatness and their
possessions! From the death-bed they had fled to Peter, and kneeling
before him, they praised God for at length bestowing upon the happy
realm the noblest and best ruler, Peter III.!

But where were Elizabeth's more particular friends, who had made her an
empress?

Where was Lestocq?

Him the empress had banished to Siberia. Yielding to the prayers and
calumnies of his enemies, which she was too weak to withstand, she had
given him up; she had sacrificed him to procure peace and quiet for
herself, and in the same hour in which she had tenderly pressed
his hand, and called him her friend, had she signed his sentence of
banishment! Lestocq had for nine years languished in Siberia.

Where was Grunstein? Banished, cast off, like Lestocq.

Where was Alexis Razumovsky?

Ah, well for her! He stood at her bedside, he pressed her cold hand in
his; he yet, in the face of death, thanked her for all the benefits she
had heaped upon him. But alas! she was also surrounded by others--by
wild, pale, terrible forms, which were unseen by all except the dying
empress! She there saw the tortured face of Anna Leopoldowna, whom she
had let die in prison; there grinned at her the idiotic face of Ivan,
whose mind she had destroyed; there saw she the angry-flashing eyes and
bloody form of Eleonore Lapuschkin, and, springing up from her bed, the
empress screeched with terror, and folded her trembling hands in prayer
to God for grace and mercy for her daughter, for Natalie, that He would
turn away the horrible curse that Eleonore had hurled at her child.