A Wedding

Fainting, she sank into Razumovsky's arms.

A few weeks later, a great and magnificent court festival was celebrated
at the imperial palace at St. Petersburg. It was not enough that
Elizabeth had chosen a successor in the person of Peter, Duke of
Holstein, she must also give this successor a wife, that the throne
might be fortified and assured by a numerous progeny.

She chose for him the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the young and beautiful
Sophia Augusta, who, embracing the Greek religion, received the name of
Catharine.

It was the marriage festival of this young German princess with the heir
to the Russian throne which was celebrated in the imperial palace at St.
Petersburg--a festival of splendor and enthusiasm, as it was attended
by two women of the most exciting beauty, Elizabeth the present and
Catharine the future empress--the one gorgeous with the splendor of
the present, the other irradiated with the glory of the future. People
looked at the fair youthful face of Catharine, and sought to read in her
majestic high forehead the hopes that Russia might cherish of her! It
was, therefore, a festival of the present and future that was there and
then celebrated, and the magnates humbly prostrated themselves before
this new star, and threw themselves upon the earth before the ever-new
sun of imperial majesty which shone upon them in the person of
Elizabeth.

Catharine with a joyful spirit and a proud smile laid her hand in that
of Peter, and as she stepped with him to the altar she thought: "I do
this that I may one day be empress! and as I can reach that position in
no other way--well, then, let them call me the wife of this under-aged
boy! I will suffer it until the time when I shall no longer suffer, but
command."