Excellency, the very illustrious and eminent Prince-General and Knight
of the crowned Compass and Axe"; and when Peter, after the Peace of
Nystadt, writes: "According to the Treaty I am obliged to return all
Livonian prisoners to the King of Sweden. What is to become of thee, I
don't know." To which she answers, with true wifely (if affected)
humility: "I am your servant; do with me as you will; yet I venture to
think you won't send _me_ back."

Quite idyllic, this post-nuptial love-making between the great Emperor
and his low-born Queen, who has so possessed his heart that no other
woman, however fair, could wrest it from her. And in her exalted
position of Empress she practised the same diplomatic arts by which she
had won Peter's devotion. Politics she left severely alone; she turned a
forbidding back on all attempts to involve her in State intrigues, but
she was ever ready to protect those who appealed to her for help, and to
use her influence with her husband to procure pardon or lighter
punishment for those who had fallen under his displeasure.

Nor did she forget her poor relations in Livonia. One brother, a
postillion, she openly acknowledged, introduced to her husband, and
obtained a liberal pension for him; and to her other brothers and
sisters she sent frequent presents and sums of money. More she could not
well do during her husband's lifetime, but when she in turn came to the
throne, she brought the whole family--postillion, shoemaker,
farm-labourer and serf, their wives and families--to her capital,
installed them in sumptuous apartments in her palaces, decked them in
the finest Court feathers, and gave them large fortunes and titles of
nobility.

When the Tsar's quarrel with his eldest son came to its tragic