manner, had a power of endurance which was toughened and
strengthened by the discipline she underwent.

And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was
taken by her mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the
Lutheran faith and was received into the Greek Church, changing
her name to Catharine. Soon after, with great magnificence, she
was married to Prince Peter, and from that moment began a career
which was to make her the most powerful woman in the world.

At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description
of Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue
eyes; and her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and
striking by the fact that her brows were very dark in contrast
with her golden hair. Her complexion was not clear, yet her look
was a very pleasing one. She had a certain diffidence of manner at
first; but later she bore herself with such instinctive dignity as
to make her seem majestic, though in fact she was beneath the
middle size. At the time of her marriage her figure was slight and
graceful; only in after years did she become stout. Altogether,
she came to St. Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded German
maiden, with a character well disciplined, and possessing reserves
of power which had not yet been drawn upon.

Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold
his sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case
of Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life
which must have tried her very soul. This youth was only
seventeen--a mere boy in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank
luxuriance of his vices. Moreover, he had eccentricities which