It is sometimes said that Poniatovski, who is described as being put in Catherine’s way by political schemers, was detected by Peter and fled to escape a whipping. The legend really runs that he was held up by Peter’s servants, as he left the palace, and brought before Peter. He was a youth of twenty-two, of no courage, and he expected a whipping, but Peter laughed at his fright. Peter’s mistress at the time, and until his death, was Elizabeth Vorontsoff, niece of a great noble of the court; a very plain and insignificant little woman whom Catherine disdained to notice. The prince felt that he could now force Catherine to be courteous to his mistress, and it is said that he arranged suppers for the quartet. The Empress, however, heard of the _liaison_, and Poniatovski had to go. Catherine had a second child, Anna, in 1758, who is believed to be the daughter of the Pole. The court was by this time, we saw, thoroughly demoralised, as all knew that the Empress herself caroused at night, and Catherine cast aside all pretence of propriety. At the time of the Empress’s death her lover was Gregory Orloff, a very dashing young officer: a young man of superb and colossal frame, of features that fascinated women and of the time-honoured habits of dissipation.
If we are to understand the character of Catherine, we must endeavour to regard these irregularities with her eyes. It is sheer nonsense to seek to put her on a moral level with Elizabeth or any other aristocratic Russian dame who mingled amours with prayers, and equally venerated monks and lovers. Catherine had not the least inner respect for the Russian Church, or any branch of the Christian Church, and its ideals. For political reasons she conformed outwardly, but it is difficult to find that she had more than a vague and not very serious deism. She read and corresponded with the French “philosophers,” and in her letters to them (when she became her own mistress) she ridiculed the “mummeries” of the priests. “I congratulate myself that I am one of the imbeciles who believe in God,” is the extent of her profession of faith. She did not respect the authority and ideals of the Church, and so she regarded herself as free. These irregularities need not in themselves be considered inconsistent with her title of “the Great.”