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now had lost another pretender - less prestigious, certainly, than the King of France, but a very honorable match for a Russian grand duchess. Really, fate seemed dead set against her dreams of marriage. She lost heart, took a strong dislike to the court of St. Petersburg and withdrew, with her putative brother-in-law Charles Frederick and her sister Anna, to the palace of Ekaterinhof, at the edge of St. Petersburg, under the shade trees of an immense park surrounded by canals. In this idyllic setting, she relied very much upon the affection of her close relations to help her ease her disappointment.
    The very same day of their departure, Menshikov gave an extravagant feast at his palace in honor of the betrothal of his elder daughter, Maria, to the young Tsar Peter II. The intended, bedecked and bejeweled like a gilded coffer, received on this occasion the title of Her Most Serene Highness and the guarantee of an annual income of 34,000 rubles from the State Treasury. More parsimonious when it came to compensating the Tsarevna2 Elizabeth, Menshikov only allocated 12,000 rubles to her to assuage the rigor of her mourning.3 But Elizabeth wanted to be seen by one and all as an inconsolable fiancée. The fact that she was not yet married (by the age of 18), and that only the most ambitious seemed interested in her - and only out of political considerations - was too cruel a fate to be swallowed anytime soon. Fortunately, her friends immediately set about finding a high-quality substitute for Charles Augustus, in Russia or abroad. The dear departed’s coffin had hardly been laid in the ground in Lübeck when the possible candidature of Charles Adolf of Holstein was suggested - the proper brother of the departed - and also that of Count Maurice of Saxony and several other gentlemen of easily verifiable merits.
    While Elizabeth, at Ekaterinhof, was dreaming over these various parties, whose faces she barely recognized, in the heart of St. Petersburg Menshikov, as ever a practical man, was studying the available bachelors’ relative advantages. In his eyes, the half-widowed tsarina represented an excellent bargaining chip in the diplomatic negotiations that were underway. But these matrimonial concerns did not make him lose sight of the education of his imperial pupil. Observing that Peter seemed to have become slightly less extravagant recently, he recommended to Ostermann that he step up his struggle against his pupil’s natural idleness by accustoming him to fixed hours, whether they be spent in study or recreation. The Westphalian was assisted in this task by Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky, the “assistant governor”; he often visited the palace with his young son, Prince Ivan, a beautiful, hot-blooded young man of 20 years, elegant and effeminate, who amused His Majesty with his inexhaustible chattering.
    Upon her return from Ekaterinhof, where she had spent a few weeks in sentimental retirement, Elizabeth installed herself at the Summer Palace; but not a day went by that she did not pay a visit, with her sister Anna, to her dear nephew in his gilded cage. They would listen to the confidences of the spoiled child, share his passion for Ivan Dolgoruky - that irresistibly handsome young man - and keep them both company in their nightly revels. Despite the remonstrances of their male chaperons, a wind of madness blew through this shameless quartet. In December 1727, Johann Lefort brought the minister at the court of Saxony up to date on young Peter’s escapades. “The master [Peter II] has no other occupation but to run in the streets, day and night, with the princess Elizabeth and her sister, to visit the chamberlain Ivan [Dolgoruky], the pages, the cooks and God knows whom else.”
    Hinting that the sovereign under supervision had unnatural tastes and that the delightful Ivan was inciting him in forbidden pleasures instead of curbing his inclinations, Lefort continued: “One could almost believe that these misguided