“She stood in rich clothes, leaning on a column,” he continues his story. “Her majestic appearance, the importance and nobility of her posture, the pride of her look, her somewhat artificial pose, all this struck me, and I completely forgot everything. Fortunately, not trying in vain to force my memory, I decided to immediately compose a speech; but it already There was not a word from the one that was reported to the Empress, and to which she had prepared her answer. This surprised her, but she did not have the courage to immediately answer me in an extremely friendly and affectionate manner and express a number of words that were flattering for me personally.”
The Prince de Ligne, describing Catherine, compared her with the Sun King: “at the sight of Louis XU,” he says, “everyone trembled; at the sight of Catherine, everyone was encouraged.” Segur had to experience for himself the correctness of this narrowing.
Catherine was very pleased with the new ambassador, and wrote about him in letters to Grimm: “I am not surprised at Mr. Segur’s reputation, it seems to me well-deserved, and it is probably better than anything that has ever come from you to our country.” After some time, Segur received an invitation to Tsarskoe Selo.
P. IN TSARSKOYE VILLAGE.
“I am writing to you in an office made of massive silver, minted with a pattern of red leaves; four columns with the same pattern support a mirror that serves as a canopy for a sofa, upholstered in bright green fabric with silver from Moscow manufacture; the walls consist of mirrors, for which silver pilasters with red leaves serve as frames. The balcony opens onto the garden; the door is formed by two mirrors, so that it always seems to be open, even if it is closed. This cabinet is very luxurious, shiny, cheerful, not burdened with heavy decorations and very hidden. I have another one, on which, like a snuffbox, white and blue glass are combined, and the pattern on them is made of arabesques.”
This is what Catherine wrote in one of her letters to Grimm. She loved both her silver cabinet and her snuff-box cabinet. and a huge colonnade, with a sweeping view of the surrounding sea of greenery. She loved to walk along the winding paths along the lake, surrounded by her grandchildren, with seven-year-old Alexander at their head, preceded by dogs, from the offspring of Sir Thomas Anderson, once given to her by an English doctor who inoculated her with smallpox; The dogs ran around with cheerful barking and squealing, and let everyone know where their owner was. “It’s not easy for you to find me here, the ambassador of the Obfda,” Catherine wrote to the same Grimm: “because the edge of seven rooms decorated with jasper, real and fake marble, besides the garden directly adjacent to my chambers, I have a huge colonnade, which adjoins the same garden and ends with a staircase leading directly to the lake. And after that, look for me if you want; if you ever came here, then only the barking of Thomas will show you the path along which I am heading, and sometimes the babbling of five little ones (grandchildren), who stick to the inf like burrs, and I need to shake myself off in order to drive them away, because they would never part with me.” Sometimes, early in the morning, she sat on the Cameron Gallery, in the middle of the colonnade, and admired the expanse that opened in front of her - from the colonnade one could see a hundred miles around; or walked along the colonnades, “between the bronze busts standing there - Yule Caesar, Achilles, Cicero, Apollo, Homer and Drume - in time there will be 82 of them;—
You can’t imagine how wonderful thoughts such a company inspires in me.”...
Having descended from the colonnade, Catherine walked along the lake and reached a grotto that stood near the shore and looked into the waters of the lake. This grotto was magnificent. The famous one built it during the reign of Elizabeth
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Rastrelli; but then it was all covered with shells; 210 thousand large shells and 17 and a half pools of small ones were used for its decoration. Now all these shells were removed, and the grotto was finished much more simply. The high hall, built inside the grotto, extended into three parts with arches; beautiful yellow patterns on the windows and doors, beautiful paintings on the walls gave everything a very elegant look: Eds were kept an-