But Catherine also expressed dissatisfaction with the guest. Khrapovitsy noted in his notes how many times she came to his address. “I see and hear everything,” said Catherine, “although I don’t run like an emperor. He reads a lot and has a life of his own; but, being strict against himself, he demands tirelessness and impossible perfection from everyone; don’t know the Russian proverb: to struggle with poverty; - he himself was the cause of two riots. Difficult in conversations. The Prince de Ligne, pretending to be the deepest philosopher under the guise of courtesy, turns it around.”
Despite all this, outwardly relations between the monarchs remained the most friendly, and Shosif did everything to earn Catherine’s favor; Segur tells how the Austrian emperor behaved with the favorites of the Russian empress: “trying to please Catherine, he lavished Mamonov with very frequent signs of attention and favor, tolerated even Potemkin’s whimsical loftiness, and more than once, like the empress’s courtiers, he waited quite a long time for the prince to enter his adoptive“...
KHERSON.
From the DNFPR, on the way to Kherson, Ekaterina wrote to Eropkin and Saltykov: “It’s good to see the place with your own eyes, we were told that we would be exposed to the heat, unbearable to humanity, but we would be exposed to the warm air and
Sunday svBzh, very pleasant and very spring; the steppe, it is true, is treeless, but the layer of earth is the most radiant and such that without much labor it will bring everything into existence; it was considered waterless, and we saw streams and streams everywhere, along which many of the villages’ inhabitants, without exception, looked fresher and healthier than everyone else, and seemed more industrious and livelier.”...
On May 12 we arrived in Kherson. The Empress rode into the city in a magnificent chariot, together with the Emperor and Potemkin. The people unharnessed their horses and brought the empress into the city. Then came the receptions, dinners, balls. We lived in Kherson for five days, and were apparently satisfied. Catherine wrote to Eropkin: "We arrived in Kherson. The child did not exist 8 years ago. First we passed through the stone barracks of six regiments, then we turned right, entered the fortress, which stands up for itself, inside the fortress, many of the military buildings are finished; some are coming to the detachment; The church is stone, beautiful. Having left the fortress, we turned to the admiralty, in which all the shops and buildings are stone, covered with roofing. On the slipway we found an 80-gun ship, which on Saturday, God willing, we will launch a 66-gun ship next to it; I have not yet seen the houses from the room in which I gave you food, and the garden of this house near the Admiralty and the slipway, which on the other side is the suburb;
There are a great many people here, besides the military, multilingual from most of Europe.”...
Segur talks about Kherson: "After a trip through a 400-verst area, we were unexpectedly struck by the appearance of Kherson. But even without this circumstance, we could not help but be amazed at the sight of so many new, majestic buildings. We saw an almost completed fortress, barracks for 24 thousand people, the Admiralty with all its accessories, an arsenal, containing up to 600 guns, two warships and a frigate, equipped for launching, public buildings erected in different places, several churches of beautiful architecture, and finally, a whole city, already a trading city, with 9 thousand houses and shops full of Greek, Constantinople and French goods, up to 200 merchants entered and stood in its harbor; courts... It is understandable that those present were surprised and delighted with how they extolled Potemkin’s talents and exploits.”
However, Segur did not approve of everything in Kherson equally. "There was a fleeting fascination, and to our surprise we cooled down with thought. Examining Kherson up close and in detail, we noticed that its location was poorly chosen, that ships generally cannot ascend the Dnfpr except without cargo, and military ships built here cannot freely descend the river without the help of stones. Not there was no embankment, no warehouse for goods; finally, the evaporation of the swamps and islands near the city had a harmful effect on the health of the inhabitants."
On May 15, in the presence of Her Majesty and Count Falekenstein, “two warships and one frigate built at the Kherson Admiralty were launched: an 80-gun ship named “Gosie P” (“This is gallant,” noted Catherine), a 66-gun ship
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