At
the time when he had made her regent he had satisfactorily shown that
his arm was sufficiently powerful to displace one regent and hurl him to
the dust! What he had once done, might not he now be able to accomplish
again?
She surrounded this feared field-marshal with spies and listeners;
she caused all his actions to be watched, every one of his words to be
repeated to her, in order to ascertain whether it had not some concealed
sense, some threatening secret; she doubled the guards of her palace,
and, always trembling with fear, she no longer dared to occupy any one
of her apartments continuously. Nomadically wandered they about in their
own palace, this Regent Anna Leopoldowna and her husband Prince Ulrich
of Brunswick; remembering the sleeping-chamber of Biron, she dared not
select any one distinct apartment for constant occupation; every evening
found her in a new room, every night she reposed in a different bed, and
even her most trusted servant often knew not in which wing of the castle
the princely pair were to pass the night.
She, before whom these millions of Russian subjects humbled themselves
in the dust, trembled every night in her bed at the slightest rustling,
at the whisperings of the wind, at every breath of air that beat her
closed and bolted doors.
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