She permitted her ministers to govern with
unrestricted power, and was rejoiced when no one came to trouble her
about affairs of state or the interests of her people.
ELEONORE LAPUSCHKIN
Two years had elapsed since Elizabeth's accession to the throne; for
her, two years of pleasure and enjoyment, only troubled here and there
with occasional small clouds of ill-humor--but those clouds overshadowed
only her domestic peace. It was not the affairs of state, not the
interests of her people, that troubled and saddened Elizabeth; she asked
not how many of her subjects the war with Sweden had swept away; how
many had fallen a sacrifice to hunger in the southern provinces of
her realm. She had quite other cares and anxieties than those which
concerned only her ministers, not herself. What have princes to do with
the happiness of their people.
Elizabeth was a consummate princess; she thought only of her own
happiness, only of herself and her own sorrows. And it was a very
severe, very incurable sorrow that visited her--a sorrow that often
brought tears of anger into her eyes and curses upon her lips. Elizabeth
was jealous--jealous not of this or that woman, but of the whole sex.
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