"If God blesses my children, the curse
of no human being can affect them, and this revengeful prayer of the
countess will have no more power when the priest of God has consented
and blessed the child now quietly reposing under my heart!"
This was the reason why Elizabeth resolved to marry Alexis Razumovsky;
this was the reason why she, in a solitary chapel, accompanied only by
Lestocq and the priest, stood before the marriage-altar with Alexis, and
became his wife.
She breathed freer when the priest had pronounced his blessing upon her;
an oppressive weight was lifted from her heart; the child she was about
to bear was saved and sheltered, and Eleonore's curse had no longer any
power over it!
On the next day Elizabeth appointed Alexis field-marshal, and raised him
in the ranks of the nobility.
"We must at any rate give our son a respectable father," said she. "I
hope we shall have a son, who will be as beautiful as his father; whom
I will overload with honors, and place high above all the magnates of my
court. Ah, a son! No daughter, Alexis!"
"And why no daughter?" smilingly asked Razumovsky.
Elizabeth shuddered, and, clinging to her beloved, whispered:
"Has not Eleonore Lapuschkin said, 'Give her a daughter, and let her,
before the eyes of her mother, experience what I now suffer!' Oh,
Alexis, wish me therefore no daughter! I shall always tremble for her!"
And God seemed to have listened to the anxious prayer of the empress.
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