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Her physical infirmities were an inconvenience, but she was not immobilized. She spent autumn and winter at the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. After Potemkin’s death, she had another residence in the capital and lived for a few weeks in spring and again in autumn in the Tauride Palace, which she had bought from the prince’s heirs. Living there helped her keep fresh the memory of the man who had been her partner, lover, and perhaps her husband. In preference to the estates at Peterhof and Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland, which could summon unhappy memories from the past, Tsarskoe Selo, where she could be surrounded by her friends and grandchildren, was her favorite summer retreat. No serious barriers were placed between the imperial family and the public; all parks in the capital and the nearby countryside were open to all who were “decently dressed.” This included the park at Tsarskoe Selo. One day, Catherine was seated on a bench with her favorite personal maid after their early morning walk. A man passed by, glanced briefly at the two elderly women, and, failing to recognize the empress, walked on, whistling. The maid was indignant, but Catherine merely remarked, “What do you expect, Maria Savichna? Twenty years ago this would not have happened. We have grown old. It is our fault.”

Catherine was forty-eight when, in 1777, her daughter-in-law, Maria, gave birth to the empress’s first grandson. She, not the child’s mother or father, named him Alexander. Motherhood had provided Catherine with few joys; now, as a grandmother, she had an opportunity to catch up. Setting aside her long-ago grief when Empress Elizabeth had taken away her firstborn, Paul, Catherine assumed the dominant role in the new infant’s life. Her reason was similar to Elizabeth’s. Both women had been frustrated by their inability, in one case to conceive, in the other to mother a child. Both used the same excuse for their subsequent behavior: a young, inexperienced mother could not be given the responsibility of raising and educating a future tsar.

Catherine did not take complete possession of Alexander, as Elizabeth had done with Paul. She had him brought to her every afternoon to be placed on the carpet next to her desk. When he arrived, she stopped whatever she was doing to play with him. She lay on the floor next to him, told him stories, invented games, corrected his mistakes, and hugged him repeatedly. “I have said it to you before and I say it again,” she wrote to Grimm. “I dote on the little monkey.… In the afternoon, my little monkey comes as often as he likes and spends three or four hours a day in my room.” She called him “Monsieur Alexander” and announced, “It is astonishing that, although he cannot yet talk, at twenty months he knows things that are beyond the grasp of any other child at the age of three.” When he was three, she said, “If you only knew what wonders Alexander achieves as a cook, and an architect; how he paints, mixes colors, chops wood; how he plays being the groom and the coachman; how he is teaching himself to read, draw, calculate and write.” These conceits are no different from the effusions of any grandmother eager for the world to know—indeed, insisting that the world must know—of the extraordinary qualities and accomplishments of her grandchild. In any case, Catherine was convinced that Alexander was unique and that this was due exclusively to her. “I am making a delicious child of him,” she said. “He loves me instinctively.” She designed a loose, one-piece garment that could be put on him easily and would not restrict his arms and legs. “It is sewn together and goes on at once, and fastens behind with four or five little hooks,” she told Grimm. “The king of Sweden has demanded and received a pattern of the dress of Monsieur Alexander.”

Her second grandson was born eighteen months after Alexander. The empress named him Constantine to indicate the throne she had in mind for him: one day, she hoped, he would reign over a great new Orthodox Greek empire based on Constantinople. When Constantine was old enough, he joined his brother to play on her carpet. As they were intended for different thrones, they were given different educations. Alexander, who would become the future occupant of Catherine’s own throne, was brought up on the English model. He was given an English nanny and was taught the history of Europe and the literature of the Enlightenment. Constantine, destined for Constantinople, was given a Greek nurse, Greek servants, and Greek playmates so that he could begin speaking the language early. His lessons included the histories of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, as well as of Russia.