Page 4 (1/2)

The Empress Anna was dead, and--an unheard-of case in Russian iain was the Russian

imperial throne vacated! Who is there to mount it? whom has the empress

named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was

read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of

an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and

unfulfilled, would be construed into the crih-treason as soon

as another than the one thus indicated should be called to the throne!

Who will obtain that throne? So asked each reatand

despair For, to whoe and thus

recoo to Biron, the

Duke of Courland? Was it not possible that the dying empress had chosen

hi minion, as her successor

to the throne of all the Russias? But how if she had not done so? If,

instead, she had chosen her niece, the wife of Prince Anton Ulrich, of

Brunswick, as her successor? Or was it not also possible that she had

declared the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Czar Peter the Great,

as ereatest, the ht to the imperial throne of Russia; was she not the sole lawful heir

of her father? How, if one therefore went to her and congratulated her

as empress? But if one should make a mistake, how then?