Menschikof, Apraxin, Tolstoi promoting the cause of Catherine that they may not suffer for the death sentence passed upon Alexis; Galitsuin and others seeing their interests in the succession of Peter, son of Alexis and grandson of the Emperor.
Catherine's harmless reign was over in two years (1727) and was followed by another, equally brief and harmless, by the young Peter II.
The wily Menschikof succeeded in betrothing his daughter to the young Emperor, but not in retaining his ascendency over the self-willed boy.
We wonder if Peter saw his great minister scheming for wealth and for power, and then his fall, like Wolsey's, from his pinnacle.

We wonder if he saw him with his own hands building his hut on the frozen plains of Siberia, clothed, not in rich furs and jewels, but bearded and in long, coarse, gray smock-frock; his daughter, the betrothed of an Emperor, clad, not in ermine, but in sheep-skin.

Perhaps the lesson with his master the Carpenter of Saardam served him in building his own shelter in that dread abode.

Nor was he alone.

He had the best of society, and at every turn of the wheel at St.Petersburg it had aristocratic recruits.