Elizabeth's child was a girl, nineteen months old, and named Sarah Catharine Young.
He finally concluded to leave it in the hands of Catharine herself, and, to prepare the way for this, he resolved to cause her to be solemnly crowned empress during his lifetime.
"I am going to a little fancy-dress dance, Mr. Sikes," she explained, "as Queen Catharine of Russia, and this tiara is a copy of the very famous lost negligee crown of that unhappy queen.
In ordinary attacks of this kind Catharine had power to soothe and allay the spasmodic action of the muscles, and gradually release her husband from the terrible gripe of the disease, but now he would not suffer her to come near him.
At the time of the death of Alexis the Czar's hopes in respect to a successor fell upon his little son, Peter Petrowitz, the child of Catharine, who was born about the time of the death of Alexis's wife, when the difficulties between himself and Alexis were first beginning to assume an alarming form.
In this proclamation Peter cited many instances from history in which great sovereigns had raised their consorts to a seat on the throne beside them, and then he recapitulated the great services which Catharine had rendered to him and to the state, which made her peculiarly deserving of such an honor.