The First Scene

1776. Patiomkin in his bureau in the Winter Palace, St.
Petersburgh. Huge palatial apartment: style, Russia in the
eighteenth century imitating the Versailles du Roi Soleil.
Extravagant luxury. Also dirt and disorder.

Patiomkin, gigantic in stature and build, his face marred by the
loss of one eye and a marked squint in the other, sits at the end
of a table littered with papers and the remains of three or four
successive breakfasts. He has supplies of coffee and brandy at
hand sufficient for a party of ten. His coat, encrusted with
diamonds, is on the floor. It has fallen off a chair placed near
the other end of the table for the convenience of visitors. His
court sword, with its attachments, is on the chair. His
three-cornered hat, also bejewelled, is on the table. He himself
is half dressed in an unfastened shirt and an immense
dressing-gown, once gorgeous, now food-splashed and dirty, as it
serves him for towel, handkerchief, duster, and every other use
to which a textile fabric can be put by a slovenly man. It does
not conceal his huge hairy chest, nor his half-buttoned knee
breeches, nor his legs. These are partly clad in silk stockings,
which he occasionally hitches up to his knees, and presently
shakes down to his shins, by his restless movement. His feet are
thrust into enormous slippers, worth, with their crust of jewels,
several thousand roubles apiece.

Superficially Patiomkin is a violent, brutal barbarian,
an upstart despot of the most intolerable and dangerous type,
ugly, lazy, and disgusting in his personal habits. Yet
ambassadors report him the ablest man in Russia, and the one who
can do most with the still abler Empress Catherine II, who is not
a Russian but a German, by no means barbarous or intemperate in
her personal habits. She not only disputes with Frederick the
Great the reputation of being the cleverest monarch in Europe,
but may even put in a very plausible claim to be the cleverest
and most attractive individual alive. Now she not only tolerates
Patiomkin long after she has got over her first romantic
attachment to him, but esteems him highly as a counsellor and a
good friend. His love letters are among the best on record. He
has a wild sense of humor, which enables him to laugh at himself
as well as at everybody else. In the eyes of the English visitor
now about to be admitted to his presence he may be an outrageous
ruffian. In fact he actually is an outrageous ruffian, in no
matter whose eyes; but the visitor will find out, as everyone
else sooner or later fends out, that he is a man to be reckoned
with even by those who are not intimidated by his temper, bodily
strength, and exalted rank.

A pretty young lady, Yarinka, his favorite niece, is