This truly amazing novel will take the modern reader into an enchanting age - alas! - the aging Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and will resurrect the most powerful courtiers, brilliant favorites, smart and crafty diplomats, outstanding commanders of Her Majesty. Very delicately and at the same time with rare awareness, both the state activities of many key figures of the Russian court and their intimate lives are described, human weaknesses, mistakes, addictions. A fascinating plot, bright, extraordinary characters, most of them marked with the seal of Providence, a magnificent historical background make the book a pleasant and unexpected surprise, all the more priceless, since the publishers carefully restored the text, perhaps the only one remaining “in living" copy of the pre-revolutionary edition.