Potemkin's condition worsened. All the labyrinthine complexities of the Prince's interests were now reduced to the one relationship that had been constant in his life for twenty years. Catherine and Serenissimus wrote simple love letters to each other again as if neither wished to miss an opportunity to express their deep affection. Fever-ridden Jassy was a 'veritable hospital'. Most patients, including Repnin and Faleev, recovered slowly after four days of shivering delirium17 but Potemkin, attended by Sashenka Branicka and Sophie de Witte, did not.
Catherine wished to follow his illness and supervise his recovery as if he were in her apartments in the Winter Palace, but the couriers took between seven and twelve days, so her caring, frantic letters were always behind events: when she thought the Prince was better, he was really worse. If the initial letter said he was improving, the second would say he was failing fast. On 16 September, the first letter she received 'made me happy because I saw you were better but the second one amplified my anxiety again because I saw you've permanent fever and headaches for four days. I ask God to give you strength ... Goodbye my friend, Christ bless you.'18
Catherine could not hear enough about him: she ordered Popov to send daily reports and asked Branicka, 'Please, Countess, write to me how he is and do your best that he takes as much care as possible against a relapse which is the worst of all in someone already weakened. And I know how careless he is about his health.' Branicka and Popov assumed control of the sickroom while the three doctors, the Frenchman, Massot, and two Russians, could do little.19 So we follow the agonizing decline through the letters of the two partners - Catherine ever more concerned by the day and Potemkin ever weaker, until Popov's reports take over.
When Catherine's letters arrived, Potemkin sobbed as he read them. He thought he was improving even though the 'shooting in the ear torments me'. Even as he sank, he worried about the 8,000 ill soldiers. 'Thank God they don't die,' said Potemkin. The Turkish plenipotentiaries would arrive in four days: 'I expect lots of trickery but I'll be on my guard.' Potemkin was moved out of Jassy to a country house.20
The Prince stopped feasting and ate moderately: starving a fever worked and 'His Highness is better every hour.' Potemkin took the opportunity to arrange the route the Russian army should take in withdrawing from Moldavia, since the passage through Poland was still closed. The negotiations progressed. The world watched carefully: the Austrians had now signed their peace with the Porte at Sistova. The gazettes in Vienna followed the Prince's illness, informed almost daily by couriers. They heard he was better and worse and better. If war came, Potemkin was to command himself, but meanwhile he was demanding some influence over Wallachia and Moldavia. The peace talks would be 'stormy'. The Prince was expected to visit Vienna in the autumn as soon as the peace was signed.
The Prince felt 'tired as a dog' but reassured the Empress via Bezborodko: 'I don't spare myself.'21 Three days later, the fever returned with redoubled strength. The Prince shivered and weakened. Branicka spent day and night beside him.[110] He refused to take his quinine. 'We persuade His Highness to take it in the Highest name of Your Imperial Majesty in spite of his strong aversion to it,' reported Popov. Serenissimus begged Bezborodko to find him a 'Chinese robe ... I need it desperately.' Catherine rushed to send it down to him, along with a fur coat. The Prince was still dictating notes to Catherine about sickness in the army on the very day that he wrote pathetically: 'I am right out of energy and I don't know when the end will come.'22
The Prince was suffering 'incessantly and severely'. By the 25th, the Prince's groaning and weeping were distressing the entourage. Once he realized the fever had taken hold, the Prince seemed to have decided to enjoy his decline. Legend claimed that he 'destroyed himself', and certainly his eating did not help. This feverish 'Sultan' devoured a 'ham, a salted goose and three or four chickens', lubricated with kvass, 'all sorts of wines' and spirits. Sterlet and smoked goose were ordered from Astrakhan and Hamburg. 'He purposely looked for the means to avoid recovering.' When he was soaked with sweat, he poured 'ten bottles of eau-de-Cologne over his head'. He was to die as eccentrically as he had lived.23 He was too ill to care any more.
Potemkin talked 'hopelessly about life', Popov wrote sorrowfully to Catherine, 'and said goodbye to all, without listening to our reassurances.' The Prince was attended by Bishop Ambrosius and Metropolitan Iona, a Georgian who begged him to eat sensibly and take his medicine. 'I'll scarcely recover,' replied Potemkin. 'But God will decide.' Then he turned to Ambrosius to discuss the meaning of his life and showed that, for all his Russian superstitions, he was also a creature of the Enlightenment: 'You, my confessor, you know that I have never wished evil to anybody. To make all men happy was the one thing I wished for.'f When they heard Potemkin's noble confession, the entire chamber burst into sobs. The priests came out and Dr Massot told them the situation was hopeless. 'Deep despair seized us,' wrote the priest, 'but there was nothing we could do.'24
The Prince rallied the next day, 27 September. Nothing made him feel better than a line from the Empress. Her letters arrived with the shaggy fur coat and dressing gown, but they made him think about his past with her and his future. 'Abundant tears always flow from his eyes at every mention of Your Majesty's name.' He managed to write her this note: 'Dear Matushka, life is even harder for me when I don't see you.'25
On 30 September, he turned fifty-two. Everyone tried to comfort him but, whenever he remembered Catherine, he 'wept bitterly' because he would never see her again. That day, thousands of versts to the north, the Empress, reading all Popov's reports, wrote to her 'dear friend': 'I am endlessly worried about your illness. For Christ's sake,' she implored, he must take his medicines. 'And after taking it, I beg you to keep yourself from meals and drinks that ruin the medicine's effect.' She was reacting to Popov's reports from ten days before, but, as her letter was leaving Petersburg, Potemkin woke up finding it difficult to breathe, probably a symptom of pneumonia. The fever returned again and he fainted. On 2 October, he woke up feeling better. They tried to persuade him to take the quinine but he refused. And then, desperate to see the steppes, this eternal bedouin yearned to travel again and feel the wind off the Black Sea. 'His Highness wishes that we take him away from here,' Popov told Catherine, 'but I don't know how we can move him. He's so exhausted.'26 The entourage discussed what to do, while the Prince wrote his last letter to the Empress in his own hand - a simple, courtly expression of devotion to the woman he loved:
Matushka, Most Merciful Lady! In my present condition, so tired by illness, I pray to the Most High to keep your precious health and I throw myself down at your holy feet.