Early in February, Peter was finally well enough to travel, and the empress brought him back to St. Petersburg. Catherine went to meet them in a reception hall of the Winter Palace. It was after four in the afternoon and the light was failing; they met, Catherine says, in “semi-darkness.” Until that moment, absence and anxiety had softened Catherine’s image of the man she was to marry. Peter had never been handsome, but he had possessed a certain nondescript, inoffensive blandness. Sometimes he wore a surly grin, sometimes a slight smile that might be inane or could be merely shy. Overall, his
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