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Catherine's next fling at planned parenthood was with dashing Count (later Polish King) Stanislas Poniatovski; and "this one." she wrote later, "was both loving and loved from 1755 till 1761." Although, according to Poniatovski, Peter encouraged this affair, the Grand Duke was dumfounded by the end product. "Heaven alone knows how it is that my wife becomes pregnant!" he exclaimed.
The Memoirs come to an end before Catherine's years of waiting. Thus, she does not defend herself against history's presumption that she was responsible for Peter's murder, ten days after the army made Catherine Empress of Russia. The narrative is nevertheless a disarmingly intimate conversation, across cultures and continents, by a woman of sense and sensibility who lived more than 50 years in Russia in the awareness that "fundamentally no Russian really likes a foreigner."