s, and she was carried a helpless captive to a cabin. At the
same moment Domanski was overpowered before he had time to use his
sword, and made a prisoner.

The Princess's cries for Orloff, her husband and saviour, are met with
derision. Orloff she is told is himself a prisoner. He has, in fact,
vanished, his dastardly mission executed; and she never saw him again.
Two months later the victim of a man's treachery and a woman's vengeance
is looking with tear-dimmed eyes on "her capital" through a barred
window of a cell in the fortress of Saints Peter and Paul.

Over the tragic closing of her days we may not dwell long. The scene is
too pitiful, too harrowing. In vain she implores an interview with
Catherine, who blazes into anger at the request. "The impudence of the
wretch," she exclaims, "is beyond all bounds! She must be mad. Tell her
if she wishes any improvement in her lot to cease the comedy she is
playing." Prince Galitzin, Grand Chancellor, exerts all his skill in
vain to force a confession of imposture from her. To his wiles and
threats alike she opposes a dignified and calm front. She persists in
the story of her birth; refuses to admit that she is an impostor.

Even when she is flung into a loathsome cell, with bread and water for
diet, she does not waver a jot in her demeanour of dignity or in her
Royal claims. Only when she is charged with being the daughter of a
Prague innkeeper does she allow indignation to master her, as she
retorts, "I have never been in Prague in my life, and if I knew who had
thus slandered me I would scratch his eyes out." Domanski, too, proves
equally intractable; even the promise of marriage to her will not wring
from him a word that might discredit his beloved Princess.

But although the Princess keeps such a brave heart under conditions that
might well have broken it, her spirit is powerless against the insidious
disease that is working such havoc with her body. In her damp, noisome
cell consumption makes rapid headway. Her strength ebbs daily; the end
is coming swiftly near. She makes a last dying appeal to Catherine to
see her if but for a few moments, but the appeal falls on deaf ears.
When she sends for a priest to minister to her last hours, and, by
Catherine's orders, he makes a final attempt to wrest her secret from
her, she moans with her failing breath, "Say the prayers for the dead.
That is all there is for you to do here."

Four days later death came to her release