t I should
go and see her garden; but, though gratefully acknowledging the
courteous attention, I prepared to rejoin my husband immediately, being
impatient to relate to him all the particulars of the interview with
which I was completely dazzled."

* * * * *

The Crimea is not without its memorable places. Madame de Hell refers to
Parthenit, where still flourishes the great hazel under which the Prince
de Ligne wrote to the modern Messalina, Catherine II.; Gaspra, the
residence for some years of Madame de Krudener, the beautiful mystic and
religious enthusiast who exercised so powerful an influence over the
Czar Alexander; Koreis, the retreat of the Princess Galitzin, the soul
of so many strange political intrigues, and afterwards one of the
associates of Madame de Krudener, and the small villa on the seashore,
near Delta, beneath the roof of which died, in 1823, the _soi-disant_
Countess Guacher, now known to have been none other than the notorious
Madame de Lamotte, who figured in the strange romantic history of "The
Diamond Necklace," and as an accomplice of Cagliostro was whipped in the
Place de Greve, and branded on both shoulders with a V for _Voleuse_,
Thief.[8]

At Soudagh, a valley near Oulou-Ouzon, Madame de Hell visited one of the
most remarkable women of her time, Mademoiselle Jacquemart, of whom a
long but not wholly accurate biographical sketch appears in the Duc de
Raguse's "Excursion en Crimee."

Few women have had a more eccentric career. In her early years her
beauty, her wit, and her talents gained her a degree of fame such as
rarely attaches to one in the humble position of a governess. From the
age of sixteen, when she removed from Paris to St. Petersburg, and
entered upon a professional life, she enjoyed an unparalleled social
distinction. Suddenly, for no reason apparent to the world at large, she
retreated to the Crimea, abandoning everything in which she had hitherto
delighted, and voluntarily sentencing herself to a seclusion which to
her, of all women, it might have been thought, would have proved most
distasteful. Seeing her in the semi-masculine costume, studying geology,
painting, music, and poetry, without the shadow of a pretension, one
could not help asking oneself in what mysterious drama her strange
existence had been involved. Having been apprised, the day before, of
Madame de Hell's intended visit, she hastened to meet her, and received
her with a