"

She immediately wrote a few lines in the album and departed in haste,
while Mademoiselle Jacquemart was reading the following quatrain,
improvised in her honour by the Princess Radzivil:--

"Reine ou bergere je voudrais
Dans ce doux lieu passer ma vie,
Partageant avec vous, amie,
Ou ma cabane ou mon palais."

[Queen or shepherdess, I fain
In this sweet spot my life would spend,
Sharing with thee, gentle friend,
Or palace grand or cottage plain.]

Before quitting the Crimea, Madame de Hell visited another distinguished
woman, also a solitary, who, in a terribly tragic scene, had nearly lost
her life. The Baroness Axinia lived at Oulou-Ouzon, and this was her
story:

She was married at a very early age to a man much older than herself.
The ill-assorted union was as unhappy as such unions generally are. The
Baroness Axinia was beautiful, and drew around her a crowd of admirers,
whose flatteries she did not reject, though it does not appear that she
listened to professions of love which could have dishonoured her. In a
jealous frenzy, not unnatural in the circumstances, her husband struck
her with his dagger, and at the same time killed a young man whom for a
long time he had regarded as a friend. The result was an immediate
separation. The Baron settled upon her a considerable estate, and, in
addition, a handsome income. She had the consolation, moreover, of
being allowed to retain by her side the youngest of her daughters, and
thenceforth she resigned herself to a life of solitude, keeping hid
within her bosom the secret of her sorrow, her regret, and, perhaps, her
remorse.

Ten years passed, and the baroness never crossed the borders of her
estate. This self-imposed penance, so rigidly observed, may be accepted,
we think, as a sufficient acknowledgment of the errors of her
thoughtless youth.

"At our first interview," says Madame de Hell, "she seemed to me a
little timid, nay, even wild (_sauvage_)--a circumstance amply justified
by her exceptional position. But, in the course of a few days, this
constraint passed away, and a warm intimacy sprang up between us.

"From the first days of my visit, I remarked with lively surprise that
our hostess was incessantly assailed by a crowd of pretty tomtits, who
pecked at her hair and hands with truly extraordinary familiarity. The
baroness, after enjoying my astonishment, told me that two years before
she had brought up a couple of t