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    MADAME SWETCHINE. 309

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    Tim Biography Of A Hussian Lady Of High ...

    much-beloved daughter , and a cold welcome from a friend on whom he had particularly relied , plunged him into unconquerable

    sadness ; and the poor old nobleman was carried off by a fit of to ap anxiousl op Madame lexy y at seeking S the wetchine moment how to she procure when could those a not recall who under . loved Bitter that him des as | was ) at otic home this rule blow were

    indulge outward regrets , . Her husband's military position retained him at St . Petersburg !! : he was about to be promoted to a post of

    activity and importance , and she was obliged to remain amidst the fashionable worldand to take her place as mistress of a large

    establishment at the , TeTy moment when her soul was filled with grief . Constraint , subordination of all her own actions to the

    proprieties imposed from without , and subjection to a thousand claims of secondary importance to religion and moralitybut absolute and

    imperious in her social circumstances , were the , lot of this young wife from the first day of her so-called independence . The life of

    a great lady in Russia , if she be also a woman of cultivated intellect and pious heart , must indeed present many painful _problems :

    and the grave and steadfast nature of our heroine turned in upon that itself the , in anxious hilosophical seeking _belle- for _esj _^ a rit sufficient asked herself guide . where Then she first could it was

    repose no longer from p able the , weary to say " excitements My father / of 7 she such lifted an up existence appealing ; and accents being ,

    and said , " My God ! " The society in which , from her first entrance , she occupied a

    high position , was then one of the niost brilliant in all Europe . The French Revolution infused into it an element which was rather

    new than foreign , and which _apj > ealed vividly to the mind of Madame Swetchine . The most distinguished residents of Paris and

    Versailles fled to the despotic court of Russia for protection , but they were generally those whom the proscription had not entirely

    deprived of all their property , or whom the Emperor Paul had personallknown at the time whenunder the name of the ' * Comte du

    Nord , y " he visited France in the , early and happy days of Louis XYI . and Marie Antoinette . For instance , the Prince de Conde , who had

    fated him at Chantilly , was' established by the emperor in the Hotel Tchernitchef _, with servants and suitable appointments , and daring

    the reparation of the hotel , the palace of the Taurida was put at his disposition , where the grand-dukes and the principal

    dignitaries of St . Petersburgh went to offer him their respects , even before he had paid his to the emperor . The empress named the Princess

    de Tarente her " dame d portrait" because the emperor had known her in Paris under the roof of her grandfather the Due de la

    Valliere . The Due de Richelieu and the Comte de Langeron were installed in posts of political confidenceand young men were placed

    in the army . The drawing-rooms of St , . Petersburgh , and particularly those of General Swetchine , resounded every day with , names

    familiar to Versailles and Trianon .

    Madame Swetchine. 309

    MADAME SWETCHINE . 309

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1860, page 309, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071860/page/21/