g lunatic. I wrote
to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his
rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the
relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to
take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the
care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had
interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus
was I left alone--a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to
have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its
brilliant society--my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband.
It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour
together--night or day--lest he should commit some outrage upon himself
or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk
under it; but, by God's good providence, the malady of my husband took a
new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon
other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed
live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health
and no joy within me."

Just at this time a low murmuring conversation between my two
fellow-countrymen, at my left, broke out, much to my annoyance, into
sudden exclamation.

"By God! sir," cried one of them, "I thrashed him in the _Grande Place_,
right before the hotel there--what's its name?--the first hotel in
Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my
britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he
did it again I would _punish_ him; that is, I did not exactly _tell_
him--for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I
could not speak a word--but I held out my fist in a significant manner,
which neither man nor brute could mistake. Well, just as we turned into
the _Grande Place_, the lubber grazed my wheel again. I jumped out of
the carriage--I pulled him--boots and all--off his horse, and how I
cuffed him! My friend Lord L---- was standing at the window of the
hotel, looking out for my arrival, and was witness to this exploit. He
was most dead with laughter when I came up to him."

"I once," said his interlocutor, "thrashed an English postilion after
the same fashion; but your Russian, with his enormous boots, must have
afforded capital sport. When I travel I always look out for _fun_. What
else is the use of travelling? I and young B-