versed. The results of their labors are described in four octavo
volumes--_Voyage dans la Russie meridionale, executee sous la direction
de M. Anatole de Demidoff_--and inscribed to the emperor Nicholas. One
reward of this labor was election to the Institute de France, his
competitors being Parry and Sir John Franklin.

Some years before this time he had entered the diplomatic service, being
attache, first, at Vienna, then at Rome, then charge d'affaires at
Florence. Here he met and married Mathilde Bonaparte, who, through her
mother, was closely connected with his sovereign. Nicolai's daughter had
been allowed to make a love-match in marrying the duke of Leuchtenberg,
son of Eugene Beauharnais, and the emperor was by no means pleased to
have another mesalliance in the family. What most offended him, however,
was the fact that M. Demidoff, in the Catholic as well as in the Greek
marriage ceremony, had promised to educate his children in the faith of
the officiating priest. In consequence of this he was deprived of such
titular honors as he possessed and was ordered to live abroad. As the
married pair did not get on very well, and as, after a childless union
of four years, they agreed to separate, Demidoff was again received into
the imperial favor. He had meantime bought the fine estate and mansion
of San Donato, near Florence; and as he thought the possessor of so much
wealth and the husband of so noble a lady deserved to have a title, he
dubbed himself "prince," and continued to enjoy this self-given title,
probably in the hope that an uncontested use would give him a
prescriptive right to bear it. In this hope he was disappointed, for
Count Medem, an attache of the Russian embassy at Paris, noticing
"Prince Demidoff" on the list of the members of the Jockey Club, crossed
the name out, adding the observation, "Il n'y a pas de prince Demidoff."
A bloodless duel followed.

In the lately-published memoirs of the German novelist Hacklaender--who
in 1843 figured as secretary to the crown-prince of Wuertemberg during
his visit to Italy--we have an agreeable picture of M. Demidoff at San
Donato. "His paintings, sculptures, odd furniture, bronzes and weapons
were arranged in an irregular and apparently arbitrary fashion, so that
they did not produce the wearisome effect of an ordinary collection, but
looked rather like treasures with which their owner had surrounded
himself partly for use, partly only to look at." Demidoff "w