ot by
nature inconstant, and was incapable of deceit even in amours. In the
very ardour of youth I always shunned mere sensual pleasures. I loved
for more exalted reasons, and for such sought to be beloved again. Love
and friendship were with me always united; and these I was capable of
inciting, maintaining, and deserving. The most difficult of access, the
noblest, and the fairest, were ever my choice: and my veneration for
these always deterred me from grosser gratifications. By woman I was
formed; by the faith of woman supported under misfortunes; in the company
of woman enjoyed the few hours of delight my life of sorrows has
experienced. Woman, beautiful and well instructed, even now, lightens
the burden of age, the world's tediousness and its woes; and, when these
are ended, I would rather wish mine eyes might be closed by fair and
virgin hands, than, when expiring, fixed on a hypocritical priest.

My adventures with women would amply furnish a romance: but enough of
this, I should not relate the present, were it not necessary to my story.

Dining one public day with Lord Hyndford, I was seated beside a charming
young lady of one of the best families in Russia, who had been promised
in marriage, though only seventeen, to an old invalid minister. Her eyes
soon told me she thought me preferable to her intended bridegroom. I
understood them, lamented her hard fate, and was surprised to hear her
exclaim, "Oh, heavens! that it were possible you could deliver me from my
misfortune: I would engage to do whatever you would direct."

The impression such an appeal must make on a man of four and twenty, of a
temperament like mine, may easily be supposed. The lady was ravishingly
beautiful; her soul was candour itself, and her rank that of a princess;
but the court commands had already been given in favour of the marriage;
and flight, with all its inseparable dangers, was the only expedient. A
public table was no place for long explanations. Our hearts were already
one. I requested an interview, and the next day was appointed, the place
the Trotzer garden, where I passed three rapturous hours in her company:
thanks to her woman, who was a Georgian.

To escape, however, from Moscow, was impossible. The distance thence to
any foreign country was too great. The court was not to remove to
Petersburg till the next spring, and her marriage was fixed for the first
of August. The misfortune was not to be remedied, and