y sufferings, I certainly should not have
endured the ten years' torture of the Magdeburg dungeon, with a fortitude
that might have been worthy even of Socrates.

Enough of this. My blood again courses swifter through my veins as I
write! Rest, gentle maiden, noble and lovely as thou wert! For thee
ought Heaven to have united a form so fair, animated as it was, by a soul
so pure, to ever-blooming youth and immortality.

My love for this lady became well-known in Moscow; yet her corpulent
overgrown husband had not understanding enough to suppose there was any
meaning in her rhapsodies during her delirium.

Her gifts to me amounted in value to about seven thousand ducats. Lord
Hyndford and Count Bernes both adjudged them legally mine, and well am I
assured her heart had bequeathed me much more.

To this event succeeded another, by which my fortune was greatly
influenced. The Countess of Bestuchef was then the most amiable and
witty woman at Court. Her husband, cunning, selfish, and shallow, had
the name of minister, while she, in reality, governed with a genius, at
once daring and comprehensive. The too pliant Elizabeth carelessly left
the most important things to the direction of others. Thus the Countess
was the first person of the Empire, and on whom the attention of the
foreign ministers was fixed.

Haughty and majestic in her demeanour, she was supposed to be the only
woman at court who continued faithful to her husband; which supposition
probably originated in her art and education, she being a German born:
for I afterwards found her virtue was only pride, and a knowledge of the
national character. The Russian lover rules despotic over his mistress:
requires money, submission, and should he meet opposition, threatens her
with blows, and the discovery of her secret.

During Elizabeth's reign foreigners could neither appear at court, nor in
the best company, without the introduction of Bestuchef. I and Sievers,
gentlemen of the chamber, were at that time the only Germans who had free
egress and regress in all houses of fashion; my being protected by the
English and Austrian ambassadors gave me very peculiar advantages, and
made my company everywhere courted.

Bestuchef had been resident, during the late reign, at Hamburg, in which
inferior station he married the countess, at that time, though young and
handsome, only the widow of the merchant Boettger. Under Elizabeth,
Bestuchef rose to the summit of