are told, "was beyond description. The festivities
lasted three days, and during that time the love of the people for
their Prince, and their admiration of the beauty and charm of his bride,
were beyond words to describe." Never did Royal wedded life open more
full of bright promise, and never did consort make more immediate
conquest of the affections of her husband's subjects. "No one could have
believed that this marriage, which was contracted from love and love
alone, would have ended in so tragic a manner, or that hate could so
quickly have taken the place of love."

But the serpent was quick to show his head in Natalie's new paradise.
Before she had been many weeks a wife, stories came to her ears of her
husband's many infidelities. Now the story was of one lady of her Court,
now of another, until the horrified Princess knew not whom to trust or
to respect. Strange tales, too, came to her (mostly anonymously) of
Milan's amours in Paris, in Vienna, and half a dozen of his other haunts
of pleasure, until her love, poisoned at its very springing, turned to
suspicion and distrust of the man to whom she had given her heart.

Other disillusions were quick to follow. She discovered that her husband
was a hopeless gambler and spendthrift, spending long hours daily at the
card-tables, watching with pale face and trembling lips his pile of gold
dwindle (as it usually did) to its last coin; and often losing at a
single sitting a month's revenue from the Civil List. Her own dowry of
five million roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches. Her father
had taken care to make that secure, but Milan's private fortune, large
as it had been, had already been squandered in this and other forms of
dissipation; and even the expenses of his wedding, she learned, had been
met by a loan raised at ruinous interest.

Such discoveries as these were well calculated to shatter the dreams of
the most infatuated of brides, and less was sufficient to rouse
Natalie's proud spirit to rebellion. When affectionate pleadings proved
useless, reproaches took their place. Heated words were exchanged, and
the records tell of many violent scenes before Natalie had been six
months Princess of Servia. "You love to rule," the warning voice had
told Milan--"to command. So does Natalie"; and already the clashing of
strong wills and imperious tempers, which must end in the yielding of
one or the other, had begun to be heard.

If more fuel had been needed t