oubtedly I have not yet arrived physically," she answered with a
faint smile, "at this degree of old age, but if you could read to the
bottom of my heart, you would see it as gloomy and as desolate as these
chambers with their want of light and air."

The baroness led her guest into every apartment, explaining the
destination of each with feverish volubility. On entering her former
bedchamber, she turned pale, and pointed with a gesture to her husband's
portrait, separated from her own by an antique clock, the motionless
hands of which added to the melancholy of the scene. Madame de Hell
bestowed a long gaze on the haughty and sombre countenance of the baron.
His rough, strongly-marked features were the very emblem of brutal
strength, and she felt herself tremble all over in thinking of what his
wife must have suffered in the first years of their union. Her unhappy
past seemed almost justified by the hard ferocious countenance of such a
husband. As for the baroness, there was about her portrait a
significantly haggard air. "I carried her out," says Madame de Hell,
"upon the balcony, where, overcome by her emotions, the influences of
the place, and that yearning after sympathy which is so powerful in
solitude, she opened her heart to me, and told me a simple but pathetic
story of all that she had endured.

"The promise that I would hold sacred the confidences of that shattered
heart compels me to leave my narrative imperfect. Two days later I
embarked on board the steamer _St. Nicholas_, gazing with inexpressible
regret at the shores of the Tauric peninsula as they gradually blended
with the horizon, their broken outline melting finally into the mists of
evening."

That Madame de Hell to a habit of close and profound observation, added
very remarkable powers of description, will be apparent, we think, from
the preceding summary, brief as it necessarily is, of her record of
travel in the Caucasus and the Crimea.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] A verst is equal to 3,500 feet.

[6] Except when broken by the war of 1855.

[7] A. W. Kinglake: "Invasion of the Crimea," Vol. i., c. 1, 6th
edition.

[8] See Carlyle's "Biographical Essays, Sec. Diamond Necklace;" also, H.
Vizetelly's "True Story of the Diamond Necklace."

MADAME HOMMAIRE DE HELL.

III.

Madame de Hell and her husband spent the winter of 1841 at Odessa.
Thence, in the following year, they repaired to Moldavia--a country
which was just beginning to revive f