She had been mistress from first to last of a dozen men, noblemen, diplomats, soldiers, but being an inveterate gambler, one after another saw, with dismay, the cash, estates, diamonds, carriages, costly furs and laces he showered upon her all go whirling into the ever-open maw of the Casino, or in the drawing-room games of the bon-ton in Paris or Petersburg. One brave youth, an officer in the Prussian Guards, had, in his infatuation for the Countess, and impregnable, as he thought, against bankruptcy by reason of his great fortune, tried to satisfy her cravings for splendor of entourage and her infatuation for gambling. The result was that one day the crack of a pistol-shot was heard in the Countess' chamber, and the servants rushing in found the young bankrupt dead, lying across the bed, with a bullet through the heart. The next day a horde of clamorous creditors besieged the house, where the Countess calmly told them she had sent for her bankers and on the morrow they would be paid. That night his comrades buried their dead friend with military honors. At midnight the cortege passed the hotel, and all eyes watched the lovely Countess robed in white as she appeared, her bosom heaving with emotion, while she waved a farewell to her dead lover. Ten minutes later she fled through the back door and over the garden wall, falling into the arms of another lover waiting there. He himself did not go the way of the last, but half of his fortune did; so one morning, leaving a polite note of farewell, he, taking for companion the dressing maid of his mistress, embarked for America. At the time I met her the Countess' reputation was too well known and her beauty too much fallen off for her to make any more grand catches. A local banker at Wiesbaden became very friendly. However, the friendship lost all its warmth when the banker's stout wife one day caught them together, and having already provided herself with a whip in anticipation, visited them both with a jealous woman's rage and a sound thrashing.