Her cottage consisted of a single room on the ground floor, which served as dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom; it was adorned with a guitar, a violin-case, a collection of animals, art-objects, and arms. The exceeding solitariness of her dwelling exposed her to frequent attacks by night, and hence a brace of pistols always hung at the head of her bed. Her fruit, her poultry, and even her vines suffered from prowling depredators; she was continually on the watch, and especially had to guard against a repetition of the cruel attempt to which on one occasion she nearly fell a victim. Her account of this affair was as follows:--Two days before it occurred, a Greek applied to her for work and food. The former she was unable to give; the latter she would never deny. The next day but one, as she was returning in the twilight from a geological excursion, carrying in her hand a small hatchet which she used for breaking stones, she discovered that this man was walking behind her stealthily. Turning to look in his face, she found herself at the same moment grasped round the waist--the hatchet was snatched from her hand--and blow after blow was rained on her head until she fell to the ground in a swoon. When she recovered consciousness, the assassin had disappeared. How she reached home with her skull fractured she never could explain. For months her life was in peril, and her reason trembled in the balance. At the time of Madame de Hell's visit she still suffered acutely from some fragments of a comb that remained in her head. Remote from the ordinary track as was Mademoiselle Jacquemart's lonely dwelling, many persons were drawn to it by the attraction of her singular story. Not long before, a young and handsome lady, incognita, but evidently of high birth, had spent a whole day there. Her curiosity greatly excited, Mademoiselle Jacquemart said to her on her departure, smilingly, "Queen or shepherdess, leave me your name, that it may always recall to me one of the most delightful souvenirs of my hermit-life." "Well," replied the unknown, in the same spirit, "pass me your album, and you shall know me as a very sincere admirer of your merit." She immediately wrote a few lines in the album and departed in haste, while Mademoiselle Jacquemart was reading the following quatrain, improvised in her honour by the Princess Radzivil:-- "Reine ou bergere je voudrais Dans ce doux lieu passer ma vie, Partageant avec vous, amie, Ou ma cabane ou mon palais." [Queen or shepherdess, I fain In this sweet spot my life would spend, Sharing with thee, gentle friend, Or palace grand or cottage plain.] Before quitting the Crimea, Madame de Hell visited another distinguished woman, also a solitary, who, in a terribly tragic scene, had nearly lost her life. The Baroness Axinia lived at Oulou-Ouzon, and this was her story: