Here began a new phase in the life of the Countess Rossi. The King of Sardinia, cognizant of all the amiable qualities, as well as virtues, which fitted the great vocalist for the most exalted sphere of society, at last authorized the Count Rossi openly to announce his marriage. Madame de Rossi, at St. Petersburg, bid adieu to the stage: and, arriving at the Hague, the Count Rossi presented her to the whole diplomatic body assembled and to the Court. If there had existed the slightest hesitation as to the cordiality with which so bright a character should be received, the first sight, and the first moments spent with Madame de Rossi convinced the most stilted and hypercritical personages that, in her, they beheld one destined to adorn every position in life in which she might be placed, and who, fortunately for them, was about to bring them, whether in their official _reunions_, or in the private intimacy of life, a great accession of pleasure. Madame de Rossi dropped as naturally into her position, amidst the votaries of court and politics, as she had done into her parts on the stage, with this difference, that here nothing was studied, not even the words she uttered, but she found herself in the natural element of one whose mind and tastes were plainly created for the enjoyment of everything that is tasteful, refined, and truthful. If her reception at first was most kindly courteous, in a very short time it was friendly in the extreme, and she became the idol of the society of the Hague. Nothing could exceed the delight with which the young Countess dropped into the calm mode of life of the small town of the Hague, far removed from the contentions and excitement of operatic life, but also from the turmoils of politics, and the agitations of the great capitals of Europe. Unlike so many other denizens of the stage, in her privacy there never was observed in the manners of Madame de Rossi the slightest trace of her habitual avocations. At the Hague, whether in the intercourse of the courtly personages, or in the calm enjoyment of beautiful scenery and rural diversions, no thought but of the present appeared ever to intrude upon the memory of one, since her earliest years, accustomed to sway the audiences of every capital, as if it were with the wand of an enchanter--the crowds alternately hushed to dead silence--a moment later excited to the loudest and most enthusiastic applause. But from the moment that Madame de Rossi left the stage, up to the hour when she was compelled to return to it, she ever appeared, like Thomson's Patroness--only ----"fitted or to shine in Courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plain With innocence and meditation joined In soft assemblage."