In the summer of 1882 the Dedopali was taken ill. We were just at that time her guests again at Gordi. The physicians whom her son summoned from Tiflis prescribed a “cure” at Karlsbad. But she refused to leave her fatherland. “I hope to get well again,” she said to me, “but if this should really be my last illness I desire to die here near the Convent of Marthvilli, where I shall be buried. I should not like to make the long journey back from Europe in a box.” Her condition gradually grew worse, and when we left Gordi in the autumn we had no hope of ever seeing her again; and, in fact, we soon received from Prince Niko by telegraph the news that his mother had passed away painlessly and with Christian resignation. Although I was prepared for the news, it was a sore grief to me, and I deeply mourned for this friend of many years. She was laid away in the crypt of the Convent of Marthvilli, in the midst of a gigantic mourning assembly, in which the population of all the neighboring provinces participated; thousands and thousands had made the pilgrimage to the ancient cloister which contained the ancestral tomb of the princes, to pay the last honors to the “Queen of Mothers.” At the beginning of the year 1884 I suffered a far heavier bereavement—my mother. I had confidently hoped to see her again very soon, for our home-coming was now in immediate prospect, and she herself was looking forward to this reunion with yearning joy. In that moment death snatched her away with only a brief illness. Full of sympathy and love, My Own did his best to console and comfort me. The period of our exile was coming to an end. The parents, who now recognized how faithfully and happily we clung to each other, how bravely we had made our way without ever claiming their help, had given over their obstinate rancor and were bidding us to come to Harmannsdorf. We had in the meantime reached a position of independence, and could therefore return home without any sense of humiliation. To be sure, nothing had come of the hoped-for situations at the Russian court, and the various plans for business undertakings that were to bring us a competency; but we had both won a place in literature which gave us the prospect of a sufficient and increasing income and assured us an honorable position. The critics lauded us, editors asked for articles, publishers wanted manuscripts. My husband’s Caucasian stories and novels were meeting with great success, and my _Inventarium einer Seele_, in which I had set forth all my views about nature and life, about science and politics, had made somewhat of a sensation; my belles-lettres were equally in demand. And we both felt that we still had a good deal to say, that the fountain of inspiration would yet pour abundant streams; the new calling had become for us “the one important thing.”