"Man's destiny is labour, woman's enjoyment" This was her motto, and she lived up to it. She dazzled the world with the rare spectacle of beautiful power and powerful beauty carrying away like the hurricane in its mad career whatever lies in its path, stripping the leaves from every flower, uprooting every young tree, and bearing them on perhaps for one moment before casting them aside, crushed and dying. A glorious spectacle for exultant Valkyrias, but one at which the common herd cross themselves. Every destructive force of nature--and such was this woman--possesses a shuddering poetic attraction for the on-looker who is himself secure. He admires what he fears, he revels in the sight of what he knows to be destructive. This was the position held by the inhabitants of the little town of N---- towards the beautiful Russian since she had arrived there with her sick husband. With her wild manner of life, she was a wonderful apparition in their eyes, a constant source of interest, yet always provoking sternest disapproval. When the magnificent woman galloped through the streets upon her fiery Arabian, or held the reins behind her pair of horses with a skilful hand, like Victory in her triumphal car, no one could refrain from rushing to the window to enjoy a sight not to be forgotten. Strength, health, and beauty seemed to be her monopoly and the firm foundation of her joyous existence. "The woman who desires to be emancipated," she was wont to say, "must have the true stuff in her. And as there are so few who possess it, there are but a few who are emancipated. If you cannot compete with a man, do not try to rival him. But she who has been baptized, as I have, in the ice-cold Neva, can afford to laugh at the whole tribe with their masculine arrogance." In Russia, where she had played her part in a community far less strict, she had had an excellent field for displaying her grace and agility in all knightly exercises at the tilting-school which had been instituted by the Russian nobility. There she made her appearance usually in a steel helmet and closely-fitting coat of mail of woven silver that shone in the brilliant sunlight, enveloping her as it were in splendour. When she rode into the lists thus arrayed, a crooked scimitar by her side, pistols in her belt, and mounted upon her Arabian steed, nothing could restrain the loud applause of all present. She rivalled the most distinguished sons of the Russian nobility in the grace and skill with which she managed her horse, the precision of her aim in shooting, and the boldness of her leaps. She knew no fear and no fatigue. She had the strength and vigour of a Northern divinity, with the glowing temperament of an Oriental. What wonder that, from Emperor to serf, all were her admiring slaves?