she came to know the old diplomat Count Worronska, and he laid his rank and his millions at her feet, offering a field for her beauty at court at St. Petersburg, she could not withstand the temptation. She became his wife, and was transplanted from the midst of half-savage serfs to one of the most magnificent courts in the world,--from the Russian forests and steppes to apartments gorgeous with every luxury of life. At first dazzled and confused, she won all hearts, even those of the women, by her innocent beauty and graceful diffidence. At last her unbridled nature broke forth all the more impetuously for the long restraint under which it had lain, and, with no guidance but that of her imbecile husband, who adored her, she rapidly degenerated in every way. Society always looks more leniently upon those errors that are gradually developed before its eyes and under its protection than upon those that it observes outside of its sphere, because it is cognizant of the excuse for the faults of those within it, and it was all the more willing to pardon the delinquent in this instance for the sake of the high rank of her husband. It therefore ignored escapades that the distinguished position held by the old count forbade it to punish, and the beautiful and enormously wealthy Countess Worronska, in spite of her dissipation, was and continued to be the centre of the most brilliant, if not the best, circle of society in St. Petersburg. All this she had resigned for the last six months, and she had lived like an outlaw, avoided by prudent "German Philisters," in the town of N----, for the sake of the only man whom she truly loved, and who--despised her. Before the death of her husband she had always been surrounded by a brilliant crowd of gentlemen who had sought her society from the neighbouring famous baths,--acquaintances from St. Petersburg, distinguished Englishmen, Italians, Poles,--in short, the gay, wealthy idlers of every nation that invariably flock around a beautiful woman upon her travels. With these she smoked, rode, and drove,--proceedings that had excited no outcry in the gay world at St. Petersburg, but that called forth shrieks of horror from the women in the little German University-town and greatly excited the students, who were never weary of caricaturing her,--harnessing four horses, and, disguised as women, driving them wildly through the streets, mimicking her foreign admirers, making her bearded servants drunk, and playing many other madcap pranks in ridicule of her.