Both she and her husband belong to the old nobility of Russia; in the library face themselves old paintings of her ancestor and his, both conspirators in the plot to murder Paul I, both expelled from St. Petersburg of that day and ordered to live on their estates, where it is said they did not behave too sweetly to their serfs. The present Count is an idealist, an admirer of the great idealistic classics of Russian literature, a man who loves the peasants, and ordinarily spends most of his time on his estates. The Countess deplored the sort of men he would bring into dinner, knowing not the usage of the knife, drinking the water of the finger-bowls, and what-not, but country manners never touched him--he simply did not see what was being done. When war broke out he was in such a hurry to get to the front that he accepted a commission in some town regiment where, as a rule, the nobility do not figure, and he went forward on the great wave of Russian enthusiasm which led to Tannenberg. There he was taken prisoner with many thousand others, and was removed into the depths of Germany. As a prisoner he made an attempt to escape, but was arrested before he reached the frontier. For this offence he was put in a fortress in Saxony and confined for a long time solitarily. But he was not treated too badly by the Germans and was given pens and paper and books. He wrote to the Countess for one of my books, of which there had been considerable talk before the war. That was my “Russian Pilgrims.” The Countess had bought a copy, lent it to Mme. S., who had passed it on to the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, and they had all found it interesting. It was sent to Count X. in Germany and he translated it. It was rather touching from my point of view to know that a Russian prisoner had spent so many solitary hours with me, working at a book I wrote. When my “Martha and Mary” was published he had that book also sent to him and he translated it, and wrote so much about the consolation that the Countess averred she felt jealous of my name occurring so often in his letters. Unfortunately, “Martha and Mary” had already been translated. The Countess disapproved of her husband’s idealism and would rather have had him of a more careless worldly type. She craved life, not merely ideas, and was afraid that the sedentary life of her husband in the fortress would so tell on his mind that when he came back he would be less practical than ever.