I shall not weary your highness with a detail of what occurred. I shall only say, that after the town had been nearly reduced to ashes, by the shells and shot, which had set fire to it at least one hundred times, it was taken by storm, with immense slaughter. We sat in our apartments, listening with terror to the alternate shouting and shrieking--the noise of the bursting of the shells, the whizzing of the balls, the cries of the wounded, and the terrific roaring of the flames, which were now consuming the whole town in their fury. At last our doors were burst open, and the enemy entered. We screamed, and would have fled, but in vain. What became of the rest I know not, but I was dragged over the dead and the dying, through smoke and through flame, until I fainted away with terror and exhaustion. When I recovered, I found myself in a hut, lying on a small bed, and attended by two bearded monsters, whom I afterwards discovered were Cossacks. They were chafing my limbs with their rough hands, without the least regard for decorum. As soon as I opened my eyes, one of them poured a little spirits down my throat, and wrapping me up in a horse-cloth, they left me--to meditate upon my misfortunes. I discovered that evening that I had, by the fortune of war, become the property of a Russian general, who had no time for making love. With him it was all ready made, as a matter of course. Still he was a handsome man, and when not tipsy, was good-humoured and generous; but the bivouacs, even of a general, were very different from the luxuries to which I had been accustomed. I lived badly, and was housed worse. It so unfortunately happened, that my protector was a great gambler, as indeed are all Russians; and one morning, to my surprise, a handsome young officer came into the tent and the general very unceremoniously handed me over to him. My beauty had been made known in the camp, and the Russian general, having the night before lost all his money, had staked me for one thousand sequins, and had lost. My new master was a careless, handsome youth, a colonel in the army; I could have loved him, but I had not time; for I had not been in his tent more than three weeks, before I was again gambled away, and lost to a major. I had hardly time to make myself comfortable in my new abode, when I was staked and lost again. In short, your highness, in that campaign I was the property of between forty and fifty Russian officers, and what with the fatigue of marching, the badness of provisions, and my constant unsettled state of mind and body, I lost much of my good looks--so much, indeed, that I found out that instead of being taken as a stake of one thousand sequins, I was not valued at more than two hundred. I can assure your highness that it is no joke to go through a Russian camp in that way--to be handed about like a purse of money, out of one man's pocket into another's. I assure you, that before the campaign was over, I had had quite enough of the