offer but the feeblest resistance, and, notwithstanding his empty coffers, managed to raise a sufficient sum to convey the syren in almost imperial state to the Adriatic, bestowing on her as a parting gift a deed that empowered her to assume his title, in case of his death before their legal union.

At Venice "Tarakanoff" found a magnificent suite at her disposal in the palace of the French Ambassador, and Radziwil having obtained the approbation of Louis XV., and a notification of his conviction of the justice of her claim through an influential relative at the Versailles court, her salon speedily became the rendezvous of the most noted men of the day. Among the admirers of the young Princess's "esprit, beauty, and deep knowledge of European politics" was Edward Wortley Montagu, the eccentric son of the famous Lady Mary whose six-volume correspondence places her at the head of the female letter-writers of Great Britain.

Chaperoned by the Princess Morawska, Radziwil's sister, "Tarakanoff's" incognita was still thinly maintained under the title "Voldomir," but her pretensions were freely canvassed in the town, and an attractive brigade of young French and Polish officers proposed to form themselves into a bodyguard under the command of Domanski, and follow her when she moved closer to the seat of war. Unfortunately, the commercial powers of Venice did not prove so open to fascination or conviction; after a few small advances, the bank. begged to close its account with the distinguished visitor, and when she moved down the Adriatic with Radziwil to Ragusa, it was he who defrayed her expenses, and who afterwards maintained her at the beautiful country villa which the French Consul was induced to give up for her use. But Sir John Dick's statement that their connection was otherwise than political and platonic seems to be without foundation.

The quaint hospitable little republic of Ragusa was much excited by the arrival of the mysterious stranger and her brilliant military cavalcade, and when the resident nobility, who dated from the days of Charlemagne, had been vouchsafed a glimpse of the credentials of her august birth, including the will of the late Empress Elizabeth appointing her her heiress and successor, and the Duke of Holstein her guardian during minority-the enthusiasm became unbounded, and the ardent Ragusans were ready to stake their lives on the truth and justice of her claim. If any outsider ventured to express doubt or suspicion, he became the object of public contumely and the recipient of a warlike invitation from Domanski, which few cared to court, as the young Pole was the most skilled swordsman of the city.

The party remained in this shelter for more than a year, watching the campaign on the Danube, and waiting for a propitious moment to advance. But the moment never came. The year 1774 proved a disastrous one to Poland's prospects; her powerful friends, Louis XV., the Pope, and the Sultan went the way of all flesh, and the latter was succeeded by a less warlike ruler, who opened his reign by a signature of peace with Russia.

This step prostrated the high-hearted Radziwil for the time being, and the Princess, noting that her adherents were beginning to weary a little of their Capuan quarters, wisely took the initiative. She gratefully disbanded her gallant bodyguard, and, accompanied only by the devoted Domanski and a Polish Jesuit named Chanecki, made her way to Naples, with a letter of introduction from Edward Montagu to the English Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton.

Lady Hamilton received her effusively, and offered her apartments in her house; but "Tarakanoff's" object being to gain the support of the new Pope and the head of the Jesuits, Cardinal Albani, she moved almost at once to the capital, and there, settling in secluded quarters, avoided the fashionable world, and promptly gained for herself a reputation for saintly propriety and benevolence, by the austerity of her life and her large gifts to the poor of the city -the money forthcoming through the sale of brevets of orders founded by the bankrupt Prince of Limburg, who still hoped for her return. By this device she gained many friends; but, funds failing her, when the brevets were exhausted she wrote to the Hamiltons, begging them to help her in raising a considerable sum on the revenues of the Count of Oberstein. Without treacherous intent, Sir William enclosed her letter to the Consul at Leghorn, asking his co-operation, and he showed it to Alexis Orloff, who at once determined to carry out the imperial wishes without bloodshed or esclandre. Through the agency of a Roman banker he offered large advances, and, seeing how eagerly the bait was swallowed, he then sent his Adjutant to entreat the Princess of Voldomir to visit Pisa, and give him the great honour and pleasure of making her acquaintance.

Having always had a longing diplomatic eye on the mighty Orloff brothers, she was delighted at the invitation, particularly as there were "signs in the air" showing that Catherine was beginning to revolt under the insolence of the elder brother, who scornfully refused the position that Rasumovski had occupied in the late Empress's ménage, and demanded a public ceremonial—even a joint coronation, it was rumoured-as compensation for the trammels of matrimony with one of the most brilliant women of Europe; and to gain such allies as

these the Princess of Voldomir would have gladly travelled from one end of the globe to the other.

In vain Domanski tried to dissuade her from the journey, and to impress on her his conviction of Orloff's intended treachery.

"When have I been accustomed to consult you?" she imperiously asked. "I go whither my destiny calls. If you fear to follow, remain behind."

"My life belongs to you. Where you go, I go," was his answer. The manner of her reception at Pisa gave no cause for apprehension. She was installed in a handsomely furnished house, the greatest respect and attention were shown to the members of her party, and her royal claims were tacitly acknowledged.

Following the general lead, the herculean Admiral at once made love to his fascinating guest with such success that, after less than a fortnight's acquaintance, he proposed an immediate and secret. marriage.

Believing that such a step would bring her to the threshold of the Winter Palace, she consented unhesitatingly, with an utter disregard for Domanski's feelings.

In the presence of two of Orloff's confederates, a third, disguised as a priest, performed the scandalous rite, and utterly unsuspicious of treachery, she accepted next day an invitation to witness a naval fight in the port of Leghorn, which the Admiral informed her he had commanded in celebration of his nuptials.

The spectacle included a banquet at sea, to which the leading citizens of Pisa and Leghorn were invited, but to what extent Sir John Dick was cognizant of the plot is not disclosed. It is clearly asserted that both he and his wife took part in the fête, but that they were not on board the barge which conveyed the lady to the squadron, as stated by Castera. In the first vessel, according to the memoir, Orloff placed all his local guests, while the second was reserved for the Princess, her friends, and himself.

Sailing slowly towards the north of the harbour, the unfortunate woman became so absorbed in the brilliant coup d'œil that she did not notice they had left the companion vessel well behind, until Domanski's white face and his agitated whisper "Betrayed!" made her suddenly aware that Orloff was no longer in sight, and that she was surrounded by soldiers.

The captain of the frigate came forward and announced that she and her party were the prisoners of the Empress of Russia, that her papers had been seized at Pisa, and her servants arrested.

She was conveyed to the Admiral's cabin, where she remained in

a state of speechless despair until evening, when an orange was handed to her by one of Orloff's attendants, wrapped in a piece of paper on which was scribbled in the Admiral's handwriting

"Have courage, beloved. I am a prisoner like yourself."

Believing that her perfidious host was confined in another part of the vessel, she recovered her equanimity to some extent, and bore the long and stormy journey to the Baltic with uncomplaining steadfastness and reserve.

They did not sail until morning. During the night Orloff slipped back to port, and the violently inflamed eyes and agitated manner described by the Consul probably show that, consummate scoundrel as the man was, yet that he must have had a pretty bad quarter of an hour before he resigned to a cruel grave the woman who had trusted him.

Cronstadt was reached in the middle of the night and the vessel boarded by Galitzin, who conveyed the prisoners direct to the fortress of Saint Peter.

Next day the minister used every threat and inducement his imagination could suggest to make the dauntless woman confess that her claim was false, that she was no Russian Princess but a Polish peasant, the daughter of a small innkeeper at Prague, and, failing utterly, he addressed himself to her companion :

But he who stems a stream with sand,

And fetters flame with flaxen band,
Has yet a harder task to prove

By firm resolve to conquer love!

Neither the prospects of a painful death, of a life-exile to Siberia, nor the promise of immediate release with high favours to follow, could shake Domanski's supreme fealty; and after lying for two months, half naked and half starved, in an icy dungeon under the level of the Neva, "Tarakanoff" still persisted in the truth of the story she had always maintained, though she was repeatedly assured that she could leave Russia unmolested an hour after she had signed a confession of imposture.

Though her brilliant versatility and daring, her powers of fascination and faithlessness in love, decidedly favour her claim to kinship with the Livonian peasant who made a tool of Menschikoff and shared the throne with Peter the Great, yet the weight of evidence inclines to the decision that the "Princess of Voldomir" was but a skilful adventuress whom Radziwil used as an instrument to upset the power of his country's worst enemy. However, it is undeniable that Catherine dreaded her as a rival, that for nearly a

century after her death no effort was made by the State to establish her identity, or the date and manner of the death of Elizabeth's daughter in the Moscow convent or the castle of Vereia, and finally that the prisoner was buried with the greatest secrecy at dead of night, her jailor and his assistants being sworn to the strictest silence regarding her last moments and her resting-place.

To what extent the magnificent Pole believed in the pretensions of the woman he loved to his undoing will never be known, for he dropped dead during the terrible winter journey to Siberia in 1775, and within a few weeks, exhausted by cold and hunger, the Princess joined him in "the eternal silence," leaving her personality one of the unsolved mysteries of the eighteenth century, and her brief career of passion and adventure a prolific theme for the writers of historical melodrama, of which few, if any, have availed themselves.

MARY COSTELLO.