interest that I felt in this backwoods maiden. A slightly pale face it was, strong and well arched, with a tender, wistful expression not easy to forget.

I had surely seen that face many times before in towns and cities, and in other lands, but I hardly expected to meet it here amid the stumps. What were the agencies that had given it its fine lines and its gracious intelligence amid these simple, primitive scenes? What did my heroine read, or think? or what were her unfulfilled destinies? She wore a sprig of prince's pine in her hair, which gave a touch peculiarly welcome.

66

Pretty lonely," she said in answer to my inquiry; "only an occasional fisherman in summer, and in winter-nobody at all."

And the little new school-house in the woods further on, with its half dozen scholars and the girlish face of the teacher seen through the open door-nothing less than the exhilaration of a journey on foot could have made it seem the interesting object it was. Two of the little girls had been to the spring after a pail of water and came struggling out of the woods into the road with it as we passed. They set down their pail and regarded us with a half curious, half alarmed look.

"What is your teacher's name?" asked one of us.

"Miss Lucinde Josephine

began the red-haired one, then hesitated bewildered, when the bright dark-eyed one cut her short with "Miss Simms," and taking hold of the pail said, "Come on."

"Are there any scholars from above here?" I inquired.

"Yes, Bobbie and Matie," and they hastened toward the door.

We once more stopped under a bridge for refreshments, and took our time, knowing the train would not go on without us. By four o'clock we were across the mountain, having passed from the water-shed of the Delaware into that of the Hudson. The next eight miles we had a down grade but a rough road, and during the last half of it we had blisters on the bottoms of our feet. It is one of the rewards of the pedestrian that however tired he may be, he is always more or less refreshed by his journey. His physical tenement has taken an airing. His respiration has been deepened, his circulation quickened. A good draught has carried off the fumes and the vapors. One's quality is intensified; the color strikes in. At noon that day I was much fatigued; at night I was leg-weary and foot-sore, but a fresh, hardy feeling had taken possession of me that lasted for weeks.

WITHIN the decade of years preceding the outbreak of the first French revolution, the French embassador was one day taking his customary morning walk through the streets of Pera, the Frankish suburb of Constantinople. Near the grave of Count Bonneval, a French adventurer of the time of Louis XIV., he came upon a band of frolicking children. The extraordinary beauty of one of them, a little girl twelve or thirteen years of age, excited the Frenchman's admiration. He watched their play, with scheming eyes fixed on the gleeful maid. "Here," he thought, "is a jewel for my palace." He called the child to him. She responded cheerfully, and stood before his excellency, with the haughty self-possession of a born princess.

"Little girl, who are you, and where do you live?" asked the marquis persuasively. "I am Sophie, sir, and my mamma is a Greek," the child replied.

"A Fanariote," exclaimed the marquis, no less delighted at this intelligence than charmed with the child's address. "Tell your mother she may bring you to the French embassadorial palace at noon to-morrow."

Sophie made her salam in a pretty bow, and leaving her playmates to wonder at what had happened, skipped away to a narrow street near by, and disappeared in a dingy baker's shop. Her mother's unattractive and dissimulating face brightened as Sophie related the interview with the marquis. One admiring look at her child explained to the mother the meaning of the marquis's favor.

"This is good fortune, Sophie," said she; we will go to the palace."

Sophie's father is invisible at the point where this history begins, perhaps lying behind the scenes with a Turkish poniard in his heart, paying the grudge of race. Sophie was a Fanariote,-as the marquis had been

delighted to learn,-because her parents were descendants of the Greeks who remained in Constantinople after the downfall of the Eastern empire in 1453, and who were assigned to a quarter of the city called the Fanar. The Fanariotes, "kissing ardently the hands which they could not bite off," became interpreters and private secretaries to their conquerors and the foreign embassy. Subservient, adaptable and shrewd, they exercised a powerful influence in the state till the Greek insurrection nipped them stalk and flower.

Sophie's mother had the scheming disposition and unfeeling heart of a Fanariote grafted on comparative poverty. So mother and daughter appeared at the embassadorial palace on the appointed day, and were placed before the marquis. The Frenchman knew with whom he had to deal,-a Fanarote and doubtless poor; not overburdened with sentiment, and susceptible to position and gold.

"How much money would the mother demand for her little Sophie, if she were disposed to sell ?"

And he promised, in the same breath, to educate and otherwise provide for the little Fanariote as if she were his own child.

The mother let flow a whole reservoir of tears. She might be a poor baker-woman, she said, but she had a heart, for all that, and came of an exceedingly good family. Her ancestor and here she courtesied profoundly-was, indeed, no other than the celebrated Byzantine emperor, Manuel Komnenos. How could his excellency think, for a moment, that she, the mother, would sell her princely baker-daughter!

The marquis did not dispute the illustrious ancestry of the little Fanariote. The excessive grief of the mother strengthened him in his conclusion that 1,500 piasters ($375) would prove a sufficient bait for the covetous bakerwoman, and he stated his terms. The mother made the palace ring with her doleful cries, till the marquis, losing all patience, told her to sign the contract, which he had already prepared, or take her daughter and go. A few fatherly caresses smoothed out the brow of the child, whose first impulse was to shrink from the embassador's seeming austerity. The mother railed at the baseness of the world, and finally consoling herself with the Turkish proverb, "The nest of a blind bird is built by God," she signed over to the marquis, beyond recall, all claims upon her daughter, took the 1,500 piasters, and withdrew.

Sophie was easily weaned from her mother. A child of her native wit, and naturally proud and crafty nature, had not been dull to the subtle influence of life in Pera. On this hillside the most incongruous elements mingled: foreign nobility and native servility, state craft and plebeian cunning, foreign adventurers and native rascals, European travelers and those citizens of the world, the gypsies.

The effect of the dingy palaces and dirty narrow streets of Pera on the æsthetic side of Sophie's nature was more than neutralized, however, by the wonderful view which the hill-side commanded. The beautiful panorama embraced all Constantinople and the suburbs, the Bosphorus, with its summer palaces; the Golden Horn, with its shipping and the Bridge of Boats; Scutari, on the Asiatic side; and in the western distance, the Sea of Marmora, where the evening sun, sinking among the Grecian isles, spread a sheen over the waters, gilding the white mosques and minarets of Stamboul and the Seraglio Point.

Sophie took more than a child's delight and interest in her new prospects. The marquis spared no expense to transform his beautiful Greek ward into a Parisian, and her intelligence and aptitude lent themselves readily to the project. She was surrounded with servants and governesses, and, thanks to her ambition and spirit, soon acquired such accomplishments as French, music, etiquette and dancing. At fifteen, she could maintain herself, almost on equal terms, with the ladies who frequented the embassy. The sly beauty was not slow to note the impression her youthful personality made on the marquis. Her sweet disposition and naïve demeanor were irresistible, and won the love of the entire household, while, with insinuating modesty, she literally commanded the palace, from the marquis down. He could not have been prouder of his ward, had she been his own child, or loved her more unselfishly. Her pre

But the situation changed. cocity and cool coquettishness caused the marquis many a little heart-pang. The possibility of some bold suitor winning her away distressed him. When love should win a claim, he knew that his authority over her would count for very little. Live without her he could not, and he gradually persuaded himself that the only safe plan was to marry her himself. Before the fitting opportunity arrived for carrying out the plans of so delicate a courtship, he was unhappily recalled by his government

and compelled to set off without much delay for France. With tender solicitude for his little Fanariote, who was in the pink of her youthful beauty, he concluded not to risk a voyage by sea, but to proceed overland and divulge his plans for her future after their arrival in Paris.

The almost barbarous districts of Turkey were traversed without accident or threatening incident. The marquis breathed more freely on entering the then Polish province of Podolia. They arrived at Kamieniec, the capital of the province, together, but the marquis was destined to continue the journey westward alone.

An adventurous star had stood over Kamieniec for centuries. As its Polish name implied, it was a "City of Rock," as obduCity of Rock," as obdurate and cold in principle as it was charmingly picturesque. In the heart of the rugged hills and green slopes through which the river Smotrycz had cut its way to the Dniester, was an oval valley. Here, the river, encountering a gigantic mass of lime-stone, cut round both sides of it, leaving an island, precipitous and rugged on the north and east, and not easily accessible from the west. The citadel of Kamieniec crowned this isolated rock.

When the castle gate opened to receive the French marquis and his beautiful ward, Count de Witt, a brilliant young cavalier, not thirty years of age, was commandant of the town. His affiliations with the Polish-Russian party, and youthful dash and unscrupulous determination of character, had hastened his promotion to the rank of general, and placed him in a command of first importance. De Witt no sooner learned of the journey of the French marquis through Podolia, than he dispatched a messenger to offer the hospitalities of the town till marquis and suite should overcome the tedium of their journey. The invitation was accepted. The marquis was received and entertained in a manner becoming an official representative of France. Count de Witt was only too kind and disinterested. The marquis made haste to confer on his host the honor of an introduction to his ward. Sophie and De Witt took so naturally and kindly to the acquaintance, that they immediately created a wall of courtesy and reserve around themselves, wholly impenetrable to the marquis. Witt was ready to declare that eye had never beheld form more graceful, or a being, in all respects, more supremely beautiful. The susceptible Fanariote discovered that the count was, in comparison with the mar

De

quis, a young Adonis, and-with two or three touches of feminine fancy-a perfect hero. The marquis saw-nothing at all. He, too, lived in the seventh heaven. It sufficed for his unlimited pleasure, that at the festival which the count gave in their honor, the beauty of Sophie threw a grateful shadow over all the other ladies. Sophie knew the influence of beauty and feminine accomplishments, and no less their perils. She had already begun to look above mere social conquests, in which she neither compromised her dignity by over desire to please or by the want of feminine tact and lady-like reserve. There was something extraordinary, and to the marquis, quite assuring, in the modest grace with which she received the homage of the cavaliers, and of Count de Witt in particular.

The count's passion was re-enforced by cool generalship and strategy. What Sophie knew of diplomatic courtship by intuition, he had learned by experience. The marquis was led into persuading himself that a half dozen days' rest in Kamieniec would be advantageous to his health and not prejudicial to his public interests. De Witt took the opportunity of a visit which was paid to the battlements, to open his heart to the Fanariote, who, indirectly, and with the utmost discretion, gave him to understand that she was not indifferent to his suit, but that he alone must devise the way and means to win her.

De Witt searched his brains for a plan to dispose of the Frenchman. The marquis was an indifferent hunter, but followed the chase with inverse ardor. De Witt caught at the idea, and in his official capacity as commandant, placed a hunting-train with no end of dogs, horses and huntsmen, at the disposal of the marquis, who, after two or three short excursions, planned a grand hunt which should serve as a pleasant remembrance of his visit. De Witt contrived to weigh himself down with official duties on that day. He took a little time, however, to see the party properly organized and the marquis safely across the Smotrycz, and to wish him a safe (he omitted the "early ") return.

The hunting-party was scarcely out of sight when all was bustle and commotion in the citadel of Kamieniec. The nimble maids of Kamieniec managed Sophie's toilet so well that want of preparation and of the strictly conventional attire of a Polish bride were easily overlooked. Other maids came with baskets of flowers and scattered them

about Sophie's apartments and along the way to the castle chapel. Then came different individuals who were prepared to represent the retinue of the Fanariote, and, not a minute too late, Count de Witt, gorgeous in his uniform, epaulets and plume, and accompanied by his martial groomsmen. With all due ceremony the marriage procession formed and proceeded to the castle chapel, where a priest of the Greek church blessed the bride and groom, and joined them so fast in wedlock that even a French diplomatist, though he had the rights of a father, could not undo the knot.

In the meantime one of the retinue of the marquis, having remained behind, early had his suspicions aroused by the unusual preparations in and about the castle, and had set off post-haste to warn the marquis of other game than the wild boor and the stag. No huntsman winded his horn for the return chase. The marquis and his faithful valet rode toward Kamieniec as if possessed by the Valkyrias, his strength fed by the anger of betrayal.

General de Witt, being warned by the sentry of the marquis's approach, gave orders that the gates of the town be closed against him. The marquis was too late to enter, but just in time to have his ears tantalized by the merry chiming of the cathedral bells, which announced to all Kamieniec that the marriage of the commandant had taken place and that the town would go wild that night over the marriage festival. The marquis was not left entirely to his own wrath. At the conclusion of the ceremony the bridegroom dispatched an adjutant and staff to the castle gate where they found the storm still raging. They came, they said, to receive any congratulations his excellency might choose to offer, whereupon they exhibited the marriage contract lawfully drawn up and duly signed by Sophie, on her own part, in the dainty little hand which the marquis had been to so much pains to cultivate.

"Take them my curse for a congratulation and my glove for a dower," shouted the marquis in his rage, throwing his glove in the face of the unruffled adjutant.

De Witt returned the glove-challenge with a courteous note emphasizing his esteem for the marquis, his love for his ward, and congratulating himself modestly on the unalterable upshot of the embassador's visit. At the same time, those of the marquis's retinue who were not already witnesses of his discomfiture were requested not to leave

their master outside the gate without the moral support of their presence. Their traveling effects were also sent along. Seeing that his bootless suit would quickly be turned into downright ridicule, the marquis pocketed the 1,500 piasters which a dutiful ward had not forgotten to return, scowled at the crowd enjoying the scene from the walls and from the castle windows, and resumed his journey toward Paris.

For three years nothing disturbed the joy and connubial bliss of General de Witt and his wife, to whom, during this time, a child was born. Unfortunately, the commandant's worldly substance was almost all cheap glory and few riches. As a fiery young officer, of noble birth, he had made away with most of his patrimony and had largely mortgaged the future. Sophie's tastes were luxurious and social. They lived in princely fashion, and the mistress of the citadel of Kamieniec did not want for admiring courtiers, only the day of payment was not always easy or pleasant. Neither the hasty marriage nor the coquettish nature of the young countess was a surety of a very deep and lasting sentiment of love between de Witt and his wife. The Fanariote was as amiable and as beautiful as a butterfly, and, in an undemonstrative way, both politic and ambitious. She had learned in the embassadorial palace at Pera, the difference between great realities and fine appearances, as well as the sources and offices of influence among men. Her husband was a brilliant cavalier, and, in the eyes of most women, passed for the greatest lord in Podolia. The clever Fanariote soon discovered that the count, bold and courageous as he was, nevertheless was only the military servant of a political faction, at the head of which stood Count Potocki.

With

Felix Potocki had inherited the prestige and fortune of one of the greatest and richest noble families of Poland. Born in 1750, he was now forty years of age, and equipped for an eventful career. For pretending to the throne of Poland, he had suffered the confiscation of a part of his estate. patriotism soured, he retired to his vast possessions in the Ukraine, the province east of Podolia, where several noble estates had fallen to his family. Here he built many villages. His influence as a landed proprietor was enormous. He possessed no less than ten cities and ninety boroughs and villages, and eighty thousand serfs were attached to the soil. He was

soon recalled to Warsaw and appointed | grand master of the artillery.

Here was a figure in Polish society and politics to place before the beautiful Fanariote, only at the peril of the de Witt family. Felix Potocki had the manners of a true courtier, and he had yet to find the consort who should satisfy his proud and ambitious spirit. General de Witt looked to the powerful noble for favor, and was, naturally, more or less controlled by him. Felix Potocki employed his exceptional advantages to become completely infatuated with the bewitching wife of the commandant, and to win her affections in return. Really he had little to accomplish, for the ambitious Fanariote had already set her feather on being one of the first ladies in the kingdom-if not queen indeed-as she was already first in beauty. She was shrewd enough not to imperil her chances by indiscreet haste, and led Potocki on till the avowal was made and the determination formed to annul the first marriage by any possible means.

De Witt could not have been ignorant of the passionate attachment of Count Potocki for his wife. He combined martial display and deference to superiors with a certain allowance of pusillanimity. Count Potocki had the assurance to appear one day before the commandant and proclaim his love for the Fanariote.

"I cannot live without your wife," said Count Potocki with genuine emotion, "and I think you see well enough that you cannot offer her the station her beauty and spirit demand. Gratify her wish by relinquishing her to me, and without enmity assist in procuring a divorce, and I will give you two million gulden."

De Witt received the astonishing confession and proposition with dumbfounded look. He was too much of a gentleman, of too obtuse honor, to show his great patron any discourtesy, and terminated the interview by promising "to think of it."

To the beautiful Greek who had inherited little fine moral sense, and absorbed even less from the atmosphere of Constantinople, and to Count Potocki and his class, the proposed bargain offered no greater objection than the legal obstacles to be overcome. De Witt invited his wife to an explanation, which was not rendered disagreeable by anything so inconsiderate as a reproach. Quite the contrary. Sophie kept him, as from the first, under the influence of her fascination, and told all. Without unnecessarily wounding his pride, she persuaded

him to open his mind to conviction. She said she loved Potocki and was determined to have the career which he alone could offer her. And to open his pocket to the two million gulden, she urged that the sum would relieve him of a great many pecuniary embarrassments, and enable him to go on in the career of a gay general as he had previous to their marriage. A stronger argument with de Witt was the belief that it would be better to accept Potocki's offer, than take offense at such an amicable attempt to dispossess him of a beautiful wife, and run the risk of being openly degraded without any recompense at all. De Witt finally consented. The two million gulden and the good-will of numerous anxious creditors were transferred to him, the divorce was as readily obtainable as his own good offices, and within two months Sophie was enjoying all the legal privileges, and had not long to wait for the social distinction, pertaining to so great a lady as the Countess Potocka.

The Fanariote was the equal of Potocki in cleverness and ambition, and surpassed him in cheerfulness and buoyancy of disposition. She wore her new honors with the grace of one born in the purple, and with the amiability of a saint. She had neither the haughtiness nor the coldness of the upstart, nor the envy and foolish extravagance which too often destroy those who find themselves suddenly rich and influential. Her influence undoubtedly strengthened Potocki in his resolve to persist in the political course which caused his downfall. Sophie could feel very little patriotic interest in the affairs of Poland. Count Potocki, who had presumed to grasp at the crown itself, who had lived to see one partition of his country, and to foresee a second, was shrewd enough as a politician, to discern that the national influence and cohesive power were broken, and selfish enough to look out for his own private interests in the impending ruin.

Catherine of Russia flattered Felix Potocki in his foolish hope of one day sitting on the Polish throne, and joined with him the wily intriguers Branicki and Rzewuski. These three agents of discord met at Targovitza in the Ukraine, and by their famous act of confederation engaged to set aside the new Polish constitution.

In March, 1793, Felix Potocki was sent as embassador to St. Petersburg. The visit was a brilliant season for Sophie, who played the countess to perfection, was received with distinction at the Russian court, and surrounded with admirers. Catherine showered