04 THE GRAND DUKE CONSTANT1NE 



he thought I was unwilling to explain, or expressly reserved that of 

 which I regret to confess I was utterly ignorant; "or he would dash 

 up in a towering passion, break into some intemperate expression, 

 and declare that I ought to be ashamed of myself not to be acquainted 

 with statistics, which even foreigners knew well. In these fierce 

 moods, in these sudden and unforeseen accesses of passion, he was 

 with difficulty pacified a task upon which I never dared venture 

 I could only look on and listen in silence ; but if his elegant and 

 amiable princess was present, as was not unfrequently the case, her 

 graceful tenderness and endearments calmed down the storm : she 

 petted him like a froward child, and with a doubting pause or a 

 half-muttered growl his good humour returned. This charming and 

 accomplished creature was his wife, by one of those left-handed 

 marriages so common and well understood among the German 

 princes; and it was always a matter of surprise to me by what 

 strange freak of destiny a being so mild and gentle in manner, so 

 graceful, so tender and amiable in all the acts and movements of her 

 life, could have been linked to such a monster; and what seems 

 stranger still, she loved him, and thence, perhaps, the secret of her 

 influence. I have seen him often playing with her long ringlets, or 

 fondling in his great paw the prettiest and whitest hand in the 

 world, or kissing his hand to her at a window with an air that 

 actually approached to tenderness. She, indeed, was the only person 

 who possessed any real influence over his mind, and her gentle ways 

 could soothe the wild beast in his angriest rnootls : she would follow 

 him as he stamped about the room : she expostulated, she wheedled, 

 she caressed, she would try with a tear in her eye to make him 

 laugh ; and it would seem that, almost in spite of himself, the smile 

 she sought so anxiously came at her bidding : he would look into her 

 eyes, kiss her little hand, and seat himself again without another 

 allusion to the cause of the explosion. He seemed almost to en- 

 courage her interference, and he played with her as a child would 

 with a doll, but she was a plaything with which he never quarrelled. 

 He seemed proud too of her mental acquirements, and he delighted 

 in the display of her accomplishments. Indeed, I at one time 

 attributed it as a principal cause whjf I was so often an invited guest 

 at the Belvidere, that it afforded her the opportunity of speaking 

 English, an accomplishment in which she excelled : she possessed 

 considerable fluency, and that least possible smack of a foreign 

 accent which could not be otherwise than pleasing on the lips of a 

 pretty woman. Constantine took great pleasure in setting us talking 

 in that language, rubbed his hands, and listened with evident 

 gratification as she prattled away in a tongue which he did not 

 understand, and continued repeatedly to express his pleasure and 

 satisfaction. 



His tenderness for this mild and gentle being was at least a 

 redeeming point in his character, and his attachment was repaid on 

 her part by the most devoted and entire affection. Poor thing ! his 

 death broke the slight cord which attached her to life ; whether it 

 was that her whole soul, her existence, was wrapped up in him who 

 had raised her from comparative obscurity almost to a throne, or 



