There is a strange tale which is told by La Mottraye, but we recommend that it should he taken cum grano.
The writer had a profound admiration for the fair exile, when he visited the Count Tekeli at Constantinople, and tells us that Helena had relinquished almost all the money and jewels which Prince Ragotski had bequeathed her, to her second husband, with the exception of four thousand ducats; but this sum, and a few remaining jewels, she had locked in a little strong-box, and deposited in the custody of the reverend fathers, the Jesuits at Galata.
A devoted Roman Catholic, she had designed the treasure to defray the expenses of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, should her life be prolonged, or to be expended in masses for her soul, in the event of her death, keeping the key in her own hands, and—so said the good fathers, her spiritual advisers—all this, without the knowledge of her husband. Her reason may be well imagined, for he, being a Lutheran, ‘and fearing no pains between death and paradise, and having so much occasion for money in temporal affairs, would have dissuaded her from being at so much expense for spirituals.’
Only one of her servants knew her secret. Him she sent from time to time, to fetch a priest of the order, to celebrate mass, hear her confession, and administer communion to the exiled lady.
When her life was despaired of, the servant in question told the Count’s secretary of the treasure with the Jesuits. The secretary immediately told his master, and they held a council together, the result of which was, that they should send the servant, who would not be suspected, with a message purporting to be from the Countess, to the effect that they should send her the box, she wishing to make some additions thereto, and that in three or four days one of the priests should go to her for it.
Bribed by the promise of a large reward, the servant is said to have undertaken the business, but the secretary judged it more prudent to follow, and watch the messenger.
By the time he returned with the treasure, the Countess had breathed her last, and when the father-confessor arrived two days after, he found the lady buried already; and instead of the box he had intrusted to the servant, another was presented to him, containing Countess Tekeli’s heart, which she had bequeathed to the holy fathers in her last moments, and to which they gave distinguished funeral rites.
The secretary offered the priest a hundred ducats, which he refused, demanding the whole contents of the casket, for masses to be said for the soul of the departed. The Count refused, observing that, though his wife might have required the money to travel to the earthly Jerusalem, she could not possibly need it to go to the heavenly Jerusalem. The secretary—we still quote La Mottraye—who was also a Protestant, laughed irreverently in his sleeve at the disappointment of the holy men.
There are duplicate pictures of the Count and Countess in the possession of a lady in London. The curious manner in which the Countess conceals her hand with a handkerchief led to the conjecture that the beautiful insurgent might have suffered the penalty of amputation, so frequent at that time, as in the case of her father, and his friends; but the lady who owns the companion picture to Lord Bath’s gave me another version of the story.
She had some time ago an old German master who was a Hungarian, and much interested in the portrait of his fair compatriot. His tradition was, that the picture was painted to commemorate the valiant manner in which the Countess behaved, when, writing a letter in her tent, a stray cannonball shattered her right hand.