The caustic wit that led to her disgrace at the court of St. Petersburg, her stately manners, her name, her prodigious memory, and immense fortune, quickly attracted round her all the notable persons in Southern Russia. Distinguished foreigners eagerly coveted the honour of being introduced to her, and she was soon at the head of a little court, over which she presided like a real sovereign. But being by nature very capricious, the freak sometimes seized her to shut herself up for whole months in total solitude. Although she relapsed into philosophical and Voltairian notions, the remembrance of Madame de Krudener inspired her with occasional fits of devotion that oddly contrasted with her usual habits. It was during one of these visitations that she erected a colossal cross on one of the heights commanding Koreis. The cross being gilded is visible to a great distance.
Her death in 1839 left a void in Russian society which will not easily be filled. Reared in the school of the eighteenth century, well versed in the literature and the arts of France, speaking the language with an entire command of all that light, playful raillery that made it so formidable of yore; having been a near observer of all the events and all the eminent men of the empire; possessing moreover a power of apprehension and discernment that gave equal variety and point to her conversation; a man in mind and variety of knowledge, a woman in grace and frivolity; the Princess Gallitzin belonged by her brilliant qualities and her charming faults to a class that is day by day becoming extinct.
Now that conversation is quite dethroned in France, and exists only in some few salons of Europe, it is hard to conceive the influence formerly exercised by women of talent. Those of our day, more ambitious of obtaining celebrity through the press than of reigning over a social circle, guard the treasures of their imagination and intellect with an anxious reserve that cannot but prove a real detriment to society. To write feuilletons, romances, and poetry, is all very well; but to preside over a drawing-room, like the women of the eighteenth century, has also its merit. But we must not blame the female sex alone for the loss of that supremacy which once belonged to French society. The men of the present day, more serious than their predecessors, more occupied with positive, palpable interests, seem to look with cold disdain on what but lately commanded their warmest admiration.
But we have lost sight of the Countess Guacher, who is not for all that the least interesting of our heroines. Resigning herself with much more equanimity than her companions to the necessity of leaving the Tatars alone, she hired for herself, even before their complete separation, a small house standing by itself on the sea shore; and there she took up her abode with only one female attendant. Following the example of the Princess Gallitzin, she threw off the béguine robe and assumed a kind of male attire. For some time her existence was almost unknown to her neighbours; so retired were her habits. The only occasions when she was visible was during her rides on horseback on the beach, and it was noticed that she chose the most stormy weather for these excursions.
But her recluse habits did not long conceal her from curious inquiry. A certain Colonel Ivanof, who had noticed the strange proceedings of the pilgrims from their first arrival in the Crimea, set himself to watch the countess, and at last took a house near her retreat; but in order that his presence might not scare her, he contented himself for some weeks with following her at a distance during her lonely promenades, trusting to chance for an opportunity of becoming more intimately acquainted with her. His perseverance was at last rewarded with full success.
One evening, as the colonel stood at his window observing the tokens of an approaching storm, he perceived a person on horseback galloping in the direction of his house, evidently with the intention of seeking shelter. Before this could be accomplished the storm broke out with great fury, and just then the colonel was startled by the discovery that the stranger was his mysterious neighbour. The sequel will be best told in his own words:
"Full of surprise and curiosity I hastened to meet the countess, who entered my doors without honouring me with a single look. She seemed in very bad humour, and concentrated her whole attention upon a tortoise she carried in her left hand. Without uttering a word or caring for the water that streamed from her clothes, she sat down on the divan, and remained for some moments apparently lost in thought. For my part, I continued standing before her, waiting until she should address me, and glad of the opportunity to scrutinise her appearance at my ease. She wore an Amazonian petticoat, a green cloth vest, buttoned over the bosom, a broad-brimmed felt hat, with a pair of pistols in her girdle, and, as I have said, a tortoise in her hand. Her handsome, grave countenance excited my admiration. Below her hat appeared some grey locks, that seemed whitened not so much by years as by sorrow, of which her visage bore the impress.
"Without taking off her hat, the flap of which half concealed her face, she began to warm the tortoise with her breath, calling it by the pet name Dushinka (little soul), which duty being performed she deigned to look up, and perceived me. Her first gesture bespoke extreme surprise. Until then, supposing she was in a Tatar house, she had taken no notice of the objects around her, but the sight of my drawing-room, my library, my piano, and myself, struck her with stupefaction. 'Where am I?' she exclaimed, in hurried alarm. 'Madam,' I replied, 'you are in the house of a man who has long lived as a hermit—a man who like you loves solitude, the sea, and meditation—who has renounced like you the society of his kind to live after his own way in this wilderness.' These words struck her forcibly. 'You, too,' she ejaculated, 'you, too, have divorced yourself from the world, and why? Ay, why?' she repeated, as if conversing with her own thoughts, 'why bury yourself alive here, without friends, without relations, without a heart to respond to yours? Why die this lingering death, when the world is open to you—the world with its delights, its balls and spectacles, its passionate adorations, with the fascinations of the court, the favour of a queen?' Imagine my astonishment to hear her thus in a sort of hallucination, revealing her secret thoughts and recollections. In these few words her whole life was set forth, the life of a beautiful woman, rich, flattered, habituated to the atmosphere of courts.
"After a pause of some duration she entered into conversation with me, questioned me at great length on the way in which I passed my time, on my tastes, the few resources I enjoyed for cultivating the arts, &c. We chatted for more than an hour like old acquaintances, and she seemed quite to have forgotten the strange words she had uttered in the beginning of the interview. Being very much puzzled to know what pleasure she took in carrying the tortoise about with her, I asked her some questions on the subject; but with a solemnity that seemed to me strangely disproportioned to the subject, she told me she had made a vow never to separate from it. 'It is a present from the Emperor Alexander,' she said, 'and as long as I have it near me I shall not utterly despair of my destiny.' Availing myself of this opening I tried to make her talk of the motives that had brought her to the peninsula, but she cut me short by saying that since she had become acquainted with the character of the Tatars she had given up all thought of making converts among them. 'They are men of pure feelings and pure consciences,' she said, impressively; 'why insist on their changing their creed, since they live in accordance with the principles of morality and religion? After all it matters little whether one adores Jesus Christ, Mahomet, or the Grand Lama, if one is charitable, humble, and hospitable.'
"I laughed, and said she spoke rank heresy, and that if she preached such doctrines, she ran great risk of having a bull of excommunication fulminated against her. 'It is since I have given up preaching,' she replied, 'that I have begun to think in this way; solitude makes one regard things in quite a different aspect from that in which they are seen by the world. Only three months ago I set Catholicism above all religions, and now I meditate one still more perfect and sublime. Will you be my first disciple?' she said, in a tone between jest and earnest, that left me very uncertain whether she was serious or not. When she left my house I escorted her to her own door, and promised I would call on her the next day."