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    884 MADAME SWETCHINE.

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    — I .— In Our Last Number We Reviewed Th...

    o ' clock she had already been to church and had visited the poor ; and the hours were her own until three in the afternoon . From three to six

    her salon was open to her friends ; from six to nine it was again closed ; Tout at nine she again received company , who usually

    remained until midnight . The habitues of the afternoon and those of the evening were generally distinct ; some of those who came every

    night , had never even seen others who had adopted the earlier hour . So fixed can the habits of French people become in these trifling

    things , that one lady , La Marquise de Pastoret , who came every day from four till six , on returning from her visits to the hospitals and

    the _j _^ oor _, was told by her coachman that he could not answer for her safety if she ivould _g-o and see a sick friend one evening , '' as

    his horses had never seen lighted lanterns . Madame de Pastoret was accustomed to " receive " every night at her own house , and her

    custom appeared to have become a sort of law . There are many biographies of which the fine flower and perfume

    cannot be gathered and presented in a small compass , and the correspondence between Madame Swetchine and her friends , though

    full of delicate and subtle touches , must be read at length to be appreciated . How her adopted child , Nadine , having become the

    Comtesse de Segur d'Aguesseau , she undertook the charge of the daughter of a dear Russian friendMademoiselle de Nesselrodeis

    , , told at length in letters to the absent mother . " PXelene , " who afterwards became the wife of Count Michel Chreptowitch , was at that

    time fourteen years old , and Madame Swetchine ' s ideas of education ¦*¦ Helene ¦ were well brings calculated her corresp to secure ondence love to from show young to Madam - peop e le Swetchine . When ,

    the latter takes care to read to her young guest some of her letters in younger return . insists ; the 7 elder on pay lady ing places 1 half a littl the e monthl girl as y an expenses apprentice out , and of her the

    " allowance / and so they go on together in a way that is not without interest for all who care to learn that Russian women of rank can be full of tender pious charity and cultivated thought .

    The _Bevolxition of 1830 threw Madame Swetchine ' s personal friends on one side , but does not appear to have changed in any way

    her mode of life in the Faubourg St . Germain . We find her still in discussing 1833 writing social a and series political of letters affairs to with " Mon her cher numerous Charles / friends 7 the Comte , and

    de Montalembert , the man for whom English sympathy was so warmly aroused at the time of his conflict with Louis Napoleon a

    few years ago . But in 1834 the quiet household of the Rue St . Dominique was suddenly convulsed hy a blow which came neither from

    the _fxivy of political passions , nor from the direct hand of Provikindness dence , but ' in from the the matter will of of the an , correspondence arbitrary monarch with , whose his predecessor " _delicate

    Alexander hardly compensated for the sentence he was now about to inflict ; . for an order actually came from the Emperor Nicholas ,

    not merely for the return of the Swetchines to Russia , _Tbut for the

    884 Madame Swetchine.

    884 MADAME SWETCHINE .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1860, page 384, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081860/page/24/