Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

44 DIFFICULTIES OF MADAME DE CUSTINE.

when you are alone, you will always receive me with kindness, for I know your heart; but your friends will regard me as some strange animal; I shall not be at my ease with them. I was not born as you were; I cannot speak as you do." My mother always continued a faithful friend to him. lie had the utmost confidence in her, and used often to relate to her his domestic troubles, but never spoke on politics or religion. lie died while I was yet a child, about the commencement of the period of the Empire.

My poor mother passed in struggling with poverty the best years of that life which had been so miraculously preserved.

Of the enormously rich estate of my grandfather, nothing remained to us but the debts. The govern-inent took the property, but left the task of paying the creditors to those whom it had robbed of the means for so doing.

Twenty years were spent in ruinous lawsuits, with the view of recovering for me some of tliis estate. My mother was my guardian. Her love for me prevented her ever again marrying; besides, made a widow by the hands of the executioner, she did not feel herself free to act as do other women.

Our involved and complicated affairs wrere her torment. We were ever kept suspended betwixt fear and hope, and struggling meanwhile with want. At one time riches would appear within our grasp; at another, some unforeseen reverse, some chicanery of the law, deprived lis of every prospect. If I have any taste for the elegancies of life, I attribute it to the privations of my early youth.

A year after her liberation, my mother obtained