rest of her chequered life until the end came one day in 1824; and her
last resting-place was, as she wished it to be, by the side of her
beloved Alfieri. In the Church of Santa Croce, in Florence, midway
between the tombs of Michael Angelo and Machiavelli, the two lovers
sleep together their last sleep, beneath a beautiful monument fashioned
by Canova's hands--Louise, wife of the "Bonnie Prince" (as we still
choose to remember him) and Vittorio Alfieri, to whom, to quote his own
words, "she was beyond all things beloved."




CHAPTER III

THE PEASANT AND THE EMPRESS


Many an autocrat of Russia has shown a truly sovereign contempt for
convention in the choice of his or her favourites, the "playthings of an
hour"; and at least three of them have carried this contempt to the
altar itself.

Peter, the first, as we have seen, offered a crown to Martha Skovronski,
a Livonian scullery-maid, who succeeded him on the throne; the second
Catherine gave her hand as well as her heart to Patiomkin, the gigantic,
ill-favoured ex-sergeant of cavalry; and Elizabeth, daughter of Peter
and his kitchen-Queen, proved herself worthy of her parentage when she
made Alexis Razoum, a peasant's son, husband of the Empress of Russia.
You will search history in vain for a story so strange and romantic as
this of the great Empress and the lowly shepherd's son, whom her love