THE COUNTESS'S REVENGE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2164, 10 December 1875, Page 4

THE COUNTESS'S REVENGE.

In the latter part of the seventeenth oentury a Frenchwoman of extraordinary beauty startled Florence, in Italy, by the splendour of her equipage and entertainments. • Her; husband, the count , had been dead some two years, and the brilliant widow made such attractive use of the millions he had left her that she soon ceased to number her courtiers on her fingers. One night she discovered a man in the assembly at her palace whom it was her destiny to love. He, too, was remarkably handsome, and for a time the fairest couple whom the society of Florence in those stately days had looked upon were thought to bo destined to a life of mutual happiness, But one more puissant than the French Countess, or more dexterous at least, suddenly descended from the North and captivated Adonis. This was a Russian woman of high rank, whose residence amd acres were scattered through every country in Europe. She departed with her bridegroom at the close of a triumphant season of revels, after inviting her Gallican rival to become her guest for a fortnight in the course of the approaching summer. The Frenchwoman surprised the victor by accepting the invitation, and the brief July of 1692, at a superb summer residence on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, hard by the site of the present splendid* Peterhoff, the memory of antagonism at Florence was apparently laughed and whiled away.

The beautiful Countess did not leave her.friends without obtaining from them a promise to visit her at her own favorite retreat the very next year. In the following July she welcomed them to an immense ancient country seat on a slope of the Western range of the Carpathian Mountains. From the day of their arrival they were treated, day and night, to a succession of pleasures far surpassing: any that she had received at their hands. Her retainers were numerous, trained to perfection, and obeyed their mistress with the celerity, silence and humility of slaves. Her horses were of the noblest breeds, and the bridlepaths led through wild and charming scenery. Her suppers, laid with the glittering display of that age, offered the dishes and the wines of three countries. Harpers and singers joined at a distance in giving the zest of Martin's, Palestrina's and Gasparini's music to these feats, which were followed, almost nightly, by theatrical representations or performances of magicians, or dances by young men and girls, which spmetimes took on a dishevelled and bewildering gaiety.

The last week of the visit was rendered still more billiant and delightful by the presence of a largenumber of distinguished guests from various parts of Europe:— friends of the Countess, who seldom let a summer pass without accepting her Bohemian hospitality. And the last night before their departure was set for aD entertainment which promised to surpass everything that had preceded it in the respects of novelty and beauty.

The Countess had arranged a series of mythological and Biblical tableaux vivanta, and a number of the guests of both sexes, including her former lover, the husband of the Russian, had been prevailed on to take parts in them.

At the close of a magnificent feast and wassail the company separated. Those who were to appear in the representations were conducted to their tiring-rooms, while the rest stayed to take seats or lie at ease as an audience upon the vast lounges, stuffed leathern ottoman and heaps of skins by which a hundred servants quickly replaced the chairs and tables at one end of the great dining-hall. The Russian bride occupied an elevated seat of honor in the front of this throng, and when all was ready the hostess entered and sat' beside her. The entertainment met with enthusiastic acceptance, and no wonder. The comeliest men and women whom the Countess could entice from the circle of of her friends and select from her large retinue, displayed in postures imitated from the most celebrated groups of Greek and Italian statuary and the best known sacred paintings, likenesses breathing with vulgar life, yet not unworthy, in the enraptured eyes, of the company, to be compared with their classic models.

At last the heavy curtains were drawn close after a splendid allegorical tableau, which had comprised more than one hundred human figures, and the company prepared to disperse.

" Stay! "cried the Countess rising with a graceful and commanding gesture, " the last: scene ought always to be the best, and the best is yet to come. I pray you resume your seats." All obeyed, and an interval of a few minutes occurred, during which conversation gradually ceased, and the great hall became profoundly silent. Then the" curtains were slowly withdrawn, revealing, against a background of stormclouds and darkness, an appalingly realistic representation of the crucifixion of Christ. At the foot of a rugged- cross, whose upright beam reached nearly to the ceiling were clustered in every variety of attitude two or three scores of mocking Jews, all lifting fingers of scorn and hatred, some gazing in each other's faces with looks of triumphant glee, some gloating on the spectacle above their heads. The figure against the cross, on which, and on several of the upturned faces, a bright light was cast from torches behind a screen, was seen to be actually spiked through hands and feet, from which the blood had not ceased trickling. The body drooped, the knees were slightly bent, the head fell forward, with its crown of thorns. The whole figure, which was that of a man in the very flower of physical beauty, was ghastly with the pallor of a cruel death. * A shudder and then a murmur of horror infected the spectators of this scene. Erom the dais, on which she had been gaily chatting with her hostess, the lovely, Russian was seen to bend forward with a terrible cry, and then to rush screaming down the room to the foot of the cross, scattering the Countess's menial mimics who were gathered there. Reaching up she clasped the knees of the man crucified, and called to ears that were for ever deaf, her murdered husband's name. * ■ * ■■ .*