OR,

PICTURES OF A COURT.

BY

MRS. ROBERT CARTWRIGHT,

AUTHOR OF

"CHRISTABELLE,"

"LAMIA, A CONFESSION,"

"AMBROSE, THE SCULPTOR," &c., &c.

"Les écrivains comme les instituteurs, améliorent bien plus sûrement par ce
qu'ils inspirent que par ce qu'ils enseignent. Les pensées délicates et pures, dans
la vie comme dans les livres animent chaque parole, se peignent dans chaque
trait, sans qu'il soit pour cela nécessaire de les déclarer formellement ni de les
rédiger en maximes; et la moralité d'un ouvrage d'imagination consiste bien
plus dans l'impression générale qu'on en reçoit que dans les détails qu'on en
retient."

MADAME DE STAEL.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL I.

LONDON:

J. F. HOPE, 16, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1857.

249. V. 234.

PREFACE.

THE AUTHOR wishes to state that she lays no claim to any amount of historical accuracy in the matter of this work; preferring, for obvious reasons, to leave her readers to draw their own conclusions as to the degree of truth or fiction interwoven in its pages. The story is intended to illustrate the manners of the North of Europe, nearly a century ago, by scenes pourtrayed from public and from private life while the fact to be found in its narrative may be drawn from her own conviction of the truth of the somewhat trite apothegm, that persons in the highest stations are subject to trials, often more severe than those of humbler individuals, and that such trials are realities in the solemn drama of life from which no greatness escapes, and no privacy lies hid.

CRAVEN HILL, HYDE PARK,

November, 1857.

INTRODUCTION.

LETTERS from the Princess Esperanza Ostroleuska, née Pavloff Rakowska, to Madame K. F. C.

"MY DEAR MADAM,

You had so often expressed to me the pleasure you formerly experienced in the society of my late lamented aunt, the Countess von Brunnersdorf, that I am induced, with a thousand apologies, to make you what must be a very unexpected request: first detailing the circumstances that have led me to take such a step.

My aunt, at her death, some few years ago, left me her universal legatee; and among the various things that then came into my possession, were a number of papers of both public and private interest. One of the packets into which they had been divided, contained an almost complete Autobiography, with an express injunction not to publish it for a certain number of years after her death, and that of two or three persons who were frequently mentioned in it.

You may imagine, madam, the high value such a manuscript must possess in my eyes, and in that of my mother who was devotedly attached to her, and whose early life was so connected with Countess von Brunnersdorf.