RUSSIAN LADIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5384, 29 June 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

RUSSIAN LADIES.

THEIR WORK AS POLITICAL AGENTS Oi’ THE EMPIRE. Everybody is aware that in all the capitals of tho civilised world there flourishes some Russian lady of rank who helps to lead the fashion, and is very successful in making friends. She is not the Ambassadress, but she is always to be seen at the Embassy parties. She is on the right side of forty, and if not always pretty, she is invariably fascinating, and speaks to perfection the language of the country where she resides. Her husband is in Russia, Little is known of him beyond his name and the fact that be is a nobleman having general’s rank. But he is a living though unobtrusive reality; and his wife sports on gala occasions a star and a diamond emblem, and her admirers would ridicule the idea of her being a paid agent. Perhaps she is not. Her money may come from her own friends, and it is possibly to her husband that she addresses those long letters full of confidential notes as to social and political doings in tho land where she sojourns. Anyhow, her heart is in the work, just as much as is that of a duly accredited diplomatist. She is a passionate partisan. All her vanity as a woman, her family interests, perhaps her heart’s affections, are enlisted in the cause which she represents; and it would be as absurd to dub her doings with a bad name as it would bo to despise tho hoary old plenipotentiary who, in discharging his duty, often uses far more duplicity than she, without having the excuse of her illusions. The game of tho feminine agent is always the same. If tho Government in tho laud where she resides be well disposed to Russia, she becomes the unofficial intermediary of unofficial civilities betweet the courts. She helps to negotiate a marriage, or prepare an exchange of august visits. She smooths away little grievances that have come of ruffled etiquette, gets an unpopular ambassador removed, and conveys tho secret assurances which form the hidden basis of treaties. On the Continent she dispenses decorations and procures honorary colonelcies in Russian regiments for imperial or serene highnesses in their teens. She is, a letter-carrier'for monarohs who think-it imprudent to correspond with their foreign relatives by post or through the legations; and now and then sho may bo found dipping Lor fingers in the preliminaries of a loan. But theso'occupations are comparatively unexciting, and our princess is much more in her clement when sho has to foil the policy of a hostile Government by raising cabals among the Opposition, The intrigues by which tbo Princess Lievcn sought to throw tho Duke of Wellington out of , offico arc well known. Statesmen in Opposition aro not always scrupulous; some rim as they can be misled by erroneous inf >rmation, and sometimes it will happen that an emotional loader of men, full of, spleen at having been turned out of place, and full of ardour for a “new cry,” will let himself be worked into a state of sentimental hysterics, and convulse his country by his antics, The emotional politi-.-Cianj at once vain, ambitions, and rash, otters

a fine prey to Russian* agents. Ho is sure to be followed by a number of other emotionalists, just as in revival meetings, when some saint begins to howl, all the other saints f.all to howling, without welt knowing why. The malcontents, the ignorant, the shrieking sisterhoods, the sects of semi-religious fanatics who are always ready to give tongue in behalf of any cry with a mystical twang in it—all these swell the ranks of those who join the standard of holy Russia. The active pi inoess triumphs; her statements have been accepted as gospel truth. The emotional politician has been softly bantered by her out of the antiquated fears about Russian aggressiveness ; aud he is truly so ashamed of having entertained such fears that he and his men go about laughing in their turn at all who have not been cured of the alarmist folly. So does the princess laugh, but iu her sleeve. ______