AN EMPRESS' REVENGE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1973, 23 November 1889, Page 3

AN EMPRESS' REVENGE.

The Veritzins were Russians of enormous wealth and power, Paul held a high office at court. One night glittering in jewels and orders, the young prince, who was one of the handsomest men in Russia, danced in a quadrille opposite the Empress. As she passed him in the dance she fancied that his eyes scanned her gross figure with covert amusement, After the quadrille she beckoned to him, and with a smile handed him her liny ivory

tablet, containing sewn pages, one for each day in the week. On the first was written, " The Imperial ball-reom, St. Petersburg;" on the last, "The mines, Siberia." He read it; his face grew pale as a corpse; he bowed lew, kiisedher hand,

and withdrew, "taking," says the old chronicle, "his wife, the beautiful princess of Novgorod, with him." He was heard to say, as he left the ballroom, "My minutes are numbered; let us not lose one."

Flight or resistance was impossible. The hold of Catherine on her victims was inexorable as death. Prince Veritzin was forced to remain passive at his palac?, while each day the power, the wealth, and the happiness that life had given him were stripped from him. Eirat he was degraded from all his offices at court; next his estates were confiscated by the crown; his friends were forbidden to hold any communication with him, his very name, one of the noblest in Eussia, was taken from him, and he was given that of a serf. Then his wife and children were driven out of the place to herd with beggars. "On the last day," says the record, " Paul Veritzin, in rags, and barefoot, chained to a convict, bade eternal farewell to his home, and departed to the dark, icy aorth. He was seen of men no mere."