"Full of surprise and curiosity I hastened to meet the countess, who entered my doors without honouring me with a single look. She seemed in very bad humour, and concentrated her whole attention upon a tortoise she carried in her left hand. Without uttering a word or caring for the water that streamed from her clothes, she sat down on the divan, and remained for some moments apparently lost in thought. For my part, I continued standing before her, waiting until she should address me, and glad of the opportunity to scrutinise her appearance at my ease. She wore an Amazonian petticoat, a green cloth vest, buttoned over the bosom, a broad-brimmed felt hat, with a pair of pistols in her girdle, and, as I have said, a tortoise in her hand. Her handsome, grave countenance excited my admiration. Below her hat appeared some grey locks, that seemed whitened not so much by years as by sorrow, of which her visage bore the impress.
"Without taking off her hat, the flap of which half concealed her face, she began to warm the tortoise with her breath, calling it by the pet name Dushinka (little soul), which duty being performed she deigned to look up, and perceived me. Her first gesture bespoke extreme surprise. Until then, supposing she was in a Tatar house, she had taken no notice of the objects around her, but the sight of my drawing-room, my library, my piano, and myself, struck her with stupefaction. 'Where am I?' she exclaimed, in hurried alarm. 'Madam,' I replied, 'you are in the house of a man who has long lived as a hermit--a man who like you loves solitude, the sea, and meditation--who has renounced like you the society of his kind to live after his own way in this wilderness.' These words struck her forcibly. 'You, too,' she ejaculated, 'you, too, have divorced yourself from the world, and why? Ay, why?' she repeated, as if conversing with her own thoughts, 'why bury yourself alive here, without friends, without relations, without a heart to respond to yours? Why die this lingering death, when the world is open to you--the world with its delights, its balls and spectacles, its passionate adorations, with the fascinations of the court, the favour of a queen?' Imagine my astonishment to hear her thus in a sort of hallucination, revealing her secret thoughts and recollections. In these few words her whole life was set forth, the life of a beautiful woman, rich, flattered, habituated to the atmosphere of courts.
"After a pause of some duration she entered into conversation with me, questioned me at great length on the way in which I passed my time, on my tastes, the few resources I enjoyed for cultivating the arts, &c. We chatted for more than an hour like old acquaintances, and she seemed quite to have forgotten the strange words she had uttered in the beginning of the interview. Being very much puzzled to know what pleasure she took in carrying the tortoise about with her, I asked her some questions on the subject; but with a solemnity that seemed to me strangely disproportioned to the subject, she told me she had made a vow never to separate from it. 'It is a present from the Emperor Alexander,' she said, 'and as long as I have it near me I shall not utterly despair of my destiny.' Availing myself of this opening I tried to make her talk of the motives that had brought her to the peninsula, but she cut me short by saying that since she had become acquainted with the character of the Tatars she had given up all thought of making converts among them. 'They are men of pure feelings and pure consciences,' she said, impressively; 'why insist on their changing their creed, since they live in accordance with the principles of morality and religion? After all it matters little whether one adores Jesus Christ, Mahomet, or the Grand Lama, if one is charitable, humble, and hospitable.'
"I laughed, and said she spoke rank heresy, and that if she preached such doctrines, she ran great risk of having a bull of excommunication fulminated against her. 'It is since I have given up preaching,' she replied, 'that I have begun to think in this way; solitude makes one regard things in quite a different aspect from that in which they are seen by the world. Only three months ago I set Catholicism above all religions, and now I meditate one still more perfect and sublime. Will you be my first disciple?' she said, in a tone between jest and earnest, that left me very uncertain whether she was serious or not. When she left my house I escorted her to her own door, and promised I would call on her the next day."