Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She was sitting in an arm-chair knitting with very thick wooden needles and coarse brown worsted, something evidently destined for a charitable purpose.

The boudoir, an irregular square room and with a picturesque bow-window, was furnished with no regard to uniformity of style, and therefore had the charm which characterizes rooms which have been as it were gradually evolved from the habits and tastes of a cultured occupant, until they are the frame or setting of an individuality. A delightful confusion of comfort and feminine taste reigned here, and the two or three trifling articles that offended all artistic sense, struck the eye only as piquant beauty spots. The cabinets, filled with rare old porcelain, threw into strong relief the ugly inkstand and candlesticks of modern dark-blue Sevres upon a writing-table. They were a memento, -- a marriage gift from a Russian cousin and youthful playmate who fell in the Crimean war. Among some old pictures, an Andrea del Sarto, a Franz Hals, and two Wateaus, hung in triumphant self-complacency a portrait by Lawrence -- a man's head and bust, -- a crimson-lined cloak was thrown around the shoulders, the shirt collar was open, black hair fell low on the brow, the eyes were large and wild, the frankly smiling mouth was exquisitely chiselled. It hung just over the writing-table, lord of all, and was the portrait of Oswald Zinsenburg, an uncle of the Countess, a gifted fellow, who, when Secretary of Legation in England, had been intimate with Lord Byron, and in all the romantic ardour of a young aristocrat fighting for freedom, had died of brain fever at Missolonghi at the age of twenty-seven, shortly after Lord Byron's death.